Other articles by Wayne Madsen:

Forcing words down mouths is un-Christian Chicago buoys workers' rights with trailblazing wage ordinance Wayne Madsen: CON: Don't fight terror by axing rightsWayne Madsen: Proposed national energy policy bill draws heated debate

Education
Yavapai College
Teachers General
GROUNDS CONTROL
LANDCAPE FOREMAN & LABORERS Health Care
Freedom Manor
Caregivers Health Care
Carondelet Foothills Surgery
Pre-Op Nurse General
Prestige Maintenance USA
Area Manager Retail
TOTAL WINE & MORE
WINE TEAM MEMBERS, CASHIER & STOCK MEMEBERS Dental
Apache Dental
Porcelain Techs

WASHINGTON

Muslims are required by their faith to pray to Mecca five times a day. There is nothing sinister or criminal about people peacefully carrying out the obligations of their faith. Airlines that single out praying Muslims and deny them flight privileges permanently are no different from the five-and-dime stores that once prevented blacks from eating at luncheonette counters.

It is as unthinkable to ban praying Muslims from a flight, as it would be to deny boarding to a group of praying Hasidic Jews. Both sects engage in public group prayers. Both are exercising their constitutional rights as U.S. citizens.

Persecution of religious minorities by the majority is nothing new in the United States. Nor is an attempt by the majority to link religious minorities to some grandiose and evil global plot against America.

The pre-Civil War "Know Nothing Party" attempted to paint all Catholics as diabolically serving the interests of the papacy in Rome. Catholics were systematically purged from government positions because they were suspected of primary loyalty to the pope. In the post-Second World War McCarthy era that saw the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, alleged atomic spies, accusations of communist sympathies often went hand-in-glove with anti-Semitic charges of being a "Jewish-Communist" agent in the service of the Kremlin.

Many of those Americans who would now paint all Muslims as being in league with international terrorists ignore past injustices suffered by their own ancestors.

The decision to remove six Muslim imams from a plane in Minneapolis in November last year represented a ratcheting up of the conditions necessary for the neo-con dream of a global "clash of civilizations" — a new Crusade that will pit Judeo-Christianity against Islam in a bloody world war. The coming Armageddon is a tenet of the neo-conservative movement and is documented in the pre-9/11 book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by professor Samuel Huntington.

Using the example of 9/11, ultra-conservative demagogues of the airwaves are quick to demonize traveling Muslims as potential hijackers. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich led the McCarthy-like polemical charge against the six imams when he falsely told a New Hampshire Republican gathering that the six men sat in the same seats as the 9/11 hijackers. Gingrich added that the six Muslims should have been "arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists" and the flight crew who removed them should have been honored at the White House.

Gingrich and his ilk are the actual terrorists who threaten America. Their rhetorical flourishes terrorize innocent American citizens and the very foundations on which this country was founded. Their speech, not the protected constitutional speech of those practicing their faith, is what must be restricted in the United States. Hate speech is unwelcome in today's America whether it comes from a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a radio talk-show host, or a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The world is full of countries that discriminate against their citizens based on race, ethnicity and religion. Today, we see the horrific effects of that discrimination in places like Darfur, Palestine, China, Pakistan, Iraq, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia. Some of those countries and others are at the front lines of the neo-con clash of civilizations. We must ensure that the United States does not fall victim to their militaristic designs by becoming an intolerant religious war zone.