In so many ways, one of the biggest civil rights issues of our
day is the way we treat Muslims in our country.  Yes, 9/11 was
an act of war against the United States, and yes, it was carried
out by radical Muslims. But it is our obligation to realize that
it simply is not appropriate to stereotype classes of people, be
they Muslims or anybody else.  Many Muslim traditions seem a bit
strange to many of us, and thus it is natural to be somewhat
fearful. But as I noted in a 2011 column, in more than half of
the dialects of the world's languages there is no distinction
between the word for "stranger" and the word for "enemy." As a
result, in those places anyone who is a stranger is
automatically an enemy. Imagine the violence, misery and lost
opportunities that have resulted from this short-sighted
approach.  Throughout our history we have fallen into the trap
of stereotyping groups of immigrants in our country, such as
labeling Irish as drunks, Italians as mafia and Chinese as
unscrupulous. And in one of our wor