What have we learned from America’s anti-Japanese hysteria?

Buddhism Guide’s Barbara O’Brien blogs about the hysteria about Buddhism and the Japanese internment camps following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in relation to the hostility toward Muslims in the United States today:

“Today most Americans recognize that the internment of the Japanese was wrong, yet we don’t seem to be able to apply the lesson to the current wave of anti-mosque-building hysteria that seems to be sweeping the country. I’d like to think that someday our grandchildren will read about the ‘mosque’ protests and wonder how people could have been so bigoted, but it would be nice if we could just skip the bigot phase for once.”

The Pacific Northwest Islander’s Robert Herold delves into the “slippery slopes” of the “Ground Zero Mosque” debate and what he sees as many misguided comparisons:

“Lacking a nation-state to blame, critics of the project propose to hold an entire religion responsible for the thuggery perpetrated by a few of its members.

It’s a slippery slope if there ever was one. Timothy McVeigh was raised a Catholic, so should we have blamed the Catholic Church for his heinous crime? Indeed, the Catholic Church has erected a memorial that sits closer to the Murrah Building than the community center will be to the World Trade Center site. An insult to the memory of the dead in Oklahoma City? Who would draw that idiotic conclusion?

Or consider all of the white supremacist hoodlums who, well into the mid-1960s, marched in those silly-looking white robes while toting burning crosses. No one, so far as I know, held Protestant Christianity responsible for the terrible crimes committed by the Ku Klux Klan—crimes that included murders, lynchings, and virulent terror tactics.

And how about the Protestant ‘Know-Nothing Party’ of the 1840s? The bishop of the New York Diocese felt the need to call out parishioners to defend St. Patrick’s Cathedral by force of arms against these ever-so-sincere anti-Catholics who believed they were saving America from papism.”

Courier Post’s John Skoufis, who says that building the Muslim cultural center is ultimately in poor taste, asks readers to tune out the extremist accusations on both sides of the debate and to instead focus on the fact the the divisiveness that has been created does nothing for unification or America’s understanding of Islam:

“One side tries to marginalize opponents by portraying them as bigots and Islamophobes while the other side makes unfounded claims that all Muslims are terrorists.

We need to tune both out and discuss, rationally, our position.

I will leave it to others to make their case for condemning those who object to this building. But the siren cry of bigotry and First Amendment and legal rights do not suffice since the vast majority, more than 70 percent, believe this mosque has both legal and constitutional rights to build while simultaneously objecting to the location. Some 70 percent of Americans cannot be labeled as bigots or against religious freedom.”