Questioning Muslims Is a Necessary Step

Re “FBI Starts to Question Muslims in U.S. About Possible Attacks,” July 18: The FBI is on the lookout for Muslim extremists -- who should be interviewed if not Muslims? Should the FBI waste valuable time and money conducting pointless interviews with Buddhists and Mormons, just to keep Muslims from feeling “stigmatized”?

During World War II, every American noncitizen of German origin had to register as an “enemy alien” and submit to interviews with their local “enemy alien board.” Any who showed signs of being pro-Nazi were interned (thousands of German aliens and their families were interned in the U.S. during the war).

As an American Muslim, I’m glad our country has evolved beyond such excesses. But it stands to reason that if a radical, dangerous ideology -- be it Nazism or Muslim extremism -- has at its core a specific racial, national or religious identity, then it’s simply not possible to effectively combat that ideology without focusing first and foremost on members of that particular race, nationality or religion.

Marlon Mohammed

Baldwin Park