Muslim civil liberties: an assault

First came Michelle Malkin, whose apologia for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was a thinly-veiled argument by analogy to muslim-Americans. (Eric Muller has an exhaustive review and rebuttal of the claims Malkin makes in her book)

Next came the shocking poll by Cornell University that revealed 27% of all Americans support mandatory registration by Muslim citizens. (original PDF link, weblog)

Now comes along Daniel Pipes, who argues that restriction of muslim-american civil liberties is neccessary. And of course, he quotes Malkin favorably. From Editor and Publisher:

NEW YORK When an opinion survey released by Cornell University last week found that 44% of Americans wanted to curtail the civil liberties of all Muslim-Americans, with better than one in four saying they should all be required to register their location with the federal government, many commentators expressed concern. Not syndicated columnist Daniel Pipes, however.

In his latest column he declares that he was �encouraged� by the Cornell survey, calling it �good news.� But he also identifies �the bad news,� which he describes as �the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully influenced public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.�

In addition to those who want all Muslim-Americans to register, 29% agree that law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, and 22% said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage.

Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, says the backlash against such notions stems from a �revisionist� negative view of the Japanese internment during World War II wielded by such �radical groups� as the American Civil Liberties Union.

He hailed the recent work of columnist Michelle Malkin, who supports the Japanese internment and claims the apology by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees, was premised on faulty scholarship.
[...]
�These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to �being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane.��

Bothersome? I again quote Benjamin Franklin - those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. In New Hampshire, the state motto is "live free or die". Frankly, I'd rather be incinerated by a plane.

(BTW, Daniel Pipes now seeks to sue CAIR for complicity in the 9-11 terror attacks. The circle is closed...)

UPDATE: Pipes responds to the criticisms with some clarifying points:

(1) I am encouraged by the results of the Cornell survey because it means that many Americans understand the need to focus on the segment of the population that is engaged in Islamist activities; I do not specifically endorse its notion of Muslims having to register their whereabouts.

(2) I raised the subject of the Japanese internment because it "still matters" in its influence on the U.S. public debate, and not because I advocate the internment of anyone today.

Pipes appears to be backtracking here. Malkin herself sought to deny that her argument was structured as a framework for muslim internment, but she has a picture of Mohammed Atta on the cover, and explicitly compares Japanese espionage to subversive behavior by Arab and Muslim Americans today. Given that she Defends Internment on the basis of such thin evidence, its impossible not to connect the dots. Likewise, Pipes seems to be in similar denial about what his rhetoric on the need for muslims to accept second-class status means. Perhaps he and Malkin are truly ignorant of the slippery slope on which they have been cavorting.