Civil Liberties
by The Rev. Vern Barnet
The Rev. Barnet is minister in residence at CRES,
a Kansas City interfaith network promoting understanding among peoples
of all faiths, and convener of the Kansas City Interfaith Council. He
chaired the 12-member Diversity Task Force appointed by Jackson County
Executive Katheryn Shields on Feb 14, 2002, to report the day before
the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
We Kansas Citians may be tempted to congratulate ourselves for refusing
to be taken in by anti-Muslim prejudice.
It was a Georgia woman who caused severe traffic problems on Interstate
75 in Florida earlier this month when her suspicions led to a search
for cars driven by three young men she suspected were planning a terrorist
attack. Some reports suggest that they were not plotting to “bring
down” buildings, but to “bring down” a car for the students
to use.
It was the officials in Florida who handcuffed the men, medical students,
held a gun to the head of one, ripped open the cars in a search for
evidence, damaged and destroyed clothing, medical equipment and laptop
computers, and 600 policemen moved into the area. It is a Miami hospital
that, because of 200 anti-Muslim emails it has received, revoked the
welcome it had previously given to the students to continue their studies
there. During their 17 hours of detention, they were not allowed to
use a restroom.
Police first said that the three had driven through a toll booth at
high speeds. Video evidence showed otherwise, and the authorities changed
their story.
So the bad stuff happened elsewhere.
We may be tempted to think well of ourselves here because one of the
students, Omer Choudhary, 23, has received strong support from those
who know him and his Kansas City family.
But we must not think all is well in the Heartland.
The Jackson County Diversity Task Force, which submitted its 77-page
report Sept. 10 after a seven-month study of the metro area, shows that
Kansas City has big-time religious bias.
I have been doing interfaith work here for 17 years. In that time I
have encountered responses to my work might charitably called “unenlightened.”
However, chairing the Task Force deepened my alarm as we uncovered the
level and intensity of recent attacks on American citizens who are Muslims.
One caller said we must kill the Muslims before they kill us. A Kansas
City area opinion-maker told me face to face that he wanted to meet
a Muslim who did not want to kill him. Of the 20,000 Muslims here, I
would like to introduce him to 20,000.
In addition to fears some people have of any who are “different,”
anti-Muslim prejudice is fueled by two factors people should contemplate:
religious bigotry and political perspectives.
First, religious prejudice. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son
and successor, calls Islam an “evil religion” and claims that
Muslims do not worship the same God as Christians. Those who wish to
see how Kansas Citians have been affected by this blatant bigotry can
read the summary in the Report from the fact-finding session we held
at the Islamic Center.
Second, the political dimension arises when, despite repeated condemnations
of all terrorism by prominent Muslim leaders here and elsewhere, a segment
of the community with a political agenda persists in repeating that
no such denunciations have been made, or are mere platitudes, or are
insincere, or cannot be trusted. You can smell the political agenda
when, instead of working together to build relationships, statements
by extremists claiming to be Muslim are used to characterize Islam.
The Report details not only the situation in the metro area but also
consider the national and international contexts which threaten both
safety and the erosion of civil liberties. The Task Force also summaries
its study of the religious dimensions of these problems.
As a result, the Task Force developed three detailed recommendations,
here summarized:
A. A Crisis Response Plan is proposed to protect the physical safety,
and the civil and religious liberties of vulnerable ethnic and religious
minority communities in the event of further terrorist activities
at the local or national level.
B. A Public Education Plan to continually promote a stronger “community
consciousness” about the importance of pluralism and tolerance
though a fuller understanding of and greater appreciation for the
diverse ethnic and religious communities in the metro area.
C. A Tolerance Monitoring Plan to build the capacity to monitor the
state of tolerance in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area.
The report is available at the Jackson County web site, www.jacksongov.org/
and at www.cres.org/dtf
.
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