EIGHT YEARS after 9/11, we’re used to changes in our routines. We show ID to get into office buildings, and take off our shoes at airports.
But should a college student flying back to school be handcuffed and held for five hours because he has Arabic flash cards in his backpack?
That’s the way Nick George, a senior at Pomona College, in California, sees what happened to him at the Philadelphia airport two Saturdays ago.
via Dave Davies: Student air passenger handcuffed to echoes of 9/11 fears | Philadelphia Daily News | 09/11/2009.
Follow that link and read this story. It is disconcerting. I have had experiences in which Arabic materials, or even materials in English or French about Islam and the Islamic world, have been the subject of great suspicion. Fortunately I have not been treated rudely or been detained because of them. It does worry me, though.