Poll: Nearly half of all Americans support restricting rights of Muslim-Americans

WLBT ^ | December 17, 2004 | AP

[yonif]

ITHACA, N.Y. A nationwide poll finds nearly half of all Americans believe the U-S government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.

The survey -- conducted this fall by Cornell University -- found that 44 percent favored at least some restrictions, while 48 percent said civil liberties shouldn't be restricted in any way.

Twenty-seven percent of the 715 respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived -- and 29 percent thought agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer groups.

The poll also found Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more likely to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

The executive director of the Muslim American Society says the news is disturbing, but not surprising.

[texasbluebell]

Turkey shut down 7 Christian radio stations and several churches calling them "offensive". We all heard how Indonesias president c blamed the jews for all the worlds ills.

Shhh, we stupid kufars are not supposed to know things like that, Luigi!

[muawiyah]

When the war finally started in Afghanistan I saw literal wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the rendering of garments in the streets of Springfield Virginia.

It wasn't that the Afghans around here (we have something like 60,000 of them locally) were against the war ~ but that they were human and that's how they expressed their anxiety.

We'd stopped in a local Afghan store to pick up some bread that evening and there were people crying so terribly they couldn't see to make change.

I don't know what they tell their kids to keep them out of Christmas season merrymaking but they don't attend either, and it's not about our soldiers. Good grief, we have Afghan neighbors who are our soldiers.

[broadsword]

The fellows who stayed back in Mongolia proper were the dregs of their society. The place is still backwards, folks running yaks, doing subsistance hunting, all that sort of stuff. They are doomed to the fatalism inherent in Buddhism. The more aggressive sort of folk left there 800 years ago and never turned back!

Ack! So the ones who sallied forth to rape, slaughter and conquer the innocent were the better Mongols? Dude! What are you saying? And what has you so suddenly foaming at the mouth angry? You were quite civil for a while there. Why don't we just give it a rest for now, and I will concede whatever it was you were trying to say.

OK?

[BobL]

I'm missing something. The article didn't mention deporting and interning, only curtailing rights. Some of the people in this thread, however, did go further.

Also, I don't think that there is any serious discussion within the mainstream or in Washington about deporting and interning all Muslims.

In fact, most of the FreePrs would be happy if this whole thing could blow over and we could get on to other, more serious, threads - like dealing with China. It's just that we keep getting pounded by articles and Muslim spokesmen, so we have to respond.

[FreedomCalls]

I'm sorry, I missed the part where you talked about all of the Christian ministers going around the world preaching Holy War

It happened.

One day in May 1212 there appeared at Saint-Denis, where King Philip of France was holding his court, a shepherd-boy of about twelve years old called Stephen, from the small town of Cloyes in the Orléannais. He brought with him a letter for the King, which, he said, had been given to him by Christ in person, who had appeared to him as he was tending his sheep and who had bidden him go and preach the Crusade. King Philip was not impressed by the child and told him to go home. But Stephen, whose enthusiasm had been fired by his mysterious visitor, saw himself now as an inspired leader who would succeed where his elders had failed. For the past fifteen years preachers had been going round the country-side urging a Crusade against the Moslems of the East or of Spain or against the heretics of Languedoc.

[muawiyah]

Broadsword, it started when you made a claim about what I'd written that was totally false. Then you pursued that claim to the bitter end.

You have been foaming at the mouth all evening.

[broadsword]

Haha, ok, ok, that is true. I meant in the form in which we see today, but point well taken.

"Ha, ha, Hi. I'm good and friendly. I don't want you American infidels to have your throats slit. See? (smooch, smooch) I'm nice!"

Looks like our little Islamonoob is backing slowly away from the ZOTmonster. Probably a learned behavior from his last three retread manifestations.

[honest2God]

"Now you have identified what it is that frightens you the most. Deportation...I reminded him that what is GIVEN can also BE TAKEN AWAY!"

Deportation doesn't frighten me at all. It's not like I'll be deported. I just don't think that it is a sound policy that will advance our strategic interests in the Middle East as a whole, and in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. I believe that both the short and long-term implications of such a policy would undermine what we are trying to accomplish there.

[honest2God]

I'm being honest. If you can't be, that's your business, and I have nothing to say to you. If you have to resort to personal attacks, it only means you can't respond to my arguments. Fine by me, I come out on top.

[texasbluebell]

A lot of people seem to have a problem with asking 1.3 billion people to change their ways, yet those 1.3 billion have no problem whatsoever DEMANDING that the remaining FIVE billion of us accept their Islamic domination. Think about it.

I think about it a lot, and am always left wondering why this is so. How is it that they insist on demanding that the rest of us change to suit them, and actually expect us to fall on the sword (sometimes literally).

I still don't have an answer.

[broadsword]

You have been foaming at the mouth all evening.

LOL! But I ALWAYS foam at the mouth. I am consistent.

I objected to your hilarious claim about the scourge of "Christian Mongols". I still think it is extraordinarily silly. And I still don't understand your insane mood-swing. But what does that matter.

Let's be pals!

[BobL]

You see - that's the reaction that we wanted to see after 9-11. For the local Afghans to be upset that we were taking out the Taliban is mind-boggling. That was easily one of the most oppressive governments in the history of humanity.

If the local Afghans still support that government, then you should be able to understand why we fight back when they want to impose that type of government on us.

[dk/coro]

This debate brings to the fore a most complicated and acutely important aspect of the Islamic challenge to Western Democracy -- and the long-term threat implicit therein.

IMO, no procedures or techniques introduced into the national fabric of social discourse will be adequate to compete against this civilizational confrontation over the long term. We will continue to have these minor "flaps" over the cultural and political aspects of this confrontation, but we will fail to address the threat in its totality.

I suspect that even when we have another major national event comparable to 9/11, the debate will rage as to whether we should re-introduce mandatory national service, etc. And, there will be the do-gooders that will be perfectly content to let our increasingly "hessianized"
all-volunteer force continue to do our heavy national lifting.

Europe is already lost. Leicester, England is already majority Muslim, if one could have imagined. Sweden will be over 50% Islamic within two decades, etc. The ludicrous EU discussions about deportation on one hand, flies in the face of the debate relative to Turkish inclusion on the other. And, so it goes on the "lost continent".

IMO, there is absolutely nothing that can be realistically be done to address this issue at the national level that ultimately does not have the support of the populace. And, that, is the great difficulty here.

Civilizational and attendant cultural transitions are measured in decades and centuries. The American people are horribly equipped to perceive -- and ultimately come to grips -- with a challenge of this magnitude, couched in demographic and multi-faceted socio-political terms of long-term portent.

Thank you for your patience. DKP

[weenie]

You guys are a bunch of unreconstructed Southern Confederate sympathizers. Puts you on the wrong side no matter who we are fighting. I could add appropriate insults to the litany but they would be wasted.

"Do whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?"

Cut that sucker down to real human language and I will respond...But that statement is a whopper of miscalculation...I could more easily explain "psychology" or the "moon."

I am a friendly spirit, but I am not unlimited in my capacity to explain...

[broadsword]

ANOTHER Islamonoob! Somebody slam down the manhole cover!

[honest2God]

"Also, I don't think that there is any serious discussion within the mainstream or in Washington about deporting and interning all Muslims."

No, there isn't. And you're right, the article only referred to curtailing rights, and my comments were pointed at those calling for extremes. I was arguing against those extremes, sorry if they were directed at you in err, I was just trying to respond to your questions.

[Fred Nerks]

Just shows ya...as we aussies say...I'm a Northerner, in the Southern Hemishpere. A migrant. German-born. Assimmilated. Conservative like my Bavarian ancestors who were staunch catholics.
Happy Christmas everyone.

[BobL]

...One day in May 1212

800 years is a long way to go back to make a point. Christians have a lot blood in their history, that's not debatable. But we all live in the present. Christianity, by and large, cleaned itself up. We're waiting for Islam to do the same.

[muawiyah]

The local Afghans WERE NOT supporting the Taliban. All of them continued to have close friends and relatives in the areas where the war would be fought.

The place had been in a constant state of violence for the last 15 years anyway. No doubt most of them thought we would fight a war the same way the Russians did, and that other Afghans did.

Mr. Karzai used to walk the streets of my immediate neighborhood. He's typical of the local Afghans and I am sure that when the bombing started he had a lump in his throat and felt a tingle in his spine while his hands broke into a cold sweat.

You should re-read what I wrote.