Some of the most perceptive commentaries since Tuesday's attack on the US are those that, in trying to understand the motivations behind the attacks, have sought answers that go beyond the wholesale vilification of an entire region and its people. They are commentaries that see these events as an indelible reminder of the unfolding tragedy of recent global history.

If the scale of this attack on American soil is unprecedented, the horror it speaks of has a long history of colonization, imperialism and resistance; of ideological divisions and countless lives lost; of global antagonism and the 'East-West' divide, out of which terrorism has emerged as an ugly manifestation propagated by the fanatical few in an increasingly militarised world.

Nothing happens in an historical vacuum, and after the shock and anger have abated, it is this tragic history, one that has now engulfed America, that must come to insinuate itself into our making sense of why this happened.

Nothing can justify the taking of innocent lives, and there is no cause or God in the name of which such devastation can be sanctioned.
The images of Flight 175 crashing into the World Trade Center and the carnage that followed portray the tragic underside of a global history that has not spared any corner of the world. They portray a human story in which humanity has somewhere gone terribly wrong. And they predict a future where the cycle of grievance and revenge is making it increasingly difficult to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

For many, however, the lines of battle seem already in place. With those suspected of hijacking the four planes all Arabic and all Muslim, this has quickly become cause for some in the West to judge the entire Arab world as guilty.

With familiar gusto, the Middle East is readily placed in opposition to the 'democratic', 'free' and 'civilized' world. It is a rehearsal of old divisions that only serve to further compound the tragedy of September 11th, not resolve it. One cannot help feeling that the battle between good and evil, democracy and tyranny, civilization and barbarity is somewhere and somehow going to eventually implicate the whole of the Arab and Islamic world as the enemy against which we are warned to remain vigilant.

Indeed, the increasing appearance of blatant anti-Arab racism in some sections of the media and the enormous jump in race hatred crimes at Australian schools, in Australian workplaces and on Australian streets indicates that the street is already one step ahead.

This wholesale vilification and 'scapegoating' of Arabic communities around the world also has a long history whose ideological origins are well known. Racism was around before the suicide attacks in the US and it shall linger long after or as long as racists scramble to find justification for their actions in ways that parallel the delusion of those responsible for the attacks.

Arab mosques and churches have been fire bombed; women who wear the Muslim headscarf have been spat at on trams and threatened with rape when they walk down the street; our businesses have been vandalised and have been spray painted with swastikas; Arabic schools have been forced to close and the parents of children attending non-Arabic schools are keeping their kids at home amid threats of violence and retribution.
Members of the Arabic community respond to September 11th as any decent person would, with both shock and horror. They have been at pains to point out that 'Islamic fundamentalism' is a narrow, unrepresentative and distorted interpretation of Islam that is held together by anti-American sentiment and whose influence is restricted to a few pockets across the globe. Leaders in the Arabic world were amongst the first to condemn the attacks and have been unambiguous in their opposition to terrorism.
This should all be patently obvious, yet Arabic community groups in Australia are having to defend our community's very innocence. For the present, it seems that we are all under suspicion, so much so that opposition leader Kim Beazley has, with characteristic simplicity and confusion, called on our community to 'dob in' terrorists. Not far behind is Peter Reith's appalling attempt to capitalize on the tragedy by manipulating it into a justification for the current government's hysterical and xenophobic reaction to asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

With an absence of political leadership shown by either main political party at the Federal level, it is left to the wider community to rediscover a sense of humanity that is inclusive rather than exclusive, that is interconnected rather than racially and religiously divisive, one that brings home our need to differentiate right from wrong both here and abroad. And it is those from the wider community who are shocked at the devastation in New York and Washington and equally appalled at the current racial vilification of the Arabic community in Australia who with dignity, have taken up the challenge of finding a light at the end of the tunnel.