While helping report RNS’s story yesterday (May 2) about the appropriateness of cheering the killing of Osama Bin Laden, one of the people I called was Baraheen Ashrafi, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh whose husband Mohammad S. Chowdhury was waiter at the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Center, and was killed on 9/11. Besides his wife, Chowdhury left behind a daughter, Fahina, and a son, Farqad, who was born two days after the 9/11 attacks.
Bin Laden not only took her husband, but created in many Americans hostility against Muslims like herself. Thus, even though she was a 9/11 widow, Ashrafi has still suffered nasty comments from people in Oklahoma, where she and her two kids moved after 9/11. I didn’t connect with Ashrafi until this morning, obviously too late for yesterday’s story, but believe her thoughts are still worth sharing. Here’s what she said about Bin Laden’s killing:
“I’m a very soft-hearted person. If I see any death scene, I can’t hold back myself from crying. As a human being, I don’t wish anybody’s death. I never gave thought about what kind of punishment this man deserves. But when I heard he was killed, it came to my mind that justice had been served.”
Ashrafi said her daughter, now a high school freshman, felt the same way. “She said ‘I don’t wish anyone to die, but I feel this is something he deserves, he did so many things,'” Ashrafi said.
