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Aslam Abdullah, vice chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, says his group received a number of threatening phone calls and e-mails on Tuesday from unidentified people. "Basically their message is the same: Pack up and leave. You have no place in America," Abdullah says.

Jean Abinader of the Arab American Institute monitored talk radio from the public policy group's Washington, d.c., office. "(Tuesday) morning I was hearing people say, 'That's what we get for letting people like that into our country,'" he says.

Riffat Hassan, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Louisville, says most of her Muslim students did not come to class Tuesday, including a woman who wears an Islamic head covering. "She was not even allowed to come out of her house," says Hassan, who received an e-mail from the student.

"We see a very bad backlash coming," says Abinader, "no matter who is responsible—even if it comes out that they are right-wing Americans, like Oklahoma City; still the reaction will be there."

In the days after the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Muslims reported more than 200 incidents of harassment, threats, and violence, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (cair) in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday cair advised Muslims who wear Islamic attire to stay out of public areas "for the immediate future" and requested that authorities provide additional police patrols in the vicinity of mosques. CAIR estimates there are 7 million Muslims in the United States and 1.2 billion worldwide. The 2000 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, however, says the Muslim population in America is 5.7 million.

Abdullah lamented that he felt unwelcome in public just hours after the attack. "I went to the Red Cross to donate blood in the morning, and I could see the kind of frown on the faces of people," he says.

Hassan says Muslims on the Louisville campus expressed fear about the days ahead. "Some people were saying Today they are in a state of shock, and tomorrow they are going to get very angry."

What has increased the anger of many Americans are the televised images of Palestinians publicly celebrating the attacks with shouts of "God is Great." Egyptian students, taxi drivers, and shopkeepers were among others who joined in the revelry Tuesday, according to news reports.

Abdullah says, however, that he cried in sorrow when he saw the Palestinian celebration. "How can any human being rejoice at the destruction of a fellow human being, especially in the name of religion?" he asked. "This is just obscene. I think this must be deplored with the loudest voice."

Abinader notes, though, that some Palestinians feel the U.S. is now paying the price for its support of Israel. "We think it's the irrational response of a people who live in an irrational environment," he says. "They don't understand. They see death everyday of their own people. They can't find any satisfaction in dealing with Israel. And so this gives them the opportunity to say, It's God's will— what's happening in the United States."

The Palestinians in the streets reflected the sentiments of only a small minority, who view the U.S. in an abstract way, according to Sami Awad, executive director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. "The U.S. is not seen by Palestinians here as a location where there are just normal people who work and live," he explained. "The U.S. is perceived as the enemy. The first celebrations took place as the attack was announced, but as the reports kept coming in and we saw the extent of the damage, then there was clearly a somber feeling in the Palestinian community."

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45