Muslims in N.J. city brace for backlash after attack in NYC
PATERSON, N.J. — In the halal bakeries and markets that line Main Street, and in mosques that have been part of the community for decades, a familiar dread has taken hold after the latest terror attack in the United States.
Sayfullo Saipov, the Muslim man accused of using a truck to mow down people on a New York City bike path in the name of the Islamic State, lived in Paterson.
Paterson saw a surge of anti-Muslim harassment after 9/11, particularly after it was learned that as many as a half-dozen of the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field lived or spent time in the city 20 miles outside New York.
After the rampage Tuesday, “it’s the same feeling again,” said Imam Mohammad Qatanani, spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, the region’s most influential mosque.
“People here feel they will be blamed as a religion and as a people. Because this guy was a Muslim, Muslims will be blamed anywhere and everywhere.”
On Thursday, it had begun. The Islamic Center of Passaic County had received telephone threats, prompting police to assign extra patrols to the area.
“They say they’re going to kill us, they’re going to burn the place down, all using extremely foul language,” said the mosque’s president, Omar Awad. “They say, ‘We’re going to come rip your beard off.’ ”
The New Jersey office of the Council on American Islamic Relations reported threats had also been made against the Omar Mosque, next door to the apartment house where Saipov lived.
Until last week, Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan, was just one more recent arrival in a city that is home to immigrants from more than four dozen countries.
Neighborhoods have been dubbed Little Ramallah or Little Istanbul for their respective Arab and Turkish residents. Peru has a consulate in the city to serve the large number of Peruvians.
More than 34 percent of the city’s residents were born in another country, according to the Census Bureau.
Paterson was an engine of the Industrial Revolution, its factories churning out textiles and embroidery that helped earn it the nickname Silk City. But many of the industrial jobs are gone, and nearly a third of Paterson’s population lives in poverty, the city beset by crime and drugs.
It has been in this environment that the Muslim community established itself over decades, with a mix of Arab, Asian, AfricanAmerican and European members of the faith.
Now, some are afraid they will be made to answer for the actions of a man many say they didn’t know.
Frank Cagatay, who lives in an apartment building where Saipov had lived, said the latest attack will further damage Paterson’s reputation.
“The people that do this cite God in carrying out terrorist attacks, but God never told anyone to kill innocent people,” he said.