De-Muslimization: Flying while Muslim after the travel ban | Hacker News Reader

De-Muslimization: Flying while Muslim after the travel ban

thebaffler.com

87 pointshownottowrite139 comments

Is anyone in this thread muslim? Just curious.

I am muslim. Travelling to the US looks very different since 9/11. I was born in the UK, grew up here, scottish accent, fair skin, british passport, work in tech. I still get "randomly selected" every time I travel to the US. Every so often when I've landed somewhere I'll be asked to wait in some immigration section for 1-2 hours, while they do God knows what. I say nothing. I keep my mouth shut. I wait for them to do their checks and I go about my business. Travelling to the US is a pretty terrible experience if you're muslim. I make sure to appear as non-muslim as possible whenever I'm travelling there.

Note: I have no plans to travel to the US while Trump is president.

I recently met a Scottish man at a tech conference in the US. He was born in KSA and it seemed like he has lived most of his adult life in the UK.

I asked him if he was worried: he had arrived in the US just after/during the Executive Order 13769 debacle. He was crystal clear that he felt very strongly that since he had done nothing wrong that he should have nothing to fear from authorities. He claimed that his entry into the US this time was uneventful, but one time in the past (~2004-2010?) he was detained for several hours because of something that sounded like mistaken identity (some horrible Soundex match for someone on a list, probably).

I don't know whether/which religion he might prefer. He wore no religious ornaments or other items that would signify that he might be muslim. If it's relevant, he looked similar to how many Middle-Eastern/Medditeranean men I've met.

Anyways, it's a [second-hand] data point for an Arab-state-born individual who seemed to have different feelings.

For my part, I apologize for poor treatment you've gotten at the border and I hope you're able to visit again in the future.

"I have no plans to travel to the US while Trump is president."

Statements like this baffle me. Literally no-one in any position of authority cares if an individual doesn't want to come to the USA.

Also, if you exclude the USA for its border policies then you also have to exclude the majority of countries in the world, most of which have stricter controls, especially in Muslim countries. You are basically restricting yourself to Europe.

> Statements like this baffle me.

I think it's hard for someone who's not muslim to understand how toxic the current situation feels for muslim people. Would you say the same if a black man told you he'd rather cross to the other side of the street if he sees a policeman walking towards him?

My comment was about how people assign themselves a self-importance that is meaningless in the the grand scheme of things. Not sure why you are talking about race or religion.

I'm not sure why you attribute this to self-importance. It's a real risk and a fair concern. USA border and immigration officers sounds hostile and antagonising from the stories I heard on Twitter (over the course of the past week).

It will take me close to 24 hours to reach American soil. Depending on my luck, I might either:

a) pass without issue, or

b) hand over my phone and passwords and/or complete CS puzzles (which may also include period of detainment)

They can turn me back for any reasons and I would have lost thousands of dollars: if my answers were unsatisfactory, if there were some prejudice against my look, or even if the officer(s) were having a bad day.

In 2014 I traveled to Ghana for a friend's wedding there. The day I flew back, I had to go through a second, thorough security checkpoint at the gate before I could hope to board my plane. I didn't have anything to worry about - I'm considered one of the "'real' Americans" that the OP mentions - but I was still struck by what sort of impression this might leave on others coming to the United States with me. Namely, I thought that it sent the message that the US, before even receiving visitors, was saying "I don't trust you".

There is always that balance between security and openness; I don't deny that it's difficult to manage. Let's not pretend, however, that people aren't affected by xenophobic rhetoric. They are. What message does it send to actual Americans citizens like the OP when we lambaste them for their religion? Is that who we are as Americans, those who spread fear to those who don't look or act "real"?

I'm not liking where this country is going.

I'm just so shocked by how... normal it's gotten.

When I was growing up, I was taught that you shouldn't ever think differently of someone because of their skin color, their ethnicity, or their religion. Obviously you should always strive to never judge a person by any one thing, but those 3 were practically beat into me as being something you just don't do. So much so that we had laws against it.

When I first started hearing the term "Muslim ban" my jaw hit the floor. I reacted the same way I would if someone proposed a "Nigger ban". It just sounded so horribly wrong and misguided and awful. Like every fiber of my being was screaming that this is such a terrible awful thing, but nobody else seemed to be reacting to it.

In my mind, this country was built on an openness to all religions. And I'm just so shocked to see that such a large number of people would not only disagree with that, but advocate for the opposite!

I don't support the so-called "Muslim ban" either, but it's worth acknowledging that anyone even calling it a "Muslim ban," including the POTUS, is just doing so to get a reaction out of people. And it worked. How about calling it a ban on countries we happen to be bombing right now? That headline isn't quite as salacious, but is more accurate than calling it a Muslim ban. We bombed I think 5 of the 7 countries in the ban within the last year.

The fact that people seem more upset about stopping some people at the border than they are about dropping cluster bombs on them in their home country is really puzzling to me.

Point very well made.

While Iran hasn't been bombed by the US, but the US did help to sabotage communications between control software and Siemens PLCs that manage enrichment centrifuges in Iranian facilities.

To use a tech analogy, this is basically the same situation that comes up with rogue certificate authorities. Security is based on trust, and if browser vendors discover that a certificate authority is not verifying the identity of the parties to which it issues certificates, that certificate authority is blocked at least until better validation procedures can be established.

The reason cited for this travel ban is that these countries either have no control over who gets an ID or actively sponsor terrorism. International travel is based on the idea that we trust other countries to validate the identity of travellers. If we know for certain the the government has no control over identity verification and that most passports are obtained from the black market, it seems reasonable to issue a temporary halt while we establish a trustworthy system for verification.

I agree that's a genuine and reasonable concern, but it's not unique to these 7 countries. We're only citing that reason because of the other contextual things going on.

I'm mentioning it because it was explicitly stated by the White House as the justification for temporary travel ban. They also said that Muslims as well as members of other religions who were at risk of religious persecution because they belonged to a minority religious group would have special considerations (it's often unreported that Islam is not a monolithic religion and not only Christians, but members of competing sects are often executed for their beliefs).

These countries were excluded from relaxing visa requirements under the Obama administration because of documented concerns about their identity verification processes. In Somalia, for example, the government esentially has no control and can't leave the capital city without risking death.

Yes, all of these things are known, but it really doesn't square with the rhetorical from the campaign or the fact that at current and previously there was no such "ban" and there have been no issues warranting one.

Again, this discussion is missing the forest for the trees. Justification for this travel ban should be largely irrelevant compared to the justification for dropping so many bombs in Syria we ran out of bombs. In the context of US foreign policy, this ban should be 2nd or 3rd page news.

I understand what you're saying, but it should be possible to have a discussion about it right? We don't have to ignore one thing to see another.

Just because we're bombing Syria doesn't mean we should ignore bad policy at home.

The house is on fire but everyone is worried about the fact that we left the front door unlocked. This is called manufactured consent. They get everyone riled up about this one bad policy that stops some brown Muslim people from traveling so they can happily continue the decade and a half long slaughter of millions of brown Muslim people right out in the open. Trump's mean tweets or random crappy policy is the dog being wagged.

> The fact that people seem more upset about stopping some people at the border than they are about dropping cluster bombs on them in their home country is really puzzling to me.

1000x this. Many people don't even know (or don't want to know) what we do with our drones.

I'm going to respond to a discussion on the click-baity "Muslim Ban" with another click-bait term, fake news. The fact that the general public is hyper aware if this "Muslim ban" which isn't really a Muslim ban but are generally unaware of the fact that we bombed Syria so much we literally ran out of bombs in 2015 highlights the fact that virtually all news is "fake news." I mean, we're the US of A. Our military spending is insane, and we ran.out.of.bombs. I don't even know how to respond to that situation.

We aren't bombing the countries though. For example, the disaster in Yemen is a joint operation with the government against a small portion of the people in the country.

Sure, we didn't bomb the Yemen government, but we sure dropped bombs on the types of people who will be impacted by the ban.

I wonder how many members and associates of AQAP even have a Yemeni passport. Or how many of the innocent civilians that have been killed by US bombs for that matter.

There's lots of reasons to be careful about admitting people from the 7 countries. But the idea that we weren't being careful is one of the things about it that is laughable.

> I'm just so shocked by how... normal it's gotten.

I mean, i think in concept it's perfectly fine. If we started banning a small sect of insanely violent Christians i don't think it would be wrong, nor do i think people would cry racism / xenophobia.

My issue is that in the above example we're not banning all Christians, we're banning that small sect. Likewise, we're not focusing on banning a small sect of Muslims (which /may/ be perfectly reasonable), we're banning them all. .. And there's just so damn many of them, it's banning vastly more innocents than guiltys.. the net has been cast far too wide.

Ignoring Muslims for a moment, why can't we ban a crazy sect of christians who have shown massively violent/hateful trends? Are we not just banning an obvious pattern of human behavior? Does their skin color or religion really matter that much?

Well personally I feel that using religion as a "flag" in something like that is still wrong.

Now that might be my "mid 20's white male never been directly affected by any kind of terrorist attack" talking, but I just feel that the risk for abuse is too great.

In the US we have laws that make it harder for the police and the government to take action. We deliberately tie our own hands with things like laws against unreasonable searching, against being forced to incriminate yourself, and more. We have many times in our history let very bad people walk free because of these restrictions we have placed on ourselves, and personally I believe that to be the right choice.

Now things are different when you are talking about non-citizens, but at the end of the day I think we should strive to that same kind of standard. Don't use things like religion, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or other things like it as a basis for "flagging" someone.

If they are violent, then disallow them based on that.

If they surround themselves with violent extremists, then disallow them because of that.

If they publicly speak about how they want to hurt americans, then disallow them because of that.

But don't group someone from the same religion in with them.

Yes, that means that it will be harder to "secure our borders" and yes i'm sure that means that bad people will get through at some point, and yes I know that those bad people could very well do a lot of harm. But I really truly believe that more good than harm will come from it simply from the amount of good people that will be coming into the country compared to the bad.

> Now things are different when you are talking about non-citizens, but at the end of the day I think we should strive to that same kind of standard. Don't use things like religion, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or other things like it as a basis for "flagging" someone.

Don't forget age. Remember, this is America and we are all just consumers. You just ruled out the 5 most obvious things that differentiate one consumer from the next. I guess it's OK in marketing.

> If they are violent, then disallow them based on that.

OK... This falls in the no shit category, but what if they happen to say they aren't violent and have a fake passport, or ID?

> If they surround themselves with violent extremists, then disallow them because of that.

What if they were carrying a clean phone and computer?

> If they publicly speak about how they want to hurt americans, then disallow them because of that.

Fair...But what of they claim to be someone else?

> But don't group someone from the same religion in with them.

Whether it is a human, an animal, a statistical model, or a machine learning model some sort of reduction must occur in order to have any chance comprehension. Deliberately ignoring a significant feature is a form of bias too.

> Yes, that means that it will be harder to "secure our borders" and yes i'm sure that means that bad people will get through at some point, and yes I know that those bad people could very well do a lot of harm. But I really truly believe that more good than harm will come from it simply from the amount of good people that will be coming into the country compared to the bad.

This is legit and a totally reasonable statement. Next time just open and close with this. Skip the do's and don'ts of fair practices at security checkpoints.

those 3 were practically beat into me

This is called indoctrination. Who was behind this indoctrination, and what were their motivations? Did they have your interests in mind, or their own?

When I was returning to the United States from Croatia, but in Heathrow Airport, my wife and I got picked for a secondary interview at the gate with a British Gentleman who asked me and my wife very detailed questions.

My wife had just changed jobs, so her inability to give the corporate address of her employer made her interview take twice as long as mine. He had a hard time understanding that while a hospital was based out of Alabama somewhere she worked in Missouri and she didn't know a lot about their Alabama operations.

All those questions made us very nervous but once through we saw no more problems.

Depending on where the second security checkpoint was, it may be perfectly normal. Was it at the first US airport you hit?

IIUC, the reason for this is, if you're flying from some country where we don't trust their airport security, we want to re-screen you and your luggage before we let you fly on our planes. This was going on clear back in the 1980s.

My father's job included a lot of travel, so I've traveled through airports and out of the country for more than 30 years.

The humanity from travel has been stripped from all of us, in spite of this I have the deepest sympathy for the writer of this article because while my humanity feels ignored while I travel due to corporations choices of how we are to be treated on their planes I am still in the "real american" category she* spoke of.

The greatest of my fears are having to sit next to someone who needs as much of the small provided seat I need causing us to have to "suck in" our shoulders so they only sort of lean on each other.

I don't have any text conversations on my phones or emails that would flag anything but in the same breath, I've never had to think or worry about that either.

edit: fixed gender issues.

I downloaded a bunch of issues of "Dabiq", the ISIS newsletter, out of curiosity, then later took my laptop through security multiple times without even thinking about it until I read this article. Because I'm also a "real american".

Last time I flew into the US I was reading a copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist on the plane. But I'm white, so nobody cared.

Next time I think I'll try The Anarchist Cookbook.

quick nit: the author is a woman. I see other commenters making the same mistake. So, thought I would correct it.

I'm a Muslim American (and Arab!) myself, and I'd like to chime in.

Firstly, let me state that I did not travel back to the US during the Muslim ban. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but feel that the author was a bit too paranoid. According to a quick Google search, she likely wasn't wearing a hijab, which drastically decreases the amount of "attention" she'd receive during security checks. More importantly, she's American! The way I understand it, there is simply no way for her to be denied entry to the US. I understand her being worried about the content of her laptop, but again this would even worry a "true American". Remember the guy who was kicked off a plane for working on a math problem? It's important to note that the brunt of the Muslim ban was aimed at foreigners and US visa holders.

My experience has been nothing but positive to be frank. Granted, I'm a male, so it's slightly more difficult to do "religious profiling". On my trip on Delta to Paris in late Dec 2016, I was comfortable speaking Arabic on the plane: I was seated next to a older Libyan lady who was traveling to visit family, and we had a nice chat as the plane landed. She was wearing hijab, and also had nothing bad to say about travelling to/from the US.

Of course, this does not at all mean that I'm fine with the ban! On the contrary, I think it was an extremely stupid and short sighted decision, and I'm honestly quite disgusted that POTUS is still pushing for it.

> there is simply no way for her to be denied entry to the US

As was proven when Trump instituted his executive order, people with valid visas and even green cards were denied entry into the US[1]. That's since been reversed in the courts... but that doesn't mean that the current, or even a future, administration won't try again in the future. (I doubt Trump will, after getting blocked in the courts... but you never know.)

[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/trump-muslim-ban-green-c...

I am aware of that, but from my understanding she is a US citizen.

Her precautions sounded totally reasonable. Being a US Citizen with security clearance won't even protect you from unreasonable searches if you don't seem white enough:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkann...

I've heard of such cases, but they seem to be the exception. Actually, a security clearance makes the chance of this happening higher from what I understand. The last people you'd want to get compromised are the people who work in sensitive fields.

His phone was confiscated and searched. The people doing the searches don't have clearance to access the information on his JPL phone, so on the contrary, the search constitutes a breach of national security.

Never said I agree with that. It was a stupid decision on the part of the CBP officer. But what I am saying is that a person with security clearance should expect further scrutiny when travelling abroad or arriving on US soil. Part of the job I guess.

Tell that to Muhammad Ali, Jr.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/us/muhammad-ali-son-ex-wife-de...

That's the most astonishingly nuts part of it all.

"Hi we recognize that you are legit and you can now come and go as a resident alien. This is a milestone towards becoming a naturalized citizen. Oh, oops -- rules just changed I know you only went to visit your grandma but you can't come back in now. Please pay your mortgage and property taxes on time and stuff, though."

It was done with purpose -- to be maximally disruptive.

Now idiots in the media will sell a new and still morally repugnant ban on refugees and other reasonably vetted immigrants as an improvement over their first attempt and in the meantime the administration gave a big chunk of their base some service.

This is a weird response.

Firstly, no one is arguing that it happens every time, the argument is that it happens sometimes, and is allowed to happen.

I don't think most CBP people, or cops, or ICE agents or anyone else is bad. They aren't out to hurt or harass.

However, within that group there are a few -- whatever percent of the population happens to be sociopaths -- that do want to hurt people.

And now, they can.

I don't think I said anywhere that I agree with such a policy. All I'm pointing out is that her reaction was exaggerated, given that she is a US citizen.

The whole 'it's fine for me therefore it's fine for everyone' rationale is somewhat a short-sighted, 'I've got mine' attitude.

There's been quite a few high profile incidents where people who've already been granted legal rights to enter/live in the US are being harassed at the border for. In this age of security theatre, one is too many frankly.

This line from near the end jumped out at me:

> "I was asked if I was Muslim and what I did and where I lived."

The hell? I know I'm a naive white guy who doesn't travel much, but can they really ask you your religion when you cross the border? That sounds illegal and unconstitutional and offensive as hell.

Yes, legally they can.

CBP has broad powers to investigate. They can ask who you're sleeping with, your sexual orientation, what your religion is, your parent's religion, and on. Most Americans aren't used to this, but foreigners visiting your country have been putting up with this stuff since 9/11.

Everything on your person is subject to search. They've now extended that to things not physically on your person (e.g. cloud accounts, social media logins, etc).

PS - It may be illegal to deny entry due to many of these things. We're talking about what they can "legally" ask about, and the answer is just about anything.

A US citizen can't be denied entry.

Others can be denied entry for a long list of reasons:

https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/757/~/friend,-r....

And there is little to stop an individual border officer from simply using one of those reasons as a pretext to arbitrarily deny entry.

They're allowed to ask a US Citizen their religion? Isn't that a protected class?

Yes they are.

I don't follow what protected classes have to do with this. Class protections stop someone from being denied employment, denied services, or discriminated against. It doesn't make it some kind of secret, or "don't ask, don't tell."

CPS have been given the power to investigate US Citizens for other criminal infractions (like smuggling, identity theft, and terrorism) so they can ask invasive questions and refer it to other law enforcement.

If they're asking for your religion for the purposes of deciding whether to let you into the country or not, or detain your or not, doesn't that open the door to being discriminated against /for your religion/?

"Opening the door" to something bad happen isn't an actual argument.

Detaining someone could "open the door" to violent beatings, talking to someone could "open the door" to threatening them, but until those beatings, threats, or actual discrimination occur it isn't considered illegal.

I think a better question is "why would they ask you your religion if they didn't mean to deny you entry to the country on the basis of it?".

You can detain someone for many reasons, some of them legitimate, some of them illegitimate. What is the other reason to ask someone their religion at the border?

> What is the other reason to ask someone their religion at the border?

To determine their eligibility to enter. Much like figuring out political views, it can open up avenues of discussion which may flag problems.

I've got to ask, it's really bugging me.

Are you OK with prohibiting entry on the basis with religion, or do you really not see how asking someone their religion to determine their eligibility to enter is prohibiting their entry on the basis of their religion?

CBP is beginning to ask folks for their Facebook passwords and denying them entry unless they comply.

This is already happening.

They're denying them entry, or making them sit in the hit box? I haven't heard of people being denied entry.

Here is an account from a person I know: http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/103020/an-open-letter-by...

Nothing in that article—as awful as the experience is—suggests being denied entry because of refusing to comply with a request for one's FB password.

I'm always curious on where we draw the line for these subjects.

Lets say for the sake of argument there is a key tell that is very effective for spotting a violent criminal. Do we have to ignore that tell if it falls into a sketchy subject matter like race or religion? Likewise, what if there is a "key tell" that someone is not a violent criminal. Do we have to ignore it if it falls into a sketchy subject matter like race or religion?

To be clear, i am not implying that Muslims are that "key tell", statistically they're far from it simply due to the number of them. It was just a question, unrelated to Islam.

Personally, i don't care what the "tells" are, race or religion. I think they're all valid. I simply disagree that the tells are effective enough to warrant questioning someones religion at all. Seems like more of the super expensive and famously ineffective TSA safety theater.

Problem is, there are no "tells," particular of a religious orientation.

I think there are.

Eg, i feel pretty justified in assuming and acting on (ie, walking away from them lol) anyone from the west bureau baptist church. I have yet to see a rational, non-hatefilled comment come out of WBBC (not sure what acronym they go by). So why do i have to strictly assume innocence?

If they start bombing or hijacking planes next week, can we not ban them from flying? It seems quite reasonable.

I'm not saying we hang them all, because they have not all been proven violent, but it's a small sect with extremism and clear patterns. Can we not use this information? Do we have to ignore it?

On that note, there really have been a number of white Christian terrorists coming from the Carolinas. It's a valid discussion.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

Your example of a "tell" is quite narrowly defined. Yes, in fact it would make more sense to exclude WBBC rather than all Christians, but how do you identify members?

Well, as i mentioned in my post, you don't (at least, you don't by questioning them at TSA). It's too silly of a thing to even ask, as it's easily avoided by the would-be terrorist.

ie, as i said:

> Seems like more of the super expensive and famously ineffective TSA safety theater.

Before I left South Carolina they passed a law requiring terrorists to register as such.

Theater is the right word.

PS: It's Westboro, not West Bureau. Acronym is WBC.

Appreciate that, i thought that looked wrong haha.

Sure, let's start with the most violent group: men

How is that relevant? I was speaking of a group of ~40[1] christians that identify as a collective and are world renown for hate speech.

That is the exact opposite of a generalized large population like Christians, Muslims or "Men".

[1]: Number posted by someone else here in this thread. Point is, small group, tiny, specific.

It's not, just like the WBC example isn't IMO.

You're talking about something like 40 people that meet together all the time (I'm guessing way more than just on Sundays), many of which are a part of the same family.

Maybe I misunderstood the point though!

The problem is one of false positives and prior probabilities. (also, it's westboro and wbc).

There's like 40 people in the wbc. Even if you have a 100% false positive rate and just include everybody, that's 40 people. Plus, if we know they're bombing things we know who they are. We don't know who potential attackers on the US are, besides the counterfactual media narrative that they may be Brown.

Relatedly.

As a white dude, I often assert my rights to avoid the pornoscanner and opt out. Once in a while get sent to secondary screening, because my shaving soap seems to have a similar gas chromatography spectrum to an explosive. They swipe me down, swipe down the soap container, and then the machine turns red and beeps. Further investigation ensues, and I am released.

They never treat me as a potential terrorist. That's probably because they know these machines are pretty terrible, and that the false positive rate is huuuge. But if I were? If this was indeed a dangerous substance and I a dangerous human? Well, the first time, they left me unsupervised in the same cubicle where they were storing their walkietalkies on a charging rack. Unsupervised, beyond just "stay there". Seriously.

They know it's a false positive and it's treated very lightly - again, I'm a White dude with no obvious marginalizing markers. So yeah.

If by "tell", you're talking about pulling aside everyone who "seems Muslim" (obligatory discussion of how Sikhs are often the target of hate crime from people who think they are Muslim because of their headwear here), you're pulling aside just under 1/3rd of the worlds' population. You can't use that information because it's literally useless.

The further complication here is that white nationalist terrorists are just as dangerous as non-white ones, but this administration is focusing on non-white terrorism to the exclusion of everything else.

> If by "tell", you're talking about pulling aside everyone who "seems Muslim" (obligatory discussion of how Sikhs are often the target of hate crime from people who think they are Muslim because of their headwear here), you're pulling aside just under 1/3rd of the worlds' population. You can't use that information because it's literally useless.

To be clear, i most certainly did not mean that. In fact, i feel like i said everything i could to explain i mean exactly the opposite of that. I also mention, as you mentioned, that statistically Muslim means nothing.

This is a touchy subject, so please try to "if you meant"s in my mouth. I'm sure you meant no harm, but .. you know how these discussions can get :)

I apologize for making assumptions about your post - I did indeed misinterpret it as assuming the existence of a shibboleth that could be used to test for adherence to a particular set of beliefs.

What would that have to do with the constitution. The government is prevented from establishing a state religion, they're not prevented from taking religion into consideration.

There are two bits of the Constitution which might have something to say; the First Amendment is quite overdone and passé nowadays, but it also says "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". It's not a giant leap to claim that prohibiting entry to people of a particular religion (or why else is the border control asking, if not to prohibit entry to people of particular religion?) interferes with "the free exercise thereof".

The second is that the Constitution prohibits religious tests for Federal office; this has trickled down a general prohibition against religious tests. (The wording of that part of the Constitution allows for a very narrow interpretation of which offices cannot have religious tests, but it's never actually been put to a test in court, because we just don't do religious tests, period.) Culturally, it is very offensive to me as an American to be instituting them at the border.

Fair enough, you've crushed my dreams of being a constitutional scholar. ;- )

Yeah, I generally think that religious tests are repugnant. Though there's the issue of Islam being a fancy religion with all the bells and whistles, such as an immutable holy language, a political ideology, a broad jurisprudence, and a warlord-prophet elevated nearly to the level of its god. I think it should be fair to ask if they hold any of the views which are obviously incompatible with 21st century western society; tossing gay people off high places like rooftops and cliffs, instituting a religious tax against non-muslims, humiliating the outgroup in the street (which is a much broader definition of humiliate than you normally use, probably includes sexual assault).

I'm in a bit of a pickle with my own principles; because none of this should happen in principle, but the intention is largely valid.

Depends on your culture and point of view regarding the state, as a French myself, I think asking religion/race on a form is offensive and outside of the role of a state (same for schools as well).

All / only feelings, no substance at all.

I have always felt treated like a suspect around US / Canadian / Swiss borders. Have been ordered to take of shoes etc.

There is literally nothing in the whole piece except feelings.

You say that like feelings are something not worth discussing.

I knew my comment would be countered like this.

I don't think they are not worth discussing, but the title of the piece is pretty sensational.

I just commented there are no facts, nothing was real. She felt the way she did. Sure. But travel has been this way 15+ years now.

edit:typos

Rafia is a she. Not that it changes anything.

This fear is much worse now. Watching what you say, the language you speak, books you read, what may be on your computers/phone, your demeanor, etc. Because of that fear she tried to remove anything that may signal she is a Muslim to the CBP. That makes the title not sensational. [But it didn't work as they still asked her if she was a Muslim.]

It does not change anything, but it explains a lot.

I'd be curious to know what exactly this explained.

First, it's "she", not "he". If you don't care about the gender of the author (inferrable from the name), write "they".

Secondly, no, the travel has not been the same even in the post-9/11 world. The change is that they are now talking about demanding passwords to social networks, and search your entire history of communication.

The change is that now you really are presumed criminal and have to prove otherwise with how you look, speak, and what information you have or looked at.

The change is that now you really do have to go through your emails and censor them.

If that's not substance to you, we don't have anything to discuss, so let's stop here.

I value your comments, however, because they supplement the article and do further author's point.

Since the edit time has lapsed, I want to clarify that the OP has originally referred to the author as "he", but has edited his post when it was specified to them (good!).

This is a nontrivial point; OP's opinions are affected by gender. Upon learning that the author is a woman, the OP stated that it "explains a lot" (as of the time of writing this, we're still waiting to know what exactly).

"Facts" are only part of any story and, more importantly, you can NEVER have all of the facts and there's no guarantee that the most important facts are even known.

If you really want facts, consider what would happen if the journalist had tried to get them from a lizard-brain CBP officer as she's being asked weird intrusive questions and who could, on a whim, detain her at the airport with no rights to communicate with anyone-- for no one actually knows how long.

The story was an insightful thought piece that might help others understand the situation better or perhaps provide a bit of illumination on why some people may be terrified of travel in the current environment.

I personally don't care to discuss the feelings of strangers. It seems silly to do. In this context the feelings of some strangers is really only valuable to me if the feelings are justified by data. If there's reasonable evidence that can be shown that the feelings are justified, then I'm happy to get on board to help resolve the issue. If you just want to whine about your feelings, talk to someone who is emotionally close to you.

My black friend and I had a candid conversation about racism once, and he told me something along the lines of: "racism can make you a crazy person. A guy will walk into a room and say hi to everyone but you, and you'll wonder, was that racism? Or maybe that dude just didn't see me? You'll order a sandwich and the white girl behind the counter is flippant, you think, was that racism or was she just having a bad day? She's nice to the next dude in line, maybe they know each other, or is it cause he's white?"

Humans are emotional creatures and social science is very much not-so-scientific at times, considering the complexity of the topic. Sometimes all we can do is talk about our feelings.

I'm not interested until we get to the point where we, as a culture, are willing to tell people that their feelings are unjustified in sensitive areas. And here I'm talking about general public discussions. If you're emotionally close to someone then of course be empathetic. If you want the general public to listen then you'd better be prepared to put up or shut up with regards to data.

If you just want to talk about your feels with no justification whatsoever, there's plenty of platforms out there for fiction writing.

> If you want the general public to listen then you'd better be prepared to put up or shut up with regards to data.

How does your argument stand in the Trump era, when a candidate can lie outright but appeal to feelings well enough to be elected president? When republicans can get on TV and say "we're about feelings, not facts"?

The reality of the world does not reflect your personal opinion of what the world should be like.

I feel like your argument is self-defeating. When Trump, or whoever, outright lies the response should be, "put up or shut up with regards to data." That it's not that way is a real problem. That this tech site has a creative writing post on the front page is a related problem.

I have the exact same thoughts as a white guy, but instead of "is it because I'm black?", it's "is it because I'm weird?".

In this case, her feelings are simply not particularly interesting or special, at least to me. She's a muslim citizen of United States. On her way home from Europe, she was afraid that she'd be searched and somehow molested by the authorities. The whole time she describes this or that detail of the process and imagines how it could go wrong for her. But nothing happens. And that's it.

Well, that's not it. Something happens to others, e.g. this: http://fortune.com/2017/03/01/nigerian-software-engineer-det...

The point is, this behavior towards people coming into the country affects even those who are not searched. They live in fear. That's not "nothing".

If you start kicking red-haired people in the street, and only 5% of red-haired people get kicked due to their red hair, the experience of the rest doesn't amount to "nothing".

It seems like you're one of the white-real-Americans the author wrote about.

You are right, the article is about feelings (although not only that). You are wrong in that it lacks substance.

Feeling dehumanized is a feeling. Saying that an article that describes the procedures that made the author feel dehumanized (but not you, by your words) is insubstantial shows a remarkable lack of empathy.

Which, by the way, was the substance and point of the article.

> I was not detained; my phone and computer were not confiscated. I was asked if I was Muslim and what I did and where I lived. When I said I was a writer, I was asked if I was going “to write about this process?” I answered, “Maybe I will.”

It seems like she was preparing for an ordeal, didn't get one, and still had an article to write.

I worry about border crossings too. We need articles to highlight the problems as they happen. This article didn't have any problems to highlight, so it concentrated on how the author felt in anticipation of the problems.

> it concentrated on how the author felt in anticipation of the problems.

That was the whole point of the article. The author describes the internal struggle of having to hide one's authentic identity because they could be mistaken for being a "muslim terrorist".

Being asked about his religion was a non-feeling.

That this didn't stick out in the narrative, and might be considered normal to someone else, is exactly his point.

To add to your point, the steps one needs to take because the perfectly normal content of personal communication are known to be forcibly examined and be a potential for either detainment or denial of entry are non-feelings.

> Some had been kicked off planes for speaking Arabic on a cell phone

One of the two prominent alleged examples of this was a youtube prankster who stood up and started yelling into a telephone in the middle of an airplane, then jump-cut a video to make it look like people were criticizing him for speaking Arabic.

The other prominent alleged example was of the son of a Iraqi diplomat who was killed under Saddam Hussein's regime; and though it may seem unfair, the FBI wanted to question him, he has a documented connection to politics in Iraq. There's a decent chance there that it had nothing to do with speaking Arabic on the plane, and the FBI wanted to question him anyhow.

Other than that I guess I'd need to dig deeper, but this is a story some people want to come true.

I am screened at airports, I don't know why exactly, I suspect they know something I don't know about my family. I factory reset all electronics before bringing them across the border, because I don't want to be asked to unlock them and submit to a search. Maybe it's theatre, maybe it's unfair, maybe it's a show of force, maybe it's discriminatory; but you know what, lots of people get stopped at the border. I can't pretend to know why I get stopped, and I don't think anyone else should either.

And in that, the terrorists have won. Before 9/11 and other attacks people were not scared and Muslim Americans were not as discriminated against[1]. Now with the help of propaganda, of Fox news and of the Government using the panic to justify taking away freedom, people are scared and a lot of them don't think twice about reducing the rights of other Americans just because of their origin. The aim of Terrorism is to bring terror to the masses and in that the attacks have been a huge success. Never mind that more people die from malnutrition per year than people from terrorist attacks. Or closer to home, more people die from traffic accident than from terrorist attacks.

It's not the number of deaths that's important, it's just the power that the attack has over the consciousness of the masses and how much of their ideals they give up and destroy.

[1] they were discriminated like any minority because people are monkeys and are scared of anything different by nature but it was bearable

I am not a Muslim and neither an American citizen. After reading multiple articles like these it has become clear to me that any visitor to the United States should backup and wipe their phones and take the minimum amount of electronics. It's not that I have something to hide, is the invasion of my privacy that bothers me.

I've seen a few places suggest wiped phones are a little suspect, so maybe populate them with a little bit of "neutral" content?

My Samsung S7 just released a thing called secure folder which creates a second version of your phone user that can have it's own apps and photos. I wonder if people are aware of it.

https://news.samsung.com/global/for-your-eyes-only-secure-fo...

You're better off just backing up to the cloud and wiping. Having hidden data can be compromising if they discover the presence of it.

Can someone clarify why the author talks specifically about Trump's America? This kind of excessive profiling at ports of entry happened under GWB and Obama too. I have heard many anecdotes in the last 15 years. Is there a provable and statistically significant increase in intensity or number of such incidents? In its absence, we should settle for a prior for likelihood-of-being-profiled that is defined by pre-Trump rates. We can't arbitrarily update this prior based on our political opinions.

She mentioned that it started with 911 and Bush. Increased under Obama and under Trump it is even worse. So to her it is getting progressively worse.

> Some had been kicked off planes for speaking Arabic on a cell phone

This was proven to be false or at a very minimum largely misrepresented. The guy kicked off was a Youtube star known for pulling pranks and filming them. It wasn't simply because he was a regular passenger speaking Arabic.

Sadly that didn't stop people from spreading this headline. I still see this claim being made often.

There are cases where people are acting irrationally scared of muslims no doubt. Airlines have been sold to the public as this scary place, which is the primary problem.

That being said, besides those minority of travelers who discriminate against muslims and cause problems, I do not believe airlines themselves are conspiring to kick people off flights simply because they are Muslim. Stories such as this reinforce this idea and create an unnecessary level of fear in the public.

The other story he mentions about the two women getting kicked off is similar. The bar for getting kicked off the flight is pretty low and many non-mulsim people have been for similar small things as this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/08/muslim-woman-k...

The customs agents though are another story. That whole group of people need to be trained better or given less power. I've been secondary screened for the silliest things of reasons twice when I used to travel back/forth from Canada/SF.

The title of the article you linked is "I didn't realize how often Muslims get kicked off planes, until it happened to me"

Opps, That was the second story he mentioned. I didn't make that clear in my comment, updated.

Isn't this the case for many people travelling to the US?

It's really not about the travel ban, or being Muslim.

For many it's a possibility, for Muslims it's an inevitability.

I still can't get over the fact that they detained Muhammad Ali Jr. for hours.

Obviously not all Muslims will be detained everywhere. It's just a free license for any asshole CBP agent to do whatever the hell they feel like.

Take a Quran with you on your next trip here and find out!

If you are having second thoughts about this idea - herein lies your answer.

Meh, I'm a white dude but I'll give it a shot.

I wonder how the author feels about non-Muslims being banned from Mecca?

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Presumably fine. Why would you let infidels into a holy place?

While persecuting people for circumstances of their birth is IMHO a moral wrong, adults are free to choose their religion (in "secular" countries like the US at least). The entails a set of beliefs, privileges and responsibilities. Whether or not it's fair, border security in a lot of places is anti-Muslim. It's part of the belief system of border agents and (some) voters. Islam and not-Islam are at odds here, just as they are in Mecca.

I especially feel sorry for non-religious "Arab-looking" people who get caught up in this.

Probably that It's Bad.

Okay cool? But why change the subject? That's certainly not defined by US policies as the author points to.

From my stoner years, I can relate.

Nowadays I'm in the "unafraid and unselfconscious" category again.

Edit: That doesn't mean I'm going to visit the US again with those checks in place.

Jeez, dark times.

Please do not take the author's advice.

Deleting text messages from your phone before getting to any customs is a terrible idea, it makes you look like you are hiding something.

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