Open Season on Muslim Americans?

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Rationality has officially departed American politics. You needn’t read past the title to this Intercept piece to understand that: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Call for Bombing ISIS After Orlando Shooting that ISIS Didn’t Direct.

Newt Gingrich:

Let me go a step further, because remember, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and Orlando involve American citizens. We’re going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we’re going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship. And we’re going take much tougher positions. In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt was faced with Nazi penetration in the United States. We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis. We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis. We’re going to presently have to go take the similar steps here.

That Committee resulted in the McCarthy hearings.

When I ran for Congress, local Muslim-Americans shared with me their fear that another 9/11 event (or, perhaps, a series of smaller yet still horrific events) would result in open season on Muslims in America.

Unfortunately, their fears were warranted. Welcome to America.

35 thoughts on “Open Season on Muslim Americans?”

    • Hardly. I am hard pressed to think of a group that has more laws, regulations and special consideration laid out to protect them than LGBT community. Just because one gay man shamed by who he is goes on a killing spree does not mean they are threatened by the population at large. The ENORMOUS outpouring of outrage, affection, concern and financial support by the general population over what happened reaffitms that the LGBT Community has worked hard and established themselves as a cherished part of our society.

    • Steve overstates his case a bit, but his point is basically valid. Bigotry towards the LGBT community still exists at an unacceptable level, but the trend is quite clearly downward, as Steve points out. Bigotry towards Muslims and, I’m afraid, towards Latino immigrants, is on the rise.

      It’s when bigotry against a group is increasing that gives rise to concern about it becoming open season against that group.

      So, yeah, you kind of engaged in false equivalency, as Steve suggests.

  3. I have two very good friends that are Muslim. In fact, I sponsored them for immigration many years ago and have been proud I did so because of the contribution they and their families have made to the Phoenix community. One became a citizen and the other is working on it.

    In any event, both of them are very concerned about the fallout from this latest incident in Orlando. However, both say they have been surprised because the outpouring of support has been far greater than the crank and hate filled messages they and the Muslim community have received. They continue to be cautious in what they do, and their Mosques have taken more studied security stances, but that is because of common sense and not because of threats. It is a shame they have to do even that.

    Perhaps it is not as bad as it seems, Bob.

  4. “But no Irish!” Quote written by that great American political philosopher, Mel Brooks, commenting on exclusionary laws.

  5. HUAC was a House committee, and Joe McCarthy was a Senator, so while there was certainly overlap and HUAC was part of the McCarthy era witchhunts, McCarthy was Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which carried out his hearings.

    I’m old enough so that I have some correspondence with a member of HUAC, Rep. Charles Longstreet Weltner of Georgia, who was chairman of the HUAC subcommittee in 1966 that was investigating the Ku Klux Klan.

    For a high school project I was working on, Longstreet sent me the volumes of committee hearings and reports on the KKK investigation. (He ended his career in 1966, declining to seek reelection because it would have meant signing a loyalty oath to the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, Lester Maddox, a segregationist.)

  7. We don’t bomb the Baptists when some Christian guns down an abortion doctor.

    We don’t bomb the Vatican for priests molesting children.

    We don’t bomb Alabama (or Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, etc) when some racist kills people in a church.

    We don’t bomb the Mormon’s for threatening US law enforcement officers at the Bundy ranch.

    But some mentally ill homophobe shoots up a nightclub and says it’s for a BROWN skinned religion, and it’s Hillary get your gun.

    • Thanks, Tom, I didn’t want to be the first to point out that Hillary is once again talking out of both sides of her mouth. One one side, radical Islam, on the other, ban assault weapons. And, all she really should be doing is supporting President Obama. Does she not trust the current administration to do a proper investigation? Does she prefer fear mongering to gathering facts? And, of course, Hillary was Secretary of State, the nation’s chief DIPLOMAT.

      I feel as though we can say “I told you so” to her ardent, clueless supporters even before she secures the nomination. I find no consolation in that, however. None at all. I’m just astonished that we have come to this. Hillary or Trump. God help us.

      • Liza — You write, “I feel as though we can say “I told you so” to her ardent, clueless supporters even before she secures the nomination.” Are Hillary Clinton’s “ardent, clueless supporters” a subset of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, or are you calling all of her supporters “ardent, clueless supporters?”

        • It doesn’t matter what I think of Clinton’s supporters, Debbie. I was angry when I wrote that because HRC said some things that, in my view, represent a rush to judgement that did not mirror the position of her own president (whose legacy she intends to protect.) And, quite frankly, this is exactly what I would expect from Hillary Clinton. Yet, when it happens, we have to keep in mind that lives are endangered, sometimes hundreds of thousand of lives are lost (like in Iraq) when our leaders are not as willing as they should be to wait for the facts.

          • Just.Stop.It. Stop making this about me. Normally I would just ignore your response. But Bernie Sanders and his supporters have been under attack for months since it became obvious that he was a serious challenger to HRC and not going away. Maybe I’m just tired of it. Actually, there’s no maybe in that.

            Drops mic…

      • Jeez, it’s going to be a long five months if every thing that happens in the world is going to result in a Liza lecture.
        I read Blog for Arizona for positive solutions to our political problems. I don’t see how trashing Hillary for the next five months really moves the needle.
        I’m looking forward to working with Hillary, Bernie, Elizabeth and Barack to keep our country sane.

        • Hey Jim, I agree for the most part. Positive solutions.

          But I don’t think there’s a positive spin to be put on this issue in this context.

          We need to point out that a US citizen who was a homophobic madman (and it appears a self-hating gay) killing people in Florida is not an excuse to bomb people in other countries.

          A few lectures won’t kill us.

        • Interesting that I went from Internet troll to lecturer. Sounds like a promotion, but not really. Golly, Jim, why not just ask to have me banned from the site?

          You may recall that on Sunday, the day of the massacre, PBO said: “We are still learning all the facts. This is an open investigation. We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer. The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. And I’ve directed that we must spare no effort to determine what — if any — inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups. What is clear is that he was a person filled with hatred. Over the coming days, we’ll uncover why and how this happened, and we will go wherever the facts lead us.”

          That’s good enough for me, and I fully believe that the ongoing investigation of this massacre will resolve the motivation of the shooter to the extent that it can be resolved given that he is dead. (I seriously doubt that he left a manifesto.) And furthermore, that should be the position of all Democrats who support the president and the current administration as he is obviously handling this with great care, intelligence, and compassion.

          Trump, on the other hand, is off the chain. And, what do you know, President Obama dealt with Trump quite well.

          • I just don’t see your end game. You’ve been very clear about how much you dislike Hillary, we get that. What are you trying to achieve? Do you want Trump to win, to validate your low opinion of Hillary and the 15 million clueless Democrats and independents that just voted for her.
            Are you going to spend the next five months telling us how great Jill Stein is?
            I think you’re very clever, but I think that Hillary winning is better for me, my family and my country. So, I just don’t understand what you’re trying to prove on this site.

          • I don’t speak for Liza, but I agree with her.

            Speaking for myself, those of us sick and tired of endless war, for profit wars to be specific, are going to keep the heat on Clinton.

            Because that’s how politics works.

            I’m not sure what your endgame is, do you want Liza to stop posting her thoughts?

          • There’s an easy solution for you, Jim. If, in the future, I happen to write a comment and you happen to see it, skip over it.

            “Are you going to spend the next five months telling us how great Jill Stein is?” No, I really don’t know much about her. I voted for Bernie Sanders.

          • Kavanagh, pay attention.

            Clinton and Trump (and it appears, you as well) want to drop bombs on other countries because a US born mentally ill homophobe committed mass murder.

            He said he was with al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and ISIL. Hezbollah is an enemy of ISIL. His claims don’t check out.

            He’s not with any of these groups, he’s like that guy Tony you know who says he knows a few wise guys, because he’s Italian, so bada bing.

            But he’s not connected to jack squat.

            So no, idiot, we don’t respond to terrorism with compassion, but when a US citizen commits a crime on US soil because he’s mentally ill we DON’T BOMB OTHER COUNTRIES.

    • Your comparisons are false. There are no large segments of Baptists, Catholics, Budhists. Hindus, Lutherans or any other religion that has declared – and carried out – murder, mayhem and destruction against the rest of the world. When a Muslim commits such acts, even marginally under the influence of the larger Jihad, people are bound to raise an eyebrow.

      Having said that, it IS wrong to condemn and single out other Muslims for hatred and retaliation for the actions of that minority that commit murder in the name of Islam. The vast majority of Muslims are decent people who want to live normal lives, but their religion has been hijacked by extremists and they are unfairly blemished by that unfortunate fact.

      • The Native American’s might disagree.

        The Irish had a pretty good run fighting over religion, for one example.

        And there are plenty of current Christian leaders calling for Gays to be killed.

        That you do not know this just means you’re not attending their churches, so I applaud you for that.

        • You are REALLY reaching to buttress your argument. An individual preacher speaking out against gays does make an organized movement practicing murder and mayhem. Nor did the war against the Native Americans for control of the land have anything to do with religion. And the Irish Rebellion in the most shallow sense was couched in terms of Catholic versus Protestant, but it was really about politics.

          • Steve, you’re kidding, right? You don’t even need to go back in time to find Christians treating Native Americans poorly.

            Bryan Fischer, Issues Analyst for the American Family Association wrote on the AFA website that Native Americans were “morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil” because of “superstition, savagery and sexual immorality.”

            There’s been a debate for years within the Christian community about apologizing to the Native Americans. Manifest Destiny was heavily driven by Christians.

            You’ve heard of Manifest Destiny, right?

            I used to love Westerns when I was a kid, Steve, they played them on Saturday afternoons on the local UHF channels. Old black and white movies mostly.

            Then when I was about 11 years old, I realized that the cowboys and cavalry were the bad guys. They were the ones killing women and children and stealing land.

            How old are you now that you have not yet realized this?

          • As often seems to happen, you missed the entire point of my missive. You attributed the genocide against Native Americans to an organized Christian pogrom against them. That is simply not true. There is no comparison to what is happening today in regards to Islamic extremism. The fact that the Americans fighting the Native Americans were Christian was NOT the primary focus of the slaughter of Native Americans. In fact, it wasn’t even a significant factor…seizing the land was the primary reason for it.

            Of course Manifest Destiny was driven by people who were largely Christian, but Christianity had virtually nothing to do with the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. There is no more connection between Christianity and Manifest Destiny than is the fact most of Manifest Destiny’s adherents were right handed.

            Please try and read what I write and try to remember I am responding to something you wrote. Don’t introduce things from left field that have nothing to do with what we are discussing. I say again, there is no other religion in the world that has a significant portion of it’s membership that is organized and active with the stated intent of killing anyone who does not agree with them.

          • The murder of the Native Americans was blessed by Christians, because the Native Americans were not Christian.

            It is blessed by Evangelicals to this day.

            The kidnapping and enslavement of Africans in the United States was blessed by Christians, because Africans were not Christians.

            It is blessed by Evangelicals to this day.

            Noted history-maker-upper David Barton, campaign chief for Ted Cruz and pal of Glenn Beck, on his Wallbuilders website, states clearly that slavery is acceptable per the Christian Bible.

            He gives a long, detailed explanation.

            He also says AIDS is the death penalty for being homosexual.

            These beliefs by Christians that it’s okay to kill non-Christians and enslave them have not gone away. We have no reason to be in the Middle East and yet were are bombing people there daily.

            The vast majority of Christians are good people, but there are millions of evangelicals on the right who support slavery, want homosexuals killed or at least jailed, believe it’s okay to kill abortion doctors, etc.

            Look up at what Evangelical Christians are doing in Uganda sometime, then tell me again they’re not organized.

            Stop being a mob wife, Steve, happy being ignorant in the big house with the jewelry, and start asking where the money comes from.

          • You are so full of crap it is amazing. You want to take the words of one man and stretch it to taint an entire religion. You want to take your interpretations of the actions of a handful of people and give it the brand of a major organized movement. Worst of all, you want to use these two things as rationale for minimizing the threat posed by, and the significance of, radical Islam.

            You suffer from a relatively recent phenomenon wherein some sort of derangement sets in when the subject of Christianity comes up. That delusion includes the certainty that nothing is worse than Christianity and no one is more evil than Christians. It doesn’t matter what mental gymnastics are required to achieve that end state. I see a lot of it on this site.

            ‘Nuff said on the subject…

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