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UNC student journo fired for calling for profiling

Sep 18, 2005 8:14 am By Robert Spencer

More dhimmitude at my alma mater, where, of course, incoming students were made to read a partial and misleading translation of the Qur’an after 9/11 — violent sections omitted, of course.

Now comes Daily Tar Heel columnist Jillian Bandes, who has been fired after writing a column entitled “It’s sad, but racial profiling is necessary for our safety”:

I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.

I don’t care if they”re being inconvenienced. I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.

I care about my life. I care about the lives of my family and friends.

And I care about the lives of the Arabs and Arab Americans I”m privileged to know and study with.

They”re some of the brightest, kindest people I”ve ever met.

Tragically, they”re also members of an ethnicity that is responsible for almost every act of terror committed against the West in the recent past….

You also can’t debate that of the 19 hijackers on those planes, all 19 were Arab.

And you can’t debate that while most Arabs are not terrorists, sadly, most terrorists are indeed Arab.

Given this combination, I want some kind of security.

Done in a professional, conscientious manner, racial profiling is more likely to get the bad guys than accosting my 12-year-old pipsqueak of a brother on his way to summer camp.

When asked if she had a boyfriend, Ann Coulter once said that any time she had a need for physical intimacy, she would simply walk through an airport’s security checkpoint.

I want Arabs to get sexed up like nothing else.

And Arab students at UNC don’t seem to think that’s such a bad idea….

Said Muhammad Salameh, a junior biology major: “I can accept it, even if I don’t like it. I don’t want to die.”

Professor Nasser Isleem, a man for whom I have complete and utter respect after merely two weeks of sitting in his Arabic 101 class, said, “Let them search.”

“It depends on how I”m stopped, but if it is done in a professional manner “¦ ”

Then he nodded.

“There were Muslims in those buildings, too.”

Some people say that racial profiling will make terrorism a self-fulfilling prophecy, or that it’s somehow unfair to designate certain individuals as being more likely to commit an act of terror than another.

They”re wrong.

If 19 blond-haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian Jews had plowed into the World Trade Center with two jumbo jets, I would demand to be interrogated every time I browsed Cheapflights.com.

After each interrogation, I would offer the official a cup of joe, then heartedly thank him for his efforts. And I would not be any more inclined to blow up innocent civilians as a result of it….

Well. Profiling is ultimately of limited value, given the fact that “Arab” does not equal “Muslim,” and that we are facing a threat from an ideology, not a race. Profiling would not have caught John Walker Lindh or José Padilla. Nevertheless, Bandes has many good points and makes them effectively.

What happened next? The Muslim Students Association fired back: “Columnist was offensive, inaccurate, disrespectful“:

Our main criticism of Bandes” article is not in what it argues but the way that she argues her point so disrespectfully. : “I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within one hundred yards of an airport.”

Although we appreciate the journalistic hook, it was an attention-grabber, sensationalistic and forced us to read the column; however, it offended us all within the same sentence. The image of naked Arabs in a public airport is not only truly horrifying, but it is also reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib photos where Iraqis were also “stripped” down for information about terrorists….

Our qualms with journalistic language aside, we take offense to the manipulation of the quotes from Arabs to support Bandes” limitedly researched article. After we spoke to both Muhammad Salameh and Professor Nasser Isleem, we realized that they were outraged at having their views on racial profiling misrepresented.

For example, Salameh’s response to the use of his statements was “Quote me as I say!”

His quote from Bandes” article that “I can accept it, even if I don’t like it. I don’t want to die” is an example of the journalist’s cut-and-paste method. In actuality, Salameh said to Bandes, “I”m not comfortable with it, I”m not happy with it, but I can accept it.”

The “I don’t want to die” part of the statement was given much later in the conversation in reference to Salameh’s Islamic stoicism in accepting his fate if he died in the World Trade Center “” not Arab strip searches at airports. Salameh is, in fact, infuriated at the way he was represented in the article, considering his involvement in diversity activities and clubs (such as Psi Sigma Phi, a multicultural fraternity)….

Similarly, Professor Isleem was approached by Bandes under the guise of writing about Arab reaction after Sept. 11. After speaking with Isleem personally, we discovered that someone else had been misrepresented through Bandes”s faulty journalistic endeavor. Their conversation had been cut and pasted to fulfill the expediency of her article.

Had Isleem known the true subject of the article, he would not have chosen to be affiliated with the piece. Isleem is a distinguished member of our faculty and would never agree to be “stripped naked” if he got within 100 yards of Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Then Bandes was fired. DTH Opinion Editor Chris Coletta explained that it was because of Bandes’ use of the quotes, as the MSA had outlined in its statement:

Might as well get to the point: I fired Jillian Bandes yesterday.

And not because I thought she was a racist or an idiot. She is, in fact, neither “” and even if she were, I wouldn’t have fired her for those reasons.

I fired her because she strung together quotes out of context. She took sources” words out of context. She misled those sources when she conducted interviews.

In other words, she conducted journalistic malpractice, and that’s simply not something I, or The Daily Tar Heel, will tolerate.

However, Bandes points out that she did not misquote anyone, and the MSA did not establish that she did:

But what I did was not journalistically out of bounds. My sources agreed with racial profiling, and I simply added my two cents.

I was also fired for apparently misleading my sources on what I was writing about. I thought I had made it clear that my article was about both 9/11 and racial profiling when I spoke to each individual.

As I wrote, I focused more on the latter topic. And I regret misleading them, even if I had no intentions of doing so.

But after asking each source several times what he thought of racial profiling, even if I did not explicitly tell them, I would”ve thought that they would understand what a large focus of my article would be about.

I”m deeply saddened that my sources have been harassed and have received death threats. I”m slightly put off by the profanity and hatred that has been thrown my way, and I”m extremely resentful for being called racist.

Join the club, Jillian: crying “racism” is a chief weapon of those who would deflect attention away from Islamic terrorism and what we must do about it.

Anyway, what we have in sum is this: a student columnist writes a column using flamboyant language that apparently embarrasses those whom she quotes, although she quoted them accurately. She is then fired after the MSA complains. But what is the MSA? And what about an honest discussion of the legitimate points Bandes raised? It has been rendered impossible by the furor over her even daring to raise them. And so dhimmitude continues to gallop forward unhindered: it is impermissible even to consider various ways we can defend ourselves against Islamic terrorism.

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Filed Under: dhimmitude, Jihadist intimidation and thuggery, Leftist/Islamic Alliance, Muslim Students Association, United States


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