Hey, Maybe WE Could Make Them Wear Special Insignia!
Via Hit & Run, a poll indicating that 39% of Americans would like to make American Muslims carry special IDs. Saying, um, “Muslim” I guess. That’ll help. Meanwhile the most recent plot, whatever its extent turns out to be, fell apart because of a tipster from within the British Muslim community.
The more we alienate Muslims as a class, the more successful terrorism there will be. It’s that simple. We can alienate Muslims as a class either by international action or domestic. We’ve been working overtime on the former; if we bring the same zeal to the latter maybe we could have new plots monthly.
That’s the practicalities. Beyond that, while it’s understandable that, people being people, the actions of a few cause people to blame the many, it is nevertheless disgusting and wrong. Let’s cast back a mere decade when Bill Clinton et al implied that Timothy McVeigh = The militia movement = Anyone to the right of Joe Lieberman = Terrorists. That was disgusting and wrong. So is this. It’s many of the same people complaining then who are doing the same thing now. See for instance talk-show host Glenn Beck:
All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin’ hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, “Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.” I’m telling you, with God as my witness, America is — no I’m not going to make this an American thing — human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things — when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.
Beck is claiming that it’s not enough for an American Muslim to obey the law and do no harm. No, Beck insists that the “good Muslim” prove his bona fides by upending his entire life and sign up in Glenn Beck’s Army. Nothing less will save the fellow from Glenn Beck’s camps. Even worse, nothing less will save himself from Glenn Beck’s insincere show of regret. (”Human beings aren’t strong enough, unfortunately . . . “)
Let’s be clear: The existence of a radical, violent Muslim fringe imposes no special duty on ordinary law-abiding Muslims in any country including this one. None. We commend the Nisei battalion not because war with Japan specially obligated the Nisei to fight on behalf of the United States but because, given the injustice we inflicted on the Japanese-American community in those days, their taking up arms on behalf of the United States was an act of special generosity. Any Muslim anywhere on Earth who does not take up arms against us has fulfilled his duty to me, you and the rest of the US or the West or whatever construct you identify with. Right now, that is the vast, vast majority of Muslims in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and most Muslim countries on Earth. As a matter of simple fellow-feeling, a Muslim-American who discovers that someone he knows – Muslim or otherwise – who intends to cause violent harm ought to notify the authorities, same as you and I, if we learn that someone is planning murder or arson or insurance fraud, ought to notify the authorities. Any active action against Muslims or anyone trying to harm us is and should be recognized as a kindness. That’s the justice of the matter.
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 12, 2006 @ 9:39 am
Yep.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 12, 2006 @ 9:45 am
What if an immigrant from the Middle East swears up and down that he’s an atheist? (Go to any university with a good science program and you’ll meet a few of those.)
What if an immigrant from Egypt swears up and down that he’s a Coptic Christian?
What if an immigrant from Iran swears up and down that he’s Zoroastrian?
Comment by BruceR —
August 12, 2006 @ 10:02 am
Thoreau, do you really think that same 39% of Americans knows or cares about those kinds of distinctions?
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Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:17 am
Agreed. It’d be nice, however, if the American Islamic associations would do something besides throw a pity party for themselves on NPR, whenever the jihadists strike.
I firmly reject the assumption that Muslims in America are undergoing any sort of dislocation that an objective observer would recognize as “oppression” or “discrimination”. Certainly, liberalism has done a lot the past quarter-century to redefine those terms down, to simply mean having your feelings hurt. But it isn’t the same thing.
Comment by Nell —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:32 am
@ TSI: Granted that this incident is “merely” Muslims visiting the U.S., but it may help you understand the basis for the jumpiness of American Muslims.
Last weekend, some fifty to seventy-five Iranians traveling to attend a global reunion of graduates of Sharif University in the SF Bay area had their visas summarily canceled and were treated like criminals, including being jailed overnight. Here’s the first-person account of one of them.
There’s also the matter of the many constitutional protections this administration is trying to throw out the window. Muslim Americans are keenly aware that they will be the first to be subjected to surveillance, arbitrary detention, etc.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Even if they are partying in the streets on the worst day of (some of) our lives? Does multi-cultism forbid me from thinking non-uplifting thoughts about people like that? If so, the hell with multi-cultism!
Comment by Thoreau —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Being 1/4 Irish, is there anything that I should do the next time a bomb goes off in Northern Ireland?
I don’t know any IRA members, I’ve never been to Ireland or Northern Ireland, and I have no sympathy for the IRA. But I am from the same ethnic and religious background as the terrorists in Northern Ireland. I wouldn’t want anybody to mistakenly blame me for the violence.
Oh, I’m also a Christian. The next time a Christian bombs an abortion clinic, is there anything in particular that I should do?
Finally, I am a gun owner. The next time that a gun owner shoots an innocent person, is there anything in particular that I should do? It is a shame that every time there’s a dramatic shooting the NRA throws a pity party and complains about possible repercussions. They’re so busy worrying about their rights that they never talk about policing their fellow gun owners.
What’s that? You say that the NRA does condemn violent crimes? Well, I haven’t heard it. They should do it more.
Comment by Jennifer —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:34 am
I firmly reject the assumption that Muslims in America are undergoing any sort of dislocation that an objective observer would recognize as “oppression†or “discriminationâ€.
And as Jim’s post demonstrates, any American Muslims who worry about such possibilities in the future are just too frickin’ paranoid.
As a blue-eyed white girl of European descent, allow me to go out of my way and specifically say that I strongly disapproved of Tim McVeigh’s actions, and although we look somewhat alike and I live not too terribly far from the New York farm where he planned his crimes, please don’t assume that my combination of geographic proximity and ethnic similarities means I agreed with him. Granted, I never bothered to specifically go out of my way and demonstrate this. Maybe I should have.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:41 am
Jennifer, I have it on good authority that you dislike a lot of what the federal government does. McVeigh was the same way.
You should carry some sort of special ID card.
Comment by Alan Little —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:43 am
Jim, you are so … sane
Comment by Jennifer —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:48 am
It’s worse than you think, Thoreau–I am an atheist. Just like McVeigh!
Comment by Nell —
August 12, 2006 @ 11:50 am
For those interested in more on the arbitrary and humiliating treatment of visitors entering with visas issued by the U.S. government, coverage from the SJ Mercury News and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Comment by abb1 —
August 12, 2006 @ 1:17 pm
Well, the citizens of the best democracy in the world that is the model for all of us – Israel – are required to carry ID cards with “Jew”, “Arab”, “Russian” (or whatever) imprinted on them. If yours has the word “Jew”, you’re in luck, being entitled to special rights, benefits and privileges, otherwise – sorry, no such luck and you have only yourself to blame: next time choose your parents more carefully.
And most of the demos there doesn’t mind, so this seems to be the way to go.
Comment by Gary Farber —
August 12, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
“Muslim Americans are keenly aware that they will be the first to be subjected to surveillance, arbitrary detention, etc.”
That’s “have been,” past tense, of course. The Ibrahim brothers, or Javaid Iqbal, for example, but many many more.
Comment by Gary Farber —
August 12, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
A post, Nell.
Comment by Ruthless —
August 12, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
It’s a ruthless world out there!
People such as my barber go home after barbering all day, plunk themselves down on their naugahyde loungers, watch the news, then concoct how the government ought to handle a problem better. Such mental gymnastics ain’t heavy lifting.
That is the real problem! Not that the world is ruthless.
Governments, even autocratic ones, do try to do what their constituents say do.
Whatever government ends up doing is always always always wrong, because it does not have a stratagery for dealing with reality. It has the naugahyde-lounger-watching-TV stratagery.
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 12, 2006 @ 7:46 pm
Standard disclaimer (feel free to use or adapt):
Comment by The Heretik —
August 12, 2006 @ 8:35 pm
I wish somebody was working on an ID that dumb asses had to carry at all times. Or better yet. A big D! An insignia! Yes, a sign for all to see. But who would decide?
The new DOD, Department of Dumb.
We already have a DOD, you say? Then let’s move ahead. Or something.
Comment by Jaybird —
August 12, 2006 @ 8:55 pm
One of the problems is that “The Bad People” (who only happen to be Muslim… we all know that Islam is a religion of peace and the people who loudly self-identify as Muslim before engaging in some particularly ugly anti-social behavior are sorely mistaken as to the true nature of their religion) have a “you’re all alike” thing going on.
“The Bad People” are very much into stuff like “collective punishment” and the belief that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
To pretend that “The Bad People” will be able to achieve a handful or two of spectacular attacks (on the scale of 9/11, let’s say) without chickens coming home to roost is folly.
Sometimes they push back.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 12, 2006 @ 9:49 pm
Tu Quoque much, Jaybird? The beautiful thing about tu quoque is the extra layer of intellectual dishonesty that usually attends it: “You do it, so it’s okay if I do it, but it’s still wrong that you do it!” Lovely mindset.
TSI:
TSI, Yes, and it’s got nothing to do with “multi-culti.” It’s simple justice, ordinary 19th-century classical liberalism (not the devotion to the regulatory state that goes by that name these days). There are so many things wrong with your comment that my parser may not even provide room for them all.
First off, Yes, it is wrong for you to resent people “like” a few people in a picture because people “like” them probably aren’t much like them in any morally important way. For instance, we are talking here about how America should treat its Muslim population. They are not “like” Palestinians who celebrated the atrocities of September 11 by dancing in the streets and shooting off happy gunfire. How are they not “like” them? Because they did not do those things. They have the same skintone and some of them pray from the same prayer book. (More on that in a minute.) Resenting people of the same religion or ethnicity for something completely different people across the world of the same religion or ethnicity did has a simple, well understood term: bigotry. It is bigotry to judge all members of an ethnic group or religion for what some of them did. This is not a controversial construction of that term; it’s the standard sense of it.
Second, those refugee photos do not identify the religions of the refugees. There are a lot of Christian Palestinians. There were, by the by, a lot of Christian Palestinians in the PFLP. Does the name “George Habash” ring a bell? He’s only the most famous of them.
Third, did you notice a bunch of things about those photos that right-wingers always complain about when it comes to photodocuments of Arab and Muslim crowds? Like, they’re cropped to fill the frame, but they don’t ultimately show many people. Like, the same people appear in multiple photos, such as the guy in the Bears jersey. In fact, if you Google “Ali Hashemi” you will find, very close to the top of the page, Townhall.com’s blog complaining about his work in the current Lebanon war – for cropping photos, for the same people showing up in multiple photos and so on. But you’re somehow okay with these sins on what was put together, consciously, as an anti-Palestinian propaganda page.
Speaking of which: it doesn’t take too much hunting around to find pictures of Palestinian women in East Jerusalem mourning on 9/11; Palestinian schoolgirls bowing their heads; mourners in Amman Jordan signing a condolence book; server rot means the photos are gone from this page of Muslim condolences from around the world for the atrocities, but the captions remain; a contemporaneous USA Today story notes:
How did I find all that stuff so easily? Because I remembered it from when it all happened. The internet was full of “the world mourns” photos. Warbloggers, back before they had quite succumbed to what Orwell called “the lunatic atmosphere of war” published them.
At some point, you, Sanity Inspector, are going to need to inspect your own sanity on this business. Because there’s no reason to bring up the link to the famous dancing Palestinians in this thread except as a justification for resenting and hating a bunch of Muslims who did not dance on “the worst day of (some of) our lives,” a day when many, many other Muslims were sick with horror and fellow feeling. That’s nuts. And nuts isn’t sane.
Comment by Jaybird —
August 13, 2006 @ 12:06 am
Not at all. I am not saying that it’s okay. I think that it’s very wrong. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time saying how wrong I thought it was so that I wouldn’t be misinterpreted.
What I am saying is that if you think that there won’t be blowback, you’re being foolish. Blowback happens. This is the way it is. I wish it weren’t. I wish I had a million dollars.
I will say, however, at this point the problem is the people who want to blow up planes rather than the people who might throw rocks through the windows of mosques in response to planes being blown up.
Comment by Gary Farber —
August 13, 2006 @ 12:24 am
“What I am saying is that if you think that there won’t be blowback, you’re being foolish. Blowback happens. This is the way it is. I wish it weren’t. I wish I had a million dollars.”
I wish you were using a word in a way I understood. Because you seem to be using some idiosynicratic meaning for “blowback,” and I can only guess what you mean.
Comment by Jaybird —
August 13, 2006 @ 12:40 am
Huh. I’ve always heard the term used as a way to describe the reaction to an act of sufficient size.
9/11, I had it explained to me, was blowback for our support of Israel and our troops on Saudi soil.
Pretty much when you are the 800-pound gorilla on the world stage and you do something that offends someone and offends them long enough, there will be “blowback”.
Anyway, that’s how I have heard the term used in the past (and the usage made sense to me in context).
Is there a better word/term I ought to be using for this concept? “Newton’s Third Law Of International Relations”?
Comment by Jaybird —
August 13, 2006 @ 12:54 am
And let me just say, once more, that I do not condone or approve of people reacting violently to something that offends them (even something violent that offends them).
People ought to be nice to each other. If people cooked with each other more often, we’d have something much closer to world peace. The attitude “if brute force isn’t working, you need more brute force” is a good way to end up with nothing more than a culture being “right” by virtue of the fact that it’s the only one with people still alive. This is no way to exist.
However, I am painfully aware of how little relevance that my thoughts of how things ought to be have on how things are.
But I just wanted to say, for the record, that my thinking that a reaction is inevitable does not indicate and should not be interpreted as indicating some form of perverse pleasure at the thought of “hitting people back”.
Comment by Andromeda —
August 13, 2006 @ 7:06 am
American Muslims carrying special IDs…coulda sworn I’d heard something like this somewhere…20th century Western history someplace…nahhhhhh, couldn’t have been all that important.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 13, 2006 @ 8:27 am
Jaybird-
I get what you’re saying. I think that US Muslims are keenly aware that there could be an over-reaction with extreme consequences for their well-being. They don’t need to be lectured and reminded about that. The vast majority of them are already doing everything that they can and should do: Being good neighbors, obeying the law, engaging in productive activities, raising their children well, and doing everything else that you can ask a decent person to do. If they aren’t out there fighting terrorists it’s because they don’t know any. What do you want them to do? Randomly search eachother’s houses?
The only thing that they can do is report on terrorists when they encounter them. I have a hunch that some American Muslims did exactly that in Miami. We don’t know the full details of Miami, but we know that the crazy guys decided to join Al Qaeda, so they tried to find a recruiter and wound up talking to the FBI.
My guess is that they went to a mosque or Muslim neighborhood and started making inquiries. And somebody called the FBI in response. But that’s just a guess.
Anyway, instead of lecturing the Muslims who are already doing everything they can to avert a backlash, why not lecture the people most likely to engage in a backlash?
Comment by Jaybird —
August 13, 2006 @ 9:30 am
Who are the people most likely to engage in a backlash? The comments section of Unqualified Offerings?
Truly the situation is worse than I had feared. I’d like to point out that people who attack Muslims aren’t real Libertarians and the Libertarian Party would be better off without such people.
That said, I do think that organizations like CAIR do more to harm the perception of Islam than they do to help it. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the joke headline “Muslims fear backlash from tomorrow’s train attacks”.
If your organization’s Standard Response to a Bad Person Who Happens To Be Muslim coming out and annoucing his (or her, I suppose) Muslimity before engaging in a fantastically antisocial act is to come out and say “you people who think that Islam has anything to do with this are all racist”, that will work once. Maybe twice. It’s certainly the case that there will be diminishing returns.
I don’t know that there is anything, in particular, to be done. Maybe an organization to compete with CAIR? You’d think that there’d be money in a thrown-together group of 3-4 guys with the best-looking one going on Fox saying “We condemn this! Absolutely! They aren’t good Muslims!”
It’s not that I think that that would help, particularly… it’s just that I think that it would help more than CAIR does.
Comment by KCinDC —
August 13, 2006 @ 10:23 am
What if the rock throwing increases the number of people willing to blow up planes (or support people planning to blow up planes, or just ignore them) and decreases the number of people willing to report them to the authorities? Is it still not a problem?
And how does saying “They aren’t good Muslims” differ from saying they’re “sorely mistaken as to the true nature of their religion”, which you got so sarcastic about above?
Comment by Jaybird —
August 13, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
Well, if the rock throwing increases the number of people willing to blow up planes, then that is a definite problem. If it decreases the number of people willing to report others to the authorities, it’s an even bigger problem.
How then might we best minimize the number of rock throwers?
I posit that groups like CAIR do more harm than good. Getting on television and then explaining that anyone who thinks that Islam has anything to do with this is a racist (despite the guy saying “I came here to be a Muslim, kick ass, and chew bubble gum… and I’m out of bubble gum” right before engaging in some seriously antisocial behavior), then that will turn people off.
I think that groups like CAIR could solve a lot of stuff by just saying something to the effect of “this guy was crazy, he was deranged, he doesn’t understand what it means to be a Muslim, of course we condemn his act. All good Muslims do.”
But they aren’t saying stuff like that, exactly. They are closer to saying stuff like “Well, you have to understand the deeper issues at hand here. Look at the injustices committed against Muslims all over the world. You have to expect that some of them will rise up and fight. We condemn that, however. But you have to understand the deeper issues at hand here.”
This is a turnoff. It hardens hearts. It results in people who will do stuff that will harden hearts of others. You know that whole Hegelian Dialectic thing? Yeah, that. Thesis and Antithesis. If both sides aren’t careful, there will be a wet and sloppy synthesis.
(Please note, this is not me praising what I think will happen, this is just me saying what I think will happen.)
Comment by Roach —
August 13, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
This was a touching piece in favor of Ostrich-like ignorance of the details of the Islamic religion and the widely held opinions of Muslims, but it seems to me there are a few obvious things missings from your piece.
1) America and the Western world did and can continue to get along fine without Muslims.
2) Muslim terrorists, pointing to the Islamic religion justify their terrorism and their actinos are frequently met not with condemnations on a religious basis by Muslim leaders but, instead, self-pitying whining about profiling and surveillance by the authorities of the host community of these terrorists.
3) The best way to maximilize liberty for Americans and reduce the impact of various hindrances and annoyances from national security activities is to use profiling of Middle Easterners and Muslims.
4) It is totally appropriate that newcomers to the United States and other Western countries prove their loyalty. Indeed, their loyalty is so dubious and so little is asked and the Islamic religious is so historically illiberal, it should be doubly so in their case. And it was totally justified in the case of the emperor-worshipping Japanese, many of whom remained loyal to the Emperorr in WWII and proved disloyal (as did ethnic minorities of all kinds in all countries invaded by the Germans and Japanese).
5) Jim argues, “The more we alienate Muslims as a class, the more successful terrorism there will be.” Actually, they’ll be more successful if we continue to let them in and less successful if we kick them out. They have no power projection capability other than through our open borders.
We need to reverse this open borders regime or we’ll continue to find our historical liberties at home threatened. And yes, to be frank, Muslims are the other vis a vis native-born Americans–Christian, Jewish, or otherwise.
Comment by KCinDC —
August 13, 2006 @ 4:50 pm
Roach, you’re calling for deportation of all Muslims in the US? Where do we send the native-born ones? Detention camps until the final victory is achieved? How many generations will that be?
Comment by Roach —
August 13, 2006 @ 5:05 pm
We can certainly deport the aliens and not let in any new ones. As for those here, they should simply be kept under surveillance, with draconian punishments meted out to terrorists and their supporters. And their demands for equal treatmetn should be ignored; they have no right to set up a state within a state and campaign for transforming American values into the retrograde and illiberal Sharia law.
People that come to America must be pressured to assimilate through ostracism, studied indifference to their complaints, shame, surveillance, public schooling, and other time tested methods.
We are lucky. We have few Muslims relative to our population, unlike Europe, and most have proven less volatile and less alienated than in France and England. That will not continue if we don’t stop the inflow and through a variety of means encourage them to leave.
We are a Western Nation. We are a Western Culture. That Culture is Christian, liberal, and totally incapable of being reconciled with Islam which is as much a totalitarian political program as a religion. Sure, there are some good Muslims. Let’s see them turn in these Fifth Columnists in their midst and we’ll know for sure if that’s just window dressing. There has been too little cooperation among Muslims and too little support and volunteering on the part of Arab and Urdu speakers for the war on terror. Until that happens, there is no reason to assume their loyalty is assured as a matter of osmosis.
I know I know, this is all so heterodox and prejudiced. So much for the “Free Thinkers” on the libertarian side of the aisle who repeat the PC shibolleths of the Left without much critical thinking.
Equality has nothing to do with liberty. Equality and indifference to culture is a sure fire way to see a country and its liberties destroyed. Just ask the Maronites of Lebanon.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 13, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
That Culture is Christian, liberal, and totally incapable of being reconciled with Islam which is as much a totalitarian political program as a religion.
So, as a big fan of liberal and Christian values, what do you think about assigning collective guilt to people who didn’t do anything except study the same religious text as some bad guys?
Comment by KCinDC —
August 13, 2006 @ 9:01 pm
Roach, you say that you “have many Muslim acquaintences and friends.” Have you told them you consider their religion totally incompatible with our culture and “as much a totalitarian political program as a religion”?
It’s a good thing I don’t hold to your notions of collective guilt, or I’d be expecting a lot of libertarians to publicly disavow your comments so I could be sure they didn’t subscribe to your ideas about religious liberty.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 13, 2006 @ 9:09 pm
I believe Chris Roach self-identifies as a conservative.
Chris, there’s “PC shibboleths” and there’s things conservatives call “PC shibboleths.” The latter set is much larger than the former.
Comment by KCinDC —
August 13, 2006 @ 9:35 pm
Oh, that makes more sense then. Somehow I had the impression AFF was all libertarians, I guess because Gene Healy’s the only one I remember reading there before today.
Comment by Roach —
August 13, 2006 @ 9:37 pm
Thoreau, since the awful punishment I envision is pretty mild–immigration restrictions–I feel pretty good about it.
I try not to alienate Muslims who are here, but my friends and acquiantneces know I think their religion presents a great number of challenges to our historical liberties, and that I think it’s basically incompatible with our values if it’s understood in its traditional manner.
Do I insult their religion? No, why would I? Why be rude to someone deliberately? Will it make them terrorists; I doubt that. But I actually agree with Jim that there is no good reason to alienate Muslims. I would not want to make people here legally feel unwelcome for no reason in particular, especially as most approahc their faith in the moderate, cafateria-style so many Americans do.
That said, I don’t want their cousins, brothers, etc. moving here and would prevent this through preventive legislation. And to the extent it would help law enforcement, I would not more have a problem with profiling people with names like Mohammad or a religious identity as Muslim than I would with black males or males in general to the extent it’s a good predictor. Even a jump from a background risk of .0001 to .01 is an important statistic in terms of predictive power.
Jim is right I’m a conservative and not a libertarian. Obviously we disagree about what’s PC, but the right of Muslims to anonymously worship “Allah” in the form of a religion with an oppressive political program wouldn’t be one of the things I’d include under the realm of “liberty” that is beyond criticism.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
August 14, 2006 @ 4:05 pm
The thread may be cold, and I have no desire to get caught up in colloquy with “Roach” (you courageous, un-PC iconoclast, you), but I’d just like to say that Jim’s longish comment upthread was brilliant–the kind of thing that keeps my decidedly unlibertarian self coming back to this site.
Thanks.