American Muslim

Of Turban Frisking: What is the TSA thinking?????


Asalaam Alaikum All,


In the last year, I have posted a few items and mentioned incidents involving Arab, South Asian and Muslim discrimination in airports and on planes. After 9/11 it was absolutely understandable with such a great feeling of discomfort and uncertainty gripping the nation. But, what is the excuse now? Xenophobia? Jingoism? Pure racism? One of my former Purdue professors, now at Washington University, wrote this highly controversial piece immediately after Sept. 11th. In response to the tons of hate mail that poured in, he had this to say: "Patriotism is a delicate issue. You shouldn't be waving a flag and turning off your brain. Patriotism means caring about your country enough to uphold what the country represents. That means protecting liberty.”


I haven't been the biggest fan of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in their implementation of "random searches" seeing as they are not random at all. I understand that nationals from certain countries have to be flagged, I fully understand this and offer no resistance. But, otherwise what I have experienced is not random searching, but searching of folks who might be wear clothes from Islamic countries, turbans, scarves, etc.


And honestly, it's not the airport frisking that bothers me but more the post-9/11 trend of scrutiny, intimidation and violence towards Sikhs -[check out SALDEF] -they are NOT Muslims, people, they have their own religion. You know how the anti-NRA lobby says, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well, "TURBANS DON'T KILL PEOPLE. Terrorists (sometimes) kill people."


So, I guess it comes as no surprise that the TSA has instituted new policies that call for mandatory second screening for all travelers wearing any form of headgear, even if there was no problem with the metal detector. Why?


According to the Sikh Coalition [awesome website], four Sikh passengers were subject to "turban pat downs" in the lat two weeks - three at San Fran and one at BMI. This lead the TSA to institute their new policy of "mandatory second screening," which as the Sikh coalition rightly note, is in direct conflict the original post-9/11 screening policy. These "pat downs" follow other high profile cases of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim airplane/airport discrimination in the last year - Raed Jarrar's prevention from boarding a plane because of a t-shirt with an Arabic slogan; the removal of 12 "unruly" Muslim passengers from an Amsterdam-Mumbai flight because they were speaking in Urdu, wearing beards and salwar-kameez; and of course the flagrantly anti-civil liberties removal of six imams from a flight in Minneapolis last year.


I don't see any way to resolve this issue, but I do fear some ugly incidents arising as a result and not just among Sikhs and Muslims, but also Hasidic Jews, nuns, etc. Insha'allah, those affected who read this, can download this guide to handling turban searches and as I get more info, I'll re-post it here.

May Allah (SWT) accept my efforts and forgive me if I have said or done anything wrong.