<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Dear Visionaries,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><font color="#000000" face="georgia, serif"><span style="font-size:16px">For who don't get the Daily News (or not getting it delievered!), below is my MLK column. The long version, to be published in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal, is attached.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black;font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:12pt;text-indent:0.5in"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black;font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:12pt;text-indent:0.5in">Read all of my columns on Islam at <a href="http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/IslamPage.htm">www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/IslamPage.htm</a>.</span></p><div><br></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:16px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:georgia,serif">After tomorrow I fear for our nation even more than I do now,</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><font color="#000000" face="georgia, serif"><span style="font-size:16px"><br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><font color="#000000" face="georgia, serif"><span style="font-size:16px">nfg</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><font color="#000000" face="georgia, serif"><span style="font-size:16px"><br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">They Came
for the Muslims, but I was Not a Muslim<span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">By Nick Gier<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><i><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">First they
came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist;.
. . Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a
Jew; then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">—German Pastor</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Martin Niemoller<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><i><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">I pledge to you that if one day Muslim Americans are
forced to register <br clear="all">
their identities that will be the day that his proud Jew registers as a Muslim.<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">—</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Johnathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">In response to the
attack on a Berlin Christmas market, in which a Tunisian terrorist killed 12
people with a stolen truck, Donald Trump said: “You know my plans”—presumably
about limiting immigration of Muslims to the U. S. Initially, it was a total
ban on all Muslims, but now it is only those coming from countries harboring
terrorists.<br clear="all">
On November 20, 2015, Trump
also said that he would “absolutely” support setting up a registry of all
resident Muslims. Recently Trump adviser</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Kris Kobach said that
the transition team was drawing up plans for such a policy, and in a November
16 interview on Fox News, Trump spokesman Carl Higbie</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> claimed that the internment of Japanese
Americans was a legal precedent. <br clear="all">
When Kobach was in George W.’s
Justice Department, he helped set up the National Security Entry-Exit
Registration System. This policy required non-citizen males over the age of 16
from 22 Muslim countries to register and have their fingerprints taken.<br clear="all">
Over 177,000 men dutifully
came forward and, many young innocent lives—some hard-working graduate
students—were disrupted. </span><a href="https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/government-apologizes-unlawful-arrest-and-detention-iraqi-refugee"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black;text-decoration:none">Abdulameer
Yousef Habeeb</span></a><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">, a
young Iraqi who had been tortured by Saddam Hussein’s thugs and not required to
register, was at least given an apology and compensation: “The United States of
America acknowledges that, by not registering you did nothing wrong [and]
regrets the mistake.”<br clear="all">
James Ziglar, former
immigration service commissioner, admitted that “not one actual terrorist was
identified. But what we did get was a lot of bad publicity, litigation and
disruption in our relationships with immigrant communities and countries that
we needed help from in the war on terror.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">The ACLU charged that this was ethnic
discrimination comparable to the shameful Japanese internment, and Homeland
Security was forced to suspend the program in 2011. On December 22, 2016,
President Obama shut it down completely, but Trump could start it up again with
a stroke of a pen. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney
general nominee, testified that he would not support a Muslim registry, but he did
say that one’s religion could be a factor for entry into the country. Trump’s
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus refused to rule out a registry, but John Kelly,
Trump’s nominee for Homeland Security, said that it was never “</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">appropriate to focus on something like religion as the only factor” for
immigration.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">On the same day as the Berlin attack a gunman
opened fire at a Swiss mosque, injuring three, two seriously. The press has
given little attention to anti-Muslim incidents in America and Europe, where
Islamophobia fueled by right-wing parties has increased. <br clear="all">
In the Netherlands alone
there have been 142 cases of verbal and physical assaults in 2016, and 19 Dutch
mosques have been attacked, some repeatedly. Last year an additional 147
mosques in Germany, France, Sweden, and Switzerland were vandalized.<br clear="all">
Last November three California mosques
received an anonymous letter. It warned
that</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Donald Trump would “cleanse” the
country of Muslims the same way “Hitler did the Jews.” There were 55 attacks on
American mosques in the first nine months of 2016.<br clear="all">
</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">
In 2001 the FBI reported 481 hate crimes against American Muslims, and
that number, after diminishing over the years, had risen to 257 in 2015. The
most obvious cause of this is Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.<br clear="all">
More recent data, from March
2015 to March 2016, come from</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Georgetown
University, where researchers report “approximately 180 incidents of
anti-Muslim violence, including: 12 murders; 34 physical assaults; 49 verbal
assaults or threats against persons and institutions; 56 acts of vandalisms or
destruction of property; 9 arsons; and 8 shootings or bombings, among other
incidents.”</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">American Muslim and Jewish leaders have come
together to protest threats to their
communities. (In 2015 the FBI reported 664 hate crimes against Jews.) On
February 28, 2016, 250 people gathered at the mosque in Fremont, California,
and Rabbi Michael Lerner warned: “We can smell fascism when it’s arising, and
it’s beginning to arise in the country, and it scares us.”<br clear="all">
As we celebrate Martin Luther
King, Jr. this week, let us remember that the
Declaration of Independence promised an “unalienable right” to “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This applies to those who live here as
well as those just coming to our shores.
As King once said: “</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">We
may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” <br clear="all">
</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Nick
Gier of Moscow taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Read all of his columns on Islam at <a href="http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/IslamPage.htm">www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/IslamPage.htm</a>.<span></span></span></p><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><div><span style="font-size:13.3333px">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br style="font-size:13.3333px"><br style="font-size:13.3333px"><span style="font-size:13.3333px">-Greek proverb</span></div><div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
<br><br></div></span></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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