How to win friends and influence people

Does this strike you as just a bit, um, how shall we say this, uh, racist?

New York Times, Washington, Jan. 14 - The Senate Finance Committee said Wednesday that it had called on the Internal Revenue Service to turn over private tax and fund-raising records for major Muslim charities as part of an investigation into possible links between the charities and terrorist groups.

The committee released a copy of a letter sent to the I.R.S. last month requesting "all I.R.S. materials," including donor records, for 27 Muslim charities, including several that have been under scrutiny by the Justice Department and the Treasury Department for possible ties to Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists. ...

"Many of these groups not only enjoy tax-exempt status, but their reputations as charities and foundations often allows them to escape scrutiny, making it easier to hide and move their funds to other groups and individuals who threaten our national society," the Senate letter said. "This support for the machinery of terrorism not only violates the law and tax regulations, but it violates the trust that citizens have in the large majority of charities."

Some of the 27 have been under investigation by DOJ and the Treasury for supposed links to al-Qaeda. But others haven't, indeed some are quite mainstream in the Muslim community. Yet the Finance Committee is prepared to sweep up all of them under the rubric "support for the machinery of terrorism," effectively declaring that being Muslim is in and of itself cause for suspicion that you're supporting terrorists if not one yourself.