RUTHFULLY YOURS

While shopping in a Washington, D.C. suburban supermarket, an Iranian-American human rights activist, who fled Iran following the Khomeini-led revolution, spied a woman in a multi-layered hijab shopping with her playful young daughter. In the parking lot, the woman struck her meandering daughter as they passed by the stunned Iranian woman. The activist reprimanded the mother for hitting her daughter and cried out, “And please don’t force her to wear a headscarf when she grows up.” Two hours later, two police officers arrived at the Iranian woman’s home to question her after the irate Muslim mother, who had recorded the activist’s license plate number, summoned them.

Are these incidents indicative of hypersensitivity to potential accusations of Islamophobia, or do they reveal an already entrenched subservience to Muslims — dhimmitude — or both? A closer examination of both leads to the conclusion that perhaps the two concepts are one and the same. Both reflect a fear of Muslims which appears to lead to special treatment. Conceivably, it’s a matter of degree, with dhimmitude being the end result of pervasive concerns about manifesting Islamophobia.

Customs & Islamophobia

In the first example, what is Islamophobic about making eye contact with a Muslim woman and requesting that she remove her covering in a private place in the presence of a female agent? This is especially confounding in light of the fact that these procedures have been put in place as a result of Islamic terrorism and that the vast majority of non-Muslim women routinely remove all outer garments and shoes publicly.

Audaciously, the Islamic Shura Council, an umbrella organization of mosques and Muslim organizations that includes leaders of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood (according to a 2009 report by the Hudson Institute), has advised representatives of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at LAX on Islamic sensitivities about body scanners, which wouldn’t be in use in the first place absent acts of Muslim terrorism. What other councils representing faith groups have been afforded this privilege?

A clear side-effect of the political correctness or the avoidance of appearing Islamophobic is that it makes terrorist attacks’ success more likely, as counterterrorism efforts are ignored and rendered ineffective. The largest potential pool of terrorists thus gets a pass, while non-Muslims are victimized by overzealous surveillance measures that were not in place until the largest attack on American soil in history, perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Allah. When the rights and feelings of Muslims matter more than those of non-Muslims, law enforcement is forced to put the “civil liberties” of a designated group — Muslims — and their religious accommodations above national security, thereby hindering law enforcement’s ability to collect vital intelligence on potential threats.

Seemingly beside the point is the fact that Islam is the only so-called religion that consistently produces religiously motivated terrorist attacks by joyful, Allah-praising individuals, whose families and communities encourage, finance, and celebrate their martyrdom. Further, the general Muslim population of the world appears to lack visible outrage over jihadist attacks and seems to overwhelmingly support the righteousness of mayhem and murder for such activities as depicting cartoons of Mohammed and Koran-burning. How could it possibly be construed as profiling or prejudice to be suspicious of someone who is visibly Muslim by dress?

New York City police were recently criticized for post 9/11 surveillance of Muslims and accused of engaging in anti-Muslim rhetoric,thereby engendering a “negative impact on the ability to gather counterterrorism intelligence.” However, as Congressman Peter King (R-NY) rightly acknowledged, terror threats come primarily from the Muslim community. In actuality, the NYPD strategy has prevented 14 known terrorist attacks since 9/11. The American Center for Law and Justice called the program a “legitimate response” to the dangers of a post-9/11 world. Its chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said, “The surveillance techniques used by the NYPD pose no constitutional concerns and reflect a sound and legitimate response to ongoing terrorist threats facing New York and America.”

It defies logic and common sense to cast greater suspicion on non-Muslims and give Muslims a free pass, especially since LAX has been the target of several high-profile Islamic terrorist attacks. In 2000, al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam was apprehended prior to his attempt to bomb LAX. Two years later, Islamic terrorist Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet opened fire, murdering two and wounding four at the Southland airport. In 2005, the terror plot targeting LAX hatched by Muslim convert Kevin James and three other Muslim men was thwarted by authorities.

In February, David Jones, the creator of a popular British animated children’s television series, was interrogated for an hour by law enforcement at Gatwick Airport near London following a matter-of-fact remark about a Muslim woman in a head-covering who breezed through security without showing her face. Jones had a scarf amongst his belongings in his airport scanning tray and joked with a security officer, “If I were wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen.” Jones was forced to defend himself against charges of racism, although he uttered nothing about race, and was told to apologize to the woman. He maintained that he was referring to the lack of common sense inherent in security procedures and his reasonable contention that everyone should be treated equally.

Police & Islamophobia

As for the second incident involving the Muslim woman who struck her daughter, it is valid to consider whether police would have responded so rapidly and dramatically had the complainant not been Muslim. Would authorities have been in such a rush to interrogate the Iranian activist at her residence, or would they even have visited her home in the first place? Did police even consider whether the Muslim woman’s act of striking her child was grounds for investigation, as they very well might have for a non-Muslim? Were their judgment and line of questioning clouded by the fact that they were summoned to provide a service for a Muslim woman and that, if they failed to act, problems and false charges of Islamophobia could arise with Muslim ostensible civil rights groups such as CAIR?

It’s quite possible that this incident would have played out very differently had the activist not announced at the police encounter that she herself was a Muslim. How routine is it for busy metropolitan police to make prompt home visits based on the testimony of an irate but visibly unharmed woman?

Sadly, incidents like the two examined above, minor though increasingly commonplace, indicate a substantial transformation in our attitudes toward Muslims. We are being dragged by the hand of our political correctness toward dhimmitude. We are becoming willing practitioners of sharia, particularly the doctrine that identifies Muslims and Islam as superior to non-Muslims and their beliefs. We have to question whether or not we are prepared to sacrifice our safety and the well-being of children to avoid what our overzealously polite society has deemed the worst crime of all — being designated as intolerant and/or racist — and realize that this is the route to the obliteration of our culture and to enslavement.