Fredericksburg Muslims Feel Misunderstood

This is a good article from this morning’s Free Lance-Star on the current condition of area Muslims:

“Ever since 9/11, and then again during the war with Iraq, people have been staring at me,” said Gotham Sethi, a lobbyist living in Stafford, who was born in northern India. “At first, I thought it was because I’m so darned handsome and people were finally noticing.”

He said he realized his good looks were not the source of the attention when one day, “Someone came up to me on the VRE, shoved me and referred to me as ‘desert nigger.'”

There might be a few people who say that this is an isolated incident. It’s not. Shortly after 9/11, my brother chased out a few people who were harassing a Pakistani family. After calmly explaining to them that they had to leave, my brother’s patriotism was questioned. As we are all Irish-Lebanese, he told them that he was partly Arabic and they needed to leave the store. Comments such as “dunecoon,” “sand nigger,” and other such colorful language were hurled before they left. During the First Persian Gulf war we got it from kids in Caroline County. The prejudice is not terribly uncommon.

Of course, you always hear a new one that you can appreciate. With the Irish-Lebanese background, “lepracoon” was just one such example.