Muslim group tracking bias
Saturday, October 21, 2006
By WAYNE PARRY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Local Muslim leaders applauded a New Jersey-based group for launching a
nationwide effort to record complaints about Muslims being wrongfully detained
or questioned at airports to determine chronic areas.
The goal is not to file lawsuits, but to get to the source of problems and
correct it, said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer for the American Muslim Union.
The group is sending out forms through e-mail networks and to mosques around the
country, asking travelers to record as much information as they can about where,
when and why they are questioned by authorities.
"It seems like people don't know whether they are interacting with the INS, the
FBI, Homeland Security or whoever -- they just know someone stopped them," he
said.
Hani Awadallah, who leads the Arab American Civic Organization in Paterson, said
the initiative would help document what he termed increasing "Islamaphobia" in
American society.
"These days, it's getting to be almost normal for somebody to attack Muslims,
Arabs and the Prophet Muhammad," Awadallah said.
Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, said the AMU's effort would
underscore the findings of the Council of American Islamic Relations. The
organization reported earlier this month that anti-Muslim bias incidents had hit
an all-time high between 2004 and 2005. During that period, bias-related
incidents against Muslims increased 30 percent.
Assaf said it was important to keep track of unlawful incidents at airports. He
acknowledged that a delicate balance is needed between protecting passengers'
civil rights and maintaining their security while traveling.
"If government officials feel an individual has the potential of doing harm to
himself or others, they should be questioned," Assaf said. "It should not be
based on a racial profiling formula. It's systemic detaining based on a person's
name or appearance that raises our eyebrows."
The AMU has received several complaints from Muslims using airports in New
Jersey and New York that they were detained by U.S. authorities and questioned
for hours when attempting to return to the country from abroad.
With the Muslim holy month of Ramadan drawing to an end this weekend, many
travelers will want to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, known as the "hajj,"
that is required of all Muslims at least once in their lives.
"This is a huge travel time for Muslims and we don't want them to run into the
same problems," Mohammed said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's civil rights office, which handles
such complaints, did not return a telephone call Friday seeking statistics on
how many Muslims have filed complaints alleging wrongful detention at airports.
Abdin Aly, a Little Falls accountant, said he was detained and questioned for
two hours at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2005
after returning from a trip to Egypt with his wife.
He had briefly left the Frankfurt, Germany, airport to have dinner with a
relative during a stopover there.
Aly said authorities did not say whether his name appeared on a watch list.
"They wouldn't let me use the bathroom or use the telephone to call my son, who
was waiting for me for two hours, wondering where I was and what was going on,"
Aly said. "It was ugly. At least this will bring awareness to officials about
what's going on."
-- Herald News staff writer Paul Brubaker contributed to this report.
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