By Tracy Fugere
Fargo, ND – You can't condemn an entire population by the actions of some people in it.
That was the point Akram Salah was making during a discussion panel at NDSU about the recent attacks on America.
Salah is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at NDSU. He is also Muslim. he says terrorism is everywhere.
"It's not other people. It's everywhere. I agree that it's related to religion one way or another--I don't know why. In fact, none of the religions by any means addressed this kind of aggression. But it adds a little bit of dimension. First, in generalizations, when the Oklahoma City bombing happened--nobody said Christianity was bad. Nobody said Americans were bad. And actually it's one of us. When we're talking about that--we also should look at it as it's not out there but everywhere."
Executive Director of University Relations, Keith Bjerke, says out nation today is facing one of the most difficult tasks in our history.
"Together we're going to try and fight a cloud, a vanishing cloud called terrorism. Terrorism isn't new, it's gone on throughout the history of man in one form or another. I had a 42 year military career. I retired in December of last year. In the last ten years of that career, terrorism was on every agenda."
The consensus of the panel was that Americans are dealing with psychological warefare. Bjerke says we have to go forward from this tragedy, hand-in-hand.