What's Next: Muslim-Only Lines At Airports?
Patriot Games
airport lines are fueling even greater racial division, fear and hysteria.
Are Muslim-only lines at airports next? The thought is offensive,
disgusting, and blatantly unconstitutional. But it’s hardly far-fetched.
Three years before suspected Nigerian airline terrorist Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab was hauled off a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam
to Detroit with a powder and liquid explosive device stuffed in his
underwear, British Department of Transportation officials openly
discussed corralling men of South Asian or Middle Eastern appearance at
airports for intense questioning, checks and searches. The plan outraged
Muslim leaders and British officials backed off the systematic profiling
of Muslims.
However, single men of South Asian and Middle Eastern appearance were
still subject to intense checks and searches. Britain was not alone.
France and the Netherlands had already imposed de facto profiling of
Muslim-appearing young men and families at airports since the September
2001 terror attacks. Polls showed that a substantial majority of
Europeans agreed that racial profiling was not repugnant if it made
airline travel safer and thwarted a possible terror attack.
The clamor for a racial crackdown was first heard in the United States
after the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1996. Then
President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno had the good
sense not rush to judgment and scapegoat Muslims. The swift arrest of
Timothy McVeigh squelched the building mob hysteria against them. But it
didn't squelch public suspicions that all Muslims were potential
terrorists. The federal building bombing propelled Clinton's 1996
Anti-terrorism Act through Congress. Civil rights and civil liberties
groups had waged a protracted battle against the bill. The law gave the
FBI broad power to infiltrate groups, quash fundraising by foreigners,
monitor airline travel, and seize hotel records and trash due process by
permitting the admission of secret evidence to expel immigrants. The
implication was that present and future attacks would likely be launched
by those with an Arab name and face rather than by men like McVeigh.
President George W. Bush, as Clinton, took the high ground after the
9/11 attack. He did not reflexively finger-point Muslims. The Bush
administration publicly assured that profiling was reprehensible and
violated legal and constitutional principles, and that it would not be
done. But the attack stirred tremors among Muslims that they would
routinely be targeted, subject to search and surveillance, and profiled
at airports.
The profiling alarm bells went off again after a soldier with a Muslim
name shot up the military base at Ft. Hood back in November. The Council
on American-Islamic Relations wasted no time and issued a loud and
vigorous denunciation of the mass killing. The Council didn't know at
that moment whether Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter, was a
Muslim by birth, a converted Muslim, or even a Muslim at all. The name
and the horrific murder spree was enough to drive the group to quickly
distance itself from the rampage. Other Muslim organizations instantly
followed suit and issued their own equally strong disavowal of Hasan.
This didn’t stop the pack of Fox Network commentators, conservative
radio talk show hosts, writers, and some officials from again openly
clamoring for even greater scrutiny of Muslim groups. Terror suspect
Abdulmutallab has simply raised the decibel level on their call for
transportation officials to openly profile Muslims at airports, train
stations, and even on the open highways.
Some elected officials have even jumped on the profiling bandwagon.
Congressman Peter King, ranking Republican on the Homeland Security
Committee, predictably loudly called for the profiling of Muslims. New
York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind went further and announced he’d
reintroduce the bill he first introduced in 2005 to let police stop and
search anyone they deem to be suspicious. Hikind didn’t specifically
finger Muslims, but the intent of the bill was unmistakable, namely to
target Muslims.
The New York Assembly will reject Hikind’s bill again. But the rejection
isn’t likely to be unanimous. Legislators read the papers and the polls.
Informal online polls taken immediately after Abdulmutallab’s failed
terror attempt found that a majority of Americans are ready to turn a
blind eye to law, the constitution and just plain human decency to
target Muslims, any Muslim, for special scrutiny. No matter that a
potential terrorist can come in any shape, size, color, gender, and
disguise. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights noted that convicted
terrorist John Walker Lindh was white, and Richard Reid was Jamaican and
British. Abdulmutallab is Nigerian, but from all appearances he could
just as easily be mistaken for a young African-American hip-hop artist.
Broad-based ethnic profiling creates in turn panic and the false sense
of security that airlines are actually preventing terrorist attacks. It
also causes law enforcement resources to be squandered chasing the wrong
targets. Worse, it’s a witch hunt against a group based solely on their
religion and ethnicity. This fuels even greater racial division, fear
and hysteria. The public whispers and the right wing’s open talk of
Muslim-only airport lines do the same.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144905/what%27s_next%3A_muslim-only_lines_at_airports?page=entire