Editorial August 18, 2003 Issue

God's laws—everywhere

Editor

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with President George W. Bush to discuss the nuts-and-bolts of traversing the Middle East road map to peace between Israel and Palestine.

And across the world from the West Bank, in Quincy, Massachusetts, the congregation of the Islamic Center of New England has been sorting through the debris from an arson fire that occurred at their mosque. Over the last weekend in July, the mosque was set on fire for the second time since 1990. As one member of the congregation, Suheil Laher, told the local newspaper: "As Muslims, we ... wish well for all people. We want to make communities better, and we want to make them better for everyone" (The Patriot Ledger, July 29, 2003).

And while authorities haven't concluded that this was a "hate crime," the Ledger news account states that "those who gathered for evening prayers ... worried that the fire was evidence of lingering misconceptions of Islam in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks." Fear. Mistrust. Right in the middle of suburbia.

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