Fort Hood anti-Muslim backlash: Critics must consider lessons from past

Japanese Family in U.S. internment camp, 1943, CA Archives

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While Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, correctly,  is the universal focus of outrage and condemnation, officials worry about a surge in anti-Muslim sentiment.

Police in Garden Grove, California took the precaution of standing watch outside a mosque during recent prayer rituals.

The US Army’s top general, Army chief of staff General George Casey said he was concerned about a backlash against Muslim soldiers. How many Muslims are in the military? Of the 1.4 million in the U.S Armed forces, estimates place the number of Muslims between 5,000 and 20,000. In the Army, 1,563 active duty solders identified themselves as Muslims, 436 were in the Army National Guard and 581 in the Army Reserve.

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters in the United Arab Emirates that her agency was working with states and local groups to try to prevent anti-Muslim anger. Critics charged her with insensitivity to the victims.

Pres. Barack Obama's warning against a "rush to judgment," unleashed an avalanche of criticism that he was soft on terrorism and defending the perpetrator.

While a host of blogging critics mocked the possibility as "Muslim whining," (see sidebar) cooler minds find that concerns, are legitimate. The majority of  Americans polled by Rasmussen Reports agreed. While 76 percent of respondents to the telephone poll agreed with Sen. Joe Lieberman that the U.S. military should have "zero tolerance " for Islamist extremists or anyone who is obviously not loyal to America, 80 percent also said they were concerned this would be the start of an anti-Muslim backlash.

And history proves them correct. Tragic events can provoke violent personal retaliatory acts against groups perceived as the enemy. Look at our own history.  After the September 11, 2001 attacks hate crimes against Muslims spiked to nearly 500, according to the FBI. But since then they have dropped.  In 2007 there were 1,477 hate crimes based on religious bias and 114, or 9 percent, were anti-Islamic, according to government Uniform Crime Reports.  A Marine reservist attacked a visiting Greek priest in Tampa Florida, last week, mistaking him for an Arab. It may be a harbinger of what's to come.

Or dig a little deeper and you can really get into the moral muck of American history. In World War II FDR sent off 120,000 Japanese to 10 prison camps in the Western United States. They were farmers and business owners, grand parents and families with newborns. They were given 24 hours to pack up one suitcase and report to curtained trains to go they knew not where.

Most spent two or three years in these barbed wire compounds with towers patrolled by armed guards. Many lost all their property and some came back to the hatred of neighbors and homes that had been burnt to the ground.

Their crime? They were Japanese.  A great many were second generation. Americans by birth who had to suspend their lives, some at the start of college or careers, to get locked up.

Some like Frank Kageta, then 22, signed up for the military to prove his love of America. Meanwhile his family was in Tule Lake, California Relocation Center. Toki Okusu, last saw her older brother, member of the 442nd, an all-Japanese unit that was one of the most highly decorated in the war, when he came to visit his parents in the prison camp. Two weeks later he was killed in action.

"We want to make sure that this never happens to anyone again," said Kageta, now in his late 80s.  "It happened to us because the constitution broke down."

President Barack Obama evoked the constitution in his statement at the Fort Hood memorial service, advocating tolerance. "We are a nation that guarantees the freedom to worship as one chooses. And instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln's words, and always pray to be on the side of God."

Right-wing talk show hosts have been quick to take advantage the call for tolerance to play on fears and hammer a deeper wedge in American political opinion while driving up viewership. Rush Limbaugh in a wacky twist of logic, blamed the Obama Administration for the shooting claiming that because Obama hadn't got out of us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, "that's one of the reasons the guy cracked." He also said the shooter was "just like Obama," because he had been among congregants for a radical cleric.

Fear mongering is not just bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber, it's being amplified at professional news and political levels too. Hosts on the Fox Channel show, Fox and Friends, suggested Muslims soldiers undergo "special screenings" and "special debriefings."

And Allen West, a Republican Congressional candidate in Florida became the first politician to point the fear finger and link Hasan with a larger world jihadist conspiracy. Allen West, former commander at Fort Hood warned that Hasan's attack was a sign that  jihadists had infiltrated the military.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) told Talking Point Media she is very concerned about infiltration of jihadists into the military. "We have a breakdown between the law enforcement  and the military ," said Myrick who is on the House intelligence committee. "This isn't the first time this type of thing has happened in the military."

While all the fear mongering continues the World War II veterans and the other Japanese who experienced something similar can only shake their heads.The Japanese who were interned have had 67 years to reflect on what happened to them and why the  U.S. did not intern German or Italian Americans.

 "All the Japanese were herded off to camp and they never gave us one reason for it ," Kageta said.  When he returned he saw "No Japs" signs in stores in his small Northern California farming community . "The people who did this were good, Christian, law abiding  people," he said.  They just saw them as the enemy.

"After 9/11, Muslims were being singled out because they looked different or had different names, without just cause," said Lila Sasaki, who was interned when she was 9 years old. "We don't want it to happen again."

"History keeps repeating itself in this country," said Kageta. "We make a mistake and 20 years later it happens again."