[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 5811-5812]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               TOLERANCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I was here on September 11, 2001. I saw the 
skies filled with mud-brown smoke rising from the devastation at the 
Pentagon. I felt that anger that every American felt then and that 
continues to simmer in the lesser angels of our nature to this very 
hour.
  There is in my heartland Indiana district a small mosque in Muncie, 
Indiana, where each weekend a small community, less than 1,000 people 
of Arabic descent, gather to practice their religious faith, each of 
them contributing in important ways in our community. They reached me 
in the immediate hours after September 11 and expressed to me their 
concern as family people for their well-being in the wake of this 
attack that was unanimously effected by Arab extremists against our 
country.
  It was then that I issued a statement I read again today. I said then 
that the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon are not representative of the overwhelming majority of Arabs 
or Muslims in the United States, and we could not allow anger at this 
horrible act to lead us to hate or discriminate against innocent 
individuals who happened to be of Middle Eastern descent. I said that 
terror has no regard for religion or ethnicity, and if we attack the 
innocent simply because of their ethnic status, we are no better than 
the terrorists who attacked us.
  So we come to these days in which we find ourselves again perhaps on 
the precipice of a war in the Middle East, with the news in our Muncie 
newspaper this weekend that a recent graduate of Ball State University 
was arrested on terrorist charges at his home in Idaho. I thought with 
this news and the potential for war abroad and terrorist attacks at 
home, it would be appropriate to rise again to remind the people of my 
district and the State and even of this country that we cannot allow 
the hatred that terrorists and their sympathizers possess to inflame 
our hearts and distort our communities.
  I urge my fellow citizens to continue to embrace those ideals of the 
Declaration of Independence, and understand while we believe and have 
built a Nation founded on the premise that all men are endowed by our 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, we cannot and must not give 
voice of persecution or permit acts of discrimination against those 
among us of Middle Eastern descent. Millions of Arab Americans, like 
those in my district, contribute daily in vital ways to our communities 
and our Nation in every professional class, medicine, academia, 
engineering, and yes, to the U.S. armed forces.
  The Good Book tells us, and what does the Lord require of you? To do 
justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God. Let us as we 
go into these difficult times and in the difficult days ahead 
rededicate ourselves to practice justice and kindness toward every 
American, citizen and visitor of Middle Eastern descent, that we may

[[Page 5812]]

hold up those ideals that brave Americans fight to defend in these 
days.

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