Muslim travelers say they're still saddled with 9/11 baggage

'There is no uniformity in the way in which the Department of Justice applies the law at every level'

Bob Croslin  /  for msnbc.com

Government records show that Hassan Shibly of Tampa, Fla., has been pulled aside at airports for secondary screening at least 20 times since 2004.

Imagine it is 5 a.m. and you’ve landed in New York after a 12-hour overseas flight. Standing in the line for U.S. citizens, you wait as a border agent asks passengers ahead a few cursory questions, then waves them through. Your family is instead ushered into a separate room for more than an hour of searching and questioning.

This was the welcome that Hassan Shibly, traveling with his wife and infant son, said they received in August 2010, when they returned to the United States from Jordan, after traveling to Mecca.

“Are you part of any Islamic tribe? Have you ever studied Islam full time? How many gods do you believe in?” “How many prophets do you believe in?” the agent at New York’s JFK Airport asked, according to Shibly, 24, a Syrian-born Muslim American. He said the agent searched his luggage, pulling out his Quran and a hand-held digital prayer counter.

“At the end — I guess (the agent) was trying to be nice — he said, ‘Sorry, I hope you understand we just have to make sure nothing gets blown up,’” said Shibly, a law school graduate who grew up in Buffalo.

A decade after Islamic extremists used airplanes to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Muslim American travelers say they are still paying the price for terror attacks carried out in the name of their religion. At airports, ports and land crossings, many contend, they are repeatedly singled out for special screening and intrusive questioning about their religious beliefs. Others say they have been marooned overseas, barred from flights to the United States.

‘Stories come pouring out' “Whenever a group of Muslims sit together … stories come pouring out,” said real estate agent Jeff Siddique, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who has lived in Seattle for 35 years. “It’s story after story after story.”

That is supported by a survey released in August by the Pew Research Center, in which 36 percent of Muslim Americans who traveled by air in the last year said they had been singled out for special screening. The Transportation Security Administration does not keep detailed records, but a spokesman said that less than 3 percent of passengers receive a pat down, a primary form of secondary screening.

Rooting out 'extremist tendencies' The difficulty is knowing where policy ends and personal discretion kicks in.

For example, depending on how the directive to focus on travelers to and from countries with active terrorist organizations is interpreted, it might implicate a large swath of American Muslims. The majority of this population is made up of recent immigrants with connections to their countries of origin in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

But Homeland Security recently launched an investigation of a flurry of complaints from Muslims who, like Shibly, say border agents went well beyond asking about their travels. Instead, the travelers say, they were questioned extensively about their religious beliefs and practices. Some reported being asked political questions, such as their views on the Iraq War or President Barack Obama.

One complaint filed by the nonprofit Council on American Islamic Relations with Homeland Security and the Justice Department said its Michigan branch alone has received “dozens of reports (from Muslim travelers) … that CBP agents pointed firearms at them, detained and handcuffed them without predication of crimes or charges, and questioned them about their worship habits.”

Shibly’s case is one of five included in a separate complaint filed by the the nonprofit Muslim Advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union in December.

Another case detailed in the complaint is that of New Jersey resident Lawrence Ho, who says that when he reached the U.S. border from Canada by car in February 2010 he was surprised to find the border agent knew that he had converted to Islam. Ho, who is Chinese American, said the border agent questioned him for nearly four hours about his Muslim beliefs. But an email to the CBP to complain about the encounter at the Rainbow Bridge checkpoint in New York didn’t get far.

"In 2001, the U.S. was attacked by Islamist extremists,” wrote a senior CBP officer in an email response to Ho. “If a CBP officer inquires as to a person's religious beliefs in order to uncover signs of extremist tendencies, that officer is well within his authority."

It is not clear if that statement is in line with Homeland Security policy. In response to msnbc.com queries, Homeland Security did not offer any detail about the ongoing investigation, but provided a general statement by email.

DHS does not tolerate religious discrimination or abusive questioning – period,” wrote Homeland Security spokesman Chris Ortman. The department's office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties “has notified the complainants and their representatives that it will investigate these allegations and, if appropriate, the department will take corrective action.”

The ACLU and Muslim Advocates also filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking all records, standards and statistics pertaining to CBP questioning on religious and political beliefs and practices, border training programs and disclosure of how the travelers’ information is used.

“We hope … (DHS) will condemn the practice of asking any citizen or legal resident of the U.S. about their religious beliefs, political beliefs and religious practices,” said ACLU staff attorney Nusrat Choudhury. “We also hope that (it) will note the troubling nature of the fact that so many Muslim legal residents or citizens are being asked these kinds of questions.”

The grading dilemma

The grading dilemma

When it boils down to it, one of the most insidious problems with our education system is its emphasis on grades. Every year, thousands of students are reduced to a letter or number that is not really a reliable indicator of caliber or intellect. How can one diminish a student’s two year effort to one mark earned after a two or three hour exam? Yet this is precisely what we do. The negative impact of this grading on the way our students think, operate and see the world is becoming increasingly obvious.

–Photos by Fayyaz Ahmed/Dawn.com

Educationists and psychologists argue that a reliance on grades as a tool to motivate students is actually detrimental to the process of learning. Having taught for over three years myself, I agree. I cannot make a student love to read by brandishing a -10 at him. To force students to study a subject out of fear is to make it a drag for them. Bonus marks or failing grades serve only to increase anxiety and resentment; they do nothing to motivate students to take an earnest interest in the subject that they study.

Moreover, since grades are the only thing that students are taught to care about, they put in just enough effort to scrape by. I have seen students harass university professors to ‘narrow down’ the scope of a literary text and tell them which ‘five questions’ they should study from so that they can do well in an exam. Ideas such as research, the joy of discovery in critical thought and delving deeper into the book just because it is a profound read leave these students cold. Will all this extra effort be graded? No. Then why do it? So much so, that end of year examinations with their selective studying and cheating do nothing to promote learning or education: many rote learners will proudly boast a first division on their university degree and yet be unable to string a coherent sentence together.

Perhaps the most detrimental effect that our emphasis on grading has had is to kill the spirit of creativity. Most of our A/B graders are not risk takers. They like to play it safe. They don’t like to waste time studying anything ‘outside the syllabus’. Most of all, they hate to make a mistake, a quality which, according to Sir Ken Robinson, is the very antithesis of creative thinking. Solutions to a problem are acquired only after trial and error. But a schooling based on tests, quizzes, evaluations and exams does not reward but rather punishes any ‘out of the box’ approaches. 

This is not to devalue all our A-graders. Rather, it is to say that the A grade devalues students who are intelligent, hard working, and passionate about learning, because it gives no credit to the extra work they put in over the course of their study. The system does not motivate them to take on anything that will challenge them – if they can get an A while sitting within their comfort zones, then so be it. A system based on grades rewards the very mediocrity that we complain is seeping into our national character.

Lastly, grades just aren’t reliable. Some of my most brilliant students are not good exam-takers and it is monumentally unfair that the work they put in during two or more academic years is completely disregarded in one examination session. Many universities and even schools have to resort to interviewing applicants and potential students, despite their excellent grades, because their results do not necessarily indicate work ethic, diligence or intelligence for that matter.

If education is the route to success and the foundation of society, our system seems to be creating a nation that is lazy, apathetic and which cuts corners. There is no joy in learning here. There is cynicism with statements like ‘So what if I didn’t attend school, I got an A didn’t I’? A society where the end justifies the means and a single grade determines a student’s fate is a society bound to stagnate. Not only do we need to re-think the amount of emphasis we give to education in this country, we also need to focus on how to educate our youngsters and what we are teaching them in the process.

Some Basic Principles in the Qur’an

Now a very important question arises. Most people do not have sufficient knowledge of the Qur’an, so how can they test a hadith according to it? The answer is made simple by the fact that the Qur’an establishes some fundamental rules. Keeping these rules in mind can empower us to assess the authenticity of our history and hadith. Briefly, the principles are:
􀂙 􀂙 The Law of Requital (Qur’an 99:7): As you sow, so shall you reap. Hence, reward and punishment are natural consequences of our own actions. Any contrary statement will be non-Qur’anic. God
is not emotional. Therefore he does not reward and punish if happy or angry.
􀂙 􀂙 No person can be held responsible for, or share the burden of another (53:38).
􀂙 􀂙 On the authority of the Qur’an (33:21), Prophet Mohammad, the Exalted, was a model human being with the best character and conduct. No action of his was contrary to the Qur’an.
􀂙 􀂙 About the companions of the Holy Prophet, the Qur’an (8:74, 9:100) tells us that Allah was pleased with them and they were pleased with Him. They were staunch and practical believers.
􀂙 􀂙 The Qur’an repeatedly impresses upon us that the Laws of God never change (48:23). Hence, people do not fly in the air or walk on water.
􀂙 􀂙 The Qur’an is the last Message of God and Mohammad (SA) is his final Messenger. Religion has been perfected (5:3, 6:34, 15:9, 75:17) and therefore anyone claiming Revelation after him, in any form, will be either insane or an impostor.
Exercising Common Sense
Dear Reader, we have underscored the six Qur’anic principles which should always stand as our guide. In addition, exercise of common sense can easily tell us that a certain narrative should not be ascribed to the most knowledgeable man who ever walked this earth. In fact, according to the Qur’an, people who do not use their faculties of hearing, sight and thinking cannot be Muslims and are living the life of cattle (7:179). The Holy Prophet said, “All goodness is linked to wisdom. One who has lost wisdom will not retain religion.” Therefore, any narrative that falls into one of the following categories cannot be considered authentic:
1. 1. Any hadith that insults the Holy Prophet.
2. 2. Any hadith that disrespects the holy companions because they were chosen by the best judge of people.
3. 3. The Holy Messenger was the most revolutionary personality in history. He changed the future of mankind. Therefore any ahadith portraying him as a storyteller, soothsayer, a man preoccupied with women, excessive prayers, spending half his life on the prayer rug and the other half in bed, these traditions must be considered false.
4. 4. Any narrative based upon outright ignorance and against common observation cannot be a saying of the Holy Prophet. For example, “No animal is born with deformities” or “Looking at a beautiful face sharpens the eye.”
Now we have reached the point where we can present with great respect a sample of those ahadith that are in accordance with the Qur’an. Each of these ahadith can be checked in the light of the basic Qur’anic rules that we have outlined.