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Morocco World News
New York, February 17, 2012
Moroccans living in the United States have strongly reacted to the news of the arrest of the Moroccan suspected of plotting an attack on the US Capitol.
Immediately after they heard of what they described as “sad news” for Moroccans and the image of their country, they emphasized that incident should not be exploited to tarnish the reputation of law-abiding Moroccan Americans, many of whom are good citizens and outstanding members of the community.
It is sad news for the Moroccan community living in the United States and for the image of our country, Omar Mohcine, a professional working at the United Nations in New York, told Morocco World News.
“This by no means represents the thriving Moroccan community living in this country, nor does it reflect the openness of our country over other cultures and religions,” he added.
“Every community includes bad apples, and this should not indicate that Moroccan-Americans are less patriotic than any other community,” said Mohamed El Hajjam, a business owner from Washington D.C.
While they condemned the alleged attack, many at the same time voiced their concern about the way U.S law enforcement officials selective ethnic groups.
Others went further to question the reason behind the idea of setting up that alleged terrorists and lure him into planning to attack the US capitol.
“The authorities have to stop resorting to tactics that incite people to carry out terrorist attacks against US targets. When seeing this, one is someone pushed to think that US law enforcement officials are in need of announcing every now and then that they arrested alleged terrorists, just for the sake of proving that they are actively combating terrorism,” said a university professor in New York, who asked to speak on condition of anonymity.
Some estimates put the total number of members of the Moroccan community at about 200.000. The Moroccan community is spread all over the United States, and is concentrated in the East Cost, especially in the tristate Area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), Virginia, Washington D.C, in addition to Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois and California.
