I left work later than I intended to tonight, and this concerned me because I’m in the middle of a rather difficult move from one apartment to another here in Chocolate City. Moving. Ugh, right? Anyway, while worrying that I now had even LESS time to sort and pack my crap, I overheard something important on NPR. “Maybe I was meant to run late”, I mused to myself…maybe, indeed.
What I ended up listening to had me riveted to the news [though it wasn’t quite a driveway moment— that would be challenging here in the city :)]. NPR’s All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel was interviewing a Michigan-based attorney named Kurt Haskell; Haskell was aboard Northwest flight 253, along with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attempted to blow it up on Christmas day.
While all of you are aware of this horrifying incident, a few of you may be unaware of some disturbing additional information pertaining to that attack. On NPR, Haskell described a scene he witnessed with his wife prior to boarding that ill-fated flight home to Detroit. He recalled seeing terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab escorted to the gate by a “well-dressed Indian man”, who tried to intervene on Abdulmutallab’s behalf and browbeat an airline employee in to overlooking the fact that the wanna-be martyr lacked a passport. WTF? Who gets to board anything without a passport, these days? And also, uh, INDIAN? I think he meant South Asian, because if Mr. Haskell is anything like me, he was born here and probably can’t tell the difference between a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan from a mere glance.
Let me perfectly clear: I did not come out of semi-hiding to write this post for the purpose of moaning that now “we” look “bad”, nor am I digging in my heels and protesting this “slur” against all good Yindians from Yindia. Aside: I think this incident illustrates a point I have long-made on this blog and it illustrates it very well; nuance and difference are lost on most people. While many of my first and a few of my second generation friends hotly protest being lumped in with “those” Pakistanis or “those” Indians (depending on whether they are the former or latter, mais oui), I roll my eyes for many reasons, including the fact that racists and other assholes just see curry. Brown. Apu. Outsourcing. Perhaps now, Jay Sean.
They sure as hell don’t assume that I’m a Christian or know where Kerala is– to most of the people with whom I interact, I’m Brown, most probably Hindu, and possibly on my way to an Arranged Marriage which I can then write about in poor chick-lit form, via a book with any combination of henna, mangoes, sari pallus and whatever else, flanked by an ersatz Indic font on the cover. Yay for predictable fiction! /aside
So why DID I write this post? Because.
a) Apparently everyone/everything really IS connected to someone Brown these days (!)
b) Haskell was so sure that the man ushering Abdulmutallab was Indian that he said as much a few times during the interview which I overheard, and NOT ONCE was he asked about this detail…not even via a tentative, “Well, you think the man was Indian, correct?”
c) Almost every article I’ve read since, including a post on ATC’s own blog omits this potent adjective. See for yourself:
As we reported earlier, Haskell (a Michigan lawyer) has been telling investigators and the news media about a conversation he says he heard before passengers boarded Northwest flight 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day.
According to Haskell, Abdulmutallab and an older, well-dressed man approached an airline employee. The older man said Abdulmutallab was Sudanese, had no passport, but needed to get on the flight. The airline employee directed them to a manager and the men went down a hallway. Haskell says he never saw the older man again, and didn’t see Abdulmutallab until the incident aboard the flight as it approached Detroit — when the Nigerian (the suspect is not Sudanese) allegedly tried to ignite some typeof explosive. [npr]
Interesting, right?
I haven’t found anything else which mentions the “Indian” mystery man who helped put an evil criminal on Flight 253, but whatever his ethnic origin, if he was aware of what he was participating in then I wish him a similarly painful, scorched-balls-sort of fate, and I fervently hope that he, too, fails at harming innocent people.
::
Because I am in the middle of moving during a holiday week, I hope you will take extra pains to be civil to each other in the comment thread below. I do not have internet access in my new home (yet) and even if I did, I do not have the time to wade through comment-drama. I want to thank you in advance for your sure-to-be thoughtful words; I hope I am not given a reason (or fifty) to regret posting this. 🙂
What I want to know SepiaMutiny is – how come the commenter “euro” has not been banned yet? He he already explicitly stated that he is a member of the racist, xenophobic Belgian “Vlaams Belang” party, and he has already made racist comments against immigrants on this thread. I don’t even know what he is doing on this site. It would be equivalent of a member of American nazi party, I think. How can readers take this site seriously when the moderation is not up to par?
just as a fyi, Euro’s Vlaams Belang colleagues were so nutso their counterparts in the american Jihad-watch blogosphere summarily disowned any blog associated with the party. I think Robert Stacy McCain may still hang out with them, though.
Hi anna.
I guess American Jihad-watch is some kind of right wing site, yes? Interesting. Even in Belgium there is a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against Vlaams Belang, which means they are not allowed in ruling coalitions.
” 142 · fwiw on December 31, 2009 3:27 AM · Direct link
Your boyfriend looks like a south indian, or like the great majority of north indians. If Haskell or any other person who is not completely clueless saw your boyfriend/husband he would assume he was “indian”. Just as if you saw a blond person you would assume he was of european origin. Exceptions only prove the rule.”
umm, huh?
hi A N N A, hope you are well and happy new year!
it was irresponsible of both haskell and the news outlets to allow what appears to be stereotyping here. fwiw i’m solidly indian but get mistaken for anything from afghani to persian to italian – when i worked on a rez folks even considered that i was american indian. that last point illustrates that folks were interpreting my background based on the circumstances i was in – i.e. on a rez. haskell seems to be connecting the dots in a manner that i think displays his prejudices. wht could the brown man not have been a dark skinned member of the basque movement vs someone from a part of the world that the west now seems to automatically connect with terrorism? (for example). shoddy reporting, i expect more from npr.
I dont disagree with what you’ve written completely. That being said, I think that that there are certain distinct northern and southern phenotypes that are associated with desis. Its noteworthy to keep in mind that in my experience south indians are much more likely to look north indian than vice versa. I have seen as you mentioned, many south Indians that look like they could be from any part of India, but I have not run into many north Indians that I would mistake for south indians. I agree that saying so is seen as “a popular and offensive canard” but I think that thats a contemporary problem and not one that desis wrestled with in the past – i.e. pre-partition India.
” Indian Hindus have no history […] for destroying American or international passenger airplanes”
Xeno says: false
No, true. There is no history of Indian Hindus blowing up,or trying to blow up American or international airplanes, let alone using the pretext of religion( injustices toward Hindus, American/British imperialism, anti-Hindu communal riots etc) . Dhiren Barot had converted to Islam and became “Al Hindi” or something like that.
Yes, there’s a possibility of an Indian Moslem cell of one of the Pakistani terror groups, assisting the Nigerian. But Haskell didn’t make any mention, any qualifying statement, when he used the word “Indian”.
for your benefit, let me repeat: false. also, last i checked, dhiren barot was born an indian and a hindu and his name was indeed dhiren barot on his passport. so that’s a pretty hindu sounding name, so can’t afford to take the risk and we do need to profile all indian hindus.
also, again, for your benefit, let me repeat: anyway, varun shekhar, good luck in hoping that the world engages in your selective bigotry. i’ll eat my hat the day bigotry against pakistanis and bangladeshis and arabs and indian muslims, the way you’d like it, is so precise and fine that indian hindus escape unscathed. yours is a self-defeating approach, which you should discard purely from a pragmatic pov even without involving qualities like humanity, decency and morality that appear to be in severe short supply,
happy new year.
as i said before, euro = rob.
How do you know? Then again people switch names on this site all the time.
Although, he does not make the grammatical and spelling mistakes in English so typical of people from that part of the world.
Vlaams Belang represents the kind of euros who have kids (I have three), so we will be stronger going forward. Also, we are Hindu-philic, so I don’t fully comprehend the hostility I’m feeling. Thank you for the compliments on my English–though it is not my natal language, I work in it now in the UK. One Europe and all that.
xeno wrote:
Xeno,
Pickled Politics has a few posts about right-wing British groups trying to reach out to Hindus and Sikhs in order to prove that they’re not racists. It’s basically a new version of the divide-and-conquer strategy that has proved so effective in the past.
yep, bnp has no choice by law but to allow some dark skinned people. last i heard, though, that idiot sikh guy who joined bnp was reconsidering, although i haven’t kept up on the story. maybe being called “paki” gave him pause, who knows? 🙂
“Also, we are Hindu-philic, so I don’t fully comprehend the hostility I’m feeling.”
Well said, and I don’t either. It’s possible that the pseudo-secular and/or self hating crowd of Indians( ethnic Indians) doesn’t like a non-Indian expressing pro-Hindu sentiments. It’s quite uncommon to find people who are sympathetic to Hindus, so when one comes along, like yourself, we should appreciate him that much more.
My ex was from Ethiopia and a lot of folks thought she was Indian. So people do get confused sometime.
RAW – Indian officer is Brown man
I call that BS. To an objective (i.e. non-delusional) observer a village or town crowd from Bihar or Bengal for example will not look different from a crowd from AP, in color or phenotype. Kashmir and some other parts of the northwest (a small minority of north indians) are exceptions, and even there most people will have the distinctive desi look and color.
The only delusion I can see is comparing bihar and bengal, two relatively close states, and not more poignant examples such as tamil nadu and punjab.
I meant
Haha Giselle Monteiro …
Lakshmi,
Thanks :)!!
@151 Xeno
FYI
“Barot was born in Baroda, India into a Hindu family[1][3]. His parents moved to the UK from Kenya in 1973 to escape violence and discrimination in Kenya, when he was only one year old. His father, a banker in Kenya, supported his family by working in a factory in UK.
Barot converted to Islam at age 20 in the UK.[4] He attended the Kingsbury High School in north London. He worked for a living on a regular basis only during 1991 to 1995 as an airline ticket and reservations agent for Air Malta, in Piccadilly, central London. It is unclear how he supported himself at other times.[5]
Barot travelled to Pakistan in 1995. He took part in militant campaigns against Indian forces in Kashmir. Using the pseudonym Esa Al Hindi, he wrote a book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir, in 1999, discussing his experience and describing ways to kill Indian soldiers. The book was commissioned and published by Maktabah al-Ansar, a bookstore co-owned by Moazzam Begg.[6][7] In the late 1990s and early 2000, he served as an agent for al-Qaeda.[8]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhiren_Barot
Profile all Indian Hindus because of this one Hindu who became a Muslim took the name “Esa al-Hind” and went to Pakistan (!) to join an Islamic terrorist organization to fight against the country of India? To me it seems if he had stayed Hindu he would have not have gotten mixed up with Islamic terrorists in the UK and Pakistan.
And that article of the arms dealer that you posted first does not say what religion he is, nor how religious he was, or that he is doing this in the name of his religion. Second that guy is an arms dealer, the article does not say that he belonged to any terrorist group. Third as an arms dealer he isn’t the one blowing up anything for any ideology. He is selling arms for money. Fourth, in the sting operation the arms dealer thought he was selling weapons to Muslim terrorists. “…Lakhani, a British citizen of Indian descent, is an independent arms dealer who has sold weapons to terrorist cells, Muslim extremists, and “rogue nations,” according to a source close to the investigation….” http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/12/terror.arrest/
151 Xeno
FYI
“Barot was born in Baroda, India into a Hindu family[1][3]. His parents moved to the UK from Kenya in 1973 to escape violence and discrimination in Kenya, when he was only one year old. His father, a banker in Kenya, supported his family by working in a factory in UK.
Barot converted to Islam at age 20 in the UK.[4] He attended the Kingsbury High School in north London. He worked for a living on a regular basis only during 1991 to 1995 as an airline ticket and reservations agent for Air Malta, in Piccadilly, central London. It is unclear how he supported himself at other times.[5]
Barot travelled to Pakistan in 1995. He took part in militant campaigns against Indian forces in Kashmir. Using the pseudonym Esa Al Hindi, he wrote a book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir, in 1999, discussing his experience and describing ways to kill Indian soldiers. The book was commissioned and published by Maktabah al-Ansar, a bookstore co-owned by Moazzam Begg.[6][7] In the late 1990s and early 2000, he served as an agent for al-Qaeda.[8]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhiren_Barot
Profile all Indian Hindus because of this one Hindu who became a Muslim took the name “Esa al-Hind” and went to Pakistan (!) to join an Islamic terrorist organization to fight against the country of India? To me it seems if he had stayed Hindu he would have not have gotten mixed up with Islamic terrorists in the UK and Pakistan.
And that article of the arms dealer that you posted first does not say what religion he is, nor how religious he was, or that he is doing this in the name of his religion. Second that guy is an arms dealer, the article does not say that he belonged to any terrorist group. Third as an arms dealer he isn’t the one blowing up anything for any ideology. He is selling arms for money. Fourth, in the sting operation the arms dealer thought he was selling weapons to Muslim terrorists. “…Lakhani, a British citizen of Indian descent, is an independent arms dealer who has sold weapons to terrorist cells, Muslim extremists, and “rogue nations,” according to a source close to the investigation….” http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/12/terror.arrest
I can distinguish between a Northerner/Delhiwala/Pakistani and a Southerner/east Indian/Bengali after a g-loaded impromptu speech for 2 mins.
it doesnt matter that he isnt doing it in the name of religion, after all, money is the ultimate religion. the question is should indian hindus be subject to questioning or suspicion in the issue of visas, passports, travel etc. and the answer is yes, purely by the standards that varun set up.
even more reason to stop people independent of religion. how would i know otherwise that a guy from india with a name like dhiren barot is muslim? can’t be sure unless we treat them all with prejudice, right?
Yes all UP/Bihar/Punjab people are light skinned and brandy eyed with sharp noses like Central Asians and cannot be confused for south Indians, especially those from the rural parts.
Xeno your post on 151 said it was false that there were any Hindus blowing up any airlines. Your own posts show that there still is no history of Indian Hindus blowing up,or trying to blow up American or international airplanes. One was a Muslim convert terrorist, the other an arms dealer selling to Muslim terrorists.
Should be “Xeno your post on 151 said it was false that there were not any Hindus blowing up any airlines.”
good luck trying to defend the claim that lakhani isn’t involved in blowing up planes when he is supplying missiles to those that do. and good luck trying to defend the claim that when people named dhiren barot who were born in india indulge in terrorism, it shouldn’t trigger greater security against people who have hindu names.
@ 172 · xeno on January 2, 2010 12:22 PM
googled “dhiren barot” : Am I wrong if I say it is not really the name , but his alleged faith has to be taken into account ?
i dont know about you, but i wouldnt be able to divine that a man named dhiren barot from india who looks the way he does is muslim
when a guy of indian origin whose passport says dhiren barot and looks likethis can bomb planes, i think it behooves authorities to profile anybody matching similar descriptions because it is the clearest indication that there is absolutely no way to know.
Thanks for taking the time to write down your thoughts but Ive never qualified anything Ive written with the nonsensical-concrete-adverb nature of your canned response.
What if people substituted maybe Haryanvi or Himachali, or even Rajasthani or Gujarti for Punjabi when making their rhetorical points vis a vis the issue de jour?
Do people from those states not exist? Is every issue a contrast between X and Punjab?
And if Punjab is going to be a topic, what about focus on some ground-level issues there, like corruption, caste, the implications of a south asian peace process or lack thereof, economic, the water table, the levels of pollutants like arsenic in the water supply, things like this. Things that can help the state solve some of the myriad problems there, rather than using the region almost solely as a rhetorical device.
Tips buddy. Tips.
What do tips have to do with the nature of many if not most of the comments?
Isnt everything about the tips?
And how does your suggestion relate to the invocation of the region as a rhetorical device?
Don’t know, I don’t think so.
Tips are prime choice as far as rhetorical devices.
Youre not thinking tips. Think tips friend. Tips.
.
That does mean anything
*not
Do you think you’re being ironic?
No
Tips often dont.
“Barot travelled to Pakistan in 1995. He took part in militant campaigns against Indian forces in Kashmir. Using the pseudonym Esa Al Hindi, he wrote a book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir, in 1999, discussing his experience and describing ways to kill Indian soldiers”
In his own way, Dhiren Barot a.k.a Al-Hindi is illustrating why Pakistan is the way it is. The Pakistanis are almost all converts or descendants of relatively recent converts from Hinduism. They possess the zealotry, exclusivism and aggressiveness of the new convert. They see the adherents of their “old” religion around them, and in large numbers, which makes them feel both insecure and militant. They are anxious to prove to themselves, to each other, and to the well established Moslems in the Arab world, how truly Moslem they are, by being aggressive toward India, the source of their old, idolatrous faith. And it doesn’t help matters that politically, they are dominated by their military, which embodies this pernicious ideology at its most aggressive and obnoxious i.e the belief that the Moslems of the subcontinent, particularly those from Pakistan, are the martial, conquering races fit to rule, while the soft, vegetarian Hindus are inferior, conquered people.
VARUN #150
Xeno, you seemed to try to show to Varun in his post #126 AND #150 that Indian HINDUS do have a history of blowing up American planes or international passenger airplanes. Varun seemed to be talking about HINDUS as Hindus for Hinduism have no history of blowing up international planes, not muslim converts for Islam. Your example of of that Muslim convert only reinforces Varun’s point since that convert did it, not as a religious Hindu, but as a religious Muslim. His example would add to the history of Muslims blowing up planes. You still have not shown any examples showing a HISTORY (which would entail multiple instances) of HINDUS blowing up American and international planes. As for that arms dealer Lakhani, the “US agents believe he was not affiliated to any terrorist group but that he was “in it for the money” and prepared to deal with anyone.” Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-192321/British-arms-dealer-court.html#ixzz0bV0gYSQ2
Not sure what religion he is cause this would be odd for a Hindu to say: “…He pleaded not guilty before US district court Judge Katherine Hayden of Newark, New Jersey and insisted he will never plead guilty.
“I was offered a deal (plea bargain), but why should I say yes? Whatever is to happen will happen, Allah sabka hai (Allah is there for everyone) and if this man (the government’s cooperative witness, Habibur Rehman) is ever extradited, (Pakistan President Pervez) Musharraf will throw him in prison for all he has done.”…http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/may/03speca.htm and Daily Times for Pakistan has him as a Muslim Briton http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_5-1-2005_pg7_49
The arms dealer, regardless of his religion which does not seem to be the motivating factor, but money as the US agents said was, still was not selling weapons to Hindus to bring down planes he was selling them to Muslims.
As to names being an indicator, there are a couple of jihadists, converts and born muslims who were born with non-Muslim names and who like “Headley” in the November Mumbai massacre took on a non-Muslim name deliberately to pass as a non-Muslim. So I agree with you a person with a Muslim name should not automatically be suspected, and everyone with a non-Muslim name should not be automatically be above suspicion. But Varun is still right in that there is no history of Hindus like there is for Muslims in blowing up international airplanes.
great stuff! i couldnt come up with better satire if i tried!