Author: Robert
Publication: Jihadwatch.org
Date: September 8, 2011
URL: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/09/raheem-kassam-says-profile-me.html
The clear-thinking Kassam
Any loyal U.S. citizen, Muslim or non-Muslim,
should understand that getting stopped in an airport is an unfortunate consequence
of the fact that devout, observant Muslims worldwide have carried out jihad
terror attacks in the name of Islam, and so people who are entrusted with
the safety of airline passengers have every reason to err on the side of suspicion.
Those who are thus inconvenienced should consider it a small price to pay
in order to head off the next terror attack.
I speak from experience. More than once I
have been held and questioned at airports because of my work. Once I was working
on this website on my laptop, someone saw "jihad" on my screen,
and presently I was surrounded by police and large dogs, and hauled off for
questioning.
Another time I was in an airport, having hurried
from a venue where I had just given a talk. I don't usually speak from a written
text, but I do carry notes -- a page or two of quotations from various Muslim
Brotherhood operatives, etc., including jihadist and Islamic supremacist statements
by some putative American moderate Muslims, as well as quotations from the
Qur'an and Hadith, etc. I had this material in my suit pocket, and it dropped
out when I took off my suit jacket to go through security. So a few minutes
later I was again in the friendly presence of police and TSA personnel. One
gentleman was holding up my notes and asking me why I had this material. I
started laughing, because I realized that there was absolutely nothing in
the notes to show that I actually opposed what was written there -- and realized
that it might take awhile to straighten the whole thing out.
And it did. But I didn't mind. Because I knew
what they were doing. I knew they weren't holding the bearded, swarthy fellow
with notes full of jihad and hate because they were racists and bigots, and
didn't like people of Middle Eastern descent, or hated Muslims, or what have
you. They were doing their job, which was to protect the American people.
"Profile Me," by Raheem Kassam for
The Commentator, September 7:
I never thought I'd write this but I have something in common with a member
of the Young Fabians. Well, two things in common - but I promise you it stops
there.
Shazia Yamin and I both have 'Muslim sounding
names', as she so brashly articulates in her blog post on her recent visit
to Israel. We also have both recently dealt with strict interrogation based
on 'racial profiling' - though I contest that this was based on religion rather
than race, we'll use Shazia's terminology for the sake of argument.
She writes about her recent 'detention in
the Muslim room' while travelling to Israel - and goes so far as to say that
while she 'understands the need for Israel to contain security and terrorist
risks' that during her three hour wait, she felt an 'invisible niqab of anger'
grow across her face. Pardon me for saying - this isn't the calm rhetoric
one would expect from this young leftist traveller. On the back of this, Yamin
says she wonders whether the Israeli response to the security threat might
exacerbate the threat it seeks to contain.
Yamin clearly does not understand the existential
threat to the state of Israel as she so professes. Anyone with an iota of
sense in this area could fully grasp why the border authorities would detain
someone with Pakistani heritage and a Muslim name travelling with a political
organisation based in the 'delegitimisation capital of the Western world'.
My own experiences when recently travelling
at short notice to the United States last month was not dissimilar, though
I'll give Shazia the fact that Israel is stricter - the Transport Security
Administration (TSA) weren't exactly all smiles when they found fifty pages
of terrorist profiles in my hand luggage (research for work which I had read
on the plane).
After a thorough bag search, almost identical
to the one Shazia describes, I was on my way. I can't help but wondering if
she kicked up more of a fuss, rather than simply complying. Either way, here's
the kicker...
People with names like Raheem Kassam and Shazia
Yamin are those responsible for atrocities that Israel experiences week upon
week, as Kassam rockets themselves hail down on Israeli civilians. Why in
heaven's name should Israeli or American security be concerned with what John
Smith is doing in their country, when the most virulent threat emerges from
people who look and sound like me? I'm all for this kind of profiling.
As an Iranian friend once said to me within
the confines of the British Parliament no less, "Once people who look
like me stop blowing themselves up - then I'll get upset at being profiled.
Not before." Hear hear.
Shazia's blog post then delves into the ridiculous
as she uses the BBC Question Time audience, usually a gaggle of hard leftists
and welfare statists, to vindicate her 'niqab of anger'. 'This type of profiling
would cause an outcry on BBC Question Time in the UK', she adds - as if this
were a representative or even sane model upon which to base your political
analyses.
I urge that Shazia try to use models which
are at least somewhat comparable. Britain and Israel are not under the same
existential threat, even though both are under threat from domestic and international
terrorism.
Ten years ago on Sunday, nineteen men with
Muslim names boarded US aircraft and flew them into government buildings and
the two towers that stood tall over the New York skyline. Since then, people
with Muslim sounding names have gone on to radicalise, terrorise and delegitimize
Western nations and Israel over and over again.
That isn't to say that John Smith or Sean
O'Connor pose no threat - but the response must remain proportionate to the
evidence.
Ten years is one second on the clock of geopolitics.
I for one hope that until jihadist threats against the West are truly diminished,
that Western and Israeli authorities will not stop profiling visitors into
their countries.
