I’ll always remember Thanksgiving 2008 as the one where we carved the turkey to the sounds of CNN, anxious for updates on the attacks on Mumbai’s hotels, train station, cafes and Chabad House. Fortunately, this year’s holiday weekend remained terror-free, thanks to federal investigators who caught Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a “confused” Somali American teenager accused of plotting to bomb a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore.

It’s good news — except that now Muslim Americans are even more vulnerable to backlash. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there have already been several local stories noting that our Somali community is on high alert. Many fear there may be attacks on their mosques, like the fire set at the Islamic center Mohamud had attended.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

P.S. In the true spirit of the holiday, here’s the text of President Obama’s Thanksgiving proclamation and a New York Times story about an interfaith Thanksgiving service in suburban New York, my old neck of the woods.

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