“It saddened everyone that here we were grieving like everybody else but we were doubly affected,” Shah Mohammed says. “We weren’t able to grieve like we wanted to.” HIS quickly sprung into action to assure the safety of its members and the entire Harvard Muslim community.

Shah Mohammed says he sent out an e-mail on the day of the attacks advising Muslims not to panic, but to take minor safety precautions.

“We tried to take little precautions like not going in dark alleys, going out in groups, telling your roommates where you’re going so in case anything happens there’s a trace,” Shah Mohammed says.

He points out that the group’s fear was not unjustified.

A Boston University student was stabbed in the Back Bay area a few days after the terrorist attacks. A Muslim Harvard graduate student was also harassed outside of the T stop in Harvard Square for wearing a head scarf.

HIS notified the Cambridge Police Department and the Harvard University Police Department following the incident outside the T, urging them to be alert to any violence towards Muslims.

Shah Mohammed says the MBTA police agreed to escort any person who felt unsafe exiting the T stop to the traffic light on Mass. Ave.

Hamad also urged her members to “stay low.”

Neither HIS or SAS have an official position on the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan.

Hamad says that “there are probably the same variety of opinions” in SAS as in the greater Harvard community.

But Shah Mohammed says that many people in HIS have conflicting feelings about the issue.

“The people who did this must be brought to justice. Justice is very central to Islam,” he says. “But there is a second question of innocent people being harmed. Innocent people must not be made to suffer.”

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu