Dear Editor:
I am writing to correct a statement I made to your reporter on Tuesday, September 11, in connection with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
In response to the question whether September 11 had any special meaning, I answered that it was the anniversary of the death of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a day that was widely celebrated in the Muslim world.
Upon further research, I learned that in fact it is only a secular holiday in Pakistan and is not in fact a day of religious significance for Muslims in general. I had relied on information given to me at a television studio Tuesday morning, when I was preparing to be interviewed concerning the tragic events unfolding that day.
I apologize to the Muslim community in Memphis for mischaracterizing what I called Jinnah Day. September 11 is also the date of the last battle of the American Revolutionary War and the day on which Chilean President Salvador Allende died in a coup d’etat. We do not know for certain who committed the atrocities and what significance, if any, September 11 had for them.
As a professor of political science specializing in civil rights and civil liberties, and former chairman of the Vermont Advisory Committee to the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, I abhor all violence and ill treatment directed at Arab- and Muslim-Americans.
Several times during our history, the American people’s commitment to civil rights has been sorely tested. A hostile crowd, gripped by anti-German hysteria in 1917 after the United States entered World War I, drove my own great-grandfather, a German immigrant living peacefully with his family in Sioux City, Iowa, out of town. In 1942, thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in detention camps during a similar wave of ethnic fear and hatred.
I applaud President George W. Bush’s announcement on September 17 that violence against Arab-Americans will not be tolerated. The ten million Americans adhering to the Islamic faith are patriotic, loyal citizens, who were just as victimized by the murder of 5,000 innocent fellow citizens as any other American.
This nation has matured since the injustice committed against German-Americans and the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans. The events last week provide an opportunity for all Americans to recommit themselves to the principles of the American creed.
One of these beliefs is that the American political community embraces peoples of all faiths, colors and national origins, gathered beneath a single flag.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently expressed the meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution when he said that this country stands for the proposition that we will judge each other by the quality of character and not by the color of skin. It is these principles, not buildings of concrete and steel, that the terrorists were attacking.
It is these principles that will prevail if we remain united, German-American and Japanese-American, Arab-American and Anglo-American—Americans all and, on September 11, victims all.
Kenneth Holland
Professor
Political Science
