Mail-Order Vigilantes

A right-wing foundation in Washington is soliciting money and signatures in a campaign to deport “Shiite terrorists” living in the Detroit area. In its inflammatory appeal, Americans for a Sound Foreign Policy alleges that the “terrorists,” illegally armed with automatic weapons and concentrated in a “1,500-man militia,” are even now planning “to strike at more American targets.” This is a scary prospect indeed. Why, then, is nothing being done to thwart it? Because “liberal appeasers” in Washington are blocking any action, that’s why.

An estimated 200,000 people of Arab descent live in the Detroit metropolitan area. The families of some of them have been there for nearly a century. Others are more recent arrivals--including some Shias from Lebanon. The solicitation from the foundation--which is headed by Phillip Abbott Luce, a self-described former leader of a “revolutionary Communist organization”--links the Detroit-area Shias to the “hooded terrorists” who took Americans hostage in Lebanon. But let no one think that the threat is confined to Detroit alone. “In cities across America they lie in wait.”

No attribution and not a shred of substantiation is given for any of the frenzied allegations made in the letter requesting money and signatures on a so-called summons for deportation. Nor is any identification given for the “liberal appeasers” who are preventing “action to remove this outrage from American soil.” Inescapably, though, the appeasers would have to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and, of course, Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department.

Is there any substance to this bizarre tale?

The Detroit Police Department says that it has no information at all about armed Arab terrorists in its jurisdiction or in the suburb of Dearborn, where several thousand recent Arab immigrants live.

The FBI says that it knows nothing about the claims that Shia terrorists have stolen machine guns, built bunkers in the heart of Detroit, and walk the streets “openly armed.”

But Americans for a Sound Foreign Policy suggests that it hears things that law-enforcement agencies hear not. That unique knowledge is its weapon as it seeks to whip concern about terrorism into an ugly hysteria directed against a minority group connected only by a shared faith to some who have done harm to Americans abroad. And, to help spread its fantasies, the foundation would of course appreciate cash contributions of $1,000 or less.

The hatemongering of Americans for a Sound Foreign Policy is worth attention at this time for one reason only. FBI Director William Webster noted recently that American concern and frustration over terrorism abroad could create a particular “zone of danger” for Arab-Americans. There can be no doubt that the screwy claims made by an obscure Washington foundation are a flagrant effort to capitalize on those concerns, to incite not only racism but violence as well. Sensible people will respond to those claims with the contempt and condemnation that they deserve.