Islamophobia in the Land of the Free

Islamophobia in the Land of the Free

April 20, 2016
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi talks during an interview in his office in Berkeley, Calif., Monday, April 18, 2016. — AP
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi talks during an interview in his office in Berkeley, Calif., Monday, April 18, 2016. — AP

There is understandable outrage at the treatment of an Iraqi student thrown off an internal US flight just before takeoff, after he was overheard speaking Arabic on his phone.

Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was ordered off the Southwest Airlines plane in Los Angeles. The 26-year-old student was then detained by airport security until an anti-terrorism team from the FBI arrived to quiz him.  The flight left without him. 

The incident arose after a fellow passenger mistakenly thought she heard Makhzoomi use the word “shaheed” (martyr) in the conversation that he was having, actually with an uncle to tell him excitedly that the day before, he had met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Leaving aside the likelihood that any suicide bomber would choose to make himself obvious in this way, the fellow passenger’s reaction was just about understandable, given the hysteria about Arabs and Muslims that is gripping America. What is incomprehensible is the manner in which the airline and security then treated this young man.

US airport officialdom at the security and immigration tracks has long been seen by foreign arrivals in the United States as rude, ignorant and humorless.  But as anyone from the Arab world will attest, the situation for Muslims, and indeed anyone else with the stamp or visa of a Muslim state in their passport, is fraught with delay and difficulty.

Even for America’s Muslim citizens, the situation has become little short of disgraceful.  Last year, this same airline, Southwest, threw two Palestinian-Americans off a flight because a white passenger told the cabin crew, their presence made him feel unsafe.

In response to protests over both incidents, the airline has trotted out its politically correct mantra about never discriminating against anyone and always putting the safety and comfort of its passengers first. But it is clear that what they really mean is that the first principle is overridden by the second. Southwest has also refused to apologize to Makhzoomi.

Given the Islamophobic claptrap being spouted by Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, it is easy to see how this paranoid discrimination has come into being. Trump wants to ban Muslims from coming to America. It is not hard to imagine that his next dumb and vicious idea will be to ban Muslims from US flights. Then, if this malign manipulator ever gets his way, the next move will be to seek to expel all US citizens who are Muslim.

When people are panicking, they lose their wits, they lose a sense of proportion. The horror of 9/11 has spooked America and the Trump demagogy plays to and stokes up this fear. It is a regrettable truth that the US public education system fails to give students a decent understanding of the rest of the world. Past bouts of isolationism have been underpinned by this ignorance.

The people who rousted the young Iraqi student off the Southwest flight were following rules and procedures. Nobody demonstrated the education and intellect to produce an incisive assessment of the situation they were dealing with. Southwest and the airport security people acted in the certain knowledge that in their current, unrepentant Islamophobic mood, the majority of Americans would thoroughly applaud their actions. The Land of the Free now is no longer the land of people brave enough to use their common sense.


April 20, 2016
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