Racial Equality Advocate At CPAC: It's "Just Logical" To "Monitor" Muslims — After All, We Interned The Japanese

Despite a half-hearted attempt at big-tent inclusiveness, this year's Conservative Political Action Conference can't avoid overtones of anti-Muslim sentiment, as exemplified by the choice of Rep. Allen West — who believes we are at war with all of Islam — to deliver the keynote address.

One attendee, Congress of Racial Equality spokesman Niger Innis, seemed to have more moderate views than some — until he was asked about Rep. Peter King's investigations of American Muslims. "It's just logical," he said, for the United States to "monitor" American Muslims for "unusual behavior." And the kicker? Innis actually suggested that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II justifies infringement on American Muslims' civil liberties. "Don't take it personally," he advised.

INNIS: When we went to war with the Kaiser in World War I, yeah, German-Americans — now, we have to be careful with these things, obviously. But German-Americans were placed under suspicion because there were contingents of German-Americans that had conflicting views and thought we should not enter the war against Germany. Give them that education. Don't take it personally. There is an Islamic jihad war, global war, that we are engaged in. That is a reality check. It's not radical Hindu. It's not radical Mormonism. It's radical Islam.

Frankly, they're a bigger danger — you should tell them, and I'm sure they know — that radical Islam is a bigger danger to them, to moderate, assimilated Muslims than they are to non-Muslims. But the fact is, we are at war, and it is just logical that a country— that a country— not go after them, but that we monitor, and that we just make sure that there is not unusual behavior. And I think the key is to let them know that this is not isolated. This has happened in the past. And of course we know the classic case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an icon of liberal Democrats and progressivism, interning Japanese-Americans.

Watch:

But Innis' conclusions are not "logical," because it's not a "fact" that we're engaged in "an Islamic jihad war" — it's a characterization, and a misguided one at that. According to a recent study by the Triangle Center, "More non-Muslim Americans were involved in terrorist plots last year than Muslim Americans." Identifying the American Muslim community as a threat is not a "reality check"; it's bigotry.