Meeting My Accuser

At Starbucks in downtown Rochester today, I met an old acquaintance, a Somali immigrant who is Muslim. I last saw him more than six months ago, just before I published a long article in Minneapolis City Pages about a local woman who claims she met one of the 9/11 hijackers in a downtown Rochester bar in August, 2001.

I was previously on friendly terms with this fellow, but apparently no more.

The minute he saw me, he started yelling. People in the coffee shop were turning around. "What do you mean by publishing that article?" he demanded. "What do you mean by that? That article hurt every Muslim who lives in this city!"

After it was published, several Muslims wrote to City Pages to say the article was unfair because it suggested that all Muslims who live in Minnesota are possibly terrorists. Needless to say, I had tried to write the article in such a way that it wouldn't inflame this concern. I had done a great deal of research and not only believed the woman was telling the truth exactly as she remembered it, but also that there was a very strong circumstantial case that she was correct. I believed then, and believe now, that the hijacker named Mohand Al-Shehri likely visited Rochester just weeks before 9/11. 

"That woman, what was she doing in a bar so late at night?" my acquaintance demanded. "She was drunk! She was dating Arab men! This is not a good woman!"

I interjected that in the United States, the fact that a woman goes to a bar for a drink after work does not make her a bad woman. He brushed the comment aside.

"Why did you print what she said?" he yelled. "Now every person in Rochester thinks that every Muslim who lives in this town is possibly a terrorist!" By now a mutual friend of ours, also a Somali Muslim, was trying to pull the man away from me. More people turned their heads to stare.

"Did you read the 9/11 Commission Report?" my accuser demanded.

"Yes," I said.

"Did it say that a 9/11 hijacker ever visited Rochester?"

"No," I said.

"So you know more than the 9/11 Commission?"

"Yes, in this one detail I think I do," I began to say, but at this point the man's cell phone went off and as he answered it my Somali friend hustled him out the coffee shop door, on the pretense that it would be quieter to talk on the phone outside. I gathered my newspaper and left while the getting was good.

The moral of the story? I'm not sure yet, but the encounter left me depressed.

I know the situation in town is not as bad as he paints it. I have other Muslim friends here who, while they are definitely concerned about stereotyping Muslims, are not upset to this degree and don't believe my article was racially irresponsible. Still, to come face to face with such raw anger -- a seething raw anger that spans the globe -- is sobering and scary. This is a glocal reality. I am determined to the degree possible to try to understand -- and as a journalist to report and explain -- the legitimate concerns being expressed.

But at some point the dialogue turns ugly and scary and one simply has to turn away. One needs to wait for a cooler moment to continue the dialogue. Will that moment ever come between this man and me? And how?

Comments

[Mark A. York]

This is a case of colliding cultures an example of what can happen they the immigrant culture refuses to melt with the American macro-slumgullion stew as the late Ed Abby called it. The answer is more exposure and dropping some of the hard-rock fallacies of the culture at odds.

[Doug McGill]

Nicely put. Who does the dropping first? Exactly how do we do it? Got any plans and procedures? Also, I agree with your comment about "immigration culture refusing to melt with the American stew." However, as a journalist, I have a tough time bringing this up. When I write on this theme, I get e-mails from anti-immigrant groups inviting me to hate rallies. It's natural to want to just shut up when you get responses like that. You don't want to stir that stuff up. On the other hand, the press I fear is largely silenced by this PC pressure into quietude on the subject.

[AH]

It seems straightforward. You decline the anti-immigrant invitations, stating clearly that you do not align with their policy objectives. And you keep writing the truth.

I understand a simple self-protective hesitation to be the object of public near-assault. But I cannot support a sense that threatening attitudes and behavior and outrage should be justified by capitulation. And "you don't want to stir this stuff up" seems to make a greater demon of those who are exercising their right to examine immigration policy, than of those who would attack free information.

A good friend of mine flying East sat next to one of the hijackers a few days before 9/11, as he was apparently doing reconnaisance. Should she have shut up?

Journalists have to deal with those who unreasonably wish to muzzle them. Republicans might think Gannon makes them look bad. Is that a reason to downplay it? Some Italians don't like coverage of traditional urban organized crime.

If you want to reach out, offer a press forum to the local Muslim community to express themselves on the matter, and answer and respond to them with care and candor.

[Mark A. York]

Yeah that's the parallel realities problem of cultural relativism. I think there are universal human values though that those of any culture can agree on.

It helps to have those from a scientific background, but lacking that it takes tack and an appeal to logic. Myth-busting and feeling, not thinking, is the biggest problem we face in communication today.

This blogosphere is terribly polarizing. It seems to be getting worse as any visit to pressthink will bear out. I say debunk both mythologies and exremes equally and stick to the universal facts we all have in common.

It's easier to say than do though, to add a cliche.