Flying Imans---- J S Tobin "If you see something, say something." Prudent action or racist fear-mongering

It used to be that the only people I knew who were concerned about the
behavior of fellow mass-transit passengers were Israelis. But that was
before Sept. 11, the airline "shoe bomber," the Madrid railway attacks and
the 2005 suicide bombings in the London subway.

Like it or not, the mantra "if you see something, say something" is simply
part of the reality of life in the age of the war on Islamist terror.
Indeed, it was exactly this sort of routine vigilance on the part of a young
clerk at a Circuit City electronics outlet store this spring that led to the
uncovering of a local Islamist plot to murder U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix,
N.J.

But while that young man was justly celebrated for his good deed, others
with equally reasonable suspicions of foul play can expect something quite
different: a lawsuit.

Justified Suspicions

Passengers on a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis last November noticed six
Islamic clerics behaving in a suspicious manner. They were not merely by
praying loudly before boarding, but didn't sit in their assigned seats and
spread out around the airplane and asked for unneeded seatbelt extenders.

Frightened by the possibility of a hijacking, the passengers reported this
behavior to authorities. The six Muslims, now known as the "flying imams,"
were questioned and then exonerated. But it didn't end there.

Rather than express understanding of the situation, with the help of the
Council of American Islamic Relations the imams accused everyone involved in
the incident of anti-Muslim prejudice, and are suing the passengers they
frightened.


The goal of the lawsuit is to send a message to anyone who associates
Muslims with terror that they should think twice before saying anything.

The goal of the lawsuit is not just revenge for their experience, but to
send a message to anyone who associates Muslims with terror -- no matter how
reasonable their suspicions might be -- that they should think twice before
saying anything.

The possibility of such lawsuits, not to mention the certainty that CAIR
will label them as "racists," will deter those who report questionable
activity to the authorities, and thus potentially make it easier for
terrorists to operate in the open.

Some members of Congress have responded to this problem, and are seeking to
add to a Homeland Security bill an amendment that would give immunity to
anyone who reported in good faith suspicious activity on mass transit.
Though the provision sponsored by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) was passed in
both Houses of Congress, it may yet be discarded when competing House and
Senate bills are reconciled in conference.

If that happens, it will be because some of our politicians are more
interested in their war on the administration than in giving honest citizens
protection against frivolous lawsuits by the Islamist race-baiters at CAIR,
whose roots as a support group for Hamas betray their own extremist agenda.

But at the heart of this controversy isn't just partisanship, or a desire to
protect innocent Muslims from humiliation. What this is about is the
legitimacy of the war on Islamist terror itself.

Insight into this dilemma was provided, ironically enough by the first
professed Muslim to serve in Congress: freshman Rep. Keith Ellison
(D-Minn.).

Ellison caused a regrettable kerfuffle when some pundits wrongly expressed
opposition to his decision to take his oath of office last January by
swearing on the Koran. His defenders sought to downplay any notion that this
former supporter of Louis Farrakhan was anything but an ardent defender of
civil liberties.

But in a July 8 speech, Ellison revealed himself to be someone who looks at
the post-9/11 world from a CAIR-like frame of reference. In it, he compared
America's response to that attack to the way the Nazis exploited the 1933
burning of the Reichstag in Berlin.


In Ellison's vision, the belated efforts by Americans to wake up to
the reality of the Islamist threat was a nightmare based on fraud and
fear-mongering Nazi-look-alikes.

The statement was not just a classic example of Michael Moore-style,
over-the-top hatred for Bush, but revealed a sensibility that saw the entire
effort to fight Al Qaeda and render future terror attacks less likely as
inherently illegitimate. In Ellison's vision, the belated efforts by
Americans to wake up to the reality of the Islamist threat was a nightmare
based on fraud and fear-mongering Nazi-look-alikes, not a nation asserting
its right to defend itself against terror.

That such sentiments exist in the fever swamps of both the far right and
left in this country is no secret. That they are being put about by members
of Congress -- especially the man embraced by American Muslims as their role
model and spokesman -- is telling.

The speech also generated one of those controversies that illustrate how
distorted both political discourse and interfaith communal relations have
become.

In response to his use of an inappropriate Nazi analogy, the Anti-Defamation
League first reached out to Ellison. Seeking to make friends rather than
merely to shoot from the hip, the ADL met with the congressman to try and
coax back in off the ledge. But though the Minnesotan now says he agrees
with ADL's position, he was slow to backtrack, and after the affair dragged
on for weeks, the group's leader, Abe Foxman, finally issued a statement
taking him to task.

Ellison's reaction was to play the victim and claim he was "blindsided" by
Foxman's reproof since he eventually intended to say something though he
won't make one now. Thus, rather than the focus being on Ellison's wild
charges, Foxman wound up in the dock.

Due to Ellison's clever spin, the reaction to his speech was treated as the
offense, not his appropriation of Holocaust imagery to smear the anti-terror
campaign. The issue became Foxman's supposed eagerness to garner publicity
and to shrei gevalt, not Ellison's embrace of extremist rhetoric.

But Foxman had been dead right about Ellison.

While America Slept

Prior to 9/11, America was asleep to the threat from Islamist terrorists,
and their apologists and rationalizers. After that national trauma, more of
us began to think about the danger and take action.


The real danger is the return to the pre-9/11 apathetic mindset that
Ellison and his allies at CAIR are encouraging.

It is true that the Homeland Security Department created to coordinate our
defense has been a disappointing boondoggle. And a fear of accusations of
racism from CAIR has led to a refusal to use profiling techniques that has
rendered airline-security measures a joke, as old ladies can be
strip-searched while those who are more likely to be dangerous are left
alone. But though the possibility of another atrocity exists, there has been
no repeat of 9/11.

While the administration has plenty of mistakes to answer for, the real
danger is the return to the pre-9/11 apathetic mindset that Ellison and his
allies at CAIR are encouraging.

If it has gotten to the point where people like the U.S. Air passengers and
Abe Foxman are seen as the problem -- and not the jihad-rationalizers at
CAIR or a congressman who thinks Republicans are Nazis -- then we are back
to square one in the war on terror.


Published: Sunday, July 29, 2007
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