Muslim Discrimination At Airports: Racist and Wrong

You're at the airport, in the security scanning line. It’s the turn of the man in front of you to walk through the body scanner, but after he walks out, the airport security people pull him aside and start asking him questions. They check his luggage and tell him to follow them into a room to be patted down. The man looks hurt and confused. You wonder why they pulled that man aside, and not anyone else. 



Girl Protesting Anti-Muslim Discrimination

The answer? He is a Muslim. This is Muslim discrimination, something that is racist and wrong.

There would have never been a discrimination in the first place, if it wasn't mainly for Al- Qaeda. This all started on September 11, 2001, the infamous date of end of the Twin Towers, and the lives of thousands of people. Al-Qaeda, a global militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden, was the group that was responsible for this tragedy. All the members of Al-Qaeda were Muslim, the leader of the terrorist group being Osama bin Laden. The United States government believes that the presence of 5,000 troops in Saudi Arabia and the Iraq sanctions were the reasons for their attack of the twin towers. The members of Al-Qaeda hijacked 4 planes and crashed them into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and attemped to crash into the Capitol Building, but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania due to the passengers fighting back. 



Since then, 9/11 has really affected the muslims and airport security. The government created the Transportation Security Administration, and hired over 60,000 people to screen passengers and their baggage at 450 U.S. airports. Muslims are pulled aside from the security screening line and are checked thoroughly, out of the fear of them being a terrorist.

I asked an anonymous Muslim 7th grader attending Stoller Middle School, what she thought about Muslim discrimination at airports-she had a lot to say:

“It is extremely racist. I know many Muslims, more than maybe eighty - explicitly saying, that they understand why the airport’s actions are so racist, but they do NOT agree with the methods of fixing the problem of terrorism, and hate that they are discriminated for their belief. Terrorists who define themselves as Muslim, take teachings to a whole new level of extreme. They disregard very hard rules like suicide not being allowed. Americans have to worry about their lives but Muslims have to worry about that as well as being thought of as a “traitor” by the terrorists. So...we get the hate from the terrorists and the Americans. The airport is not the only place where I have experienced racism and hatred. I could walk down the street and get dirty looks near the place that a large community of Muslims and I pray, and even somewhere completely random like...Michaels! We DO NOT spend every minute of our lives making bombs. Or plotting against Americans! We even avoid saying the word, ‘bomb’. I was born here and love living here...I just hate the discrimination. It hurts.”

People like the 7th grader I talked to have to go through this not all the time, but often. According to them it is very cold-hearted. Muslim discrimination at airports, stores, anywhere - is just plain wrong.

People who don’t discriminate don’t see it unless they look. It happens frequently and if you look you may see it. Next time you see a woman walking down the street in a head scarf, not a turban, you may see the racism. However, the racism isn’t as bad as its been before and the people who are innocent are being treated as such. People are now opening their eyes and seeing the bad for the bad and the good for the good.

Sources: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/11/29/airport-security-lets-profile-muslims.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Photo:http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0yaastUee1rrk7f3o1_500.jpg
Word Count: 627
Anjali Panikar