I take around 50 flights a year. My wife is on a plane even more frquently, so aircraft safety is of great concern. This is an editorial from today's Washington Time, addressing a situation that has long been discussed in some quarters. Well worth the read, and if it is true, we are beyond hope as a nation.
Note to terrorists: Next time, wear a hijab. The Department of Homeland Security reportedly is giving special exemptions to their "enhanced pat-down" policy to Muslim women wearing the hijab or other form-concealing garments.
Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a "travel advisory" noting that women who are patted down "should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down." It's unclear why CAIR believes TSA frisking must be Shariah-compliant. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to deny that such exemptions existed when CNS News asked her about them on Monday, saying instead that "adjustments will be made where they need to be made" and that "there will be more to come" on this issue.
A fatwa issued in February by Islamic scholars at the Fiqh Council of North America forbad observant Muslims from going through full-body scanners. The council stated, "It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women. Islam highly emphasizes modesty and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts." The alternative to the highly revealing and intrusive body scanners is the similarly invasive pat-down, which is objectionable to everyone regardless of religion. Reports of TSA officers placing their hands inside peoples' pants and conducting full skin-to-skin frisks have only heightened the general sense of disgust at this unprecedented government intrusion.
Exemptions for Muslim women wearing traditional garb may be the brainchild of Mohamed Elibiary, who recently was made a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Mr. Elibiary is president and chief executive officer of the Texas-based Freedom and Justice Foundation and a self-styled "de-radicalization expert" whose star has risen during the Obama presidency. He previously was appointed to Homeland Security's Countering Violent Extremism Working Group and has testified before Congress as an expert on Muslim radicalism - a topic he seems to know well.
In December 2004, Mr. Elibiary spoke at a conference honoring the life and works of the "great Islamic visionary," Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 2008, Mr. Elibiary denounced the conviction of Hamas-connected members of the Holy Land Foundation for material support of terrorism. Most alarmingly, Mr. Elibiary is an admirer of the work of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual and spiritual godfather of modern jihadism. Mr. Elibiary argues that Qutb is greatly misunderstood. "Many Westerners who've read Qutb's and many others' work," Mr. Elibiary wrote, "see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more."
No one who has read Qutb's work can mistake it for anything but an all-out assault on the American way of life and a call for a global Islamic takeover. The 9/11 Commission noted Qutb's role as an inspiration to al Qaeda and concluded that, "No middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims - as he defined them - therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction." Qutb - who lived in the United States as a student in the late 1940s - developed a comprehensive anti-American ideology that's widely cited as the basis for the contemporary violent Islamic extremism with which America is at war.
Qutb promoted violent, predatory Islamic internationalism with a clear voice. If Mr. Elibiary is one of his disciples, he has no business being anywhere in government, let alone as an adviser at the uppermost reaches of an agency that purports to protect the homeland.
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Note to terrorists: Next time, wear a hijab. The Department of Homeland Security reportedly is giving special exemptions to their "enhanced pat-down" policy to Muslim women wearing the hijab or other form-concealing garments.
Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a "travel advisory" noting that women who are patted down "should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down." It's unclear why CAIR believes TSA frisking must be Shariah-compliant. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to deny that such exemptions existed when CNS News asked her about them on Monday, saying instead that "adjustments will be made where they need to be made" and that "there will be more to come" on this issue.
A fatwa issued in February by Islamic scholars at the Fiqh Council of North America forbad observant Muslims from going through full-body scanners. The council stated, "It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women. Islam highly emphasizes modesty and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts." The alternative to the highly revealing and intrusive body scanners is the similarly invasive pat-down, which is objectionable to everyone regardless of religion. Reports of TSA officers placing their hands inside peoples' pants and conducting full skin-to-skin frisks have only heightened the general sense of disgust at this unprecedented government intrusion.
Exemptions for Muslim women wearing traditional garb may be the brainchild of Mohamed Elibiary, who recently was made a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Mr. Elibiary is president and chief executive officer of the Texas-based Freedom and Justice Foundation and a self-styled "de-radicalization expert" whose star has risen during the Obama presidency. He previously was appointed to Homeland Security's Countering Violent Extremism Working Group and has testified before Congress as an expert on Muslim radicalism - a topic he seems to know well.
In December 2004, Mr. Elibiary spoke at a conference honoring the life and works of the "great Islamic visionary," Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 2008, Mr. Elibiary denounced the conviction of Hamas-connected members of the Holy Land Foundation for material support of terrorism. Most alarmingly, Mr. Elibiary is an admirer of the work of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual and spiritual godfather of modern jihadism. Mr. Elibiary argues that Qutb is greatly misunderstood. "Many Westerners who've read Qutb's and many others' work," Mr. Elibiary wrote, "see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more."
No one who has read Qutb's work can mistake it for anything but an all-out assault on the American way of life and a call for a global Islamic takeover. The 9/11 Commission noted Qutb's role as an inspiration to al Qaeda and concluded that, "No middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims - as he defined them - therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction." Qutb - who lived in the United States as a student in the late 1940s - developed a comprehensive anti-American ideology that's widely cited as the basis for the contemporary violent Islamic extremism with which America is at war.
Qutb promoted violent, predatory Islamic internationalism with a clear voice. If Mr. Elibiary is one of his disciples, he has no business being anywhere in government, let alone as an adviser at the uppermost reaches of an agency that purports to protect the homeland.
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