I guess I am shaken, and the more I think about it the more I have a mixed bag of feelings.
I am glad I went to the airport early. In the morning I asked my husband what are we going to do early in the airport since we didn’t have lounge access. I guess now I know. Have a friendly chat with one of the police officers.
I was stopped and questioned or as they put it “an informal” chat with them about my upcoming trip. Which by the way was under the action 7 of the terrorism act! Who me? I can assure you the only person I terrorise is my husband. 🙂
I knew that when I booked this trip it could have been somewhat interesting with all the issues with the refugees in Europe.
We are exploring
- Austria
- Hungary
- Greece
- Bulgaria
As a friend of ours put it the reverse route immigrants take. 😉
I get asked a lot about travelling with hijab and the issues you might face with immigration or the police. I always use to say that I have never had an issue and have never been stopped until now…
Apparently we were stopped because we had a one way ticket. They were some recent incidents with people going from our airport to Syria! I mean why would anyone do that, so this time we “got lucky” as well. I can see that it would raise red flags.
But they didn’t know I am the MuslimTravelGirl and a typical vacation is not really a return journey on a packaged holiday.
The officers were polite. They took us (separately) into a room. Searched my possessions (every one of them) and asked me few questions – which you probably can guess.
How did I feel?
I think at the time of being interviewed I was shocked that it was happening. I was more worried of missing my flight and the bad start to my holiday. I know they are doing their job and I can see their point of view. However once it was over. I actually could’t sleep that night and woke up having a nightmare. I did feel violated and especially my privacy! It makes you uncomfortable knowing that someone has access to your personal info. Plus it scares you.
You keep thinking what have I done wrong? Did I say anything, should I have posted this or that? It stops you from expressing yourself freely whether it is something against or for a particular topic. it doesn’t matter whether its religion or politics. It makes you think is there really freedom?
It should be innocent until proven guilty and this tactic makes you feel guilty from the start.
Don’t get me wrong questions are ok but searching everything under the sun of your possessions, for me, goes a little bit too far. Especially when there is no evidence to suggest the opposite.
I will not disclose the questions they asked because I respect the fact that they are doing their job and they have a country to protect! I want them to protect me as citizen of this country.
I will however say what I told them.
Yes I am a Muslim and by many I am considered a liberal Muslim. I wear hijab, I pray and I try to be a good person. Jihad which translates into struggle is used for many of this life’s struggles and doesn’t mean killing innocent people. My hardest jihad was to tell my mother I was a Muslim and see the pain in her eyes when I wore hijab for the first time. This is my jihad.
Leaving your family and going to Syria to get brainwashed or blow yourself up in my eyes is cowardliness. This goes against the basic principles of why I became Muslim.
Islam for me stands for social justice, love to the creation, to fellow human beings and honouring your parents. I believe there is God no matter what language you call it.
I don’t believe we just appeared on this earth. My brain and my feelings are too complicated to just come up. My soul the most important of them. Scientists can talk about the body but the soul for me is the answer to all. And that soul is a gift from our Creator.
What is Islam for me
Islam for me is when I am annoyed with my mother but I don’t say “uff leave me alone old woman” because this goes against Islam. In her feet lies paradise, but how many of the young generation today actually ignore their parents or treat them badly? Including myself and even my own sisters!
According to my family I became more calm and patient after becoming a Muslim. This is true, I am. I see the big picture and the grand scheme of things. Not the new bag or the big house I need to keep up with the Jones’s.
I give charity not because I have to show off but because I respect and I am thankful for the fact I have food on the table, nice holidays (that many would envy) and good health. Alhamdulillah (Praise is to God) for all these blessings.
Do I support those who go to Syria or to fight the infidels? NO! I would never do this and I don’t care what you tell me.
I don’t like being stopped, I don’t like being discriminated against just for the tiny 1% of the population that the big media cover. I believe there is more to many of this than meets our eyes or what is fed to us. (my inner conspiracy theorist shows)
However. I respect the job the police do! I respect that they are trying to keep our borders safe because trust me I don’t want bad people coming in this country either.
I have a family, dreams, hopes and I want to know I am safe. That nobody is going to come and blow up a bus, a plane or a building in the name of Islam or any other religion for that matter.
As long as those who are stopped are treated fairly, with respect and justice. I know it will probably not be the last time to be asked these questions. But you know what it’s ok.
Here is what I will say to you my fellow Muslims:
Don’t stop travelling, don’t be intimidated and travel the world. You have as much right as any other human being. If stopped answer all the questions truthfully and if you don’t have anything to hide you have nothing to be afraid of. I will continue travelling, sharing my stories and hopefully inspiring you.
My fellow sisters don’t stop wearing your hijab through the airport, because then they will win. Not the bad police who stopped you but the bad terrorist who does what he does in the name of Islam.
Travel and show your fellow humans and travellers the sunnah of our Prophet (Peace be Upon Him); smile, be polite and enjoy this life!
From me happy travels…
5 Tips on How to Enjoy Travelling with Low Cost Airlines
Anxiety Counselor
What a great article. The Police must be allowed to do their job, they are working hard protecting the people. Having said that, the one way it doesnt work is this, what if alleged suspects decide to dress without any sign of being a muslim, then what? the whole profiling then falls on its face.
But stay safe, be cool, dont be afraid to pray and meditate, airports can be stressful regardless.
Muslim Travel Girl
Thank you 🙂
Anon
Thanks a lot for the encouragement. I’ll be travelling for the first time alone in my life (to college in the US) and it’s pretty daunting.
But inshaAllah it goes as smoothly as it did for you. Thanks again
Peter
“I don’t like being stopped, I don’t like being discriminated against just for the tiny 1% of the population that the big media cover.”
Now it’s my turn to be picky on your post. You give the terrorists too much credit. 1% of Muslims would amount to 16 million people world wide. The ISIS army is estimated to have under 30,000 “soldiers”. 0.01% (160,000) would’ve been too high of an estimate for the proportion of Muslims to ever take a role in terrorism in their lifetime.
I’m not a Muslim, but it pisses me off that a developed/educated society such as ours discriminate against Muslims based on completely fabricated fear.
GUWonder
I am of the following school of thought: systematic governmental (or governmentally-supported) harassment of innocent people in the name of (pre-emptive) security risks not only undermining respect for the government and its laws but that it also increases the risk of alienating groups of people to the point where the end result is the mainstream public at large ends up being at a loss for it.
Treating innocent people as if they are lesser human beings (and deserving of more scrutiny), just because of some immutable (or largely immutable) characteristic relative to the rest of their fellow citizens, doesn’t do anyone much good — unless your plan is to try to thrive on conflict and violence.
I will note that Turkey has been doing this kind of thing to perceived Muslim travelers far more vigorously and in far greater numbers than the UK has. And that’s with Turkey under an “Islamist”-oriented government at that. Turkey was doing this even before the blowback from Turkey’s backing of anti-Assad forces in recent years hit Turkey repeatedly.
Mak
“(i.e., of the millions of Muslims who travel internationally every day, how many are terrorists? Right, a statistically insignificant difference from the number of Christians, Jews, etc.).”
What would you say if the above supposition was wrong? What if it could be demonstrated that despite the fact that a small minority of Muslims are terrorists, that Muslims are much more likely, relatively, than Christians or Jews, to be terrorists? Would that make a difference to you?
The question is important, because I think that your statistical assumptions are almost certainly wrong. While it is certainly true that any person’s individual likelihood of being a terrorist is very, very small, that tiny percentage will necessarily be much, much larger on a relative basis for Muslims over Christians or Jews. This is a matter of mathematics, and not of prejudice, and one can utilize accepted statistical “Bayesian Inferences” (i.e., Lrelative(a,b)=L(a)/L(b)) to do these calculations.
Of course, that does not mean that most Muslims are terrorists, or even that many Muslims are terrorists. It only means that Muslims are relatively more likely to be terrorists than other groups. If one outwardly demonstrates allegiance to related, though non-violent, Muslim principles (i.e., hijab), it is not irrational to focus on those people for further inquiry.
Mina
You’re inaccurate stereotype of Muslims stems from your belief that Muslims are prone to terrorism/support terrorism. In reference to your Bayes’ Theorem one could also argue that based off a Rand report the probability of a Muslim being a terrorist was calculated to be 0.007 percent. In any event you’re entitled to your prejudice assessment of Muslims.
Peter
Mak,
Good try pretending to understand statistics!
What are your thoughts about flying with a German pilot? At least one of them intentionally killed a whole plane of passengers, and that’s a pretty high proportion of Germans out there.
Ben
Peter,
Nice try trying to obscure Mak’s argument. Yes one German pilot kills a whole plane of passengers. But internationally, how many Germans are involved in terrorist plots, especially against the US and Western Europe?
As Mak said, if you are comparing threat levels (as the government is doing), then you look at statistics. Obviously at this current time, the threat of terrorism in the US or Western Europe (and even China) is most likely, though not exclusively, going to come from Muslims. That doesn’t mean that even 0.01% of Muslims are involved in terrorism as you said in your post.
But as Mak said, compared to other groups, such as Japanese, Koreans, Brazilians, Buddhists, Christians, and Jews, there is a much higher probability of Muslims committing terrorist acts. This is not racist, fear mongering, it is reality.
If MTG had been questioned or treated inappropriately by the authorities, been verbally abused or had her legal rights taken away, then that would be completely unacceptable.
Peter
Ben,
Let’s put it this way – consider the Oscar winners. Most of them are white. That’s a fact. Now, when you come across a white person at a random corner of the earth, do you take a selfie with him/her because “chances are good he/she is an Oscar winner”?
If treating Muslims the way we do is justified on the grounds of them being more likely terrorists, it must also make sense to treat all white people like potential celebrities.
TravelBloggerBuzz
Excellent post, thank you.
And welcome to TBB…tomorrow that is!
Ariana
A very eloquent and thoughtful post. I understand that feeling of being violated and treated like a criminal – though to be fair, I’ve experienced that more while buying money orders at Walmart than at the airport. 😉 I’ve had my things thoroughly searched once but the officers were so respectful about it, I honestly didn’t mind. I do, however, worry when my family travels – are they going to be treated as well as I am (as a non-hijabi?). In any case, I think the way you expressed yourself was honest, respectful, and appropriate. What some people don’t realize is that “we” are as concerned about travel safety as everyone else and that unlike them, we carry the extra burden of being targeted by both sides. It’s hard to understand unless you’re in our shoes. But the biggest fallacy in the argument of those who chastise you for writing this post is that you can’t be concerned about general safety and personal privacy at the same time.
Dude26
I’ve gotta be honest. Yes, if this happened to me on a regular basis, I would be upset. But, I do see the other side’s view point as well. There is only (as of now) one, major group of people that hosts within them pro-terrorist views – and it’s muslims. They may be a minority, sure, but a sizable minority. You know – if you are honest with yourself – that there are alot of people in muslim countries that support terrorist acts (they don’t call it terrorism…), there is vast anti-americanism across the muslim world, also alot of anti-jewish hatred that goes beyond anything rational (in fact, I would say about 40% of muslims worldwide think jews “run” America).
What I’m saying here is: Yeah, it sucks to be profiled (I would be upset too), but sometimes it’s the least worst option, and I’m sorry, but our safety and lives means more to me than the inconvinince of a few.
Muslim Travel Girl
Sorry but I respectfully disagree with your comment on vast majority support terrorism. Check out the studies. I would also like to know where you get the 40% stat? Because I speak to a lot of Muslims even through this blog and majority don’t support anything. They want happy, long and peaceful life, like any of us.
Peter
Sure there are pro-terrorist Muslims. There are also God-fearing white American Christians who walk into schools/churches/malls and gun down random innocent people. Far more commonly, you hear Americans (who prob will never actually commit a crime) talk openly about how they need to be armed so they can fight the evil Washington-based government who’s out to get them.
Mike
I admire your restraint, because no one should be subject to the type of harassment that you received. I hope that you can ignore everyone who tries to justify the actions of the police by saying, “We’re just trying to protect ourselves.” Not only is it bigotry but it shows a shocking misunderstanding of how math works (i.e., of the millions of Muslims who travel internationally every day, how many are terrorists? Right, a statistically insignificant difference from the number of Christians, Jews, etc.).
I have a lot of respect for GUWonder and I think that their explanation is probably the correct one. Doesn’t make it right, of course.
Muslim Travel Girl
Thank you very much Mike. I appreciate your comment.
Kimmie a
Muslimgirl, I have a short story to tell. My daughter was a college student age 21. She was having a terrible internal struggle withher chosen academic path, so one night she drive herself to the beach (we live close to the ocean in an expensve community) so that she could pray and ponder her decision. It was about 11:00 at night and she was in a very safe area, parked in authorisedlot. While she sat in her car and watched the waves two police officers drove up to her car, questioned her, and asked permission to search her car! Being a dutiful young woman she obliged, as she could hear her father’s voice (he is an attorney!) to cooperate with the police.
Of course nothing was found and my daughter was “allowed” to continue sitting in her car. However, she was so upset she left immediately and drove to our home, in tears. She felt violated, guilty, and very ashamed, although she had done absolutely nothing wrong.
Now, today, two years later she is terrified of any type of security official.
BY the way my daughter is not Muslim, she is a petite woman about 5’2″, no tattoos or piercings, dresses in a respectable style, and wears glasses! So you see, it is a terrible fact that this type of incident can happen to anyone.
Muslim Travel Girl
Aw Kimmie,
I am so sorry for experience, it is not easy to pass the fact that someone has such a right over you. I hope she manages to move on and have a happy and stress free life. I know this can happen to anyone it doesn’t matter what religion or race you are. If she needs a new friend im here for her. 🙂
Ahmad Jalaludin
Amazing post. As a muslim that has to travel to the US for work, I had been stopped and interviewed every time in recent months.
The first time is always the worst feeling. I can totally empathise with being made to feel guilty when you have done nothing wrong.
Similarly, I would just answer every question honestly and it’s most important to keep calm and not be emotional. Apparently, it gets easier each time but I do feel bad for my non-muslim co-workers who have to wait for almost an hour for me to get past border control.
I do hope it does not stop muslims from traveling and seeing the world InshaAllah.
Muslim Travel Girl
Definitely me too. It wouldn’t stop me but I hope it doesn’t others. I have friends who say they won’t travel for this reason and it’s sad.
eternitysojourner
We had a similar experience when returning to the USA (via George Bush Int’l Airport!) from Trinidad in 2006. We’ve had mini-interrogations almost every summer visit since living abroad. It’s annoying, inconvenient (especially with little ones!), and frustrating to be asked the same questions again and again but we don’t let it stop us from exercising our right to move, migrate, and discover. Sorry you had to experience this but it can be (and is!) much worse for others.
Mak
I am sorry for you that you got caught up in the extra security because of the acts of your co-religionists. But I think that you need to see the other side of the coin from the perspective of the (non-beleiving) potential victims of these people whom they have declared to be their enemies. While you disagree about their use of violence and are not a danger, nobody can know that without speaking with you, while outwardly you share many of the same values and beliefs as them. You are unlucky that a material number of those who share your aesthetic and religious views are engaged in a terror campaign against your Country, and I think that it is unfortunate but understandable that security is interested in learning more about you to assure that you don’t have more in common with them than that.
Muslim Travel Girl
I agree Mak that’s why I said I don’t mind them doing their job. There is really no issue with talking but going through everything on your possession when they see we not a threat is a bit too much for me. That’s all
Mina
MTG is justified in bemoaning her hapless airport security experience.
Holding all Muslims accountable for the actions of a few, painting all followers of Islam under the same brush as ISIS is inequitable. Proclaiming to believe in the same God are just words at the end of the day, it’s actions that draw the line in the sand. Your vilifying accusatory statement and using words like “co-religionists” implies that all Muslims are ISIS.
I can’t fault the officers, in light of what’s happened they have a job to do and sometimes that means indiscriminately choosing a Muslim to single out.
Wes al Kentuckiya
Hey MTG,
Without addressing the merits of your grievance with security, I would opine that this is an untimely post. Over thirty are murdered at an airport by Islamic extremists one day, and the next you choose to post an article that is, at least in part, centered around how your feelings were hurt by airport security.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t make your arguments, and I am not commenting on the validity of your positions. I’m merely stating that it appears to be poor taste to lament hurt feelings at this particular point in time. It doesn’t present good “optics”, to use the parlance of our times.
Muslim Travel Girl
Sorry you feel this way. Because 2 days before my travels 30 more were killed in Istanbul and Ankara. Unfortunately the times we live in are not the best.
The-Nuffler
@MTG,
@Wes al Kentuckiya meant 30 European/Western victims. He either doesnt know or really doesn’t care about all the other victims that suffer everyday at the hands of extremism. They expect you to grin and bear indignities that they themselves would never tolerate or suffer even if the world was burning to the ground around them. Your account is an excellent and sobering reminder of how a Police State usually comes into being. Stay strong in your struggle sister.
GUWonder
They thought you were trying to sneak into Turkey or elsewhere to get into Syria.
Quite routinely either the passengers’ own statements or the electronic spy machine obsessed with mass surveillance of passengers’ records with airlines (and other travel companies) leads to a trip and its passengers being flagged.
What was the routing of the ticketed PNRs with the flight coming in and the flight going out of this airport where the questioning like this happened?
I find it amusing that the passport cover image for this blog entry says “God and my right”.
Muslim Travel Girl
Well we definitely didn’t say anything. The flight was with Jet2 which is a UK based low cost airline. 🙂
Harambe
Why would you wear a hijab onto a plane, that’s the same as an American wearing a face mask.