Unjust Discrimination

Last Monday, six Muslim imams were detained at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota. Imam Omar Shahin, one of the detainees, defended his colleagues saying they had not done anything suspicious. The muslims were returning from a religious conference and were merely praying in the airport before the flight. Once on the flight, a passenger insisted he had overheard anti-U.S. statements while the men were moving about the plane, and reported it to a flight attendant. The men were then taken off the plane and were handcuffed and questioned, suspected of poessessing terroristic intents. The airline, US Airways, protests that they made the right call. However, the incident is still under scrutiny by groups such as the Transportation Department and Homeland Security.

This derogatory and offensive move against a specific racial group is not the first one to occur in history. One of the most infamous slanders against a race is the Holocaust. More specifically, the Americans' attitude towards the Muslims is the same as the attitude of the Nazis towards the Jews. They were suspicious and believed that all Jews did wrong, no matter who they were or where they came from, much like we believe of the Muslims. This is, however, not true in all cases. What happened at the Minneapolis Airport and during the Holocaust were both cases involving racial stereotypes. Racial stereotyping is not only belittling towards the race, but morally incorrect. Not every person of a specific race is evil.