Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Let's round up some brains first

You know, when people start talking about interning Muslims, it reminds me just how incoherent their thought processes are regarding the subject of Islam and nonwhite cultures generally.

My first question to them is: Do we intern Muslim Americans? Or just Arab Americans?

If they answer the latter, then the next question immediately arises: Then what about all those non-Arab Muslims who are likewise implicated by association with Al Qaeda? You know -- the Pakistanis and Indians, the Bangladeshis, the Malaysians and Indonesians and Filipinos? They are, after all, racially distinct. Should we round them up too? If not, then what good are we doing just rounding up Arabs? Aren't we letting a lot of potential Al Qaeda operatives roam free?

All right, then say they answer the former -- intern all Muslims. That raises the next question: Then are they now willing to intern all those black Americans, like Muhammad Ali, who have converted to Islam?

And of course none of them will consider that. (Or if they will, then they are probably working for Karl Rove.)

There is simply no logical consistency to any enterprise that would deprive Americans of their rights based on their ethnicity, regardless of the circumstances. Not unless its promoters are truly and admittedly monstrous.

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