They weren’t your ordinary thugs. Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, nearly a dozen men carrying metal pipes entered a corner store, shattered refrigerator cases and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer, terrifying the clerk but stealing nothing.
The just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling alcohol to fellow Muslims. In urban America, friction between poor residents and immigrant store owners is nothing new. Nor are complaints that inner- city neighborhoods are glutted with markets that sell alcohol and contribute to violent crime, vagrancy and other social ills.
But the recent attack at San Pablo Liquor _ and an identical vandalism spree at another West Oakland store later that evening, along with an arson fire there and the kidnapping of the owner a few days later _ have injected religion into the debate.
The two episodes highlighted tensions _ and different interpretations of the Quran _ between black Muslims in this struggling, crime-ridden city of 400,000 and Middle Eastern shop owners, many of them also Muslims.
