Justice Stevens : on Ground Zero Mosque "fear of the unknown - is the source of most invidious prejudice"

The Double Crane Memorial

Like many Japanese and Japanese Americans,
 Justice Stevens loves the game of baseball

The National Japanese American Memorial  commemorates those Japanese Americans who died wearing the uniform of the United States and the Japanese Americans put in internment camps during World War II.  Speaking to supporters of the sponsoring foundation retired Justice John Paul Stevens  reflected on the `Ground Zero Mosque'.  A Navy WWII veteran, Stevens's own impulse was to resent the Japanese tourists he saw at in Hawai'i at the Pearl Harbor Memorial - the sunken battleship Arizona,   But reflection led him to the dangers of guilt by association,  And to the basic fact that "fear of the unknown - is the source of most invidious prejudice".  thanks to Adam Liptak of the NY Times for reporting this story.


The entire speech is HERE.   An excerpt follows:

I suspect that many New Yorkers who lost friends or relatives as a result of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 may have reacted to the news that Muslims are planning to erect a mosque or a religious center in the neighborhood much as I reacted to the sight of the Japanese tourists on the Arizona. Perhaps some of them may have thought: "This is no place for a mosque; Muslims killed innocent Americans herei they should build their places of worship in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else, but not here."

But then, after a period of reflection, some of those New Yorkers may have had second thoughts, just as I did at the Arizona. The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago; the Mus-lims planning to build the mosque are not responsible for what an entirely different group of Muslims did on 9/11. Indeed, terrorists like those who killed over 3 / 000 Americans -including Catholics 1 Jews 1 Protestants atheists and some of the 600 1 000 Muslims who live in New York -have also killed many more Muslims who disagree with their radical views in other parts of the world. Many of the Muslims who pray in New York mosques may well have come to America to escape the intolerance of radicals like those who dominate the Taliban. Descendants of pilgrims who came to America in the 17th century to escape religious persecutions -as well as those who thereafter joined the American political experiment that those people of faith helped launch -should understand why American Muslims should enjoy the freedom to build their places of worship wherever permitted by local zoning laws.

Names of Japanese American veterans killed in WWII