After reading this exposition on the issue by Great Bong. I realized that if Park51 were actually an effort by terror-loving organizations, then it’s a master stroke indeed! I find it hard to believe that Soho Properties did not foresee any issues or controversies with announcing a major construction project to benefit Muslims so close to Ground Zero. Knowing the tea baggers, Fox News, Sarah Palin, and their ilk. It is preposterous to claim innocence to not having anticipated such a backlash. So what forced them to proceed ahead with the plan?

Consider this: let some radical Islamic terrorist organization X want to indulge in a negative PR campaign against the US. Specifically, create a propaganda that depicts US as an intolerant nation, thereby denying US its moral high-ground in the so called “war on terror”. All X has to do is create a political catch-22 situation for US by capitalizing on the severely polarized political atmosphere near an election season. The Park51 fits the bill perfectly. The Right and the republican party simply plays into X’s ploy and is vituperative in its opposition to the construction despite having no constitutional or legal basis for doing so, whereas the Left and Libertarians play their part by opposing the Right. The catch-22 here is that if Park51 does not come through, the the US is demonstrated as a bigoted nation with none of the freedoms that it is putatively defending through its “war on terror”: bad PR. On the other hand, if Park51 does come  through, then Islamic organizations like X can claim victory in Islamization of the US (again potentially bad PR if not handled well), which will further enrage the Right to act Islamophobic (definitely bad PR!).

So are the entities responsible for Park51 unfortunate victims of the far Right’s bigotry? It is entirely possible. But are we sure that there not more than what meets the eye here? That’s something to think about.

P.S.: Even if my conspiracy theory was true, IMHO pulling the curtains on Park51 is a far worse proposition then letting it go through and then engaging in a careful discourse and PR campaign to mitigate the damage from the far Right’s Islamophobia.

Delta Airlines

I was supposed to be in Costa Rica this week. Instead, I am still in College Station, Texas. Mostly because I am not Muslim. Sounds weird? Read on.

My flight on Delta Airlines was supposed to leave on Friday at 5:45 AM from Houston International Airport. I got there about an hour before departure and they stuck me on a self check-in line. I tried getting the staff’s attention but they didn’t seem interested in helping anyone. During my time there, I saw stretches of as long as 10 minutes during which the check-in counter was completely unmanned with a line of over 10 groups of passengers waiting.

After about 20 minutes of waiting on the self check-in I finally managed to get to the check-in kiosk. When I try to check-in it says it can’t do the check-in because I don’t have an US passport and I have to get to the manned check-in counter. Now they stick me at the end of the manned check-in counter which is taking 10 minutes or more to check-in each passenger. As I inch closer to the front of the line a new guy shows up to take over the counter, and simply leave the counter and starts walking around the line of people waiting for check-in.

He looks distinctly south Asian seems to be curiously interested in the diaspora in the passenger line. He walks up a group in front of me and two groups (all south Asian) behind me. He asks both of them where they are going to. Then he proceeds to ask “Hindu or Muslim?” It left me a little more than surprised! When they say Muslim, he says he’s Iqbal from Pakistan and just pulls them out of the line and proceeds to expedite their check-in for a flight that over an hour away while mine is in 30 minutes.

I try to get his attention but he doesn’t seem to care. Finally after he checks them in, he comes up to me. I try to check in and he says “Sorry, you are too late for the flight. I’m afraid you have missed it.” And this is my fault how? He says “You should have been here 2 hrs before the departure” Never mind the fact that I was passed over for two groups of over 5-6 passengers each. And then when I ask about reschedule he just scorns at us and walks to the next Muslim group behind us!

At this point I was shocked! What the hell! I really was out of words to verbalize my thoughts. Finally the lady in the First Class check-in section noticed that I had been waiting for over 40 minutes and calls us over to see if she could help us. By then it was too late for her to help us with anything. She was trying to be as helpful as she could, but the damage was done. All other tickets/flights to Costa Rica was too expensive for me to afford. I was enraged at the discrimination and wanted to speak with the person in-charge. Guess who was in-charge! Yup, it was Iqbal! So much for redress. In fact, the staff there went so far as saying that they have no obligation to reschedule my flight or give me a single penny of what I had spent buying the ticket, and it was their generosity that they were even entertaining a reschedule at higher prices. (Behold the glory of deregulated capitalism).

With all options exhausted, all I could do was drive back to College Station, all the the while wondering “If only I was Muslim….”