A Culver City woman said Wednesday that a secondhand Koran she ordered through a book dealer working with Amazon.com contained anti-Islamic hate messages, including profanity and “Death to all Muslims!”
Azza Basarudin, a 30-year-old UCLA graduate student, said Amazon apologized, sent a new book and offered her a refund and gift certificate. But she and the Muslim Public Affairs Council called on the online bookseller to do more, including issuing a public condemnation of anti-Muslim hate speech and cutting commercial ties with the Pennsylvania-based book dealer that sent the Koran.
Holding up the book to display the messages at a news conference Wednesday, Basarudin said the incident resurrected the fear she felt after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when anxiety about anti-Muslim sentiment made her reluctant to leave her apartment for two weeks.
“I was taken back to 9/11, my fear that somebody is going to hurt me,” Basarudin said at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times, 19 May 2005
See also Islam Online, 19 May 2005