Letters, Replies and Forwards
Here are the unedited e-mail messages and replies I've received from various people across the country.
My Message
September 12, 2001.
Yesterday’s attacks and the magnitude of devastation they brought to the American people have made me deeply tormented and sad. I want to tell you that my family and I share the deep sorrow and anger of all the Americans. Last evening my wife called me and told me that our 7-years old daughter is utterly traumatized by what she is watching on TV and when I spoke to her, the first thing she asked me was: Are Muslim supposed to be like this? How can they kill thousands of innocent people and destroy New York for nothing? I had no answer for her, since I didn’t have any for myself either. I don’t know what kind of Islam they follow which exhorts them to do such barbaric acts and promises them a hot seat in paradise? Instead, Quran states that: If you take a single human life for no reason, you have killed the entire humanity. And, if you save a single life from wasting, you have saved the entire humanity. No religion, be it Judaism, Christianity or Islam, teaches violence of any kind and anybody justifying such horrendous acts of violence as committed yesterday is simply a fanatic and a person-gone-astray.
I lived 31 years of my life in India and not even for a day I felt patriotic about her. From my very childhood, I had this feeling that I didn’t belong there; the way the system worked, the way the corruption in all walks of life was pervading, the calculative nature of people around us, left me very disenchanted. When I came to the US more than 10 years ago, within a week of living here, I knew I have come home…I was mesmerized by the warm smiles and friendliness of the American people wherever I went and whom so ever I met and worked with. And over the years we embraced the system with open heart and soul and with an immense sense of gratitude to this great nation and its fabulous people. Now, when some body asks me, are you Indian? I tell them, if you mean, if I was born in India, the answer is yes. But the connection begins and ends just there. Now, this is my Country and this is my Home in the entire sense of the words. Like millions of other immigrants, we love the US of A as much as any native-born American could and are very proud to be a part of it.
I wanted to let you know that our hearts are bleeding as much for the victims and their relatives as anybody else's in this country at this hour and we all will feel sad and hurt for many weeks and maybe months to come, for what has happened. I pray to God to give His grace, solace, peace and comfort to the souls departed and heal the wounded and give the courage and strength to the families whose loved ones were snatched away from them off-guard so suddenly and so cruelly. I hope the authorities grab the fanatic perpetrators of this crime- be they individuals or groups or countries - and bring them to justice and punish them in a manner that nobody else would ever dare repeat this again anywhere else in the world.
Abdul-Majeed Azad, Ph.D.
Research Scientist, NexTech
Materials Ltd.
720-I, Lakeview Plaza Boulevard
Worthington, OH
43085-4733, USA.
P: (614) 842-6606 x 119
F: (614) 842-6607
E-mail:
azad@nextechmaterials.com
Homepage: www.nextechmaterials.com
