By Maryann Bird
In the wake of the purported terrorist plot to bring down a number of transatlantic airliners (in which 11 British Muslims have been charged so far), fear and loathing have slipped past toughened airport security measures and even made their way onto a number of aircraft.
While debate rages anew about “passenger profiling” – the security-screening of travelers, based on such characteristics as race, religion and ethnic origin – there has been a disturbing outbreak of reports of “security scares” involving Muslims and people of Asian appearance. Many already seem to have committed the de facto “offence” of “flying whilst Asian”. A senior London police official, chief superintendent Ali Dizaei, warned last week that screening of passengers for likely terrorist types could foster just such a situation.
A British Muslim airline pilot (flying as a passenger) says he was taken off a Continental Airlines flight from Manchester to Newark, New Jersey, just before takeoff on 10 August – and interrogated by armed police. The problem? Amar Ashraf, who flies for a Continental partner-airline in the United States, believes it was his “Muslim-sounding name.” He told the press later: “I guess I just meet the profile ... I think as a Muslim I was an easy target.”
Even more chilling than officials yanking from planes a number of passengers who had already cleared the security measures imposed on 10 August, however, is the phenomenon of jumpy passengers getting other passengers ejected on the flimsiest of grounds.
From Denver comes a report of a Muslim radiologist from Canada being escorted off a United Airlines flight after he was heard to recite prayers that other passengers regarded as suspicious. (Did he beseech the help of “Allah” rather than “God”?) And in Malaga, Spain, two men of “of Middle Eastern appearance” were ordered off a Monarch Airlines flight because, among other things, they were thought to have been speaking Arabic. Apparently, in other behaviour deemed suspicious by some Manchester-bound Britons, the men also paced around in the departure lounge and looked at their watches frequently.
The BBC quoted a representative of the British Airline Pilots Association as saying that “very tight procedures” were now in place at airports, to ensure that the right people get onto planes. He added: “Clearly, we can’t have a situation where one passenger decides that another passenger isn’t going to fly.” But that appears to be what is happening in these cases, as airlines remove those attempting to “fly while Asian”. (Cleared, they have been put on later flights without incident.)
A better course of action would be to ground the groundless accusers. Let them explain to their travel-insurance providers why they missed their flights and are seeking reimbursement. Will the insurance companies pay out for paranoia? Not likely. Those who disrupt the lives of innocent travellers, by judging them hastily through the lens of race and nationality and religion, are a sort of terrorist, too.
