topic by
Fred Reed
6/12/2002 (1:04) |
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FLORIDA, HILLARY, AND AIRPORTS
Maybe Them Terrorists Just Got Their Towels
Wrapped Too Tight?
By Fred Reed
The whole curious affair began when Fatima Ali Rezah, a citizen of Algeria,
refused to unveil for a driver's license photo in Florida. The clerk, who
didn't follow society carefully, thought she was joking. She wasn't. Her
religion, she said, prohibited baring her face. The laws of the United
Stated were irrelevant. The clerk stared at her, puzzled. She was covered
from head to toe in black cloth and looked, he later told friends, like a
large raisin. He is what is nowadays called a good ol' boy, meaning someone
with a Southern accent and common sense -- that is, starkly unqualified for
diplomacy. He refused her request. A photo was supposed to identify, he
said. This one wouldn't. One black bag was like another. No, he said. And
that was that. Or should have been.
With encouragement from the ACLU, Fatima sued, and won on grounds of
religious freedom. To insist on a photo would be discrimination, said the
justices without noticeable rationality. DMV argued for separation of church
and at least the state of Florida, but was told it applied only to
conservative Christians. Things snowballed. About seven thousand Islamics
lived in Florida, most of them studying crop dusting. Skeptics pointed out
that they came from countries that didn't have crops. The Muslims said this
was because their crops hadn't been dusted. The State Department accepted
this explanation, saying it showed initiative and would result in
self-sufficiency in vegetables in the Sahara. Anyway, the Muslims all
demanded photos of textiles on their licenses. The hooded look was in. One
of the crop-dusting students, who was studying pesticide chemistry in night
school, said he wanted a bagged photo too. Not to allow it would be sexual
discrimination, he said. The courts agreed. Florida, they said, would not
countenance special privilege.
Soon dark blobs were everywhere behind steering wheels. The police,
notoriously insensitive, began referring to them as BBJs, for 'Black Bag
Jobs.' This led to agitation by the civil-rights apparatus. 'Black' might
offend African-Americans, 'Bag' would damage the self-esteem of the
digestively incontinent. Besides, it was the name of a book of the Bible,
and banned from public discourse. But this was minor compared to what was
coming. Unexpectedly, the black Muslims in the penitentiary at Calhoun filed
suit, saying they wanted to wear bags too. The real reason was that they
were engaged in ongoing warfare with the Aryan Brotherhood, a white
supremacist organization noted for its shankwork. Wearing masks, thought the
incarcerated Muslims, would be a tactical advantage. But they weren't women,
objected the warden, who didn't read the papers and wasn't aware of the
unisex decision. The Muslims were irate. 'Man, you discriminate because we
be guys, just like we be black. Can't nobody git no justice now how. Damn.'
This made no obvious sense and thus qualified for judicial review.
It got worse, or at least stranger. Months later the jailed faithful, no
dummies, discovered that their beliefs required the wearing of gloves during
fingerprinting. It was, they said, a tenet of their religion that had never
been written down. Western civilization lacked respect for Oral Tradition,
they said. This too began working its way through the courts.
Unaware of the searching revision of jurisprudence begun by her case, Fatima
Ali Reza returned to Fort Myers, where she lived with her husband Abdul and
three teenage daughters. They were in most respects a normal American family,
except that they spoke English. Abdul was a branch manager at a local bank
and gardened as a hobby. In the interest of economy, he had bought two tons
of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer and kept it in the garage. The girls, good
students, served as crossing guards at their school [where they became known
as the Safety Rezahs.] Every morning Fatima made breakfast, made sure that
Abdul had a clean towel, and got the girls off to school.
More trouble ensued. There were, as it turned out, implications for airport
security. One Saturday at Miami International, the personnel at a security gate
were strip-searching a 93-year-old woman in a wheel chair. Next in line,
ignored by security, was a bearded Arab wearing a turban and carrying a
briefcase marked 'Bomb.' A woman in line behind him repeatedly tried to get the
attention of the security people. It took a while because the woman in the
wheelchair was struggling, which distracted the searchers. Finally her
gesticulation roused the suspicion of a supervisor. 'Don't you see? He's got
a bomb. Do something. Search him.' 'Ma'am, we can't profile. It's illegal.
We search at random.' 'Yes, but it says bomb, for God's sake. Look.'
The guard made a mental note to search the complaining woman, who had an
Alabama accent and was therefore probably bigoted against Muslims. He explained
to her that the man had a First Amendment right to write anything he chose on
his luggage. To suspect a Muslim male with a bomb of bad intentions was
stereotyping, he said, bordered on racism, and could lead to prosecution for
Hate Thought. The woman was so infuriated that she stormed off, muttering
that she was going to move back to the United States, if she could find it.
Her luggage was never found among the debris. National attention grew.
Newsweek picked up the story, running a cover, 'Mass Murderers: Victims or
Martyrs?' Dr. Saxa Prolimet-Mantequilla, who taught Lesbianism and Tantric
Symbology at Yale, argued that Muslims had a history of oppression in the
West. Challenged, she made the peculiar assertion that Anglophone peoples
had used Muslims in dark sacrifices and even in cannibalism; why, she said,
nursery rhymes proved it. Anyone but a reporter would have had the sense to
let this one pass. One of them asked. Prolimet-Mantequilla answered: 'Little
Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her Kurds in Hué. That's cannibalism.
Note that she says her Kurds. Indisputable evidence of slavery.'
The idea was silly enough that several campus organizations began
campaigning for reparations for enslaved Kurds, correctly thinking that it
would annoy their parents. The Atlantic solemnly picked up the story.
Hillary Clinton was then running surreptitiously for president, hoping to
finish off the country. She flew to Gainesville and said that she favored
reparations for mistreated female Kurds of color. These came to be called
Reparations H. Her approval rating rose to 76% among the functionally
illiterate, which pundits said assured her the Democratic nomination. Fatima
Ali Rezah was blissfully unaware of all of this. She made supper for her
husband, who was downtown renting a truck, and got the Safety Rezahs ready
for bed. America after all was built on immigration.
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