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I've noticed this more and more recently. I was at the UN on Saturday, taking a tour like any good tourist does ;) and they were discussing the 6 official languages of the UN. I figured, well, hey, I'm halfway through that list - why not just learn the rest of the languages? I'd always wanted to learn Arabic, anyway, and I'd studied the script for a while a couple months before, so I stopped at a Barnes and Noble in Soho and picked up an Arabic book.
Immediately, I felt uncomfortable. At the checkout counter, at screening for the tours we went to, at airport security. Why? Because I was learning Arabic, and nothing more than that.
The airport, I think, was the worst. I'm of Norwegian and German descent, from Minnesota, a Methodist turned Unitarian Universalist - why should I, of all people, be worried? Well, first, someone in my family (not quite sure who, somehow) is on the no-fly list. We've got a common last name, so it's possible that it's not ACTUALLY one of us, but we're always stopped at airports. Add to that the fact that I now carry an Arabic book with me, and the workers there start to get suspicious. They actually do. It's unbelievable. It's not their fault, either.
The recent experience has really highlighted something for me, although I knew it all along: the Bush administration is not targeting terrorism. They're using the Arabic language, features that look Middle Eastern, the religion of Islam, to create suspicion among Americans when they seem any of these things. I hear quite often, "That guy looks like a terrorist." What does a terrorist "look" like? Did Timothy McVeigh "look" like a terrorist, or can he not be considered one because he was not from the Middle East?
Why in the world should I feel like I have to hide the fact that I'm speaking Arabic to keep myself off some government terrorist watch list? It's so ridiculous. The Bush administration should stop targeting innocent civilians, innocent AMERICANS, and focus on actual terrorism.
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