VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

A disturbing sign of the religious divide in our country is a new poll showing that nearly half of Americans believe the U.S. government should curtail the civil liberties of Muslim Americans as part of the war on terrorism.

In the national survey by Cornell University, more than a quarter of respondents specifically favored government infiltration of Muslim civic organizations, and requiring U.S. citizens of the Muslim faith to register with the government to track their whereabouts.

Such hysteria should be of special concern in Hawai'i because it's so eerily reminiscent of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II on the unfounded fear that these loyal citizens represented a security threat.

Most worrisome in the Cornell poll was that respondents most likely to support restricting the rights of Muslim Americans were those who described themselves as "highly religious."

Is that what religion has come to in America — using political power to oppress law-abiding citizens who practice a faith different from the self-proclaimed majority's?

What gives one group of Americans the right to render another group of worthy Americans second class by excluding them from "us" who are entitled to equal protection under the law?

That we're at war is no excuse. All of our wars have been fought in the name of preserving cherished freedoms — including the freedom of worship on which our nation was founded by forebears who came here to escape religious persecution elsewhere.

We're in a dangerous time when the war on terror is converging with the growing muscle of religious conservatives who control the White House and both houses of Congress.

The most zealous of this group aren't bashful about seeking official privilege for their view of Christianity over the diverse range of other religious faiths practiced in the United States. Never mind the First Amendment.

Repression of civil liberties is but part of a dangerous attitude by a cocksure "majority" that it's OK to bend the law in the name of security.

Our president has declared an unprecedented doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against nations we see as threats — even when we lack conclusive proof they actually threaten us, as in Iraq.

The president's nominee for attorney general supported using physical and mental abuse to interrogate terrorism suspects, notwithstanding our long history of condemning such tactics and international treaties banning torture.

A U.S. general addressing concerns that our conventional forces are too tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan to deal with trouble elsewhere said adversaries should keep in mind our nuclear arsenal.

Extremists are far from being the majority in our country, but their voices gain volume when the rest of us sit silent to their bullying.

We must stand up for our fellow citizens of the Muslim faith not only because it is the moral and American thing to do, but also because a threat to their rights is a threat to all of us.

Anybody who doubts this should remember the poem by the Rev. Martin Niemoller, a German dissident interned in Nazi concentration camps during World War II:

They came first for the Com- munists

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade union- ist.

Then they came for the Catholics

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.