Hello Evelin:
On continuing daily 'small' events of humiliation that eventually get connected, become one and explode, I was reading the text below by Prof Ali Mazrui who I think felt deeply hurt and wrote the following piece out of that feeling. What surprised me was the last sentence that came as a challenge by a person of the stature of BBC's Triple Heritage series. Its an affirmation of what you and the core group have said again and again albeit in difference words that Humiliation can lead to defiance, retaliation and violence in words and deeds at different levels of social or even intellectual stratum.
Quote:
"However, I am not complacent. I am afraid it could happen again, the Lord preserve us. But we shall not be intimidated. Amen".
Sultan Somjee
(Member of the Advisory Board of HumanDHS)

Counterterrorism at Miami Airport?: A Personal Experience
By Ali A. Mazrui

Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities
Binghamton University State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, U.S.A.
Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology Kenya

There was a time during the Roman Empire when Christians were thrown to the lions for sport. Modern day religious persecution is rarely so callous. But are there global war-games unfolding at the expense of the Muslim world in this day and age?
Muslims under direct military occupation include Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. Muslims militarily struggling for self-determination include Chechnya and Kashmir. Muslims on the radar screen for possible military intervention by Western powers include Iran, Syria and Somalia. Muslims being harassed under new anti-terrorist legislation already include Tanzania, Kenya, potentially South Africa and a host of other countries under pressure from the Bush administration. Muslims under other methods of oppression include the appalling suffering of the Muslims of Gujerat in India. In comparative number of victims, Muslims of the world are more sinned against than sinning.
Muslims who are harassed at American and international airports are beginning to multiply. On August 3, 2003, on arrival from overseas, I was detained at Miami airport for seven hours under repeated interrogation. Detaining a 70-year-old man as a potential terrorist is a case-study of the new paranoia at airports.
I was interrogated by (a) immigration; (b) customs; and (c) Homeland Security and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in that order. They all focused on security. Paradoxically, the last interrogators were the most apologetic and the most courteous. But they still questioned me behind closed doors. Of course, I was truthful about all the Muslim organizations I belonged to, including the Muslim American Congress, the old American Muslim Council and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy [CSID].
In fairness to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, they subsequently booked me a hotel room for the night in Miami and paid for it. They arranged for me to be taken to the airport hotel. And they paid for my dinner that night (giving me $25 for it). The Homeland Security interrogators were the most friendly. Yet I felt that I would not have been kept for so long if they had not been interested in interrogating me personally. I was kept waiting until they arrived.
After living in the United States for more than a quarter of a century, did I arouse suspicion on August 3, 2003 because of where I was coming from? Was I coming back from Afghanistan? Had I visited Baghdad? Perhaps I was coming back from Indonesia?
NEGATIVE to all of those! I was coming back from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. My primary mission in Trinidad had almost nothing to do with Islam. I had been a keynote speaker to mark Emancipation Day - commemorating the end of slavery in the nineteenth century.
The questions I was asked at Miami on my return included whether I believed in Jihad and what did I understand by jihad? What denomination of Islam did I belong to? Since I was a Sunni, why was I not a Shi'a? I reacted: "If you were a Catholic, and I asked you why were not you a Protestant, how would you deal with that?"
Since I was coming from Trinidad and Tobago, had I seen Yaseen Abubakar, the Islamic militant who had held the whole cabinet of Trinidad hostage in the Parliament building nearly fifteen years earlier? That was a much more sophisticated question.
I replied at Miami Airport that I had not met Abubakar, but I had tried to see him in Trinidad. After all, I was teaching a course at Cornell on "Islam in the Black Experience". I had also taught "Islam in World Affairs" at Binghamton. It was my business to study the Abubakars of this world!
The Miami airport officials allowed me one phone call. I called my home in Binghamton and raised the alarm. My wife mobilized my three adult sons and their families. She also mobilized some colleagues at Binghamton University. Their phone calls of alarm to the relevant authorities might have speeded up my release. My ordeal at Miami airport ended amicably, with a few embarrassed smiles. However, I am not complacent. I am afraid it could happen again, the Lord preserve us. But we shall not be intimidated. Amen.