CAIR Laments More Egregious Profiling

Surprise! CAIR has found an incident of a Muslim woman who covers her hair being PROFILED by TSA officials!

Muslims question full-body search of woman in head scarf

Dearborn native says she was told she was singled out by security

ORALANDAR BRAND-WILLIAMS
The Detroit News

Detroit -- A national Muslim civil rights group is asking the Transportation Security Administration for clarification on whether Muslim women wearing Islamic head scarves, or hijabs, will be singled out for additional security checks after a traveler said she was targeted for a "humiliating" full-body search at an airport Tuesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations office in Washington, D.C., sent the letter via e-mail Wednesday after a Muslim woman Tuesday from Washington's Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles said she was asked to remove her hijab and then put through a full-body pat-down search when she refused to take off the scarf.

She said she did consent to a search. The woman told CAIR officials her clothes, luggage, laptop computer and cell phone were searched and tested for bomb-making materials.

Nadia Hassan, 40, of Maryland said she was patted down in front of her daughter, 5, and several male TSA staffers. . . .

Take note that Ms. Hassan was not patted down until she refused a request to remove her hijab. Security people don’t like it when you refuse a direct request. It makes them suspicious. And then she consented to be searched.

CAIR’s Nihad Awad wrote to the head of TSA on Wednesday, saying, “If this troubling new policy is indeed in effect, it represents religious profiling in its most egregious form. We respectfully request that you clarify whether Islamic head scarves will now trigger automatic secondary screening for Muslim travelers.” Or, translated back from CAIRsperanto: “We demand you resume your conscientious avoidance of secondary screening of Muslim-looking passengers.”

But TSA says there’s no new policy, they’re still using the same guidelines in place since 2007:

"The wearing of a hijab itself does not automatically trigger security checks," said Sarah Horowitz in a written statement to The News. "To ensure the highest level of security, passengers wearing loose fitting or bulky clothing -- including headwear -- may be subject to additional screening."

By means of the ill-chosen comparisons he uses in his bullying pronouncements, Awad manages to keep ringing the very bell that CAIR has been trying to unring since 9/11. In the letter to TSA he released to the press on Wednesday, he asks, “does this new policy apply to all those who wear religious head coverings, such as Sikh men, Catholic nuns and Orthodox Jewish women, or will it apply exclusively to Muslim travelers?"

Which naturally only calls to mind for the rest of us that, darn it, have there even been any instances of Sikh men, Catholic nuns, or Orthodox Jewish women trying to blow up our airliners or setting off suicide bombs? No-oo-ope, last we checked, that’s still only Muslims doing that. (Jihadi attack updates are now available hourly). Which in turn raises the question: how unreasonable would it be really to apply screening exclusively to Muslim travelers, when the dangerous passengers that need screening out are damn near exclusively Muslims?

Of course CAIR already knows that TSA isn’t searching every woman wearing hijab. Ms. Hassan seems to have invited attention by balking at removing her headscarf when asked. That makes it her attitude, not her headscarf, that caused screeners to check her for a bomb. I don't know whether it's part of TSA "profiling" guidelines, (I wish), but Muslim passengers who cause onboard disruptions almost universally defy cooperation with flight crew, security personnel, and police. (E.g., the six imams, the Denver United Flight 227, the December 26 Nigerian, and yesterday’s Miami four, featuring Mansor Mohammad (“I want to kill all the Jews”) Asad, just to name a few. Which means that if you act up, Ms. Hassan, get ready for a closer look. This really was an instance where the system worked.

Awad, CAIR, and their latest test case, Ms. Hassan, are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill because CAIR is desperate, desperate, desperate that sundown is fast approaching on the era of American terror at being thought Islamophobic. CAIR probably figures if they can threaten publicity about a decent-looking young Muslim woman raising hell about a “very humiliating, very uncomfortable patdown,” the TSA will cave in and reinstate its two-Muslims per flight maximum screening pattern.

I don’t think it’s going to work this time.