Staff Editorial
Northern Star (Northern Illinois U.)
(U-WIRE) DEKALB, Ill. -- The FBI is soon expected to order their field supervisors to count the number of mosques and Muslims in their area, according to a report in the Jan. 28 issue of the New York Times.
Cassandra Chandler, an assistant director of the bureau, said this survey looks at a wide range of demographic and other measures. It is a small part of the FBI's larger re-engineering effort with the bureau focusing primarily on national vulnerabilities. The FBI considers mosques one example of these since they have been targets for violence in the past.
But Arabs and other groups think of it as a new form of racial profiling.
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By the FBI conducting this type of investigation, it is implying that it thinks every Muslim person is guilty of terrorism or some sort of violence by association. If there is a huge increase of Muslim people living in one area, that doesn't mean that there is something big going down.
When the Oklahoma City bombing first happened, everybody's head first turned toward Arabs and people from the Middle East. That assumption turned out to be wrong.
If the FBI did then what they're considering doing now, people would think it was crazy. Keeping track of where all white people live would be crazy.
Don't get us wrong; we're glad the FBI is looking out for our safety. But how much are we willing to give up?
Little, when it affects the rights of other people.
D`uring World War II, thousands of Japanese-Americans' lives were ruined when the United States decided to put them in camps just for the "safety" of American people. The U.S. government took decades to admit they were wrong.
We say they are wrong now before the government thinks they can go any further.
Keeping track of every Muslim person is not an acceptable behavior of a civilized society. The FBI is playing into stereotypes, and that's not an example any U.S. government agency should set.
