By American Airlines Pilot - Captain John Maniscalco

"I've been trying to say this since 9-11 but you worry me. I wish you didn't.  I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens
and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into
buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.

So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to
tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim-Americans and the Arab/Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR
constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens,
with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your
"Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy...I am only interested in action. What will you do for America - our great country -- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America". I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.

The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein,
Farrakhan, and Arafat. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it
if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?

It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to
us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members defended Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson after the latter butchered his wife and murdered an innocent friend. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are
seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from
a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security
checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate
Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire Middle East? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here?

Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.
We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.

I want to know where every Arab/Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who
died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas
or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand."

"Until then ... you worry me."

I've always taken the position that everyone is to be trusted until he proves that he shouldn't be. From that point it becomes his responsibility to do whatever it takes to restore the trust he has destroyed.

That is exactly how I see people of middle eastern descent now.

If arab americans want to be identified with a group that uses religion as a pretext for carrying out atrocities then they have to accept responsibility for exposing those individuals and for rooting them out of their hiding places.

Americans have a duty to help eliminate the terrorist among us. This goes double for 'Arab Americans'.

The Klan wasn't run to ground by the black folks they terrorized.

Their white neighbors are the ones who took responsibility for cleaning house. They turned in names or took direct action to end the reign of terror perpetrated by their neighbors, friends, and sometimes family.

If Arab Americans are not willing to do this then they fall below the minimum standard for being an American and should not be here.

For those of you who don't know, the first place where this letter supposedly penned by American Airline pilot John Maniscalco was in the Hyatsville, Maryland, Gazette (under the title "An open letter to my Arab-Muslim neighbors") on 12 October 2001 and credited to a Kevin Daly of Beltsville.  This does not mean he did not pen the letter, only that it first appeared in public under somebody else's name.

The letter really shows a lot of interesting hallmarks of being urban lore as well as propaganda.

For example, the letter mentions our rights and our constitution but the author fails to realie that our rights and constitution are applicable to anyone in our own country.  The person can no more demand specific information, allegiance, etc. from folks such as Muslims any more so than our own government can demand it from us.  Nice double standard.

I really liked the aspect where the author appeals to the readers' help as rational Americans, only the author has loaded the letter with largely emotional values that are contrary to being rational.  In rhetoric or logic, he is doing what is called "an appeal to emotion" where emotion is used to gain favor in an argument or presented perspective instead of using facts.

Funny, in all sorts of conflicts of our country with other countries, similar stands have been made and this stuff has been getting rehashed at least for the last couple hundred years in our own country.  The enemy of the propaganda changes, but the sentiment does not.

You gotta admit, this letter speaks volumes about being afraid and untrusting of people who are different from us in skin color and who may have different beliefs and practices.

Oh, yeah. Like the practice of flying fully-loaded airliners into buildings for the express purpose of murdering as many infidel heathens as you can get because you believe a beautiful tent full of virgins awaits you...

Sorry, buddy. I don't care who wrote it or where it appeared first. I think it speaks volumes of how Americans feel right now, and it's a tribute to the restraint we have excercised. In any other country the Arabs would have been rounded up and deported forthwith. Here we simply write letters about how worried we are.