01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 11, 2006

I sat down with four local Muslims whom I had recently insulted in print.

Not directly, but close enough. A month ago, I wrote a pointed column asking why moderate Muslims never protest terror. My implication was that most condone it with their silence.

Now I was in a mosque in Pawtucket with leaders of Rhode Island's Muslim community.

I looked at Dr. Ali Hassan, a Brown University Middle East studies professor who is president of the Rhode Island Council for Muslim Advancement (RICMA).

He had just finished showing me a stack of articles proving that he and others have frequently denounced terror.

I clearly had not given them credit.

"So you must be angry about what I wrote," I said.

He and the three others at the table smiled. Dr. Hassan shook his head.

"I am not angry," he said. "I am grateful for the chance to address misconceptions."

Usually, if I criticize someone in print, they'll respond angrily. I thought that would happen in this case. That column was pretty tough.

"You cannot expect people who decapitate bound innocents to acknowledge their own evil," I wrote, "but you can expect mainstream Muslims to condemn them."

I added: "Wouldn't you think that, somewhere, some prominent Muslim would go public and say, 'Don't you dare do this in our name.' I've seen no sign of that."

After it was published, the column drew many phone calls from Muslims.

But all were along the lines of one from Dr. Mamoun Najjar, a Woonsocket physician specializing in pulmonary medicine who also serves as spokesman for RICMA.

Instead of saying, "How dare you?" -- he left the following message:

"Thank you so much for taking an interest in the Muslim community." Then he asked if I might call to discuss it.

I'm afraid I didn't call for three weeks. When I finally did, he was simply grateful. He asked if I might want to view a typical daily Muslim prayer session and then sit down with local leaders.

Just before 1 p.m. on a recent Friday, I drove to one of the state's six mosques -- this one a nondescript converted office space in an industrial corner of Pawtucket not far from Memorial Hospital. It was an open, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and a few framed religious teachings in gold Arabic letters on black backgrounds.

About 30 men were there when I arrived. By the time the prayer session was done 45 minutes later, the room would be filled with 100 men. Separated by a table, there were another 15 women in head coverings.

The worshipers sat shoeless on the open carpet, and as a visitor, I assumed I'd be expected to join them out of respect, but the hosts offered me a chair, wanting me to be comfortable as an observer.

Dr. Najjar, the Woonsocket physician, was leading the service. Mosques like this, he explained, are run by the community itself instead of a single leader. Najjar would later explain it's one reason why moderate Muslim voices aren't always heard; Islam, he said, has no Pope, bishops or "Pat Robertson," so there are no main spokesmen.

I listened as Najjar addressed the prayer gathering.

Mostly, he spoke of striving to follow the prophet's teachings as Muslims who must also be committed members of America's secular society.

Afterward, he introduced me to other worshipers. There were several doctors, dentists, professors and software designers. There were taxi drivers and laborers, too.

"So this is us," Najjar said.

Then: "May I introduce you to some of the sisters?"

We approached the women in head-coverings. One was a lawyer, another a pharmacist.



My newspaper's photographer asked them if he could take a picture. One of the women smiled. "As long as we look pretty," she said. Then I sat with Woonsocket's Dr. Najjar and Brown's Dr. Hassan. We were also joined by Dr. Amjad Kinjawi, a dentist who is president of the Muslim Society of Rhode Island, based here at the mosque. Tod McKenna was with us, too. He is 29, a software designer who went to Catholic elementary school, Tolman High and later converted to Islam. He is on the Board of RICMA.

They came armed with stacks of articles about moderate Muslims condemning terror.

One was in my own paper last summer after bombings in London and Egypt.

"It's un-Islamic," Dr. Najjar himself had said at the time. "These people are extremists. They are criminals."

I looked at Najjar.

"I guess I missed that one," I said.

Dr. Hassan said he'd noted that I specifically asked in print why no Muslim has said, "Not in our name."

In response, he had brought a July 11, 2005, UPI article about the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia using those exact words to tell terrorists: "Not in Islam's name." A second article was about the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, also saying that terrorist acts are "not in the name of Islam."

Tod McKenna added: "Those are two of thousands."

I asked McKenna if he was angry at my having tarnished moderate Muslims by saying they never speak out.

"No," he said. "We realize this is the majority opinion." He understands that many Americans look upon all Muslims distrustfully because of the acts of extremists. But he said that's as unfair as associating all whites with the acts of the KKK or supremacist groups.

They talked about the riots that broke out after political cartoons were published in Holland showing images of the Prophet Muhammad. They condemned that violence, feeling it reflected badly on all Muslims.

"I can guarantee you that most of the ones that were doing the riots were not even related to the Muslim religion on a daily basis," said Dr. Kinjawi. He said they were more like street thugs.

"You see what we are doing here," said Dr. Najjar, "sitting and talking and letting all points come out? That is what Islam is about."

They know that many Americans don't see Muslims that way, and they worry that misconceptions feed prejudice.

Dr. Najjar showed me articles about a rise in hate crimes against American Muslims.

I asked if they worry it could happen here.

"Actually," said Dr. Kinjawi, the dentist and Muslim Society president, "we had a couple of incidents at our previous location."

He was speaking of the mosque, which recently relocated from a site off Newport Avenue. When it was there, someone wrote hate graffiti on the mosque's door.

I asked what the message was.

"I won't be able to repeat the words," said Dr. Kinjawi. It was foul language, he explained, and he's uncomfortable saying it.

Basically, he explained, it said that Arabs and Muslims aren't wanted here.

"It was very hateful," said Dr. Hassan.

Hassan was the first to find it when he arrived at the mosque one evening last year with his two teenage boys, then 13 and 15. The message, written obscenely, said that all Arabs should go home.

His sons, he said, were born in America. They wondered, said Hassan, why someone would hate them like that, and think they didn't belong here.

"This is our home," added Dr. Najjar.

Dr. Hassan has been in America 26 years, and lives in Barrington, where his boys go to school.

Dr. Najjar has been here 10 years.

I asked what brought them here. In most cases, it was study or jobs -- a Brown professorship for Dr. Hassan and internal medicine for Dr. Najjar. Now, many of Rhode Island's 10,000 Muslims are citizens, they said. Najjar said they have the same philosophy as most people who live here: "Pursuing the American dream."

Dr. Hassan was previously a professor in California, where there were more frequent hate crimes against Muslims, including mosques being set on fire.

Once, someone drove by in a car and threw an egg at him and his wife. He presumes his wife's head-covering drew attention.

I asked the women who were still at the mosque if they are ever uncomfortable for that reason.

Mai Shaker is a pharmacist and board member of the mosque, in line to possibly be its next president. Last year, her children went to the Islamic Academy of New England in Mansfield, Mass. A few times, people drove by shouting at the kids and moms to go back to their own country.

"It's very hard for the children," she said. Mai grew up in Egypt, but her children were born here, and it's home now.

She said she too feels the media implies, as she put it with a smile, that all Muslims are secretly fans of Osama bin Laden.

Dr. Najjar agreed that it is uncommon to find positive coverage of the Muslim community in mainstream news coverage. He and the others kept saying they were grateful I'd sat down with them to let them show that side.

"Islam," said Dr. Najjar, "is what you saw today: people praying and supporting the community."

Then they wanted to make a point about Rhode Island. Those who had spent time elsewhere, from Belgium to California, said this is among the most accepting places they have been. They know about the state's history of tolerance, and feel they have benefited from that. Yes, they said, there have been a few incidents, but generally, Rhode Island has been welcoming, and the women, for example, do not feel self-conscious about wearing head-coverings.

Still, they feel it's an ongoing mission to make clear that terror and Islam are separate things.

The call to prayer at the mosque happens five times a day for the most devout. My hosts told me they are seldom able to make it that often, but they at least planned to be back for the evening prayer on this Friday. It would be a big night, said Dr. Kinjawi, with a social session planned, and then a group trip to go bowling.

But now, they were late.

They put on their shoes, said their goodbyes, and then these doctors, professors and cab drivers headed back to work.

mpatinkin@projo.com / (401) 277-7370

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