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Muslim students leaving U.S. to avoid harrassment
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COLUMBIA, S.C. – Two Saudi Arabians in Columbia to attend the University of South Carolina attempted to leave the country after the Sept. 11 plane attacks.
One made it home.
The other is being detained by the FBI in Atlanta, friends and USC officials confirmed.
One of the pair, Wafaa Alghamdi, a Muslim woman who was recently a graduate student, had filed a harassment complaint against four white male USC students over an incident that happened Sept. 12.
She decided to leave the country shortly afterward, said a friend who’s a leader in the campus student Muslim association.
Her brother tried to leave with her, but was detained in Atlanta because the siblings’ last name matched that of one of the Middle Eastern men who hijacked and crashed U.S. airliners on Sept. 11.
The Sept. 12 incident was one of “just a couple of very minor incidents against Middle East students” since the hijackings, USC spokesman Russ McKinney said.
McKinney said neither Alghamdi nor her brother is enrolled this semester. But McKinney said 12 of 83 USC students from Arabic countries have left to go home. Others are considering leaving, too, some Muslim students said.
According to a USC police report, the four white men approached the Muslim female on the Horseshoe area of campus and verbally assaulted her about her nationality.
They then attempted to remove the young woman’s hijab, an Islamic head covering.
Fearing the worst, friends said the siblings decided to leave USC, but only found more bad luck.
McKinney and a Muslim friend of the girl said Alghamdi’s brother was detained while trying to return to Saudi Arabia. The FBI isn’t commenting on anyone who may be detained.
Sheima Salam, vice president of USC?s Muslim Students Association, said the brother and sister share a common Arabic surname with one of the alleged hijackers. Saeed Alghamdi is believed to have lived in Del Ray Beach, Fla.
“It made me very sad,” said Salam, a Muslim American who knows the pair. “She told me she had waited four years to get this scholarship (to study English in the United States). Now, it’s fallen through the cracks.”
There aren’t any USC students from Afghanistan, the country where alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding. But there are students from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s birthplace.
At least a dozen students from the Middle East have left the school since Sept. 11, McKinney said. More of USC?s 71 remaining Middle Eastern students also plan to leave, Muslim students said.
“We’re feeling a lot of pain from many different sides right now,” Salam said.
“We’re really sad about those people who lost their lives, we’re really hurt about the attack on America, and we’re really hurt that people who claim our faith did this,” she said. “They brought our faith down.”
But Salam said Muslims are equally hurt that all Muslims are being looked upon as complicit in the hijacked plane attacks.
Since the attacks, the Saudi government said it has offered each of its citizens in the United States a plane ticket home.
For students who are in the United States on government scholarships, Saudi Arabia will fly the students home and continue to pay them stipends for three months, an embassy spokesman in Washington said.
The students could later be flown back to the United States to continue their education in the same, or different, universities.
“We issued a notice to students in the U.S. to be cautious,” said a Saudi Arabian embassy spokesman who asked that his name not be used because of security concerns.
The embassy official said 400 of the 5,500 Saudi nationals in America have asked to be returned home since Sept. 11.
The embassy spokesman wouldn’t comment on whether the FBI was holding the former student from USC. But he said his country is providing legal counsel to Saudi detainees.
“In most cases, we are being contacted by families back in Saudi Arabia who only know what they see on cable,” the spokesman said. “We don’t want them to be in anxiety over their children at this time.”
Maj. Eric Grabski of the USC Police Department said no arrests have been made in the Sept. 12 complaint. But the case is under investigation, he said.
Roddie Burris, Knight Ridder Newspapers