Comment

NEWYORKUSTAN: American Muslim Series

4
CuriousLurker11/18/2011 12:42:18 pm PST

re: #3 Bob Levin

However, in America, this group always loses. They’ve always been there, and they’ve lost every time. They get a few years when they get to make noise, but it isn’t long before they have to go back underneath the rocks.

Yes, that particular group always loses, BUT what always comes to mind for me (even though it had nothing to do with religion) was the internment of Japanese Americans, not to mention Italian Americans and German Americans. This included some Jewish Germans who had escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to Latin American countries—they ended up being expelled and sent to the U.S. for detention. See Jewish Internees in the American South, 1942-1945 (PDF). German-born Americans were interned during WWI as well, though on a much smaller scale.

That’s always in the back of my mind. In fact, there are people here on this blog who have admitted that in the aftermath of 9/11 they had felt it would have been acceptable to intern American Muslims. To their credit they have since changed their minds, however I’m not convinced that if (God forbid) there were another major terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims there wouldn’t be a president willing to issue orders like Wilson & Roosevelt did.