Garbanzo Toons

Air Travel

We dropped my daughter off today at Detroit Metro Airport. She is part of a group that is winging its way to Australia. She'll be gone for two weeks. She's been excited about this trip for months. The group met at the new McNamara Terminal, which is the newest, latest, and greatest of terminals in Detroit. It's modern. It's beautiful. It's full of shops and restaurants. They are currently building an even newer and more modern terminal at the airport, which I'm sure will be full of restaurants and shops. And security.

Standing in the lobby of the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport, I couldn't help but remember back to when I was a child and there was much less security at the airport. When we used to drop someone off at the airport we could freely walk right up to the gate and hang out until boarding time. Then we used to go out onto the balcony of the terminal and stand outside, on the balcony to watch the plane take off, giving our final waves as the plane passed by on its way to some far off land.

That final old terminal that we used to be excited to go to way back in the 1960s will be torn down once the newest terminal is completed. Of course, nobody has been allowed to watch planes take off from the balcony in decades. And the only way to get to go to the gate if you are not a passenger is to make arrangements ahead of time. That's what we had to do two years ago when my daughter went to visit her grandparents in Arizona.

I still like going to the airport. Even with all of the extra hassle, it's exciting. It's the beginning of an adventure. It's the freedom of the open road . . . sort of. You're going somewhere else, or sending someone somewhere else, or getting someone from somewhere else. I'm willing to put up with extra hassle if it makes sense. When I see a TSA worker wearing a hijab, it no longer makes sense. No, I'm not saying that all Muslims are terrorists, but I am saying that the reason for all of this extra security is to protect us from people who take the Koran much too literally. None of us are supposed to admit that of course. That would be singling out one group for special attention. And that is only proper when it comes to to Affirmative Action programs.

In the meantime, we must pretend that those who believe in the Koran are exactly the same as those who believe in The Bible or any other holy book. To admit otherwise is to humiliate Muslims and leave them vulnerable to discrimination. That's what we're told by our intellectual elite, and their Islamic handlers.

But isn't the opposite true? Because we can't be honest, and because we are removed from polite company for pointing out the obvious facts of Islamic terrorism, violent jihad around the world, and the moral warping of our society due to the pernicious influence of the Islamic jihadists, aren't we, non-Muslims being inconvenienced, humiliated, and forced to live a lie? And all with a vacant smile on our faces?

In order to not appear to be intolerant of others, we are forcing ourselves to be prey to Islamic supremacists who are out to destroy our freedom and replace it with Sharia. Yes, other minority groups in the United States have been discriminated against, denied their rights, and horribly abused - all because they were of a different skin color or religion. The guilt over those abuses has paralyzed us into accepting the lie that we are prejudiced against Muslims if we refuse to "accommodate" Islam, or if we aren't sensitive to delicate Islamic feelings. In order to prove our tolerance, we are expected to let Muslims run roughshod over rights that our fathers and forefathers fought and died for.

We force ourselves to pretend that the Irish-Catholic grandmother is just as suspect as the young madrassa student. We waste precious resources by not profiling, because to admit the truth would leave us open to charges of the moral hypochondria of Islamophobia.

As Muslims around the world and in the United States have freely admitted, Islam is not here to be equal to any religion, but to reign over them. We can hear stuff like that but we're not supposed to listen to it. It might make prejudiced against the religion of perpetual humiliation.

I will still enjoy flying, whenever I can afford to do it, with rising fuel prices and all (but that's another post) but I will not submit to lying to myself about Islam. It's not like other religions. In the 1400 years of Islamic history, they have a horrible track record when it comes to working and playing with others (of course, it's Islamophobic to examine the historical record) and as the Islamic world expands, the non-Islamic portion of the world, the part where freedom reigns or has a chance of reigning, gets smaller for the rest of us. As much as Muslims are allowed to freely practice their religion in most of the non-Islamic world, just try flashing that Bible in an Islamic country.

Darn, there I go again, pointing out the obvious and opening myself up for accusations of You-know-what-ophobia. It's a good thing I don't care.

Labels: "Islamophobia" air travel, islam, terrorism

posted by Harry @ 6:52 PM