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Muslim-Americans in Mainstream America
"What did you do?" I asked. "Nothing!" he stated emphatically. My blood started to boil as I heard their story. Mohamed Al-Qubaiyeen and his friend Hamdan Al-Shalawy, both Ph.D. students in linguistics, were enjoying their trip from Phoenix, Arizona, to Washington, D.C. They were looking forward to a conference sponsored by their Saudi government and thought they might have some time to take in the sights of America's capital. As they boarded the plane in Phoenix, they were anxious to know what time the plane would arrive in Washington. They asked the flight attendant and she told them. As they were seated, they found that Mohamed was seated in the sixth row, but his friend Hamdan was all the way in the back of the plane, in the twenty-second row. They asked to be seated together. The flight attendant said she would seat them together once all the passengers had boarded. "Are more people coming on the plane?" Mohamed asked. He didn't know it at the time, but this was the fateful question which the flight attendant regarded as suspicious. The flight attendant said she didn't know. Eventually, after a wait, the two managed to be seated together. Their conversation, in Arabic, turned to their studies. They hoped to meet the president of Imam Mohamed bin Abdul Aziz University at the reception they were headed to. The school had been sponsoring their graduate studies in the U.S. Their conversation, apparently, sounded dangerous to some people. After a while Mohamed needed to use the restroom. He walked to the front of the cabin, as he had seen another economy class passenger use that restroom shortly before. He found a flight attendant blocking his way. She told him he couldn't use that bathroom, as it was for first-class passengers only. Thinking it a little odd, since he had just seen another woman use that bathroom, he turned without argument and went to use the bathroom in the tail section. Mohamed didn't know his innocent trip to the rest room was the straw that broke the camel's back. Returning to his seat, he dozed off, as did Hamdan. The pilot's announcement woke them up. They were scheduled to make a stop in Columbus, but the pilot told the passengers there would be a change in the usual landing procedures. This time the plane followed an emergency landing procedure, taxiing to a distant part of the airport, far from the terminal. "I had a weird feeling," Mohamed said, "when I looked out and saw police cars everywhere with their lights flashing." Seconds after the door was opened, several police officers made their way down the aisle and asked Mohamed and Hamdan to stand up and turn around. They pulled the men's hands behind their backs roughly and handcuffed them, spun them around and pushed them down the aisle and out the open door of the plane. Ninety passengers looked on in shock. More shocked were Mohamed and Hamdan. They were speechless as a police dog was ordered to sniff them. The dog didn't seem very interested in them, returning repeatedly to his handler, who repeatedly had to order him back to the two students. Mohamed's and Hamdan's carry-on baggage was then dumped onto the grass so the dog could inspect it for explosives. Meanwhile, the two Ph.D. students were shoved handcuffed into the back of police cruisers. They complained that the handcuffs were too tight. One officer said, "Okay, okay," — but he did nothing about it for two hours. After spending two hours manacled in the back of the police car, while all the other passengers were evacuated from the plane, the two men were taken to interrogation rooms where they were grilled by FBI and FAA agents. Their rights were never read to them. "Where did you enter the U.S.? When? What are you doing in the U.S.? Why did you come here?" Mohamed and Hamdan heard diatribes, ridiculous sounding to Muslim ears, about how the U.S. had supported Saddam Hussein but he turned against it, and about how lucky Muammar Qaddafi is to be alive today. Hamdan protested, "We didn't do anything wrong! And we are from Saudi Arabia!" "You're still from the Middle East!" retorted one of the agents. The agents went on to talk about the EgyptAir crash, the crazy world we live in, and that co-pilot business. The episode lasted for about seven hours, during which time the two students were prevented from using the restroom. They were not allowed to make a phone call to their families or the seminar's organizers. Mohamed and Hamdan were found to be blameless and were released that evening, but not before being told their names were now in the FBI headquarters database. "If you need information, there's a procedure for that," an agent told them helpfully. When the pair walked out, they found the media waiting for them. As I listened to their story, I thought: Their crime was being Arab, speaking Arabic, asking questions which America West characterized as unusual, yet questions asked thousands of times every day by other travelers without precipitating emergency landings.
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