No Recourse

Trey Smith

In April of this year, Saadiq Long, a 43-year-old African-American Muslim who now lives in Qatar, purchased a ticket on KLM Airlines to travel to Oklahoma, the state where he grew up. Long, a 10-year veteran of the US Air Force, had learned that the congestive heart failure from which his mother suffers had worsened, and she was eager to see her son. He had last seen his mother and siblings more than a decade ago, when he returned to the US in 2001, and spent months saving the money to purchase the ticket and arranging to be away from work.

The day before he was to travel, a KLM representative called Long and informed him that the airlines could not allow him to board the flight. That, she explained, was because the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had placed Long on its "no-fly list", which bars him from flying into his own country.

Long has now spent the last six months trying to find out why he was placed on this list and what he can do to get off of it. He has had no success, unable to obtain even the most basic information about what caused his own government to deprive him of this right to travel.

He has no idea when he was put on this list, who decided to put him on it, or the reasons for his inclusion. He has never been convicted of any crime, never been indicted or charged with a crime, and until he was less than 24 hours away from boarding that KLM flight back to his childhood home, had received no notice that his own government prohibited him from flying.
~ from US Muslim Placed on No-Fly List Is Unable to See His Ailing Mother by Glenn Greenwald ~

Whenever someone tells me that all these attacks on our basic civil rights are nothing to worry about UNLESS an individual is up to no good, I just shake my head. Most Americans don't worry about these intrusions simply because it doesn't impact them personally. But as Glenn Greenwald has shown again and again and again, there ARE Americans who are impacted daily and a good deal of these people are Muslims!

This usurpation of rights has accelerated under Obama, not decreased. More individuals are on the No Fly list than ever before. So, this idea that Obama is a Muslim sympathizer is absolutely insane. His administration seems to go out of its way to stick it to Americans who happen to be Muslim.

Regardless of WHY someone is placed on the No Fly list, it should bother every person reading this that such individuals are left with no recourse. With no way to challenge inclusion, people are just left hanging in the breeze. More importantly, as history has shown, unchallenged power always leads to abuse.

Whatever side of the political aisle you happen to stand on, you should be pissed off to no end. Yes, today the main targets may be "those" Muslims, but tomorrow it may be you!!