Letter to the president

LAHORE: This is with reference to Faryal Gauhar’s “Letter to the president –II” (July 4). The writer has made some very interesting observations. As a Pakistani-Canadian, I have crossed over into Buffalo, New York, a number of times in the post-9/11 period and while I was properly processed and, on occasion, thoroughly searched, never once was I ill-treated or probed beyond what might be described as “normal course of inspection” by officials of the US Department of Homeland Security – Customs and Border Protection.

I strongly believe that the collective sobriety with which the Americans conducted themselves as a nation after the 9/11 attacks is worthy of highest praise. From the Eastern Seaboard to the Deep South and San Francisco Bay, church groups, civil society organizations and concerned individuals came out in record numbers to protect the seemingly vulnerable Muslim communities: Arabs, Indonesians, Indians, Pakistanis and many more. The number of reported hate crimes nationwide was astonishingly low and the process of assimilation, with a few exceptions, of Muslims into the mainstream of American life went on fairly smoothly. It is difficult for me to imagine that people of any other nation would have shown such remarkable restraint in the aftermath of a similar attack on its soil.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2010.