Kevin Bacon quote
Reader comment on item: [Brandon Mayfield Case:] "If You Are Muslim, You Are Suspect"

Submitted by Richard Whitten (United States), Jun 2, 2004 at 01:44

As a regular reader of your columns I have to say that your final comment in the June 1 NY Sun piece, "If you are Muslim, you are suspect" is unfair. The rest of the piece has important points about the Mayfield arrest which were not well covered in the media.

However, my interpretation of the NY Times article you cite as the source for the "no Muslim is more than six degrees from terrorism" quote was directly opposite from yours. CAIR is saying (rightly or wrongly) that there is an erroneous presumption in the US government: "It becomes the whole Kevin Bacon game — no Muslim is more than six degrees away from terrorism." The reference is to a game in which the contestants try to connect various actors and other public figures to the actor Kevin Bacon by no more than 6 associations, none of which is meaningful in itself toward the ultimate conclusion. The point behind the game is the theory that we are all connected in one way or another through six degrees of separation. Thus CAIR is saying anybody could be connected to terrorism if you try hard enough to make the association (an obviously absurd comment).

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