by Christopher Henderson , Assistant Editor, Queens Chronicle

    (Christopher Henderson) Malika Bey Rushdan coordinates the 9/11 Civil Liberties Project at the Islamic Circle of North America.    
  
    The day after Sept. 11, 2001, Malika Bey Rushdan stopped for gas at a filling station in Massachusetts. As she exited her car, wearing a hijab—the head scarf that identifies her as a Muslim—the man filling his tank in front of her began screaming at her, asking her rhetorically, “if she was happy now?”
 
    Instead of returning the man’s hostility, Rushdan confronted the man telling him she could never be happy about the deaths of thousands of people. She continued by explaining a bit about her faith and the belief of many of its followers that acts of terrorism and violence are against the central peaceful tenets of Islam.