Racism in the Muslim Community?

This made me very sad. I'm so disgusted by my own community at times. :( Alhamdulilah I love this sister though well done to her for speaking out.

Why Do White Guys Hate My Hijab?

Just last week, I graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. A few weeks before graduation, my best friend (the only other hijabi on Wesleyan’s 2600+ student campus) and I were taking one of our infamous long walks (we have preset one and a half, three, and five mile loops) around campus and the surrounding Middletown area. As was typical of our second-semester of senior year conversations, we were venting to each other about the many difficulties of finding post-undergrad work with our liberal arts degrees (she a government major and I a history major) and barely-there networks. As we paused our conversation to cross one of the many streets that interrupt our rather scenic routes, I turned around to “look both ways” when I heard a car honk at us and someone yell, “Take that shit off of your head!” Amused, all I could think was, “Hey look, it’s another one of those white guys who hates my hijab.” Unfazed (and quite honestly, used to such behavior at this point in our Wesleyan careers), we continued on our walk.

The next morning, I had to share this story with one of the librarians at Wesleyan’s Art Library, where I worked. During my shift the week before, much to her surprise, I mentioned to my supervisor how often Middletown residents (especially young white men in their red or white pickup trucks) verbally abused my friend and me when we left campus to walk into town. I even refused to walk into town for dinner the day after the Boston Bombings in fear that I would be attacked, like the many hijab-wearing Muslim women in Boston in the aftermath of the bombings. Horrified to hear what my friend and I go through (even though it doesn’t bother us very much), my boss mentioned that it was common for young white males in Middletown to drive around Wesleyan’s campus in the warmer months to “cruise for chicks” (her words, not mine). That’s when it hit me, “So that’s why these white guys hate my hijab – the way I look interrupts their ‘cruises for chicks.’”  More specifically, the way I dress denies them their privileged white male gaze – a privilege that society has taught them is their right, especially over women of color.

The male gaze.  The white male gaze. That infamous white male gaze. Kind of like the male gaze that permeates Hollywood and cinema. Except in this case, the white male gaze is separated from its objects of desire by car windows, not movie screens. And these young white men in their pickup trucks feel it’s their absolute right to “gaze” at women on and off campus. They drive around Wesleyan to see long flowing hair, short shorts, and even shorter dresses. Our hijabs, long-sleeved shirts, maxi skirts, and maxi dresses disrupt their cruises; we deny them their gazing privilege. And so, through their shielded windows and in their mobile getaways, they feel it’s their right to tell me to “take that shit off” of my head.

I hate to break it to you, white guys, but your male gaze is one of the major reasons (among many others, rest assured) I began to wear a hijab.

And let’s not kid ourselves:  the privileged white male gaze and the verbal abuse it provokes is not reserved for Middletown residents only. Although their remarks usually surfaced when they were under the influence, I’ve gone through the same phenomenon with white fraternity brothers at Wesleyan. On one Friday night in the spring of our junior year, my friend and I were taking a late walk when a couple of white fraternity brothers shouted out of their car, “Take that shit back to India.” I’ll admit, this time the words hurt a little more, mainly because neither of us is from India. All joking aside, it did hurt that these Wesleyan fraternity brothers – who we’ve sat in semester-long seven-student seminars with – felt that it was their right to openly and publically shame us for acting different, all because we choose to dress in a way that does not allow them to see us the way they want to.

source

Death by brown skin

Sunando Sen, a 46-year-old Indian immigrant, recently opened a small copying and printing business in New York City’s Upper West Side with his hard-earned savings. Described by friends as “very educated” and “so quiet, so gentle, so nice,” Sen’s American dream ended in tragedy last Thursday when Erika Menendez fatally pushed him in front of an oncoming subway train.

Menendez admitted the hate crime, explaining she “pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.”

Never mind that Sen was raised Hindu and the 9-11 terrorist attacks were coordinated by 19 foreign hijackers primarily from Saudi Arabia.

An unbalanced, paranoid mind marinated in our oversaturated Islamophobic environment is numb to such cultural specifics and susceptible to conflate anyone appearing “Muslimy” as the “enemy.”

Although Islamophobes did not cause the NYC murder, they contaminate civil society with their toxic ideological fuel and remain a beacon for bigots, hate-mongers, and the mentally unhinged, all of whom emerge from the same diseased infrastructure.

Citizens of this dangerous, fringe minority include Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 individuals last summer to punish Europe’s alleged leniency towards Muslims and multiculturalism. Upon reviewing Breivik’s 1,500 page anti-Muslim manifesto, which frequently cites notable American Islamophobes, counter-terrorism expert Marc Sagemen concluded thisIslamophobic  rhetoric is “not cost free.”

The cost of such hate is mostly borne by members of the AMEMSA (Arab Middle Eastern Muslim South Asian) communities, however the tainted profit is collected by bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of the “hate group” Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), part of the lucrative  “Islamophobia network” subsidized by inciting fear-mongering and misinformation against Muslims.

SIOA claims that it is a “human rights organization dedicated to freedom of speech, religious liberty, and individual rights; no special rights for special classes.” However, the Anti Defamation League reviewed SIOA’s activities and concluded SIOA “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy ‘American’ values.”

In the fall, SIOA purchased inflammatory anti-Muslim ads that continue to appear in New York City and Washington D.C. metro stations and buses.  One ad reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, Defeat jihad,” suggesting all Muslims are savages. Another ad features a picture of the World Trade Center towers burning next to two Quran quotes.

In light of SIOA’s recent propaganda in NYC subway stations, it is not far-fetched to wonder if Menendez’s hate toward Sen was in some way influenced by these ads.

After news broke of Sen’s murder, Robert Spencer tweeted what sounded like a justification for senseless, anti-Muslim hate crimes: “If Muslims would stop doing evil in name of Islam and jihad, no one would respond with evil to them.”

This is typical rhetoric from Spencer, a hack whose writings are so toxic they reverberate globally and damage both national security and our relationship with Muslim communities abroad. Before her death, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazhir Bhutto name-checkedSpencer in her biography as an individual who “uses the Internet to spread misinformation and hatred of Islam…he presents a skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only helps sow the seeds of civilizational conflict.”

Spencer’s blog “Jihad Watch” was cited more than 162 times in mass murderer Breivik’s manifesto.  Spencer has published the writings of Serge Trifovic, one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs during the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims. Spencer believes the neo-Nazi group English Defense League “deserves the support of all free people.”

Spencer’s colleague in hate, Pam Geller, who never met an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory she didn’t immediately publish as fact, believes “devout Muslims should be prohibited from military service. Would Patton have recruited Nazis into his army?” She also thinks President Obama is a Muslim, illegitimate son of Malcolm X who once went to Pakistan for drugs and jihad, and that the Arabic language is a spearhead for anti-Americanism. She believes stealth jihadists have infiltrated Disneyland because employees wear headscarves to work. Like Spencer, Pamela Geller once strongly endorsed the English Defense League writing, “I share the EDL’s goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the West.”

In a perfect world, these rantings would be amusing fodder for an amateur comic.  However, when over 60% of Americans say they do not know a Muslim and Islam has its lowest favorability rating ever, extremists like Geller and Spencer disproportionately inform and influence the nation’s conversation and perceptions about Islam and Muslims.

According to a new quantitive analysis published by the American Sociological Review, sociologist Christopher Bail mentions Stop Islamization of America as one of the “angry and fearful fringe organizations” that “not only exerted powerful influence on media discourse about Muslims in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, but ultimately became some of the most influential mainstream groups in the field. By 2008, these fringe organizations not only permeated the mainstream but also forged vast social networks that consolidated their capacity to create cultural change.”

These Islamophobic memes do not exist in a victimless vacuum. There is a cost to such dissemination of hate.

In 2012, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported a 300 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate groups. In 2010, the FBI reported unprecedented 50 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes, with 160 reported cases. In 2011, the number dipped slightly to 157.

SPLC mentions the 2010 Ground Zero Mosque debate as the key driver for the recent surge in anti-Muslim sentiment. The controversy and subsequent protests against the Park 51 community center, which is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero, was directly manufactured and orchestrated by Pamela Geller and SIOA. Now, there are over 50 ongoing nationwide movements against allowing Muslims to build their constitutionally protected houses of worship.

Recently, a man convicted of setting fire to an Ohio mosque said Fox News convinced him all Muslims are “terrorists.”

Last August, recently defeated Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told a town hall in Chicago that Muslims in America are “trying to kill Americans every week.” A few days later, air rifle shots were fired at a mosque in north suburban Morton Grove, Illinois. Soon after, someone hurled a 7-Up bottle filled with acid and other unspecified materials at an Islamic school in Chicago during nighttime Ramadan prayers.

Nearly 31 states have introduced an anti-sharia bill, which is about as necessary as a bill banning big-foot or unicorns.  Yet, 6 states have passed it (Louisiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma.)  The author of the bill is attorney David Yerushalmi, who serves as counsel to none other than Pamela Geller.

Islamophobia is not just a “Muslim” issue. It never was. Sadly, it is a cancer affecting all our communities.

Sen’s horrific death was yet another episode in which an innocent individual’s brown skin tragically caused him to be mistaken as an anti-American threat. Last August, White supremacist Wade Michael Page murdered six Sikh Americans at their Wisconsin temple. The first post 9-11 hate crime murder was of Arizona gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American specifically chosen by the murderer because he was “dark-skinned, bearded and wore a turban.”

A senseless tragedy like this affords an opportunity, requires necessity and demands urgency for diverse American communities, especially Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, to unite in solidarity against hate and intolerance. In America, there exists space for legitimate criticism, debate, and discussion about  religion, race, and ethnicity. But we must finally confront ourselves and ask how do we, as a society, benefit from hysteria, fear and scapegoating? What do these Islamophobes inspire except division and lucrative, personal paychecks?

Yes, we give the KKK a freedom to speak their nonsense, but we as citizens and as a nation have disempowered them, denied them a mainstream platform and silenced their megaphone.

The question now at hand is how many Sens and Sodhis will it take to expose these fringe Islamophobic voices, marginalize them, and move onward, together, as they slither in shame and eventually drown in their own irrelevance. 

Source

Sticks & Stones

 Comment: I really felt for sister Sabiyyah and I really agree with all the points she makes here.

This post, is one that I have repeatedly considered writing since March of this year, following all the harassment I received following the airing of Make Bradford British. At first, I left it because I didn’t want it to seem like I was crying out for sympathy & secondly I didn’t want the trolls/bullies who were hating on me to know the extent of their damage. The second time I considered writing this post was after the Shafilea Ahmed case, and my very public acknowledgement and approval of the sentence given to her parents, again i was subjected to more abuse, and again I left it. The most recent events that have prompted me to actually sit down and write this, is the response that I received after writing my post re the comments Galloway made on rape. To be honest with you, the abuse and insults no longer affect me, in fact I read them, hear them and turn a blind eye or deaf ear to them. I guess some would say that it is sad that I’ve gotten so used to it now that mentally when i read something i just shut it out and carry on as i was, but for me its a great progression. And I am going to describe how i got to this stage to you in this post. I have to warn you, this is my longest post, simply because I am going to break down a lot of the misconceptions directed towards me.

Before Make Bradford British was aired, I was prepared for a backlash from certain members of the Muslim community, I was prepared because I knew that firstly a lot of people wouldn’t have been comfortable watching me in the situations i was placed in, most prominently the pub, but secondly and most importantly i knew that some would not be happy with the things that I said in the programme. I thought i was prepared, i really did. And I’m no wallflower, throughout my life I’ve dealt with crap and I’ve come out of it always more tougher and always more positive. So i kept thinking to myself, you’ve been through worse, you’ll be fine.

Then came the aftermath of MBB, and no amount of experience could have prepared me for it. You see for so long I held the view that I was in a majority, i.e. that my views were views that were held within a majority of Muslims, i guess the reason behind that was because my friends are a good mix of egalitarians, liberals and humanists of every religion and race. I really honestly naively believed that i was a part of a majority. That bubble was burst as soon as the first episode of MBB was aired. It was then that i realised that in fact i was part of a minority, a minority of muslims who applauded and craved critical thinking, who despised mob mentality and who urged the use of rationality & intellect. We are a minority. I guess the biggest issue people had was when I told Rashid that he didn’t need to pray in a mosque & that the Lord didn’t need his prayers, many took this as me saying that he shouldn’t pray, but what i was in effect saying to him was that if he was letting down his community, he was doing God a huge dis-service, because his insistence to pray in a mosque meant that religion was preventing integration in the house, and religion DOES NOT prevent social cohesion, in fact it aids it.

The criticism and abuse I received for this was hideous, i had people telling me to hang myself, that i would burn to death, that they wanted to kill me, i was branded a “hoejabi”, a ‘slut’ and much worse. People simply couldn’t understand why I challenged him, and a part of me realised after as well that one factor was the fact that I am a woman. Seriously i know for a fact if  i was a guy and had said what i had said, i would have got away with it a lot easier, in fact so many women came to me after and said the same thing to me. The fact that i was a woman, wearing a hijab and challenging a man who appeared to be so devout made me look like Satan’s advocate. And boy was i treated like Satans advocate.

You can hear the tone of hostility and resentment towards my comments on MBB on Inspire Fm, this was by far the WORST interview i have ever ever ever given. It was hostile, cold and very unwelcoming. So have a listen

http://soundcloud.com/inspire-fm-luton/inspirefmluton-interview-with

I reckon the reason why I am the target of criticism especially when i make a statement condemning something publicly is because of the fact i overtly dress like a muslim woman, yet to the majority i don’t act in the way they expect me to. Maybe their conception of a hijab wearing woman is to be meek and conformative and i am neither, in fact i resist conformity.But this issue of me wearing a hijab and not acting accordingly has come up time and time again, most recently with the Galloway drama, 

the tweet by Said Omar Muhammad says “You obviously are wearing hijab as a fashion statement” I am sorry Said Omar, but when did you look into my head, read my intentions and decide that yes it is a fashion statement?

In fact i wear my hijab as a badge, as a symbol of identification of being a proud Muslim woman, a liberated and equal Muslim woman who has been given rights by GOD to speak as i wish, and to practice equality and tolerance. I do not wear my hijab out of religious requirement, I believe that to wear a hijab is a matter of choice, and the hijab wearer is no superior to the woman who doesn’t wear one. So don’t say to me i wear it as a fashion choice or that if i wear it i should wear it ‘properly’ I dictate how i wear it, i decide how i act and i am ACCOUNTABLE TO GOD NOT YOU!!!

Another misconception a lot of people, especially ignorant women, hold is that I claim to represent Muslim women. Let me put this straight once and for all. I DO NOT wish to represent Muslim women, in fact after studying the dynamics of the Muslim community, we are no way homogenous, I couldn’t represent anyone but myself because each individual has his/her opinions. Yet for some bizarre reason, I still get attacked for misrepresenting hijabis, or misrepresenting women. Here is a tweet by a rather crude and nasty individual who perpetuates a lot of hate on twitter.

Now lets move on to the Galloway saga, and this has been the most surprising attack for me. When I wrote my blog post condemning Galloway’s comment, I honestly did not expect abuse, especially from leading Respect Party Members. I mean i was of the view that rape is rape is rape. end of. clearly its not as black as white as that. Galloway’s die hard fanatical fans, didn’t care about his comments about rape, in fact i don’t think they care much for politics, nor do they understand it. Rather they are fuelled by a mob mentality that is rife in Bradford. And i can say this confidently because I’ve been a victim of it ever since MBB. Mob mentality strips you of your rational and intellect and Gods most precious gift to you, free will. It strips you of that and essentially transforms you into an animal who follows the pack. And this is the only way i can describe the onslaught following my post re Galloway.

What scared me the most about the reaction, was the fact that it was coming from leading members of a political party that i had defended and supported. A party that i had once seen as a viable alternative and one that could lead Bradford to positive change. Now i want them out of bradford, i want them out of power and i want them stripped of their egos. Power in the hands of the ignorant and foolish is dangerous. And this exactly what is happening in the Respect party in Bradford. I spoke to a Respect party member who described horrifically to me, the corruption that exists within this party. If he had told me a year ago I would have been shocked, but after the Galloway drama, to be honest i was unsurprised and in fact i was expecting it. What frustrates me the most is the lack of critical thinking which exists in them, and its not just members of the Respect party, its within all those who have criticised me. Don’t get me wrong its not that I’m saying don’t criticise me, i welcome constructive criticism, but theres a distinct difference between criticism and bullying. e.g. below

It’s like seriously!?!? are you seriously tweeting this crap to me? Do you blame me for blocking you? I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with stupidity. I only engage in debate when I think it will be constructive and progressive. Otherwise I will ignore you.

I was reading today about the controversy that the comedy show Citizen Khan has provoked. And it made me laugh, you see as Muslims we are so defensive and emotional. We get so caught up in reacting but not being proactive. Its happened every time from the Salman Rushdie affair, to the Cartoons in Holland, to documentaries to comedy shows. By reacting so emotionally, we prove that we are a weak community, we have no self esteem and that we have no other method of intelligently responding. I was told today by countless people that they were being bullied on twitter for defending Citizen Khan, seriously its ridiculous. Why do we crave conformity? Why do we coerce people into conformity? Individuality and difference of opinion is what strengthens a community! If your so bothered, approach Adil Ray with an email, send him a message, I’m sure he’d appreciate that more then you absolutely slating all his and the teams effort. But thats hard work so instead, you just shout out the abuse and everybody else just joins in.

You see, its gotten to a point with me, unfortunately  where i don’t expect support for what i say. I don’t expect support from the Muslim community or leading Muslim organisations or groups or leaders. Because i have learnt the very very hard way, that the majority of Muslims that are in positions of power, avoid controversy. They will entertain you for a while but when it comes to the crunch, your on your own. Nobody likes to admit that spousal rape happens within Muslim marriages you just need to listen to the BBC asian network to get that confirmed, people will say to you forced marriage is wrong Islamically, it is abhorred by the Lord, yet nobody will applaud the criminalisation of it and the active crackdown. And I know i’ll get abuse following this post, but frankly I no longer care. Because you see what i do care about and its the only thing i care about, is the women who have so much potential in my community who are being disempowered everyday, by idiots like the ones that exist in the Respect Party. I care about those women who can deliver change and who will deliver change. I worry that they are not strong enough to deal with the criticism and the bullying, I worry that they will remain silenced due to their fear of speaking out. And you know what, I wouldn’t blame them, its taken me a long time to develop my thick skin and no shit attitude. Some people just don’t want it, and thats what worries me, that our own community is leading itself to destruction by stifling critical thinking and freedom of expression.

People worry about Islamaphobia, and we have writers like Mehdi Hasan who are fighting it, and i really feel for them. For me, I’m fighting phobia amongst my own, and i guess thats what makes it harder. You expect support but you just get stabbed in the back.

 Source

France is a deeply racist country, and Toulouse will only make that worse

Barely had Mohammed Merah leapt from his bathroom widow in Toulouse yesterday, still blasting away with his gun, than politicians and experts were analysing just what it might mean for the President and the other candidates in the coming election.

It's unseemly. It's obscene. It has precious little to do with the facts of the case, the question of religion or the future of society in France. But it is what politics is now about, as much in France as the US.

And, of course, it does matter in electoral terms. Think back only two days when the gunman was thought to be a man of the extreme right, very probably a dismissed soldier, who was as eager to take his revenge on Muslims and blacks as Jews. Then it seemed as if the loser might be Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, and the question was whether Sarkozy could draw some of her support to him or whether the Socialists, under Francois Hollande, would reap the benefit.

Once the assassin was fingered as a Muslim with allegedly al-Qa'ida connections, however, the whole focus changed. Now it is Le Pen, despite the halt to campaigning during this time, who is on the offensive again with a rallying call to "fight this war against these politico-religious fundamentalists who are killing our Christian children, our young Christian men", and Sarkozy, already tacking hard to the right, who is caught trying to catch up.

On the one hand, he needs to be statesmanlike and, as President, above it all; on the other hand, he wants to garner the emotions and the votes of those who want to use this as a good reason for reducing immigration and putting Muslims within France in their place.

There doesn't seem much doubt which way Sarkozy, ever hyperactive, will turn. Even without an election, he has long been fierce in his opposition to immigration and his rejection of multiculturalism. As Interior Minister during the riots of 2005, he dismissed protesters as rabble. As President, he has urged new laws restricting the veil and halal meat.

For all the public statements over the past few days on the need for national unity, France remains a deeply racist country. The threat of Muslim terror has allowed the French to transfer their resentments away from the Jewish population to the Arab one, and to feel the better for it. But the sentiments are exactly the same and made only the worse by rising unemployment and slowing growth.

Mohammed Merah's trail of death will only serve to make such prejudices more publicly acceptable. Even the liberal left in France will find it hard to make him into a martyr for racism. They shouldn't be too thrown. Mohammed Merah's name may be no help, but his case is peculiar. It's not the kind of grand attack on society in the manner of the July bombings in London and which al-Qa'ida would normally seek to arouse.

Instead, there remains something very personal about these killings which would belie generalisations. Had the killer survived, the right could have continued to play on the statements and information which would have come out over the coming weeks of campaigning.

As it is, Merah wasn't taken alive, as the police had planned, but died in a peculiarly cinematic and unsatisfactory (for the authorities) way. The questions which will now surface will be as much about police incompetence as his support.

How, given that he was on the radar of the intelligence and security forces, was he not stopped sooner? Why were the police unable to capture him in the end? Why was the knowledge of his time in Afghanistan not joined up with suspicions about him at home? It is right that these questions are asked.

There is far too much talk about grander themes of race relations, ethnic differences and religious motivations, and far too little acceptance of the simple fact that these cases are uncommon, they have always occurred through history and society's best defence remains good policing, not draconian legislation.

Mohammed Merah should have been caught even before his first murder. Whether you blame the failure to do so on Sarkozy as head of government, the police or Muslim extremists will no doubt be the stuff of the election in the coming weeks.

It probably won't make that much difference. It will be economics, as always, not race which will probably determine the outcome. The nearest parallel to events in Toulouse is not the July 7 bombings here in the UK, but Norway.

Anders Behring Breivik, who killed over 90 people in a murderous spree last summer, is a right-wing fanatic from the opposite end of the spectrum to Merah. Yet Norwegian politicians and the media made little of this in the aftermath or even during his arraignment. Instead, they worked to bring the nation together in a solemn moment of mourning.

Sarkozy has the opportunity to do the same in France if he wanted to step back and up to be the voice of the French people in the way that President Clinton managed after the Oklahoma City killings in the US. One can't see him doing it. The temptations of electioneering are just too great.

It can't be said that it would be any different here.
source

Department of Homeland Security officer disciplined over anti-Muslim hate comments on Facebook

A veteran officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Chicago is being disciplined after posting hundreds of racist and derogatory comments on Facebook.

His name is Roy Egan. Not only were Officer Egan's racial and religious rants open for anyone to see, for years he openly identified himself by name on Facebook and listed his employer as U.S. Homeland Security-TSA, the Transportation Security Administration.

For the past nine years, Egan has worked as a TSA baggage screener at O'Hare Airport. The 46-year-old has noted on his Facebook page, "I look for bad stuff going on airplanes."

But it wasn't Egan's personal data that caught the eye of the I-Team. It was his public postings calling "Islam a cult that glorifies death...and a filthy religion." It is a theme Egan repeated in postings just about every day: that Muslims should be exterminated.

In the garage at Egan's southwest suburban home, the I-Team questioned the nine-year TSA officer about his anti-Muslim statements.

Goudie: You posted those, didn't you?
Egan: It was common stuff I picked off the web and made comments on.
Goudie: What does it say that a TSA officer is saying these kinds of things about Muslims?
Egan: I don't refer to it in my job.

Egan's job is to screen baggage at O'Hare. Since 9/11, the treatment of Muslim travelers and allegations of Middle Eastern profiling, have dogged Homeland Security agencies.

Officer Egan recently posted, "does anything at all make you smile more than a Muslim burning by his own hateful hand." He maintains such beliefs don't interfere with his work.

source