Here is an “Open Letter to President Obama from a Muslim Family.” It contrasts his message to the Muslim world of dignity and civil rights with the treatment many American Muslims face in the United States. If you believe in the Bill of Rights and in American values this letter will alarm you. It’s a call for Presidential leadership. I hope the President heeds it.
Tags: American Muslims, Bill of Rights, ethics, Islamophobia, Presidential leadership, tolerance
Ethics Bob 
May 21, 2011 at 6:14 am |
Bob: I have to say, I think the letter is a cheap shot. Among the 200 “anti-Muslim’ laws are those (stupid) laws banning Sharia Law in court decisions, for example. Anti-Sharia law isn’t “Anti-Muslim.” Who says there is an uptick in anti-Muslim incidents? It’s a big country. There are a lot of fools and bigots out there, and the fact that one of them is an airline pilot doesn’t prove a thing. Crackpot letters in a newspapers? So what? The writer appears to have problems with the basics of free speech. Worse things are written about Obama and Newt Gingrich on blogs every day.
A Muslim country that receives a lot of money to be an “ally” of the US was just revealed to be undermining US efforts to capture bin Laden. The US is fighting in Afghanistan. Extremest Muslims are demonstrating against a moron pastor’s isolated acts as if he was the whole US population, and others are holding rallies condemning the US for killing a mass murderer. An Iranian court just told a woman she could put acid in a man’s eyes. This is what a publicist would call “bad publicity.” Many member of the US public are not going to feel warm and fuzzy about Muslims until it stops hearing about Muslims trying to plot mass murders of US citizens. Go figure.
I”d say the unreasonable antipathy is far, far, greater on the part of the Muslim world than against it by US citizens…indeed, given the context, I thin k the US public has been remarkably good at avoiding anti-Muslim bigotry. Compare it to how German-Americans and Japanese-Americans were sometimes treated here during World War II.
This is a CAIR political points stunt, and that is all. I think the significance and prominence you give it are undeserved.
May 21, 2011 at 11:01 pm |
Here’s what I know is happening: Lots of people in New York, Tennessee, Florida, Minnesota, and California are fighting to stop Muslims from building or expanding houses of worship, even though the plans have cleared all the governmental approval hurdles. Lots of states have passed, or are considering anti-Sharia legislation, even though Sharia law hasn’t been any kind of a legal issue: that’s as anti-Muslim as birth certificate legislation is anti-Obama. And a lot of the free speech you mention is the free hate speech of prominent mainstream American politicians and religious leaders (c.f. Franklin Graham et al). And I’m guessing that there’s more than one foolish and bigoted airline pilot.
And c’mon, why are American Muslim called to account for Pakistan or Iran? Do Mexican Americans have to answer for Mexican drug lords? Or African Americans for inner city gangs. Collective guilt went out of style long ago.
American Muslims are being scapegoated and vilified and interfered with, and I think President Obama could go at least as far in 2011 to speak out for them as President Bush went in the aftermath of 9/11.