George Takei Starts Petition to Stand Up for Muslims in the U.S.

    Taryn Ryder
    Writer, Yahoo Entertainment
    George Takei is standing up for Muslims in America. (Photo by Jerritt Clark/WireImage)

    George Takei is taking aim at Donald Trump and the president-elect’s Cabinet nominations.

    The Star Trek star and political activist has started a Care2 petition to gather support for the Muslim community and oppose any policy targeting them based on their religion or national origin. For Takei, 79, some of Trump’s threats hit too close to home.

    “When I was just 5, my family was rounded up at gunpoint and forced from our home in Los Angeles into an internment camp,” the Japanese-American actor writes. “We were prisoners in our own country, held within barbed-wire compounds, armed guards pointing guns down at us. It was an egregious violation of our rights under the U.S. Constitution, all in the name of ‘security.’”

    Takei continues, “I have spent my life trying to ensure something like this never happens again. But dark clouds once more are gathering. A Trump spokesperson recently stated the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II ‘sets a precedent’ for Trump to do the same today. And Trump continues to stand by his plans to establish a Muslim registry and ban immigrants from ‘certain’ Muslim countries from the U.S. It starts with a registry, with restrictions, with irrationally ascribed guilt, and with fear. But we know well where it might lead.

    “National security must never again be permitted to justify wholesale denial of constitutional rights and protections,” Takei concludes. “If it is freedom and our way of life that we fight for, our first obligation is to ensure that our own government adheres to those principles. Without that, we are no better than our enemies.”

    So far, the petition has 48,000 supporters and counting. This is hardly the first time Takei has taken on Trump or those in his inner circle.

    Sign George Takei’s Petition to Stand Up for Muslims in the U.S.

    “It’s getting to be even more worrisome,” he told CNN in December. “The kind of people he’s appointing to major Cabinet positions: Jeff Sessions to head the Department of Justice when he has a history of racism and he was denied a judgeship because of that history?”


    Takei has also taken to Twitter to share his concern.