TSA Targets Women Wearing Hijabs?

By Matthew Rothschild, January 7, 2010

Nadia Hassan is a frequent flyer. The forty-year-old MBA, who was born in Michigan, had never been hassled until Tuesday morning, January 5.

She was traveling with her five-year-old daughter and went to Dulles International to board a plane for Los Angeles.

She was in line to go through security.

“Before I could even get to the conveyor belt,” she says, “a lady in uniform comes up to me and asks me to remove my headscarf. I said, ‘No, I cannot, but you’re more than welcome to pat me down or search me.’ ”

The TSA agent stood there while she put her belt, shoes, coat, and laptop in the bins and went through the usual screening device with her daughter.

“But as soon as we went through the screening, she said, ‘Ma’am, can you come to the side for a full body pat-down?’ She did it right in front of four men, and she was touching me everywhere. And every article in my baggage was being checked for bomb-making materials.”

Hassan says she asked the man who was examining her bags what was going on.

“Ma’am, they just switched procedures on us this morning,” she remembers him saying. “Every woman wearing a head scarf must go through this type of search.”

The TSA denies this new policy, sort of.

“The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) current procedures for the screening of bulky clothing or headwear -- which have been in effect since 2007 -- remain unchanged,” it said in a statement. “The wearing of a hijab itself does not automatically trigger security checks. To ensure the highest level of security, passengers wearing loose fitting or bulky clothing -- including headwear -- may be subject to additional screening. In instances where passengers choose not to remove bulky clothing, including headwear, our officers are trained to offer a private screening area and may conduct a pat down search to clear the individual.”

Hassan calls the “additional screening” of women wearing hijabs “villainization.”

“I was born and raised in this country,” she says. “My father was a Marine and fought in the Korean War. We were taught to love this country. You’re targeting good Americans who just want to practice their faith and dress modestly.”

Hassan understands the need for “safeguarding Americans, myself included,” she says.

“But that morning I didn’t feel I was safeguarded or protected. I felt like I was being insulted. I felt like I was being targeted.”

In a separate incident on January 4, a Muslim woman with a Canadian passport was trying to fly from the airport in Halifax to Ohio to visit her husband. She believes she was held for questioning because she was the only woman wearing a head scarf, the Council on American Islamic Relations reports.

Nihad Awad, head of the group, objects to the policy of profiling women who wear headscarves. “Screening of passengers,” Awad said, should be based on an analysis of “people’s suspicious behaviors, not on their skin color or religious attire.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.