If I were a Muslim woman… and if I was Bob Dylan!

If I were a Muslim woman with a twelve year old child in my home country, Canada, stuck in Kenya while visiting, because the government of the country that I am a citizen of, Canada, subjects me to a DNA test to prove my identity before I can come back home, would I feel constrained? If I was the former President of India and a Muslim and a very well-known nuclear physicist, and I was frisked at an American airport and asked to remove my shoes, how would I feel? (These are common dignities extended to ex-Presidents Clinton and Carter, when they visit New Delhi and they are not told to go shoeless through the metal detector). And if I were a well-known Bollywood actor, with over seventy films in the house, and I was making a film on racial profiling and I was “questioned” for sixty-six minutes at Newark airport, because my name was Muslim, would I begin to feel angry and disconsolate? All of the above incidents occurred in the past few weeks and days and because they were somewhat high profile in nature, they came to our notice.

I do not feel that the Border Security Forces of the United States of America, other European and Canadian Security enforcement agencies and their various functionaries make bureaucratic faux-pas, because they are socially awkward or tactless,or because they are only humans and are prone to errors. I also do not think that it is a credible argument that they have an inherent tendency to bungle at the border due to the rushed circumstances. They never seem to be in a hurry, as I have known from several personal experiences when my flights were a close call. I do not think that they are simply doing their duty and following orders. I do not think that their interceptions are routine and part of due process. I do not think they are particularly culturally unaware and therefore make silly errors. I do not think that their training is inadequate, nor do I think that they are selected from a low IQ pool, because they have failed in other professions.

I do think that they have developed a common consensus, amongst themselves, that they can independently act out a vigilante spirit of retribution and justice, towards those of a particular persuasion, because the general mainstream media is reporting that such folks are causing problems around the world, by having several wives, restricting girls from going to school, murdering their own kids because they have dishonoured their families, passing laws that allow women to be raped by their husbands on demand, carrying out suicide bombings on coalition forces, wherever they are stationed. Such folks deserve some rough treatment! You do not need instructions from higher ups, to rough up such folks. There are things happenning in the Muslim world that are now very accesible to us, because the world media is reporting such events, without an iota of analysis about the nature of the forces that are carrying out such activities to further their clan controls and political objectives. I do think that Muslim activity is being deeply focussed on. I do not think that school shootings, wife beatings, murder sprees, gay killings, killing of doctors who assist in unwanted pregnancies, polygamy in certain communities, is being reported with the same intensity and detail as to the religion of the perpetrators.

I do think that the world vision of Samuel Huntington, Fukuyama, Christopher Hutchens and Norman Podhoretz have begun to crystallize in the Western world’s unwritten code of conduct towards the rest of the world. George Bush did leave behind a legacy. That they are Them and we are Us. The media today is replete with reporting on the behaviour of Muslims, all over the world. Muslims act irrationally and are the reason for so much conflict around the world. This is what the common person sees on CNN, CBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, BBC ---you name it. I will not provide you, in this blog with counter arguments, with news of the daily killings, by the dozens, of unarmed civilians by robot planes in the skies above Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of the world, with controllers sitting in bases in California, Nevada and Arizona. There are scores of blogs discussing these issues. Unfortunately, just as much as the world has become blog-savvy, the majority are still dependent on the TV visage of Lou Dobbs and Christian Amanpour for news that compels you to feel severe animosity towards the Muslim world and the ïllegals"of this world. If I were a Muslim man with a beard and travelling the world, visiting relatives, exploring my chances to better my future in this globally accessible world, I would feel mighty constrained and concerned at every border crossing.


If I was a white man, clean shaven, with a short-cropped hair, no tattoos, no piercings and trim fit pants, no hat and a passport that had no stampings with weird writing that had to be read from right to left, and a very creative name like Tom Henry Jones, I would feel better at the border. If I was a woman with a scarf on my head and a name like Suuad Muhamad and I was flying back home from Kenya to Toronto, I would be worried.

Strangely enough, Bob Dylan, last week, walking around a neighbourhood of Newark, was detained and actually taken to a Police station for claiming he was Bob Dylan and not having an ID to prove it. Dylan was simply taking a stroll incognito before a performance at a local show. A young policewoman in her twenties decided to nab him because as we all know Mr Dylan could sometimes sound pretty vagabondish, even at sixty eight. The young police officer refused to believe him. He was gentle, but not particularly persuasive. He went along for the ride and was released after a while and he went back to his concert. No DNA tests were done on him, as per the latest news I have. Perhaps we will get a song out of Mr. Dylan on this incident. He was the one who wrote about the Hurricane! A great song.