. . .or at least make you cross it out.

That’s what recently happened to Raed Jarrar , a Middle Eastern man who wore a shirt that had Arabic script written on it.

Yes, that’s all folks. . .he simply had Arabic writing on his shirt and he was simply a Middle Eastern man. . .heaven forbid.

(T-shirt says in English beneath: We will not be silent)

And what was the superior, logical reasoning behind JetBlue’s, the airline company, request of Jarrar?  Because according to several passengers, because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like “wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber.” 

Really? Its like that? Then it seems we need to start telling people who resemble Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro or Mao Ze-Dong to cut off their mustaches/beards or change out of their drab green shirts.

Fact of the matter is, it wasn’t the T-shirt people were scared about. . .its the fact that a Middle Eastern man was wearing that shirt.  If a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man walked on that plane with the same shirt no one would have said a peep. No one probably would have even noticed.

Let it be said, there is understanding as to why passengers would be a bit cautious.  9/11 was a dreadful and completely, 100% morally wrong event, and the memory remains.   Because regardless of one’s personal disdain for another people group, there is no good reason to kill another person out of personal biases.

Its sad to think that an event like the Holocaust has not sent a permanent message that genocide/terrorism is ugly. . .And, no one, Arab, Black, White, Asian, Latino, et. al. deserve to live their lives in fear. The fight against terrorism, hatred, racism, and discrimination will be a long one, but a valiant one, an obligatory one.  Perhaps this incident was an ignorantly genuine one, and for that we have all done such at one point or another with one thing or another.Yet even in the quasi-justified cautiousness, the fact remains Jarrar, who was also escorted to the back of the plane afterwards, was wrongly accused.   And this is not just the first (or last) time either.  It happened similarly with AirTran just 4 days ago:

As was said earlier , racist roots in the American culture still run deep, no matter which way you slice it.

And to add to the racial profiling miscues - Fact: Only 20% of the world’s Muslims are Arab. Or in other words, 80% of the world’s Muslims are non-Arab. That means instead of just worrying about the guy who you think looks like he would be named Ahmed, there are many more who could be far more dangerous and not even be Arab/Middle Eastern. And that is of course if one naively believes that all Muslims are Jihadist.

Again, “We will not be silent” would raise some eyebrows. Certainly. . .but again, common sense, supposedly the same stuff that JetBlue used, has to ask: Would a Jihadist Muslim who wants to attack a plan wear a shirt that would purposely get him profiled and make him stand out “more than what he already does”?  Sometimes people believe what they want to believe. . .

For all of the raucous the Bush administration has caused, credit needs to be given for this: We have not had another attack on American soil since 9/11, and hundreds of plots have been disrupted. Thank you President Bush; your fight to protect this country is appreciated, and surely the work of President Bush, the U.S. government and its military forces have disrupted evil plots worldwide, while engaging the fight many others have already been engaging in.

In the same light though, in the spirit of preventing further unnecessary hatred and killing we all need to look out for each other.  But let us do a better job of not creating another evil in an attempt to prevent a different one.

- IgniteTheMind

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