In the News: Imad Damaj reflects on a decade of challenges for Muslims

"After 9/11, the Richmond faith community embraced area Muslims, says Imad Damaj, president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs. But that unity has dissipated in recent years.

For Imad Damaj, it's been a decade of challenges. Seven years after the attacks of 9/11, for example, the Henrico County Board of Supervisors rejected a proposal to build a mosque amid what Damaj recalls venomous rhetoric. Last month, the same body approved it. "Steps forward, and then steps back," he says.

Damaj, professor of pharmacology at the Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical Center, almost sighs while he expounds on the national conversation about Islam and the well-being of its local practitioners.

"After 9/11, a lot of people who practice the faith were asked to carry the burden of these hijackers," he says. "Bottom line is, these people misunderstood the religious tradition, took it out of context, abused it and then made life tougher for American Muslims and tragic for all Americans."

Sitting on a stone bench along Marshall Street, Damaj, a Lebanese expatriate, recalls the day. Like most, he saw the video of the second tower falling while watching televised news reports. "I felt numb," he recalls. And then, like so many others, he left work to spend the rest of the day with his wife and children.

Damaj, who's taught at VCU for nearly 20 years, is president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, he says that Richmond, especially its faith community, embraced local Muslims.

But slowly, those bonds and the sense of unity have dissipated. To re-establish them, he says, it will be just as necessary to look forward as look back. "We as a country cannot and will not forget the tragedies of the past," he says."