Some months ago, I heard a passing news story that Congress was to hold hearings on Muslims. I discounted it as impossible or innacurate reporting. However, I was wrong. Today, there were protests prior to actual hearings which will be conducted by the House Homeland Security Committee this coming Thursday, March 10th. What this committee hopes to accomplish, I cannot understand. It seems to me, this may harken back to the time of McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
In 1950, Congress passed the Internal Security Act (later repealed in '68), which provided for concentration camps where "subversives" could be held without trial (similar to Guantanamo?). In '51, New Hampshire followed suit and passed the Subversives Activities Act and appropriated money to conduct investigations into individuals such as university professors. In the documentary Rights & Reds: Cold War in NH, some proposed that the Red Scare was an effort by one of our political parties to use the public's fear of Communism to regain powers lost during the Roosevelt administration and to reinvigorate public support of military spending.
Are we once again living in an environment where public policies are beginning to erode our privacy and personal freedoms, one group at a time? Is belonging to an ethnic or religious group considered probable cause for investigation? Or are these kinds of policies necessary to protect our citizenship? Does the perceived public opinion of "Islamaphobia" really exist? If so, does it justify our government targeting a specific group of Americans for hearings?
4 comments:
It's just profiling. It will take a lot more than these invasive measures to actually accomplish anything other than pissing of the citizenry, at least the portion of the public who knows the difference between Shia, Shiite, Sikh, Sufism and so on. Even the portion that doesn't know should in theory open they're eyes enough to see that Muslims aren't actively doing anything on this hemisphere and the subsections that do, don't represent the whole.
Unfortunately, we're living in a time of terrible paranoia and constant skepticism of anyone who isn't "American." The attack on Muslims is no different than our attack on African Americans, Germans and Japanese during World War II, and anyone else that could be "dangerous." The constant violations of privacy and any right to be different in this country does nothing but kick up more controversy, and tear the country apart.
Maybe we should start profiling ignorant bigots, that's a much better use of our money and time in my opinion. It'd sure clean up a large portion of this country, that's for sure.
I feel like Islamaphobia is really becoming an issue the goverment is targeting this group and is hurting the idea of "Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses" that is on the statue of liberty.
I do not think that there is any justification for government to be targeting a specific group of Americans. Nor do I believe that we are still dealing with labels that are created in order to incite fear among the American population. This label has gone from Communist to Islamic Fundamentalist or terrorist. These words, these people who are associated with this stereotypes are created to "reinvigorate public support" not only for military spending but also other covert affairs. Islamaphobia does exist because of what we see on the news on a regular basis. Sure a white man can blow up a building claiming insanity,but if a Muslim walks through security with tweezers it would be a whole different reaction.
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