Monday, 1 March 2010




Taking Offense

Dear Harold,

Have you ever wondered why 80 year old ladies are frisked at airports while the “Underwear Bomber” was able
to get through security?

If you answered that political correctness has a lot to do with it, you win the prize! “Random” searches are done to avoid
any pretense of “profiling”—which is done to avoid giving “offense” to Muslims.

But no matter how sensitive our security officials try to be in order to avoid “offending” Muslims, no matter what tactics
 they propose using to keep us safe, some Muslims still take offense.

No one ever bothers to ask if all the law-abiding people who fly on airplanes are ever offended by the inconveniences
and indignities imposed on them.

The short commentary below is very instructive.





Islamists Play Shell Games with Security

by David J. Rusin • Feb 23, 2010 at 9:16 am
http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/02/islamists-play-shell-games-with-security


Despite the countless terror attacks perpetrated by their co-religionists, some Muslims still have the chutzpah to
demand that security protocols conform to supposed Islamic sensitivities. But like a typical shell game, every
time we think we know which procedures they grudgingly will tolerate, we discover that we have been hoodwinked yet again.

Responding to
security measures implemented after the attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day,
CAIR characteristically charged that "the new guidelines, under which anyone traveling from or through 13
 Muslim-majority nations will be required to go through enhanced screening techniques before boarding flights, …
 amount to religious and ethnic profiling." CAIR's proposed alternative: "First look at behavior, not at faith or skin
 color. Then spend what it takes to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated
bomb-detection equipment, and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior of real terror suspects."

All are fine ideas. But in reality, Islamists oppose each of them:

Scrutinizing behavior. Consider the "flying imams" imbroglio, where six Muslims who seemed to exhibit "the
behavior of real terror suspects" were removed from a plane before takeoff in 2006. Passengers and crew
 members became alarmed when the men spoke loudly in Arabic, refused to sit in assigned seats, and
requested unneeded seatbelt extenders. How did CAIR respond? By alleging religious discrimination and suing
everyone in sight — with some
success. True, the imams were fingered originally by alert citizens rather than
dedicated security officers. But should we believe that CAIR's reaction would have been different otherwise?

Bomb-sniffing dogs. Given that some Muslims see dogs as unclean, using them for security purposes often
provokes Islamist criticism. Britain has experienced a
litany of canine controversies, while a prominent Canadian
Muslim recently voiced concerns about dogs
patrolling Vancouver. The issue of police dogs also arose when a
Detroit-based radical imam was killed in an October FBI raid. According to the Detroit News, the attorney
representing his widow "said it was needlessly confrontational to send a dog after Abdullah because Muslims view
 dogs as unclean and anyone attacked by a dog could react violently"; an FBI canine was
shot dead by the imam.
 How long until bomb-sniffing dogs in U.S. airports face objections?

Bomb-detection equipment. Body scanners are about as sophisticated as it gets, but now we know that these,
 too, run afoul of Islamist sensibilities. "The Fiqh Council of North America (
FCNA) emphasizes that a general and
public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law, and all religions and cultures that
stand for decency and modesty," the group explains in a
fatwa issued on February 9. CAIR, which had
championed "sophisticated bomb-detection equipment" just a month earlier,
backed the ruling.

The shell game continues, with the Fiqh Council offering yet another idea: "FCNA appreciates the alternate
 provision of pat-down search" and advises Muslims to avail themselves of this option over the body scanners.
 After all, no Muslims balk at being touched,
right?

Related Topics: Dogs, Lawfare, Legal, Lobby Groups, Mosques / Imams, Police / FBI | David J. Rusin This text
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