what a pity! the paranoia and the pukeable hatred.
what to do about it??
chime!
dushi
just to further demonstrate the ignorance and fear of the Muslim community amongst the American public…
Radio Hoax Exposes Anti-Muslim Sentiment in U.S.
By Bernd Debusmann, Reuters
WASHINGTON (Dec. 1) – When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all
Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape
tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.
The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be “off
his rocker.” The second congratulated him and added: “Not only do you tattoo
them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country
… they are here to kill us.”
Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as
crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did
not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to
set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”
At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual
identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public’s
fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that
are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second
with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL,
which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland.
"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear
armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or
birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.
“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people
allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we
need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of
David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to
kill them all because they are dangerous.”
The show aired on November 26, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday,
and Klein said in an interview afterwards he had been surprised by the
response.
“The switchboard went from empty to totally jammed within minutes,” said
Klein. “There were plenty of callers angry with me, but there were plenty
who agreed.”
Those in agreement are not a fringe minority.
A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39
percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including
American citizens, to carry special identification.
Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door
to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States
sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11,
2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
A poll carried out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an
advocacy group, found that for one in three Americans, the word Islam
triggers negative connotations such as “war,” “hatred” and “terrorist.” The
war in Iraq has contributed to such perceptions.
Klein’s show followed a week of heated discussions on talk radio, including
his own, and online forums over an incident on November 22 involving six
Muslim clerics. They were handcuffed and taken off a US Airways flight after
passengers reported “suspicious behavior” that included praying in the
departure gate area.
The clerics, on their way to a meeting of the North American Imams
Federation, were detained in a holding cell, questioned by police and FBI
agents, and released. Muslim community leaders saw the incident as yet more
evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice.
Ignorance Seen as Key Problem
Several American Muslims interviewed on the subject of prejudice over the
past few weeks said ignorance was at the core of the problem.
“The level of knowledge is very, very low,” said Mohamed Esa, a U.S. Muslim
of Arab descent who teaches a course on Islam at McDaniel College in
Maryland. “There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and some people think
they are all terrorists.”
Hossam Ahmed, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel who occasionally leads
prayer meetings for the small Muslim congregation at the Pentagon, agreed.
“Ignorance is the number one problem. Education is of the essence.”
There are no hard figures on how many Muslims have been subject to
harassment or prejudice and community leaders say that ugly incidents can
prompt spontaneous expressions of support. Such as the e-mail a Minneapolis
woman sent to CAIR after the imams were taken off their flight.
“I would like to … help,” the e-mail said. “While I cannot offer plane
tickets, I would be happy to drive at least 2 or 3 of them. My car is small,
but at least some of our hearts in this land of the free are large.”
And optimists saw signs of change in the November 4 election of the first
Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has 435 members.
Democrat Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old African-American lawyer, did not
stress his religion during his campaign for a Minnesota seat, but said his
victory would “signal to people who are not Muslims that Muslims have a lot
to offer to the United States and the improvement of our country.”
“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily
comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.”
-------- Machiavelli
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single
candle.”
------ Francis of Assissi
