Airport security? Pah! From WND, with thanks to all who sent this in:
The Transportation Security Administration — created after 9/11 to safeguard America’s airports — is providing Islamic sensitivity training to 45,000 airport security officers so they’ll know what to expect when Muslims fly from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia to participate in the annual “hajj,” or pilgrimage to Mecca.
“We put out information telling everyone that hajj is coming; this is the time frame; individuals are going to be traveling with these types of items,” TSA spokesman Darrin Kayser told the State Department’s USINFO Web site Tuesday. Calling it “cultural sensitivity training,” Kayser added that airport security officials need “just to be aware that they may also be praying.”
Ironically, just last month six Muslim imams were ejected by federal authorities from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis because they were deemed a potential security threat. Among the various behaviors that unnerved fellow passengers was the group’s prayers in the airport prior to their flight.
Welcoming TSA’s Islamic sensitivity training is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which describes itself as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” In a press release praising the program yesterday, CAIR noted that it distributes a pocket guide titled “Your Rights and Responsibilities as an American Muslim.”
“As an airline passenger,” the CAIR guide states, “you are entitled to courteous, respectful and non-stigmatizing treatment by airline and security personnel. You have the right to complain about treatment that you believe is discriminatory.”
The press release also quoted the group’s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, as saying CAIR representatives nationwide have met with not only the TSA, but also from Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection officials on “issues related to cultural sensitivity and national security.”
Indeed, CAIR has developed a wide-ranging advisory and teaching relationship with government on the subject of protecting Muslim interests.
As WND reported previously, last June a senior Department of Homeland Security official from Washington personally guided CAIR officials on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O’Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.
However, CAIR itself is a controversial organization. It is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a “front group” for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Moreover, several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.
Read it all.