Controlling Ohio’s opiate epidemic requires a different treatment approach

http://www.toledoblade.com/OpEd/2013/12/08/Controlling-Ohio-s-opiate-epidemic-requires-a-different-treatment-approach.html


Action teams are combating the opiate epidemic, but they are missing the vital piece of promoting medication-assisted treatment


Four Ohioans die every day of opiate overdoses. Yet as daunting as the statistics are, the reality of treating the ravages of our opiate epidemic is even worse. Medication-assisted treatment has become essential.

In 2011, one in 20 Americans used prescription painkillers for nonmedicinal purposes. Hydrocodone, an opiate, is the most frequently prescribed medication in the United States. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of pregnant women who used opiates went up five times.

In the late 1990s, doctors were urged to consider pain as a vital sign. Powerful painkillers were developed and used effectively by competent physicians, but they also were diverted to “pill mills” that sprang up in Ohio and across the nation.

Some greedy or careless physicians prescribed opiates indiscriminately. Other doctors who suddenly realized the problem, or feared government regulation, summarily ended treatment with opiates. That forced many patients who had grown dependent on opiates to get their drugs on the street — or to switch to heroin.

Studies over the past decade have shown that opiate addiction is a chronic relapsing disease, like diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. Relapse rates for people who depend on opiates range from 40 percent to 60 percent — similar to the rates for these other chronic diseases.

Brain scans reveal structural and functional changes in the opiate-addicted brain. Blaming an opiate addict for relapsing is like scolding a diabetic for having high blood sugars.

Addiction crosses all boundaries of race, religion, ethnicity, education, profession, age, and wealth. I’ve seen a 65-year-old suburban professional who is addicted to oxycodone chat with a 25-year-old heroin addict, in a touching display of fraternity.

I have specialized in treating addiction for more than two decades. In that time, I often felt powerless as I recommended abstinence and counseling, only to see relapses and ruined lives.

Medication-assisted treatment changed that. Such drugs as methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone, and Suboxone can be prescribed along with behavioral treatment, enabling patients to maintain sobriety and regain the ability to function fully.

Methadone is very effective for treating opiate dependence. But because of its potency and high risk of overdose death, it can be dispensed only in maintenance programs that require daily attendance and swallowing of liquid methadone in front of a witness.

Buprenorphine not only binds tightly to opiate receptors in the brain, it also can prevent stronger opioids, such as oxycodone and heroin, from doing so. Higher doses of the drug do not cause euphoria, lowering its potential for abuse.

In medication-assisted treatment, patients get a detailed evaluation, urine drug testing, counseling, assignment to a 12-step program, and a prescription for buprenorphine. Doctors who are not board-certified in addiction medicine can take an online course in buprenorphine and obtain a license to prescribe it.

A pregnant opiate addict should be cared for by an experienced addiction specialist. In that way, the buprenorphine dose is carefully adjusted, the pregnancy is protected, and the intensity of opiate withdrawal in the newborn baby — and the resulting hospital stay — are reduced.

Without treatment, pregnant addicts often use a potpourri of drugs. Such abuse sometimes kills their babies, or causes prolonged stays for newborns in an intensive care unit.

Toledo has its share of addiction specialists. But it also has Suboxone “cash-pay” clinics, where the only activity is the exchange of money for prescriptions. Just as painkiller pill mills created the opiate epidemic, Suboxone pill mills are implicated in overdose deaths.

Action teams convened by Gov. John Kasich and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine are doing great work in combating the opiate epidemic. But they are missing the vital piece of promoting medication-assisted treatment.

My family-medicine patients send me thank-you cards, but my opiate-addicted patients write thank-you booklets. One such patient was homeless and hopeless.

He dutifully followed a medication-assisted treatment program for a year. He now has a job, a new car, his own apartment, health insurance, and even a 401(k) retirement plan.

Our collective contempt for the disease of opiate addiction is based on ignorance and misinformation. Criminalizing addiction is inappropriate and ineffective; you can’t punish it out of patients.

Recognizing addiction as a disease, and getting more physicians certified to practice office-based opioid treatment in tandem with counseling and 12-step meetings, can quickly control Ohio’s opiate epidemic.

Mahjabeen Islam, M.D., practices in Perrysburg and specializes in addiction and family medicine.

US will pay a price for its hypocrisy on Egypt: Haroon Siddiqui in Toronto Star

Superb article in The Toronto Star by Haroon Siddiqui

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/08/15/us_will_pay_a_price_for_its_hypocrisy_on_egypt_siddiqui.html

Opinion / Commentary


U.S. will pay a price for its hypocrisy on Egypt: Siddiqui

The U.S. and its allies have been enablers of the grave crimes committed by the Egyptian military.

By: Haroon Siddiqui Columnist, Published on Thu Aug 15 2013

There has always been a hierarchy to the value of life. Kings mattered more than peasants. Killing continental European colonialists in Africa or the British in India brought the wrath of the empire down on the natives, who were strapped to the cannons and blown to bits by the hundreds. The contemporary era, with its spread of democracy, globalization and greater egalitarianism, raised hopes that all human beings would have equal value.


But the murder of 2,977 innocents on Sept. 11, 2001, led to the killing of at least 100,000 Muslim civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan. An Israeli life is deemed infinitely more valuable than that of a Palestinian. Our own government in Ottawa makes no bones about caring more about Christians in Egypt and Pakistan than Muslim victims of similar religious persecution there or in Myanmar. When the West does care about Muslims, it does so for the secular “good Muslim,” not the Islamist “bad Muslim.”


When Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s thrice-elected “Islamist” prime minister, ordered tear gas and water cannons on peaceful protesters in Istanbul, he was duly reviled. But the Egyptian army that has been firing live ammunition into peaceful “Islamist” protesters and killing them by the hundreds in the last month has only been told, politely, of our “concern.”


On July 11, Ottawa raised just such a pipsqueak “concern.” Stephen Harper’s government was more emphatic as it condemned the shooting death of a Coptic Christian priest near El Arish. “The targeting of religious leaders is unacceptable.” Following the second massacre, July 27, in which about 80 protesters were gunned down, Ottawa was “deeply concerned and appalled” — and fixated on its clarion call for respecting “religious minorities,” namely Coptic Christians.


Barack Obama was also mostly silent about the two massacres. So was David Cameron. So was much of Europe. They had refused to call the July 3 military coup a coup. In fact, John Kerry passed the perverse judgment that in toppling the elected president Mohammed Morsi, the Egyptian army was “restoring democracy.” American annual aid of $1.3 billion was to continue.


It’s only now after Wednesday’s bloody massacre of pro-Morsi protesters that Obama stirred himself to shed crocodile tears. The U.S. and its allies have been enablers of the grave crimes committed by the Egyptian military as well of the Goebbelsian lies it has been peddling.


After each official atrocity, the army has under-reported the deaths and blamed the victims, accusing them of “inciting violence,” “hoarding weapons,” “torturing people in public squares,” “fomenting terrorism” and being “a threat to national security.” It has hurled a slew of charges against Morsi — murder, treason, espionage, conspiring with Hamas, attacking and insulting state institutions, etc. It has held him incommunicado, along with several top Brotherhood leaders. It has shut down a dozen pro-Morsi TV stations, with a nary a peep from free speech advocates in the West.


The U.S., the E.U and others have also been doing the Egyptian army’s bidding by calling on “all sides” to refrain from violence when, in fact, the violence has been almost always one-sided. Western governments and media have also accused Morsi of having been unduly partisan when, in fact, he was far less so than most ruling political parties in democracies. Proportionately, he appointed far fewer dummies than, say, Harper to the Senate, or the Republicans or Democrats named friends and funders to key posts.


Morsi was inept in the extreme. But he did reach out to his opponents who simply refused to accept their repeated defeats at the polls.


It has now been credibly reported that the secular anti-Morsi forces formed an unholy alliance with Egypt’s Deep State (the army, the intelligence, the security forces, the police, the interior ministry and its paid thugs, the judiciary and the bureaucracy), along with the beneficiaries of the Hosni Mubarak era (crony capitalists and corrupt politicians) to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood government. They collaborated in mounting mass protests, in a blaze of hateful anti-Brotherhood propaganda by both the state and privately-owned media, which heralded the unproven and unprovable claims that 20 million people had taken to the streets and 22 million had signed anti-Morsi petitions. Post-coup, acute shortages of gas and electricity miraculously disappeared overnight. Law-and-order situations improved in selective neighbourhoods.


Reportedly in on the plot were the intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other oil-rich Gulf states except Qatar. They hate the Brotherhood, not so much for its Islamic ideology but the democratic threat it poses to their monarchies. They rewarded the coup with $12 billion in aid.


The army conveniently claimed that the coup was only a response to the people’s will. In turn, it has been forgiven all its sins — including the virginity tests on women protesters, and the shooting of Coptic demonstrators and running them over with armoured vehicles.


What we’ve witnessed is “fascism under the false pretence of democracy and liberalism,” said Amr Hamzawy, an Egyptian political activist and former MP.


All this will not be lost on the Muslim masses in Egypt and elsewhere. There will be a price to pay — we don’t quite know when and where and how. But as American pollster Dalia Mogahed, who has surveyed Muslim societies worldwide, says, it is useful to remind ourselves that “Al Qaeda was conceived in the prisons of Egypt and, contrary to conventional wisdom, not the caves of Afghanistan.”




Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

CAIR Leadership Award Acceptance Speech

Assalamoalaikum and may the best of peace be on all of you!
The highest honor in my mind is to be appreciated by one’s own people. And for this I am deeply grateful to CAIR.
The Islamic Center of Greater Toledo’s construction began in 1982-the year that I moved to the United States. Mine was the first wedding that was held at the Islamic Center. I could not have imagined then that fast-forward 30 years, not only would I become its president, it would be at a time when a hate-filled, armed and drunk Randy Linn would torch its prayer hall.
Throughout my career in medicine I have been acutely aware of the power of my signature and how it can profoundly change lives. After I was elected president of the Islamic Center the added power to affect the lives of 500 Muslim families would weigh on my mind. I remember. When requests for zakat money or financial assistance came from the community, I would beseech God to sharpen my sense of justice and objectivity.
Muslim leaders should continually remember the triumvirate of accountability: the angel on the right, the angel on the left and God above. Our responsibility and accountability is greater and the Day of Judgment should be continually in our thoughts and impact on our decision making. In my mind the definition of leadership encompasses the four Cs: consensus building, conviction, courage, and consultation. With absolute integrity connecting all of them.
The concept of shoora or consultation is an excellent one. I feel shoora begins at home, where I live with my youngest daughter and mother. I run a very democratic household and in every important issue my daughters Atiya, Sairah, Faiza, and my mother and I vote. Thanks to technology my Atiya votes from Chapel Hill NC and my Sairah from Boston MA. Everyone gets an equal vote; my youngest daughter Faiza’s vote is equal to my mother’s or mine. Instituting shoora and equal representation in families, workplaces and organizations encourages team spirit and accomplishes a whole lot more than egocentric tyrants handing down unilateral decisions made behind closed doors, as it tends to happen in our mosques and Islamic schools.
Just before Ramadan 2012 at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, we received an eerie threat that said “stopped” in Arabic with a smiley face in grease on the same paper. It was very strange. The writing was in typed Arabic, with each letter disconnected, and rather than “stop” it said “stopped.” But it didn’t have to make sense for us to know that it was intended as a threat.
Our congregation had gotten very concerned after the Joplin City Missouri arson and suggested that we get added security at the Islamic Center. And here came consensus building: some Council members felt that security during Saturday iftar dinners and Friday prayer was not needed and just another expense.
We learned how it is important for leaders to integrate conflicting opinions and make the decision that is born of conviction and a commitment toward the community. We did have security during Ramadan and I am so grateful that we did; had Randy Linn decided to attack us during Ramadan with a full mosque, it would have been disastrous.
I just attended a conference in Toledo called “Abrahamic Visions of Peace” and they spoke of “internal pressures from the community” and I was reminded of the disagreement within our community regarding the disposition of Randy Linn’s case. To me, making it a federal rather than a county case seemed so logical and obvious; but it wasn’t so clear to others. And here courage is what was needed. Against a lot of pressure I pushed for it to be prosecuted at a federal level and it was. This was important because it wasn’t just about our case; this sets a precedent for future cases.
Only this past week Randy Linn was sentenced to 20 years for unlawfully entering a religious institution, carrying a weapon and arson. I want to acknowledge the diligence and determination of the US Attorney’s office especially the work of Bridgett Brennan and Ava Dustin. The tense hearing when Randy Linn tried to withdraw his guilty plea was handled with professionalism and the skill and convincing arguments of Bridgett Brennan.
Randy Linn was given an exemplary sentence which works to ensure that religious minorities are protected in our country. Judge Zouhary’s statement at Randy Linn’s sentencing was very instructive. He told Linn that what happened on Monday in the Boston bombings and what Linn had done were “an assault on the American psyche”. He also told Linn to study Islam while he’s in prison so that he could perhaps better understand the people that he had attacked.
I can trace the way I’ve been treated as a Pakistani Muslim immigrant for the 30 years that I’ve been in the US. When I first came here, people did not know where Pakistan was and I was treated with interest and courtesy. Post 9/11 things still weren’t too bad. But over the last 7 years or so, that courtesy and interest has changed to coldness and intimidation. There are times I feel that I have horns on my head! At others if looks could kill I’d be dead! My experience is backed up by polls that show that public opinion of American Muslims is worse today than immediately after 9/11.
People would have us believe that America belongs to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The fact is that all its citizens, red, yellow, black, white and brown own America. Muslims do live in fear; we do feel that we are under siege. But cowering in the corner will not do us any good. Calling non-Muslims “Americans” and allowing us to be made into “the other” will not either.
It is for Muslim-Americans in general, and our leaders in particular, to promote the premise that sharing a religion with fanatics or crazies doesn’t make all Muslims extremists. That there’s the good, the bad and the ugly in every group, culture and religion.
We must follow the example of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) about whom the Quran says in Surah Qalam “You O Muhammad stand in an exalted standard of character”. With courage and restraint, determination and flexibility, fearlessness mixed with wisdom, let us work for a day where differences do not mean inequality and we can walk in any neighborhood with skins of many hues and covered heads and not be marginalized, harassed, intimidated, injured or killed.

Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and freedom of speech

Printed in The Toledo Blade January 6, 2012

Watching Randy Linn in court last month was unsettling. He pleaded guilty to defacing religious property, using fire to commit a felony, and carrying a firearm as he walked through the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo last Sept. 30. He accepted a binding plea agreement of 20 years in prison, without appeal or parole, for the arson.

His diatribe at the hearing was worse. He cited news media, especially Fox News, for inspiring his desire to avenge U.S. military deaths. He conceded he knew nothing about Muslims or Islam, other than that Muslims did not believe in Jesus Christ as savior.

America’s Constitution promises justice, liberty, and protection of citizens. Yet a wave of Islamophobia, reflected in incidents such as the Islamic Center arson, suggests that we are more intent on protecting freedom of speech than Americans’ lives and property.

In 2004, when he signed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, President George W. Bush said that “extending freedom also means disrupting the evil of anti-Semitism.” The law requires a specific federal agency to document acts of physical violence against Jews, their property, their cemeteries, and their places of worship. It also mandates monitoring of anti-Jewish propaganda and promotion of unbiased school curricula.

There is no similar law to respond to this country’s ferocious and well-funded Islamophobia industry, which relentlessly whips up anti-Muslim sentiment that can inspire disturbed people to destroy property, maim, and even kill.

Just weeks before the Islamic Center arson, the Muslim Public Affairs Council released a report on 25 supposed experts on Islam, who are frequently quoted by news media. The report concluded that just one of the 25 “experts,” Daniel Pipes, has had any kind of education about Islam.

Two so-called academic experts, Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel, do not have college degrees, the report said. Yet not only do these pseudo-experts get frequent attention from mainstream media, some of them also train law enforcement officers and testify about their hate-filled agendas before Congress.

Several of these so-called experts were cited by Anders Breivik, who in July, 2012, planted a bomb in an Oslo government building that killed eight people, then went on a shooting spree that killed 68 people, mostly teenagers. Breivik subsequently told a Norwegian court that violence was necessary to save Europe from Marxism and “Muslimization.” In his manifesto, he repeatedly quoted anti-Muslim propagandists Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and Walid Shoebat.

Marc Sageman, a terrorism consultant and former CIA officer, notes that just as religious extremism “is the infrastructure from which al-Qaeda emerged,” the writings of anti-Muslim misinformation experts are “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.” Their rhetoric, he adds, “is not cost-free.”

At the opening last November of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tenn., which survived arson and zoning protests, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez asserted: “Without question, we are seeing real challenges to the civil rights of Muslim Americans, including arsons of mosques, assaults, and other hate crimes. We have a steady diet of these cases.”

Mr. Perez expressed deep concern about harassment of Muslim, Sikh, Arab, and South Asian students in schools. “I have often said that today’s bully is tomorrow’s hate crime defendant,” he said. “So we are vigilant to ensure that schools are taking bullying seriously, and are held accountable when they do not.”

He added: “We are doing everything in our power to stop this blight on our nation.” It is comforting to know that the Justice Department recognizes Islamophobia as “blight.”

The Islamophobia industry helped push Anders Breivik to commit a massacre. Fox News helped incite Randy Linn to burn our mosque. Muslims, mosques, and Islamic schools are attacked every week.

There is a federal law against anti-Semitism. But if I call for a similar law against Islamophobia, I am told that protecting freedom of speech is more important.

Hate speech is turning into hate crime. It starts with words, but it ends with mosque burnings — or deaths.

Dr. Mahjabeen Islam is past president of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Letters-to-the-Editor/2013/01/06/Islamophobia-anti-Semitism-and-freedom-of-speech.html

Mosque arsonist: Fox News made me do it! /Salon.com

Saturday, Dec 22, 2012 10:00 AM EST
An Indiana man says he was spurred on by news reports suggesting Muslims were "killing us"
By Bill Morlin, Southern Poverty Law Center
This article was originally published by The Southern Poverty Law Center.

An Indiana man who pleaded guilty yesterday to setting an Ohio mosque on fire told a judge he was motivated by media accounts – specifically those on Fox News – suggesting Muslims were threatening Americans and were in control of parts of the federal government.

Details made public at the plea hearing also revealed that the arsonist, Randolph Linn, was carrying a pistol when he entered the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on September 30, only minutes after several worshippers had left, and that he had more guns in his car.

Linn, a 52-year-old truck driver from St. Joe, Ind., expressed no remorse when he admitted trying to burn down the third largest mosque in the United States. Under the terms of a plea agreement, prosecutors and Linn’s defense attorney will recommend a prison term of 20 years when he is sentenced early next year.

Accounts of the federal court hearing were provided to Hatewatch by Mahjabeen Islam, president of the mosque, who was present along with 10 other members of the mosque.

When U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary asked Linn about his motivation, he responded that he was spurred on by newspaper, radio and Fox News accounts suggesting Muslims were killing “us” and were in control of the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, Islam recounted.

“When asked if he knew any Muslims or about the Islamic faith, he said he did not; he knew only what he got from Fox News, and he did know that ‘they don’t believe in Jesus Christ as the savior,’” Islam said.

“Randy Linn’s statements clearly incriminate the media,” Islam said. “We call on print, Internet and broadcast media to educate the public about various cultures and religions and promote the strength of diversity, rather than whipping up hatred that leads to such destruction. Fox News, in particular, needs to reset its course and policies very quickly.”

The fire caused an estimated $1 million worth of damages.

“We are grateful that no one was injured or killed when Randy Linn came to the Islamic Center,” Islam said. That kind of tragedy, she said, “was a major possibility” because Linn entered the mosque carrying a gun in his hand and had three other firearms in his car.

“The prospect of Randy Linn finding anyone in the Islamic Center is spine-chilling, and we appeal for attention and action on the easy availability of these deadly weapons,” Islam said.


Court documents say Linn left his Indiana home on Sept. 30 in a red four-door Chevrolet Sonic, stopping at a gas station near Perrysburg, Ohio, to fill three gas cans he had in the vehicle, before driving on to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo. The mosque in Perrysburg is the third largest in the United States, a 70,000-square-foot landmark, visible for miles, with 3,000 members who celebrated the center’s 32nd anniversary in October.

Linn made numerous efforts to enter the Islamic Center before finally gaining entry, walking through several rooms with a pistol in his left hand before exiting and then returning with a gas can, the court documents disclosed. He entered the mosque’s prayer room on the second floor and poured gasoline on the prayer rug used by worshippers during prayer services. Linn then set fire to the rug and fled. His actions were caught on surveillance cameras, and he was arrested a few days later after the photos received media coverage.

Islam said attending the hearing and seeing Linn left her “numb and overcome.”

“At no point during the hearing did Randy Linn reveal any remorse for what he had done,” she said. “He pled guilty to all three counts but took no responsibility.”

Linn pleaded to intentionally defacing, damaging and destroying religious real property because of the religious character of that property; using fire to commit a felony; and using and carrying a firearm to commit a crime of violence.

“His guilty plea, acceptance of a binding plea agreement with no chance for appeal and a prison sentence of 20 years, sends out a clear message to future criminals that our society will not accept hate and violence,” she said.

Islam’s comments were echoed by U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach of the Northern District of Ohio, who said, “Religious freedom is at the core of our country, and we will continue to aggressively prosecute such hate crimes whenever and wherever the evidence warrants. This was a true joint effort to seek justice for these victims.”

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said the freedom to worship in the manner of one’s choosing is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans.

“The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division will continue to aggressively prosecute hate-based attacks on houses of worship,” Perez said in a statement. “I commend the cooperative efforts of local and federal law enforcement officials to ensure justice in this case.”

Just another mosque burning

October 11, 2012
The Joplin City Missouri Mosque burned to the ground on August 6 this year. On September 30 the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo would have as well had it not been made of brick and mortar. Thankfully, no one was injured or killed since the suspect entered at a time when the mosque was empty. Is that why our nation does not notice? Or do we feel that Muslims deserve this?

The 60,000 square foot Islamic Center of Greater Toledo sits beside Interstate 75 and has the distinction of being the second oldest and one of the largest mosques in the United States. It is one of only two mosques in North America where men and women pray side by side, separated by a short partition. It also has a female president-me-and an executive committee that is three-quarters female.

I was rounding at the hospital and rushed to the mosque thinking it was a false alarm or maximally an electrical fire. The smoke was so thick that entry for investigation could not be accomplished for two hours. Why were there so many fire trucks and even more police cars? I had left a busy Sunday at the mosque just three hours ago. My mind still tries to absorb the State Fire Marshal’s statement that it was arson. I wondered whether the creepy Joker-style letter sent in mid-August with the word “stopped” written in Arabic and a smiley face drawn in grease was connected.

The video surveillance system caught a middle-aged white male entering the mosque and within twelve hours of the publication of this photograph, a woman identified him and reported that he had made many anti-Muslim statements. At the time of arrest he said “(expletive) the Muslims”. He also had 3 guns in his car and the video shows him walking the hallways of the mosque with a revolver. Randy Linn, age 51, has been charged with a hate-crime.

How did Linn enter the mosque? The bravado to pour gasoline on the carpet in the center of the prayer hall and set it alight contrasts with his seeming ignorance of the security cameras.

The walk-through of the mosque before it was given back to us by the authorities will remain etched in my mind. The power had been shut off so the trek was murkier. Soot floated in black puddles in ankle high water, ceiling tiles swelled with the sprinkler water, some already giving way to hanging wires. Smoke layered the books and blackened the wall hangings. Even the inside of the high dome had punched out areas in it. In a localized fire how could he have disabled the entire building?

Did Linn learn the geography of the building during the guided tours at the time of the International Festival in mid September? Some members seem to remember him wanting to come into the mosque in the summer, but he looked suspicious so they said the mosque was closed.

The days have just blended together and during the Friday prayer attended by Muslims all over the Greater Toledo area, grown men from dentists to retirees have sobbed. Many members don’t want to see the prayer hall and when they get the courage to, their faces pale as though it were a grave. A sickening testimony to overpowering hate.

The support from the multi-faith community of Toledo exactly one week after the attack has been heartwarming. And though these prayers and moral support go a long way to balm our wounds there is this constant unease within me: who will be next?

And while I’m relieved that he has been apprehended and one more hate-crazed man is off the streets, I’m unable to comprehend why this did not get national attention. In barely a 2 month time frame there have been nine attacks on Sikh and Muslim places of worship. Wade Michael Page who killed six in the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin was an army veteran and allegedly had links to a white supremacist group. Similarly, Randy Linn is an ex-Marine who feels that Muslims “get a free pass”. It is unknown whether Linn acted alone or not.

Local television stations had to disable comments on the reports about the Islamic Center attack for the refrain of many was that “the Muslims deserve this”. Our nation is being saturated with hate speech. Anti-Muslim remarks like those of Senator Joe Walsh (R., Ill) or the vitriol of Michelle Bachman (R., MN) serve to enrage and stir violence in probably war-scarred individuals like Page and Linn.

Wires and hoses criss-cross the Islamic Center now and yellow scaffolding extends the length, breadth and height of the prayer hall. I remember the magnificence of the prayer hall and the glorious stained glass windows and then the black crater at its center and now bare floor with areas where the padding sticks obstinately to the floor. The pristine exterior belies the ravages within.

Though the questions stream endlessly the solutions seem crisp. We must call out Islamophobia when we see it; just like anti-Semitism, it starts with words and ends in deaths.

The attack on the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo was not an attack on Muslims but on our constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion and protection of all citizens. I’m stunned by the attack on the Islamic Center but even more grieved by the collective national shrug in response to these tragedies: it’s just another mosque burning.

Dr. Mahjabeen Islam is president of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

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Area Muslims deplore embassy attacks, deaths

http://www.toledoblade.com/Religion/2012/09/13/Area-Muslims-deplore-embassy-attacks-deaths.html