http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-03-1Amuslims911_CV_N.htmNEW YORK — 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.
"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."
Yet 9/11 had more Muslim victims (about 60 of nearly 3,000 killed) than terrorist hijackers (19).
This, his mother infers, is what happened on 9/11: While heading toward the city on the elevated subway train, Salman saw the twin towers burning and wanted to help. He used his EMT and police cadet credentials to get downtown, where he was killed when the north tower collapsed.
A New York Post story about Salman was headlined "Missing — or Hiding?"
The following month, at his funeral, the police commissioner called him a hero. "Most people would have gone in the other direction" during the aftermath of the attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "He went in to help people."
The martyrs were Salman, and all the others born in faraway places with unusual names. "They died for one reason," she says. "Not because they were Muslims or from Pakistan or anywhere else. They died because they were Americans."
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