Muslims See Themselves as Another Victim in Twin Explosions

Worried about the well-being of a family friend who worked there, Anjum Javed Khan raced to the U.S. Embassy here after it was bombed, thinking that he might do a good deed and offer any help he could. Instead, the Muslim youth ended up in police custody, undergoing questioning about a heinous crime.

While Kenyan and U.S. officials hope that the detention of five men as part of their bombing investigation will provide a breakthrough in the case, the hunt for the culprits has become a nightmare for this East African nation’s 8 million Muslims. They feel unfairly targeted.

Muslims in Tanzania, scene of an almost identical explosion, also feel wrongly blamed for the tragedy, which, in Kenya, killed more than 250 people--among them 12 Americans--and injured more than 5,000; 10 people were killed in the explosion in Tanzania, where 14 people have been detained for questioning.

Kenyan officials said their detainees--possibly more than five of them--have been held because of “suspicious activities.” They declined to discuss the matter further, though an American law enforcement source in Washington has termed two of the detainees “suspects” and said they came from outside Kenya, without offering specifics as to their nationalities.

The Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims, which represents this nation’s Islamic organizations, named four members of its community as having been detained, including Khan, 29, a citizen of Kenya of Pakistani descent. Ibrahim Lethome, deputy secretary-general of the Islamic council, said the other detainees are: Hani Fuad Mohammed, Umar Harari and Abdul Qadir Mohammed Hussein (nicknamed Sahar Deed).

Mohammed and Harari are Kenyans of Arab origin, Lethome said; Hussein is a Somali Kenyan. Qari Abdul Razak, a Pakistani from Kenya’s North-Eastern province, also was detained but later released, Lethome said.

Muslim leaders in Nairobi said Thursday that they believe the media have discriminated against them, portraying Islamic adherents in knee-jerk fashion as likely suspects in the bombings.

A cartoon in Tuesday’s daily Kenya Times showed a hyena with a bone in its mouth running across the surface of the globe, leaving a mountain of skulls in its wake. On its back appeared the words “Arab Terrorism,” and a corner caption read: “This filth should not roam our sacred continent.”

The East African Standard depicted a Muslim with Arab features about to set off on a journey from a terrorist camp in the desert. Kneeling on a mat for his early morning prayers, he asks God to “help me kill innocent men, women and children.”

“The [anti-Islamic] attitude has been created right from day one--that the right suspects should be Muslims,” Lethome said. “Five minutes after the blast, we rushed there, and people were saying it must be Arabs, it must be Muslims. The dust had not even settled.”

Of Kenya’s 8 million Muslims, Lethome said about 10% are Arabs.

“I think to link the blame to the whole religion, that is the kind of coverage that is unfair,” said Mohammed Farouk Adam, vice chairman of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque, noting that the foreign press also has played up the Arab terrorist angle in stories. “By these innuendoes, you are creating a picture that is very dangerous. I would have thought the media would have played a more sensible role and not speculate.”

Activists hasten to note that the media have erred spectacularly before, citing, for example, widespread early reports that wrongly blamed Muslims for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and for the still unexplained 1996 midair explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island.

Lethome said that at least nine Muslims were killed in the Nairobi explosion and that about 10 members of the Muslim community were still unaccounted for.

Khan, a furniture salesman, was taken into custody five minutes after the blast, friends said. He had gone to check on Farhat Sheikh, 45, a family friend and cashier at the U.S. Embassy. Sheikh, a father of three, was among the Kenyan embassy employees who died in the blast, his sister confirmed.

Her husband had also gone to the embassy to look for Sheikh. He happened upon an emotional Khan, who was trying to assist blast victims. “An officer said [Khan] was helping somebody and he refused to leave the site,” said his mother, Nasreen Almas Nazir Hussein, who was devastated by the detention of her only child. “He told a policeman who was trying to get him to move him from the place to mind his own business, and that’s when they arrested him.”

Speaking at her one-bedroom house in a working-class suburb of Nairobi, Hussein said Khan’s good nature had gotten him into trouble. “My son is very warm-hearted,” she said, noting he is a volunteer for his neighborhood crime prevention committee. “He can’t see anyone suffering. He went there to help, and because he has a mustache and beard, they thought he was an Arab.”

Since last Friday, Khan has been held at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department, his mother said. She has not been told why her son is being held or when he will be released. Neither has she been allowed to speak to him. She caught a glimpse of him last Friday when delivering food and medicine for Khan, who suffers from jaundice. “He said, ‘Mummy, I’m OK, don’t worry,’ ” Hussein recalled.

This brought Safia Javed, Khan’s wife of two years, to tears. “I haven’t been away from him since the day I married him,” she said, clutching 18-month-old son Mohammed Nabil.

Khan’s friends and colleagues expressed shock that he has been implicated in this incident. “He was so friendly, so social and very honest,” said co-worker Rukia Musa, 32. “It’s not possible he could be involved.”

Neighbor Muneer Khan, 18, said, “We were all surprised” at Khan’s arrest, the police search of his home and confiscation of his passport. “They were just after someone who looked like him.”

Any such anti-Islamic bias infuriates Muslims here, who note that they have publicly condemned the bombing in a newspaper advertisement.

“We are not trying to say a Muslim could not do it--but why the wholesale blame?” Lethome said. “If a Christian was arrested, we would not blame the whole Christian community. The law says a person is innocent until proven guilty. But we have already been condemned before the process has begun.”

Times special correspondent Elias Okach in Nairobi contributed to this report.