A noisy crowd of young people shouting anti-Arabic insults began a late-night march Wednesday on a Bridgeview mosque but were contained by as many as 125 police officers on a Harlem Avenue streetcorner, where a demonstration lasted past midnight.
The incident capped a day in which Muslim leaders publicly pledged their community’s loyalty and pleaded for tolerance while some Chicagoans of Middle Eastern descent said they continued to experience harassment in the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.
Officials at mosques in Villa Park and Glendale Heights reported vandalism or bomb threats, and police in Buffalo Grove said a resident of Iraqi descent had been threatened by phone.
In Palos Heights, a Worth man was charged with a hate crime after he allegedly used a 2-foot machete to attack a gas station attendant he thought was of Arab descent, police said.
According to Oak Lawn police, teens began congregating after school let out Wednesday at Oak Lawn High School, 95th Street and Southwest Highway, waving American flags and shouting insults at passing cars occupied by people who appeared to be Arabic.
Police dispersed the crowd, which had grown to 300 to 500 people, mostly teens, at around 10 p.m. Wednesday.
Some of the young people then regrouped near 95th Street and Harlem Avenue and began marching toward the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation on 93rd Street west of Harlem, in Bridgeview, police said.
Bridgeview Police Lt. Tim Callahan said officers allowed the crowd to conduct a peaceful demonstration on the east side of Harlem at 93rd Street, about two block east of the mosque.
He said there were three arrests, two for disorderly conduct and one for reckless driving. He said 100 to 125 police officers from Bridgeview and at least eight other departments were on the scene.
At an interfaith gathering earlier Wednesday hosted by the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation, Rev. Walter Turlo of St. Fabian Catholic Church urged people not to confuse their Arab neighbors with broadcasts from the Middle East showing jubilant crowds.
Two dozen Christian, Muslim and Jewish clergy met at Operation PUSH in Chicago to urge that ethnic groups not be held collectively responsible.
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“We are part of the American family,” said Umar Abdallah of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago. “The grief that all of you feel, we also feel today.”
But one Arab-American student at the University of Illinois at Chicago said Wednesday that when he got to his English class, he found his classmates in a finger-pointing mood.
“One girl said she was sure 95 percent of Arabs were terrorists,” Ehab Odeh, 18, said.