IT’S ONE thing to report suspicious behavior. It is another to report behavior because the people behaving are the targets of what is really the watcher’s racism.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have come to realize that their government cannot really prevent terrorism. Just as we all know that our government cannot prevent crime, either.
Yet, President Bush and our American government have been urging Americans that when they see someone acting “suspiciously,” they should turn them in to authorities.
Sharing the burden to “fight terrorism” on the American people distracts the American people from questioning our failed American government policies.
It’s “patriotism” fueled by fear. But rather than preventing terrorism, it has prompted many Americans to simply complain out loud when they see other people, usually Arab, Muslim or Middle East looking, doing something they dislike, disapprove or feel is wrong.
Like, praying in an airport.
Last November, passengers (insert non-Arab, uneducated Americans frightened to death by the government’s inability to protect them) notified the flight crew on a US Airways flight in Minneapolis.
It seems six Islamic passengers who were religious leaders, were acting “strange” and “suspicious.”
The suspicions, by the way, involved a series of “suspicious” activities. The imams, who might have been a bit overweight, didn’t sit in their assigned seats — something that always happens when a plane is not filled to capacity with passengers. They also asked for “unneeded” seatbelt extenders.
Oh my God, overweight imams on board! Overweight Muslims. Overweight Arabs. Overweight terrorists.
An airline clerk even complained that three of the potential terrorists prayed “loudly” at the gate before the flight.
Oh my God what better evidence of a potential terrorist threat? Americans don’t pray in airports. Hell, most Christian Americans (is there any other kind of American in today’s America?) barely pray on Sunday in a church.
The “suspicious” activity only continued. Passengers said they overheard the suspects “speaking loudly” as if they were “angry.” Like we have never heard loud-mouthed passengers on a flight before? It’s the first thing a terrorist would do, right? Speak loudly and draw attention to yourself before hijacking the airplane?
The six imams were removed from the plane and detained by airport security. Police called in to investigate treated them like potential terrorists, because the other passengers said they were acting like terrorists.
US Airways “refunded” their tickets and told them to go to another airline if they wanted to travel. That must happen a lot on US Airways because US Airways is considered one of the most racist airlines operating in America today.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) rightfully challenged the detentions as a violation of their civil rights. That CAIR defended them only painted the six imams as being “more guilty” in the eyes of many American columnists.
Of course, few of the media pundits criticizing the lawsuit noted that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota also criticized the detentions.
As it turns out, they weren’t terrorists. And last March, CAIR filed a lawsuit on behalf of the six imams against US Airways and the passengers on the flight who complained, although in being a patriotic airline, the airline never asked to get any of the complainers to file formal complaints, as is normally required in a criminal complaint.
As the lawsuit navigates through the maze of illegal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim American court system obstacles, the media demagogues like Michele Malkin, and hate websites like JihadWatch and FrontPage Magazine have championed US Airways as the victim in all of this.
So-called “Christian” groups have also raised funds to defend the airline and the passengers who fingered the Muslims. And, with support from those extremist Christian groups, several members of Congress proposed a law shielding passengers from such lawsuits.
Americans are being driven by two factors. The first is an American government that can’t do what it has promised. They can’t prevent terrorism before it happens, just as they can’t prevent crime before it happens, either.
Professional crime fighters can properly investigate and then arrest anyone complicit, based on evidence, in the criminal act. But the real factor driving this hysteria is fear by an uneducated American public. And their only answer to that fear is racism, hatred and stereotyping. Would they have turned in a nun praying in the lounge of the airport? The response is: “Nun’s don’t hijack airplanes, only Muslims do.” Back to profiling as the failed answer to terrorism.
Statistics show that 97 percent of all serial killers are white, Christian men. The rest are white women, and maybe one or two non-whites. To prevent serial killings, why not just arrest any white person who stares too intently at a beautiful woman? Or a child?
My real concern is that more lawsuits like this one will prompt people like the Fox TV network, the cornerstone of growing racism in mainstream American media, to create a new reality TV show called “Turn in the Terrorists.”
A panel of regular Americans (white and Christian applicants only) try to identify whom in a group of unsuspecting Arabs and Muslims in America are terrorists. There will be no loser in this game and the patriotic Americans who point a finger, right or wrong, will win fully armed automatic weapons to protect their home.
Why not turn American fears into fun, profit and gain? In today’s America, it would become the nation’s number one TV show.
