Arab-American Roundups?

One of our regular criticisms here at DU is directed to Islamic spokesmen who repeat the grossly unfair calumny that the Arab-American community in the United States is “under siege,” and that Dearborn’s Muslims live in constant fear of being arbitrarily set upon by law enforcement and disappeared into a limbo empty of legal protections.

Dawud Walid, of CAIR-Michigan, is one of the worst offenders: “Our community has been under siege since 9/11,” he says. (See for example, “CAIR Exploits Dearborn Vandalism,” “Press & Guide-ADC Merger in the Works,” and "Siege, Or No Siege?"

As statements from Walid, and from Osama Siblani of the ADC, and articles in the Dearborn Press & Guide, the Detroit News, and Detroit Free Press constantly reinforce, since 9-11 Arab-Americans have been besieged by Islamophobic attacks and an escalating “surge” of “hate crimes”--except they haven’t.

The statements are all the more outrageous because they aren’t just a twisting of facts, or an exaggeration of facts, but a pure invention.

Then there have been the media's frenzy of made-up news stories about "domestic spying" programs, and "profiling" of suspected terrorists, "just for being Muslim."

It is closer to the truth that American law enforcement has prosecuted hardly any one for terrorism since 9/11, in view of the large number of activists in the country explicitly endorsing religious violence against the nation.

I live in Dearborn, and I'm here to say there are no concentration camps, no black mariahs, no boxcars on one-way rides.

Shame on anyone who insists there are.

As I wrote last January,

How prosaic and ineffective it feels to write, simply, that there is no “siege” against the Arab community in Dearborn, not since 9/11, nor ever. The very suggestion is an insult to every resident of the area, Arab, Muslim, or non-Muslim.

Now I see presidential candidate Barack Obama feels he can get some mileage out of repeating the same charge--carelessly, thoughtlessly, and without a shred of basis in any facts.

Lance Fairchok shares our frustration, and has written about it at American Thinker: “Obama: Arab-American Families Being Rounded Up?”):

In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."

This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology.

Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Even the suggestion it could occur is a profound insult to our nation and our citizenry. It is an image of the gulag, the death camp, the dictatorship, and so inappropriate in any discussion about America, it is beneath our contempt.

This despicable image of innocent families imprisoned and the ethnic cleansing it suggests is a theme the radical left nurtures. It is by design intended to portray an unjust and intolerant people, it was no error, no misstatement. It elicits moral outrage with false assumptions, endlessly repeating those assumptions until believed. It is behind the exaggeration of everything the U.S. does in the war on terror or against Islamic extremism. It is behind the hysteria over the Patriot Act.

As divorced from truth as it is, it is found everywhere in the propaganda of the left, from the Bush-Hitler signs, to the fabrications of American military wrongdoing in the press, to the invented Islamophobia in our populace. It is the motivation behind Michael Moore, Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and George Soros. It is unfortunately the message the media aids and abets….

The bleak fantasy of Arab-American families interred for being Arabs and, of course, for being Muslim is very plausible to the radicals that help write his speeches. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies. An Obama presidency would be a disaster.

That part goes without saying. To think that such a person might actually be in the White House next January is sobering indeed.