Imagine: a few members of a radical Christian group commit acts of terrorism. Let's say they're firebombing buildings and murdering some doctors who provide a service they disagree with.
Now let us pretend that American police departments decide that the fact that these murderers and terrorists were Christian was significant. So, in an attempt to stave off future murders, police start to investigate every Christian student association in the country and put their members under surveillance without any probable cause.
The uproar would be insane. Christian conservatives in government would be calling for the head of every police chief involved, and blaming the current president for allowing the executive branch to meddle with religion.
Sadly, it has happened, only with minor twists.
Muslim student associations across the northeast have been put under surveillance by the NYPD, after a few other Muslims were connected to terrorism. With the assistance of the CIA, it monitored where students ate, shopped, and worshipped.
Although the NYPD claimed that only people suspected of some connection to terrorism would end up on reports, UB alumna Adeela Khan ended up on one. Her offense: forwarding an email inviting students to lectures by Muslim scholars.
Another report attained by the Associated Press shows that the NYPD also came to Buffalo to monitor the local Somali community. Included in the notes by the Erie County Sherriff's department, our community would have to be looked at because we had Somali professors and students.
After the backlash to Obama's decision on birth control, one would assume that the conservatives crying for religious freedom might come to the defense of Muslim students.
Strangely, they're silent. Somehow mandating that a business run by the Catholic Church be treated like any other business trumps the civil rights of American students being pulverized.
As high school students, many of us are made to read Nineteen Eighty-Four and ponder the possibility of Big Brother arriving and monitoring every aspect of our lives. For Muslims, this is no longer just an idea of what might happen; they're seeing their rights slowly get whittled away.
Everyone involved in this horrible ruse should be ashamed. Just one person in a position of authority could have remembered that our U.S. Constitution protects every citizen equally, but our government has convinced us that abandoning the values that founded this nation is defendable as long as it's for a good cause.
Without a doubt this is one of the most disgusting examples of profiling seen since the beginning of the post 9/11 era of fear mongering and hate. Under the guise of giving our police force the "tools" it needs to fight terrorism, we've allowed for a whole subsection of citizens to be thrown under the bus.
There is a strong contingent in this nation that thinks that the rights of others can be stomped on. The same people who tout their staunch adherence to the Constitution are the ones basically ostracizing citizens based solely on their religion.
Of course, that's already the Republican ideal: the Orwellian notion that some people are more equal than others. As long as you're a straight white Christian, you're in the club.
