Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
CNN has this roadside blog of a couple of Muslims, a Southern white guy, and an African-american driving thru the South during Ramadan. Kind of interesting for some perspective on this thread, I think: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/30/ramadan.roadtrip/index.html?hpt=C2
Aman has seen this country before. Although he's an award-winning journalist for Gannett News Service, he's also a standup comedian who's traveled a lot. Once, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he went into a convenience store. The white guy at the counter walked away, he says, and hollered in the back: "We've got a colored! We need you to serve him." A black man came to take his money.
It's a good thing they didn't have harmless model rocket parts in their trunk after being pulled over by the local police near a military base.
Blacks in the South learned that lesson long ago."What it means to be Muslim in America?" she says. "It means to be modest, to be humble."
As the two zipped along the dark highway toward New Orleans, their next planned stop, a police officer in Biloxi, Mississippi, pulled out and followed them for about 15 minutes.
Sounds like all Muslim-Americans should have bumper stickers that say "I hate the Ground Zero Mosque"."So tell me," he says, "what do you think about that ground zero mosque?"
Bassam sat, frozen. He and Aman had intentionally avoided driving at night previously, partly for fear of being racially profiled. The answer to this question, he thought, is going to decide whether we're going to spend the night in Biloxi or in New Orleans.
He decided to give the cop the answer he thought he wanted to hear. "For them to build it by ground zero is very insensitive," Bassam said. "... Isn't it just a slap in the face?"
The cop eased up. "I'm not pro-religion or anything, but that's just wrong for them build it there." He sent the two on their way.
"I just sat there wondering, 'Did that just happen?' " Aman told me later.