Ahmaddiyas are a Muslim minority that has suffered persecution in Pakistan. Most of them in southern California are of Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi descent.
Source/Credit: Al Jazeera
By Haya El Nasser | December 4, 2015
The San Bernardino killers were Pakistani and Muslim — news that has devastated Pakistani Muslims in the area
SAN BERNARDINO, California — Wednesday’s mass shooting that killed 14 people and injured 21 has shaken this community to the core. But for the thousands of Pakistani Muslims in southern California, many with ties to the San Bernardino area, the revelation that the husband and wife shooters were not only Muslim but Pakistani was devastating.
“It’s figuratively and literally close to home,” said Ahsan Khan, a physician who lives in Orange County. “When you see the name is a Muslim name, it’s frustrating and unfortunate.”
Most of the Pakistani community on the West Coast is concentrated in southern California’s five-county area that includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura Counties, according to the website of the Consulate General of Pakistan in Los Angeles. The estimated 150,000 in this region are predominantly professionals — lawyers, doctors, engineers — small-business owners of motels, gas stations and travel agencies. Many, such as the Khan brothers and one of the shooters, were born in the U.S.
Ahsan Khan is also president of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Los Angeles East Chapter. His younger brother volunteers as the national director of public affairs for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and is an adjunct professor at UCLA Law School.
Ahmaddiyas are a Muslim minority that has suffered persecution in Pakistan. Most of them in southern California are of Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi descent.
The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, who were killed by police have no affiliation to Ahmaddiya, said Ahsan Khan. Mosques in the area with varying affiliations held vigils.
“Tonight is about honoring the victims,” he said.
But no matter what their religious beliefs are, Pakistani Americans are pained by the association to the mass shooting on Wednesday.
“I have a deep fear of people who don’t know my happy and empathetic toddler, but will fear him as he grows up based on the way they think he looks or practices religion,” wrote Subia Aleem Ahmad on Facebook. “I have a deep fear right now this very second that my husband or mother will be physically or emotionally attacked. will they survive? will they be the same?
"I literally have nightmares about all this.”
Ahmad lives in Dallas but her father-in-law, a doctor, works in San Bernardino across the street from the social services center where the shootings happened.
“When we couldn’t get a hold of him, our world stopped. our chests hurt, our hands shook. so much fear. so much terror,” Ahmad posted.
Her husband, Usmaan Ahmad, 36, told Al Jazeera America that he spent an excruciating 15 minutes before he knew his father was safe.
He doesn’t want to react differently to this shooting than he does to any of the other horrible tragedies that have happened elsewhere in the U.S. just because the shooters were Pakistani and Muslim like him.
“I don’t think the feeling or the shock changes,” said Usmaan Ahmad, who works in health care management and once lived in Redlands, California, the suburb where the shooters lived. “It’s a lack of humanity … It’s hard for me to think that the people who do crazy things are Muslims … I’m getting tired of having to condemn these acts of violence.”
Amjad Khan, a partner in a Los Angeles law firm, said the San Bernardino tragedy reopened old wounds for Muslims in the U.S.
“I had the same reaction that I did after 9/11,” when he was a law school student at Harvard University. “When we found out that the people who committed these acts were doing it in the name of Islam, it was horror.”
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks were citizens of Saudi Arabia. None was Pakistani.
But the San Bernardino shooters were Pakistani and “I would be lying if I said I don’t feel the double burden,” said Amjad Khan.
“We’re all in a state of disbelief,” he said, which was heightened when the names of the shooters were released late Wednesday. “We’re more interested in what the motive was.”
Ansari came to the U.S. from Pakistan at the age of 19.
“They don’t want any backlash,” he said of Pakistanis in the area. “But just the fact that he (the shooter) had a Muslim name gives the impression of a terrorist connection.”
His mosque now keeps the gate closed at all times and has asked for increased police protection. Local law enforcement were invited to attend Thursday night's prayer vigil.
With additional reporting by Sadaf Syed.
[Pictures: Facebook Jameel Mohamed]
Haya El Nasser - @hayaelna
Read original post here: USA: Southern California Pakistanis shaken by shooters' identity
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