Excerpt:
After that cruel day nine Septembers ago, Talat Hamdani felt twice victimized: first by fellow Muslims who killed her son, then by fellow Americans who doubted that a Muslim like her Salman died a hero at the World Trade Center.
Now, Hamdani says that with anti-Muslim feeling aroused by plans for an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from the Ground Zero site, she again feels like a double victim.
"It's worse now than it was then," says Hamdani, a retired middle school English teacher who supports the project. Despite feeling an anti-Muslim backlash in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she says, "at least there was empathy then. I got tons of support. Now I'm getting hate mail."
Hamdani is one of hundreds of American Muslims who lost loved ones on 9/11, yet found themselves tarred, because of their faith, by the attacks. As 9/11's ninth anniversary approaches, some of these Muslims worry that the controversy over the mosque near Ground Zero is feeding a revival of the Islamophobia of 2001.