« For your holiday reading list | Main | Liberal Christians Go After Christian Video Game »

December 13, 2006

Afraid of the guy in the turban

A piece in yesterday's USA Today talks about fear among the American Muslim community. Fear of what their fellow Americans will do to them. Fear of being targeted by the government simply because they are of Arab descent and practicing Muslims.

DEARBORN, Mich. — The Arab Muslims who came here eight decades ago to work on Henry Ford's new assembly line believed their American future was limitless. But after five years on the home front in America's war on terrorism, many of their descendants are hunkering down, covering up and staying put.

...

"It's as bad as after 9/11," says Rana Abbas-Chami of the Michigan American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "A lot of people are scared. They've changed how they do things."

...

Some blend in. They Anglicize their names (Osama Nimer, electrician, is now Samuel Nimer) or change them (Mohammad Bazzi, nurse, is Alex Goldsmith). They trim their beards. In public, they speak English instead of Arabic. They display the flag. They wear the Tigers cap.

Some lie low. They won't contribute to a Muslim charity, at least not by check, and not if it works overseas. They watch what they say, especially on the phone. They think twice before trying to rent a truck, get a hunting license or take a flying lesson.

...

"Each crisis makes it more difficult. They're always insecure," Suleiman says. "They ask, 'When is it we actually become Americans? When is the hyphen dropped?' "

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations reports of anti-muslim incidents jumped by 30% last year.

Americans seem unsympathetic. Thirty-nine percent say they harbor at least some prejudice against Muslims, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll earlier this year. The same percentage favor requiring U.S. Muslims — citizens included — to carry special IDs. About a third say U.S. Muslims sympathize with al-Qaeda.

Another piece in USA Today just over a year ago looked at homegrown terrorism and it too reveals an American society obsessed with Arab Muslims and not so worried about what the white guy around the corner might be planning.

"Not a lot of attention is being paid to this, because everybody is concerned about the guy in a turban. But there are still plenty of angry, Midwestern white guys out there," says U.S. Marshals Service chief inspector Geoff Shank.

Angry Midwestern white guys not at all unlike Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh. And much of the domestic terrorism threat is associated with organized hate groups. Contrary to popular opinion, hate groups are growing while we remain fixated with Arab Muslims. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, reported a 6% increase in known, identifiable hate groups from 2002 to 2004. There's absolutely no reason to believe that trend has not continued unabated.

Potok, director of the center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups, says, "I don't mean to minimize the work of groups with ties to al-Qaeda. Obviously, there's a huge external threat as well. But there's a tendency to want to externalize the threat and say the people who want to hurt us don't look like us, they don't worship the same god and don't have the same skin color."

A piece published a little over a year ago by U.S. News & World Report describes how in the ten years following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, "roughly 60 right-wing terrorist plots have been uncovered in the United States." These were actual terrorist plots, not simple hate groups being investigated. Plots! By right-wing terrorists! The left-wing terrorists, such as ELF, get plenty of media coverage. But we rarily hear about the right-wing terrorists. It seems to me that this is due to at least two factors. 1, it's more politically correct to laugh off or otherwise dismiss right-wing extremists. And 2, our government, and the media, focuses more on left-wing and Muslim terrorism at the expense of right-wing terrorism.

The DHS was criticized by hate-group experts in April when an internal planning document on domestic terrorist threats was leaked to the press. The DHS report listed radical leftist groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, which have been involved in numerous arson cases, but not violent right-wing militia and skinhead groups.

I submit to you that both our government and the media largely reflect the priorities of the American people as a whole. Which puts the onus of responsibility ultimately upon you and I.

Lastly here I want to quote a version of the infamous poem attributed to German Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984):
First they came...

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

Which is really nothing more than another way to state the truisms penned by Thomas Paine,

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."

and Benjamin Franklin,

Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.

Posted by Kevin at December 13, 2006 11:02 AM