Last week I interviewed several Muslim students at Guilford, but Naz Urooj gave me answers before I asked for them at Sunday night’s potent Teach-In. Pacing up and down the Moon Room’s aisle, Urooj shouted, “My religion is between me and Hod. Why do people have to say that the Muslims attacked them. When Timothy McVeigh bombed Okahoma City, nobody said, ‘The Christians bombed us’.”Urooj later said, “Ever since Tuesday I’ve been called names–terrorist, hater, foreigner–given looks, told to go back hme, asked if I was happy, asked, ‘Why do you hate us?’”

Among America’s political leaders, reporters, and civilians, many have been searching for an entity to label as our current enemy. On CNN, they speak of “America’s new war”; Bush declared that the attack was an act of war before noon Tuesday, based on the nature of the close-timed crashes into the Towers and the Pentagon. Everyone in America has been immersed, if not swept away, in the fever of discovering an enemy.

Urooj recommended Guilford student and Palestinian MuslimTamara Asad as our expert on Islam.

What is Jihad?—it’s rumored that the hijackers were waging a jihad against us.

“Jihad means only killing people who are holding a gun to your face. You can’t kill women, children, elderly people, unarmed men—you can’t kill civilians. Suicide is absolutely not permitted by God. It says in the Koran that it is a crime against humanity.”

This phrase, ‘crime against humanity,’ echoes the exact words of the Italian prime minister’s condolences to President Bush.

I asked Asad about love in the holy book of Islam.

“Koran teaches us that you love a person for who they are—that’s Jews and Christians—there is no hatred for Jews and Christians.”

The difficulty of retrieving our Attacker has led the government to vow war against any country harboring the terrorists—whom we have married to Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, turbaned and smiling serenely, is everywhere we look. In fact, the scourge on him and his unidentified followers has set a terrifying number of American citizens—the impatient among us— against Moslems in general.

I returned to Urooj for the following question. What do you have to say about Hamas, the extremist Islamic militant group that seems to approve of the attacks on the U.S.?

“Most Muslims look at Hamas the way Christians look at the KKK,” said Urooj. “All I can say is that people kill thousands of people in the name of God. Its just a misinterpretation. There are extremists that want the (Pakistani) government to attack America. This is just a group of people compared with millions of people that are being blamed.”

The hatred spans to envelop Afghanis, Palestinians, Iraqis, and Pakistanis. Guilford students have complained of not knowing much about these four nations.

Afghanistan happens to be an old ally, informs Alex Stoesen, some time Guilford professor, “anti-Soviet, anti-Iran, anti-heroin.” Almost every Palestinian family has lost members to American weapons employed by the Israeli government. Iraqi children are starving under our current sanctions. A large number of Pakistanis were killed in the World Trade Center; their families cannot return to Pakistan for fellowship and safety since travel to and from Pakistan has been arrested.

Monday I asked a Palestinian friend of mine if I could wear his prayer shawl. He asked me if I was crazy. He finally relented but told me to let him know “what people do to you when you go outside.” I wore it for a day and nothing happened. My friend said, “Oh, of course, it’s because you’re white.”

America is wondering how it should react to terrorism. How does your religion tell you to react to oppression from foreign powers?
It tells us to be patient, to be humble … to be thankful to God for what you have,” said Urooj. “As you know, all Pakistanis can really do with the U.S. is be patient, ask God for help.”

America may be at war, but Americans are struggling to come together. An interesting fact: Jihad is defined as the internal struggle of the soul for peace.