Should The Government Profile Muslims At Airports?
There have been several recent Al Qaeda plots involving American commercial airplanes: the 9/11 attacks; the attempted 2001 shoe bombing; the 2006 plot to bomb planes flying from London to the U.S.; and the December 2009 attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit.
Following each of these attacks and plots, there have been public calls to focus airport security on Muslims flying to the U.S., and on Muslims flying within the U.S. During times of public fear, some American Muslim travelers have been subjected to heightened scrutiny. For example, following the disruption of Al Qaeda’s August 2006 plot to bomb planes flying from London to the U.S., some American Muslims of Iraqi descent flying into the U.S. from overseas reported that federal agents in New York took their American passports; held them for several hours without food, water, or chairs; asked them if they ever had weapons training and what they thought about the Iraq war; and yelled at them and threatened to arrest them when they complained about the way they were being treated. Read the rest of this entry »
