Will Polls Translate into Legislation?
According to a July
2006 Gallup poll, 39% Americans feel
that Muslims in America should carry
special identification. This sentiment
is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi decision
to have Jews wear a yellow star so they
could be easily identified, vilified
and persecuted.
In that public opinion poll of 1007
Americans, 22% did not want to have
a Muslim neighbor, 34% felt that Muslims
in America back Al-Qaeda and 49% felt
that Muslims were not loyal to America.
While Gallup does opinion polls, the
US Congress passes quiet resolutions.
In the uproar and confusion post-9/11,
on October 25, 2001, Congress passed
the USA Patriot Act, 98 voting for and
only one against. The lone soldier was
Senator Russ Feingold (D. Wisconsin).
The subsequent violation of civil liberties
caused by the Patriot Act has had several
congressmen volunteering that they had
not even read the contents of the Patriot
Act. The prevailing panic and the fear
mongering had hustled the legislation
through.
In its renewal in March 2006, with some
privacy protections thrown in, the voting
improved but still allowed passage in
the Senate: 89 for and 10 against. On
October 11, 2004 Congress unanimously
approved Tom Lantos’ (D. Calif)
sponsored bill aimed at preventing the
spread of global anti-Semitism. Essentially,
Holocaust denial or anything vaguely
anti-Semitic becomes a crime in the
US. But flagrant disrespect of the Prophet
of Islam (pbuh) comes under the purview
of free speech.
As the world’s fourth most sophisticated
army leveled Beirut and dropped American-supplied
cluster munitions on Lebanon’s
civilian population, Congress on July
19, 2006 rushed to approve a bipartisan
resolution endorsing Israel’s
military campaign. Republican National
Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman went
to the extent of saying that “today,
we are all Israelis”. Analysts
label this rush to endorse Israel a
move to pander to Jewish voters and
political donors.
The Gallup poll in this context is important
for it is representative of a general
feeling or trend. A congressman is impacted
by history, his own experiences and
current day political realities. And
then there is the concept of money in
campaign coffers being like nuclear
missiles to consciences. The most powerful
lobby in Washington after the National
Rifle Association is AIPAC or the American-Israeli
Public Affairs Committee. Recently the
open bribing of congressmen has become
a matter of a public investigation.
It serves to illustrate how a great
democracy can be subverted by that worldwide
passport called money.
Israel lost in the court of public opinion
as well as on the battlefield with Hezbollah.
A month long offensive with white phosphorus
tipped precision bombs was unable to
stem the rain of 100-200 Katyusha rockets
per day. 21st. century military sophistication
could not debilitate Hezbollah’s
archaic ammunition.
The media slant in war coverage in the
United States has been so blatant as
to cause someone to ask, “Which
war is America watching?” Despite
all the image sanitization and CNN repeatedly
showing the same blue-clothed Israeli
woman on a stretcher, the American public
was beginning to guess that the United
States was condoning and actively aiding
the massacre of innocent civilians.
Callers on radio talk shows, letters
to the editor and even personal conversations
were replete with condemnation. And
then the news of the liquid-bomb airline
terror plot broke on August 10th. And
everything suddenly went back to square
one.
Prior to 9/11, the average American
did not know where Pakistan was. That
fateful day became an ironically expensive
lesson in geography, for Pakistan could
be located on the world map and also
identified as a partner in the War on
Terror. Now the radio and television
seem to scream out the words “Pakistan”
and “Pakistani” in the most
negative of connotations. The last names
of the arrested suspects are Ali, Hussain,
Islam and Khan.
Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941, prompted the issuance
of a blanket US Presidential warrant
authorizing the then Attorney-General
Francis Biddle to have the FBI arrest
“dangerous enemy aliens”
and, by the end of the day, 737 Japanese-Americans
had been detained. The next day America
entered the Second World War and, on
December 11, the FBI detained 1,370
Japanese-Americans and classified them
as “dangerous enemy aliens.”
On February 19, 1942, an Executive Order
was issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt
stating “…the successful
prosecution of a war requires every
possible protection against espionage
and sabotage of national defense material”
and thus authorizing the Secretary of
War to establish military camps for
the detention of dangerous enemy aliens.
The US army established 12 “restricted
areas” in which enemy aliens were
restricted by a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew,
allowed to travel only to and from work
and not more than five miles from their
home. By August of that year, over 110,000
Japanese-Americans had been moved to
these 12 sites.
Already there are several thousand Muslims
languishing in jail for unknown charges,
mostly visa violations, without representation.
The backlash for the alleged UK airline
terror plot has already begun in Britain.
It shall cross the Atlantic soon enough.
With American opinion about Muslims
in the Gallup poll being so negative
in July, the 39% that feel that American-Muslims
should carry identification will surely
climb.
The Japanese internment camps in World
War II were known euphemistically as
“military areas” or “restricted
areas.” With mounting civilian
unrest in the form of hate crimes, as
well as anti-war protests, an overwhelmed
government may well suggest to American-Muslims
that in order to “protect them”
there be the institution of “safe
areas”. Being that we are in the
Information Age, what really would be
true internment camps could take on
innocuous or deceptive facades. There
could be individual surveillance much
like that for a prisoner on parole,
where he cannot go past a defined circumference,
or risks setting off alarms. Or the
whole program could be marketed with
“for-the-sake-of-your-own-safety”
label and Muslims of a particular ethnicity
would be persuaded to move into a neighborhood
that had more of their kind, much like
a Muslim ghetto. Harried and overwhelmed
Muslims just might agree. Better cramped
and alive than daring and dead.
With a public opinion poll, even before
the UK airline terror plots, being so
averse to Muslims and reminiscent of
the Jews before the Holocaust, life
in the United States, for Muslims, has
taken on a strange sitting-on-pins quality.
With murky American politics, a sold-out
Congress and a blissfully ignorant President,
an opinion poll becoming legislation
has quietly entered into the realm of
possibility.
(Mahjabeen Islam is a freelance columnist
and physician residing in Toledo Ohio.
Her email is mahjabeenislam@hotmail.com)
