RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS AND HOME LAND SECUIRTY
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From: Bettina G.
Date: Friday, August 22, 2008, 6:47 AM
Subject: Religious Freedoms and Home Land Secuirty
ID: 263666

Last night many of you might have caught a news article about an airline pilot and military veteran and his wife fighting for his job because he and his wife are, apparently, on the Homeland Security watch list as possible terrorists. He is a convert to Islam. The TSA won't confirm that he's on their list but his employer is about to fire him unless he can prove is innocence! Yet he has no access to any accusations, no understanding why he might be on their list except possibly that he is a convert to Islam and his wife is a Pakistani Muslim.

CNN picked this story up and ran the story August 20th. Here is the place you can see the CNN clip on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEPZ8DqmPao

My personal concern for these people comes from one of those odd coincidences in life. Last year I was on a flight to Pennsylvania and for the last leg of the flight I met a charming woman who was my seat mate on the airplane. She was Muslim and traditionally dressed, very friendly and outgoing. It turns out that, by coincidence she was working with a small interfaith group in her community. We visited the entire flight she gave me some of the materials she distributes. She represented a small publishing group for educational materials about Islam. We parted at baggage claim with a hug and have casually stayed in touch over the year or two since.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw the story about the two of them on CNN and realized it was the woman I'd met on my flight.

At the time we met I remember she made a comment about security at the airports, that she wondered how long and how many times being stopped going through "security" it would take before they figured out she was "OK" but she said it with a patient forebearance. Now, apparently her husband is guilty by association.

I find this alarming. Neither of them have access to correcting the situation. It took an act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off that same watch list!