Getting to that point.
I work with people coming from other countries to migrate to the USA and work as nurses. One of the things I discuss in my seminars is the fact that the US is a diverse “stew” of people.
The USA is not a melting pot, for a melting pot would blend everything into a homogeneous mixture. Congressman Jackson once explained to me in Chicago that the concept of America as a “stew” is more apt.
Each ethnic or religious group provides something which enriches America but does not remove anything nor does it eliminate the uniqueness of that group.
When carrots, potatoes, meat, etc are added to the basic broth, they are flavored by the broth and add flavor back into it.
The constitution, Federalist Papers, Declaration of Independence and many other founding documents and prevailing laws are our broth in the American Stew. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindi, Baha’i, and all the other “colors of Benetton” make up the components of the stew.
Each one unique, each one adding to the richness and fullness of the stew-pot of America.

As I have promoted in my seminars, this is what makes America unique and great in the world. This is something they must acclimate to and be sensitive to.

As health care professionals they have to learn to put aside personal concepts of who and what people are and embrace them on the level of patients. To learn to administer compassionate care regardless of ethnicity or religion.

This is why, I feel, Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi is such a significant symbol of the irreverence to America that ethnic or religious profiling creates. Because she is one trained to look beyond such things and simply provide care and administer healing to whomever needs it. Yet, she was violated by the very antithesis of her career philosophy.

(And I’m finished here—I made my point.)

Individual rights extend to the point of interfering with others’ rights, that is a tenet of how we can believe in freedom.

Posters that defend any other countries beliefs are only doing that. We are here in America. We have our freedoms for which we so firmly believe and defend; our government (us) representing us, as well as protecting and maintaining our freedoms, as the posters expressing their parents’ or relatives or their own involvement in the military only know too well the depth of sacrifice to maintain individual rights and freedoms. Along with freedom is responsibility.

However, the point is continually being made…there is no room in a civilized country ascribing to glorious and uplifting ideals of freedoms to discriminate and deny freedoms of any of the minorities. In the USA, Islamic, Buddhist, and for that matter, Jewish adherents are in the minority. No matter what reasons those in majority give, there is NO justification for racial profiling based on religious affiliation, appearance, name, and ancestry. That is the point of bringing up the unfair government policy of Japanese internment even amidst a war declared against Japan. That is the reason, over and over again Saifullah provides information about Muslim worship in the US (most of us in the majority are unfamiliar with the religious beliefs). On another tact, which might be more understandable to Pattie RN, I am a Catholic, in the minority in the US. Many people who are not Catholic are uninformed about Catholicism. Our brand of Christianity is a large segment of the Christian believers. About 25% of religious adherents in the US profess a Catholic belief. Despite that, we were considered a minority at one time when there were very, very few non-Christian believers, and the Protestant (non-Catholic believers in Christianity) were considered the majority. Our homes and businesses were targeted by the KKK (a symbolic group of racist Christians, the majority of sympathizers here in the mid-eastern cornfields). Even the US President from Missouri at the time was a card-carrying member of the KKK. When President Kennedy was elected as our leader, there was a significant movement to diss him because those who do not believe in the freedom of religion as part of our US Constitution tried to argue he he was going to answer to Rome for US policy and decision-making. But, we are the USA, and a Catholic could be president–someone in the minority. We live and work and enjoy the freedoms of citizenship in the USA. As healthcare workers (Nurse Ratched’s forum) we might have special insight on the emotional, physical, mental effects of promoting and upholding freedom of religious beliefs in our workplaces and our patients whom we serve.

Arabs are the minority of Muslims worldwide, they only account for 20% or less of all Muslims in the world.

Please don’t drag race into this argument, it is completely irrelevant.

Of course Jesus will come back. As a believing Muslim I look forward to that time. The messianic age is described in the Qur’an. In face, Jesus (AS) is discussed more times in the Qur’an than any other Prophet. We love him.

Why don’t we focus on the things we have in common instead of making wild assumptions about one another and making accusations?

Allah has nothing to do with it. It is the failure of the Muslim world to dig itself out of its enslavement to a small group of radical leaders, even cruel dictators. And even if they did, they can’t ever agree on anything amongst themselves and will engage in tribal warfare and civil war until Jesus comes back.

And trust me, Jesus WILL come back.

You also fail to notice the social and political situation and narrowly focus your gaze on the religion and ethnicity of those rioting.

While I do not condone the actions of people who protest violently, I do understand why political or social issues can make people angry enough to do so.

Would you be willing to say that no non-Muslims have ever engaged in violent protest over a social or political issue?
Would you be willing to say that ONLY Muslims protest violently over a social or political issue?

Of course not… because that is illogical and irrational.

Let’s be logical and rational in our discussions.

I’m glad to hear that Allah delivered you safely from that situation.

The US Government has has a really bad run of miserable foreign policy for generations. In the wake of this we (as a nation) have left people oppressed, starving and economically crippled. This is the by-product of what we have done.

The anti-America sentiment in the world has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with what our government has done. What we, the people, can do is make sure we elect responsible leadership that will work to undo the chaos that we have created since the close of the Second World War.

A simple explanation from Sociology 101 is ‘mob’ mentality or ‘groupthink’, very similar to the attitude of the majority who think because of their size, power, dominance, etc. that ‘might makes right’ in KKK vigilante sequence. The situation would probably have been similar had there been any other issue pitting a large crowd of demoralized native citizens against a powerful minority encaged in an embassy or other holding area. For example, had your folks been popular and friendly French teachers in the Embassy of France (just as an example–have no idea of there’s a French embassy in the Syrian capitol), and the madding crowd was hunting down and targeting the French in the area. In the nightmare you were engulfed you were the racially profiled. Not quite fair?

PTSD? You betcha.
Do I like Muslims anymore? Not on your life.

In 1997 I was in Damascus, Syria. My mother and I both worked for the American Embassy there. And then the citizens (hundreds) of that country stormed the Embassy. At the beginning of it, I happened to be standing in the annex, where the Embassy operated a language school, where I taught English to young Syrians. I was considered a “favorite” of the Syrian students.

Guess what happened at the beginning of the storming, when the mobs started gathering and throwing rocks at the Embassy— and I realized that my mother’s and my life were in danger?

My co-worker teachers, and many of my students (the ones who were Syrians, Egyptians, and other Arabic natives) began scorning me verbally, saying horrible things about Americans and our President, and one girl even went so far as to say: “I hope they DO get your mother!”

You could have knocked me over with a feather—because these were just young people with no particular participation in radical groups. They were “average citizens”, taught by their “average citizen” parents.

Do I think we need to racial profile? You betcha.

Sorry, but that’s my opinion. And I lived overseas all my life and have seen anti-Americanism in a front row seat. So I think I know what I’m talking about.