“2/ Fox news would refer to anyone of Orthodox appearance as lid-heads in the same way that towel-head was a common epithet last September.”
—Ummm, what US news anchor used the word “towelheads?” If such a thing had happened, he or she would have been summarily fired.
“4/ That the US News Media would be as accepting of this level of discrimination as it has been with Moslems.”
—The US news media has, in fact, gone out of its way to walk on eggshells with the Moslem community. Our president, you may recall, issued a statement ON SEPT. TWELFTH, that Americans should not blame all Muslims.
Pjen, I assume you are in the UK now and were last year? Where are you getting your “information?” I have heard that the European press is very biased agains the US and Israel, and your statements are really making me believe that’s true . . . Very sad . . .
Yer not getting it Pjen - show me 1 of the 1250 U.S. detainees who were picked up because they were Muslim, and perhaps you have an argument.
Time’s up.
As for your thought experiment, guess what? The U.S. population would have the same response to the detaining of 1250 Jews as they have had to the 1250 detainees (whom I presume, but do not know, are all Muslim) - some would be outraged. some would be tolerant, and, yes, some would say “that ain’t enough. Let’s lock up all the Jews.”
In point of fact, Ashcroft’s actions aren’t anti-Muslim. Some of his actions very well may be unconstitutional, but that ain’t the same thing.
Do you see the difference between these two situations:
The Department of Justice, in the course of an investigation into a terrorist act, detains 1250 people, many of whom have violated U.S. immigration law ([pet peeve] BTW, Pjen, there is no such thing as a “technical violation” of the law. Either an act violates the law or it doesn’t. Similarly, no one ever gets acquitted on a “technicality.” Either the police and the prosecutors complied with the law or they violated it. [/pet peeve]). All of the persons detained belong to the same ethnic/religious/racial group as the terrorists. The reason said people were detained was because uncovered evidence indicated they had some connection, solid or tenuous, to the terrorists. Some number of those detained are being held improperly.
The Department of Justice, in the course of an investigation into a terrorist act, detains 1250, many of whom have violated U.S. immigration law. All of the persons detained belong to the same ethnic/religious/racial group as the terrorists. There is no evidence that some or all of the detainees have any connection to the terrorists; the only tie for these detainees is their shared enthnicity/religion/race.
Why not? We get pretty nuts when it comes to nukes. Remember the brouhaha at Los Alamos with that Asian-American scientist? And let’s not forget Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. No breaks cut for the Jews that time.
The News Media certainly would not be accepting of it, since they haven’t been accepting of the treatment of muslims in the wake of 9/11. They’ve actually been all over the govt./law enforcement officials for their detaining of Muslims w/o very much evidence, and for how terrible the “secret military tribunals” are.
FYI, in case you are not in the U.S., FOX NEWS is NOT representative of most American media. FOX NEWS would be the first to say that–they’re rather conservative, while most news outlets are more liberal.
Doh! Sorry. I was working on this for about an hour between various interruptions, and forgot to make my further point:
I do believe it’s naive to think that law enforcement officials do not include religious affiliation in their suspect profiles, and that otherwise tenuous connections to known suspects would appear more significant to investigators based on said religious affiliation. Right or wrong, that’s probably going to happen.
That said, would investigators be as tough about ferreting out these hypothetical Jewish suspects as they have been about finding co-conspirators of the Muslim perpetrators of 9/11?
Maybe not.
Why? Because of a history of enmity. Simply put, the Muslim world has a long history of being opposed to U.S. interests, and Israel has had a long history of being allied with U.S. interests.
Let me illustrate with a (very) hypothetical of my own:
At a U.S.-brokered talk, peace in Northern Ireland is achieved, and the UK cedes all control of Northern Ireland. Some Brits are furious over this, blame the U.S., and set off a dirty bomb in Washington, DC. Does the US govt. round up every British expat in the U.S.? Probably not. Why? Because we know, from a long history, that the British are our allies. We know that this is an isolated incident likely involving a few individuals, rather than being indicative of a perceived long-term pattern of violence against the U.S. to which many Brits are sympathetic.
In general, though, I think you’d be surprised at how fast we’d arrest ANYONE we thought might be connected to terrorism, reagardless of who they were. A long history of peace and tranquility has made the continental U.S. inviolable territory. Our govt. is fairly crazed about keeping it that way.
Well, I’m not saying that because many terrorists who attack/want to attack America/Americans are Moslem, that we should infringe on the rights of all Muslim people.
Rather, I’m saying re: the OP that detaining people who had possible links to terrorists, or who had engaged in suspicious activities similar to those of the 9/11 terrorists (or possibly previous terrorist acts as well), was not in any way anti-Moslem. Here’s why I feel this way: Al Qaida perpetrated this attack. Al Qaida is an extremist Islamic terrorist group. Al Qaida, because of this extremist nature, probably HATES anyone who isn’t Muslim. Therefore, any potential Al Qaida terrorists/members/agents/what have you are likely to be Muslim. Now, since the US was trying to find people with links to Al Qaida, chances are the majority of people detained, if not all of them, would be Muslim.
Now, whether or not this was the appropriate action to take, I’m totally undecided. But, I believe that if an extremist Jewish terrorist organization bent on the destruction of America/Americans, with a prior history of terrorist attacks on American interests, carried out the 9/11 attacks, the US government would have acted in the exact same way: Find everyone they could who looked like they might have connections to terrorists.
But, I see Pjen has an agenda and will pursue it however he can. Notice the lack of cites.
(note: this post may be an oversimplification of some issues, but I didn’t really want to put a lot of time into composing this post)
‘The Arab-American community suffered the Sept. 11 attacks as acutely as all Americans, but has also been dealing with a painful backlash in the form of hate crimes, discrimination and defamation. ADC notes that while reports of violent hate crimes have fallen dramatically since the first 6-8 weeks after the attacks, employment and airport discrimination continues, along with a steady stream of anti-Arab defamation from certain media commentators. ADC is committed to working with all parties to continue to heal the wounds and bring all Americans closer together.’
'Hate Crimes: ADC has confirmed520 violent incidentsdirected against Arab Americans, or thoseperceived to be such, since Sept. 11. These are defined as acts of physical violence ordirect threats of specific acts of violence. These incidents range from simple assault and battery, to arson, aggravated assault, and at least 6 murders. These acts have been random, spontaneous, and without geographical concentration. …
'Concerns:Serious concerns about civil liberties in the United States, especially for Arab Americans and immigrants from the Arab and Muslim worlds, have been raised by the USA Patriot Act, a numberof new Administration policies, and aspects of the investigation into the crimes of Sept. 11. …
‘A plan for authorities to interview 5,000 young Arab men based solely on their gender,age, national origin and time of entry into the United States. This smacks of racial profiling.’
‘Retired General Bernard Trainor, the chief military analyst for Fox News, talked about the “detainees,” who were shown lined up between two barbed wire fences, kneeling with their heads toward the ground. He pointed out that we are forcing these people to spend twelve hours a day on their knees. It’s done to punish and to control them. O’Reilly then asked Trainor if this wasn’t considered cruel and unusual punishment, and Trainor actually said on the air, “These are just towel heads. This isn’t punishment for them. They’re used to spending a lot of their time on their knees in prayer.” He actually used the word “towel head” and referred to these people as if they were sub-human. And I thought to myself after he said that - and we wonder why they hate us so much?’
Well, those first two that you quote, while horrible, aren’t actions of the US government. In fact, both Bush and Ashcroft have publicly denounced discrimination against Arabs and Muslims and urged tolerance. Discrimination and hate crimes are sad things, but there’s not too much the goverment can do about them, other than tell people not to discriminate or break the law, and punish those who do.
Pjen I didn’t realize that you wished to discuss non-governmental actions. I guess I was misled by your direct reference to Ashcroft and Rumsfield’s actions in your freaking OP.
If you get any American other than white supremacists or subliterates to express approval of hate crimes, defamation or discrimination, including Trainor’s bigoted comments, please let me know.
Yes, we have idiots and hate-filled people in America. The contrast with Europe is that we don’t vote for them for President or let them into ruling coalitions.
The ADC cites themselves don’t really include any more evidence than your OP and subsequent posts. I don’t mean to suggest that the ADC “made up” what is in the reports, but they don’t include any details or citations either. Also, much of the information in them is couched in phrases such as “the ADC has received [a number of] cases…”, “…received numerous reports…”, “…confirmed cases…” and so on. This is not the same as demonstrating that the incidents actually involved anti-Muslim discrimination, that they occurred as reported, or reporting on the actual outcome of the cases in a court of law.
Furthermore, some of the ADC’s concerns about new laws and procedures which could be bent in an anti-Muslim or anti-Arab direction are certainly understandable, but the language in the reports indicates (to me, at least) that these are understood to be logical extrapolations of what might occur, not what has occurred or what will occur.
In short, I’m suggesting that these ADC reports might not be the best, most accurate, most balanced source of information on this topic.
Lastly: yes, following September 11th there was a noticeable wave of behavior attributable to anti-Muslim/anti-Arab sentiment. My aunt’s mosque was vandalized; fortunately no one was hurt. But I haven’t heard anyone in my little corner of the world say that this kind of behavior was acceptable/OK, as your OP questioned.
As has been pointed out, your ADC site is lacking in any specifics, and we are expected to accept their tally uncritically:
**
Pretty vague. And what of statements such as this?: “ADC notes that while reports of violent hate crimes have fallen dramatically since the first 6-8 weeks after the attacks, employment and airport discrimination continues, along with a steady stream of anti-Arab defamation from certain media commentators.”
More undocumented opinion. As to the media allegations, you’ve contributed precisely one supposed statement by a commentator on Fox, the quote supplied by a self-styled military expert hawking a book on the web. Using Google, I could find no other references to anyone saying this on Fox. I find this suprising, since Fox has gotten quite a bit of attention lately including a recent front-page spread in USA Today which was largely uncomplimentary, and I would have expected them to pick up on allegations of anti-Arab statements. And even if this proved true, it does nothing to back your claim of sweeping anti-Arab bias in the U.S. media.
Got anything else besides the odd unsubstantiated anecdote?
520 violent incidents directed at Arab-Americans since Sept 11?
And how many violent incidents have been directed at Non-Arab-Americans in that same time frame? Against American-Americans? :rolleyes:
My point is … how many of these 520 incidents were random acts of violence not attributable to the fact that the victims were Arab-Americans? That’s got to whittle that number down appreciably.
And wasn’t the OP about Muslims? Since when did the terms ‘Arab-Americans’ and ‘Muslims’ become synonymous?
If anyone thinks the major U.S. media are anti-Moslem, perhaps that person would like to explain the new movie version of TOm Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears.”
In Clancy’s novel, the villains are Palestinian Arabs who set off a nuclear weapon at the Super Bowl. In the movie version, of course, there are no Arabs to be seen- the villains have been, conveniently, changed into Eastern European fascists.
What this suggests to me is that, in Hollywood as in the news media, everyone is afraid of offending Moslems, and will do anything (including making preposterous plot changes to a major best seller) to avoid ticking them off.
They’re different spellings of the same word. Muslim is the more accurate spelling…it sounds more like the Arabic word. Moslem is older, and not really preferred anymore, because most people pronounce “Moslem” “maws-lim”, which sounds like another, insulting word, in Arabic.
Speaking of stereotyping…that’s exactly what you’re doing. For example, I have only once tried to attach the label of anti-semitic to something, and that is you. I realize now that this was not the best way to approach the debate. What is done is done. I regret trying to use it as a debating chip. Anyway, it seems that your goal in a great deal of the things that I see you post is to bring up the topic of Israel and the Jews. More exactly, to bring up your feelings about Israel and the Jews. If you don’t think the supporters of Israel or Jews have the right to defend themselves in a constructive argument, then you’re being a tad ridiculous. As long as the arguments have some sort of basis, I don’t see what’s wrong with them. If Muslims do not choose to speak up, it has little relevance in terms of the way the supporters of Israel and Jews approach a similar situation. Say, for example, that I were to suggest that all white Christian males hate all blacks. It seems unlikely that everyone falling into the category of “white Christian males” would remain quiet. And I would not object to an argument against my statement.
Part of the problem here might be generalization. Nobody is going to say “all jews, and the jewish religion, makes people hate modernity/America/technology/white people/whatever”. These claims would immediately be labelled anti-semitic and utterly ludicrous. The same is not true of Muslims and Islam. As we’ve seen here and in other parts of the Internet, the discussion not just over whether some Muslims are extremist but whether Islam in-and-of-itself requires extremist hatred is not dismissed out of hand but is actually a source of serious debate. Debate that quite possibly could lead to policy decisions, even if we never see that debate nor have the reasons accurately explained to us.
After all, it wasn’t the Israelis that Ann Coulter was demanding the forcible conversion of.
