Protestant Polyglot

Civil rights for the Jesus-challenged

From the Volokh Conspiracy, an article in Women’s Wall Street about Muslims and profiling in airports:

On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.

The specific policy that seems to be the trouble here is that DOT fines airlines who question more than two passengers of Arab descent. It’s an odd policy, and probably doesn’t do a lot of good. As the WWS piece and comments all over the blogosphere illustrate, the greater evil faced by Arabs is from fellow passengers and staff aboard airplanes, not from the airlines themselves.

What’s being ignored is that if not for the policy above, the airline would probably have been within its right to (briefly) question the men—even ignoring their race, the group looked and acted suspiciously. Furthermore, after this incident, airlines have asked their staff to keep people from congregating in the aisles. No ones rights need to be trampled on.

What’s really disturbing are the reactions to the article:

TIP FOR MIDDLE EASTERN TRAVELERS IN US - Don’t act like a jackass when you are flying on our planes because if you pull that crap on any plane I’m on I WILL call you out and ask what your problem is!

Streiber: F**K the videotape! Someone should have risen and called “Let’s Roll!” They should have been taken, searched and seatbelted into their seats - harmless - until the pilot put down at the nearest field to offload them into custody. Any American that sits there waiting for an Air Marshal to ‘SHAZAM’ will eventually have to charge to take out the one who exits the John with the Bomb around his chest. Never forgive, never forget - have the lessons of 9.11 been forgotten?

From the comments at Jeff the Baptist:

It seems to me that if you’re trying to spread your faith, it makes no sense to behave in ways that arouse suspicion, especially when you know that there is a lot of fear engendered by terrorist attacks like 9/11.

All of this when it’s possible the men really were just musicians praying on the airplane (see Jeff the Baptist’s post quoted above). The most disturbing thing of all is the implication in some comments at these sites that the men should have been arrested, despite their having done nothing illegal, simply because they made some white people nervous.

I think I’ll leave finding the gems in the comments at LGF, as an exercise for the reader. But then stop by Donald Sensing’s blog for a little dose of reason.

Posted by Chris Tessone at July 18, 2004 06:02 AM | TrackBack