Quote:
Originally posted by dhamsaic
Actually, those people are being held on immigration violations. Are they being held because they are suspected to have terrorist links? Yes. But they are not being held because they are Muslims.
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Dave, I suspect that you and I have very different perceptions of the actions of the government following 9/11, which could be why we do not see eye-to-eye on this.
As I see it, our government made some knee-jerk reactions regarding Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. Most of those detained by the INS in the few months following 9/11 were from the Middle East and South Asia. Lots of people overstay their visas, but the focus (from what I saw) was clearly on Arabs and Muslims. I think the intention was good...the US was going after terrorists who happened to be Muslims...certainly, I can see that. But innocents were caught in the crossfire, like Albader Alhazmi or Malek Zeidan. I think cooler heads have prevailed since then, although I think the government is still going to sweat Muslim organizations like the Holy Land Society, perhaps unfairly.
As I mentioned last night, to my knowledge, there is no state-sponsored persecution of Muslims. (But conspiracy theories aside, I believe that there is an underlying desire by some in the government to squash Muslims like bugs.)