Lodi Muslims Fear Backlash Following Arrests

June 9, 2005

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Probe-expected-to-widen-FBI-says-LODI-2629709.php

On June 9, 2005 the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, angry people threw eggs and shouted insults at the Pak-Indian Spices Grocery store downtown. After the arrest here this week of two Pakistani American men and the detention of two Pakistani Muslim religious leaders, Mohammed Shoaib, 53, a shopkeeper, fears another backlash... Many Pakistani Americans were shaken Wednesday, some convinced that the arrests were the result of a misunderstanding and that the men who were being held would eventually be cleared. Local leaders estimate the Pakistani population in this Central Valley town at 2,000 to 4,000 people. The U.S. Census counted 700 Pakistani Americans in Lodi in 2000. Many of Lodi's Pakistani Americans hail from the Attock district in Pakistan's Punjab state, five to six hours from the Afghanistan border. The town's only Islamic house of worship, the Lodi Muslim Mosque on Poplar Street, was founded in the late 1970s. The community's men work in a variety of occupations: field labor, factory work, engineering and real estate. Many of the community's women stay home to raise families."