"Islamic group supports airport safety and security"

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Opinion
Islamic group supports airport safety and security 
The Arizona Republic


Regarding "Behavior of imams on airline justified suspicions" (Letters, Nov.
25):

We at the Council on American-Islamic Relations can't agree more with the
letter writer when he said, "No patriotic American Muslims want another
plane destroyed and people killed. " 

But he went on to say that he is concerned that what is likely to come is an
appeal by CAIR to reduce security at airports.

This is absolutely preposterous. 

This is exactly the opposite of what CAIR and all its 34 chapters stand for.


The security and safety of our citizens at airports is paramount, and so are
our fundamental civil rights. 

At CAIR, we support both!

CAIR has been working diligently with all states and federal authorities for
a safer America while protecting civil rights of Americans. CAIR condemns
and stand against all acts of intolerance, incitement and disrespect against
people or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.

That is the American thing to do. We will continue to do it.

The truth about how the imams have been treated has been covered very
thoroughly by CNN. 

We believe that the treatment of the imams, ranging in age from 30 to 60
years and including one who is blind, was un-American - just as un-American
as the groundless assertion by your letter writer. 

Left unchecked, both will do irreversible damage to our rights as citizens
of this great country!

We encourage the letter writer and others to do more research about CAIR. By
doing so, we hope misunderstandings will be replaced with better
understandings of our goals as a civil rights group in the United States. -
Mohamed El-Sharkawy, Phoenix
The writer is chairman of CAIR-AZ.


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