HOME PAGE
|
Saturday, August 22, 1998
Las Vegas Muslims say U.S. overreacted
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Las Vegas Muslims on Friday condemned terrorist acts linked to renegade Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, but they also said the magnitude of the U.S. retaliatory missile strikes against bin Laden's strongholds in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan were unwarranted.
"In Islam if you've killed a person, it's like you kill all of humanity," said Atif Fareed, a native of India who was one of 500 Muslims attending a prayer service Friday at the Islamic Society of Nevada mosque on East Desert Inn Road.
Fareed and three other congregation members -- Abdul Ansari, Reza Salimian and Douglas Lawrence Chenin -- agreed that bin Laden was wrong if, as U.S. officials claim, he was behind the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
But they said the United States use up to 79 cruise missiles 13 days later, knocking out targets and possibly killing innocent people, was inappropriate.
Said Chenin: "Islam and terrorism is like positive and negative. They are two separate things. We believe all mankind is a single nation."
Fareed, an airline captain who has lived three years in the Las Vegas area, said he fears non-Muslims are confused about his religion and the political motivation of bin Laden, a Saudi fundamentalist who relocated in Afghanistan and who is closely aligned with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
"There is a difference between religion and people who follow the religion," Fareed said. "If bin Laden did it, he deserves to be punished. We could have pinpointed him and had a more successful mission, but we didn't get bin Laden and there should not have been as much chance of civilian casualties."
Ansari, another Islamic Society of Nevada member and an Afghanistan native who did not attend Friday's prayers-for-guidance service, said he is "positively" worried about his 25 brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces who live in Mazar-e Sharif, an Afghan city 35 miles south of the former Soviet republic, Uzbekistan.
"Seventy cruise missiles for one person? That wasn't right," Ansari said. The problem, he said, is not religion, it's politics.
"We don't like terrorism. We are not protecting terrorists. We are not standing behind them," said Ansari, who fled Afghanistan "after the (Soviets) kicked us out and the (hard-line) religious people took over."
"I'm a a Muslim. I'm shaving. I'm a decent person. I'm against terrorism. Why should war be making more war?" Ansari said.
"He (hid) in my country. If the United States wants to prove justice, bring him (bin Laden) to justice in this country and try him," he said.
Ansari, a U.S. citizen, said after fleeing Afghanistan in 1979, he joined his brother in Los Angeles, who had been in the United States since 1965.
An electronic technician, Ansari said he moved to Las Vegas in 1996 after the 1994 deadly earthquake in Northridge, Calif., destroyed his home and business.
Salimian -- a native Iranian educated in Pakistan -- recalled how the Islamic Society of Nevada has grown from five households in 1975 to the 500 who attended Friday prayer services.
The mosque was built in 1994. Boxer Mike Tyson occasionally comes to say prayers, he said, estimating there are 5,000 Muslims in the Las Vegas Valley who practice the teachings of the Koran, the words that Allah dictated to the prophet Mohammed.
Give us your FEEDBACK on this or any story.
Fill out our Online Readers' Poll
|
Douglas Lawrence Chenin (left), Atif Fareed and Reza Salimian discuss this week's U.S. military actions after a prayer service Friday at the Islamic Society of Nevada mosque on East Desert Inn Road. While they denounce terrorism, they say the United States went too far to retaliate for the embassy bombings in East Africa.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.
|
