Blogger Forced to Change Antiwar T-Shirt Before Boarding Plane
Wednesday September 6, 2006
Category: Free Speech | War on Terror
Photo: Copyright © 2006 Eran Chesnutt.I'm not making this up, folks. Jen Brea reports on one of the strangest free speech stories I've heard in ages: Peace activist Raed Jarrar wears a bilingual English-Arabic T-shirt reading "We Will Not Be Silent"...and is forced to, well, be silent:
It all reminds me of an apocryphal story about Golda Meir in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. One parliamentarian, it is said, pointed to a recent spate of sexual assaults in Jerusalem and suggested that a curfew be enforced against women. Meir stood up and pointed out that, since it was men who were doing the raping, men should be the ones living under a curfew. The matter was dropped at that point.
As many of you may know, Jarrar was the titular Raed of Where is Raed?, in which the Iraqi blogger Salam al-Janabi--writing under the nom de plume "Salam Pax" (the Arabic and Latin words for peace, respectively)--gave the world an insider's view of the Iraq War.
Full Coverage:
Photo: Copyright © 2006 Eran Chesnutt.
While Jarrar tried to explain that he was merely exercising his constitutional right to free speech, the inspectors questioning him told him that wearing a shirt like that to go on an airplane was like entering a bank wearing a shirt that read "I am a robber." Jarrar says he left the Middle East precisely in part because he did not want to live in a society where officers had the right to dictate his behavior or dress.While the mental image of a dozen passengers tackling Jarrar every time he reaches into the overheard compartment is probably more realistic than most would like to admit, censoring people to protect them from public bigotry "for their own good" is never a good idea. Besides, blocking someone for wearing a "We Will Not Be Silent" T-shirt creates the impression that the only way you can be an Arab and not silent is to be a terrorist--exactly the same message al-Qaeda and similar groups are trying to spread throughout the region.
It all reminds me of an apocryphal story about Golda Meir in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. One parliamentarian, it is said, pointed to a recent spate of sexual assaults in Jerusalem and suggested that a curfew be enforced against women. Meir stood up and pointed out that, since it was men who were doing the raping, men should be the ones living under a curfew. The matter was dropped at that point.
As many of you may know, Jarrar was the titular Raed of Where is Raed?, in which the Iraqi blogger Salam al-Janabi--writing under the nom de plume "Salam Pax" (the Arabic and Latin words for peace, respectively)--gave the world an insider's view of the Iraq War.
Full Coverage:
- Arab Blogger Barred from Boarding Plane Because of T-Shirt (Jen Brea / About World News)
- Political Blog Profile: Where is Raed? (Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins / About Web Logs)
- Book Review: The Baghdad Blog (Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins / About Web Logs)
- U.S. Government Harasses, Intimidates Visiting Foreign Scholars
- Tariq Ramadan Wins Case Against U.S. Government
Comments
Some correspondence between myself and JetBlue customer service regarding their behavior can be found at my blog, link attached to this comment. They offer several excuses for their racist behavior.