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Raed Jarrar with his t-shirt on TV.
you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank.
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The t-shirts read 'We will not be silenced'.
A man traveling through JFK airport in New York was stopped and told to change his t-shirt because it had Arabic type on it. The words on the t-shirt read "we will not be silenced" in Arabic with the English translation in the bottom. The man wearing the shirt is an Arab-American blogger named Raed Jarrar.
When he was stopped he asked: 'Isn't this my constitutional right to wear it?'. The security guard responded to him by saying: 'you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank'.
Jarrar was also told by the security guards that a number of passengers complained about his t-shirt fearing he would be a terrorist. He was later persuaded to change his t-shirt in order to board the flight.
The statement "we will not be silenced" is derived from a slogan the White Rose dissident group used when they opposed Nazi rule in Germany. It has been adopted by Jarrar to oppose the ongoing war in Iraq.
It seems that rising Islamophobia in the west and particularly in America has begun to encompass all aspects of Arab culture, even Arabic type has not been speared.
This incident took place on 12th of august 2006. Now almost one year later, Raed is suing Jet Blue the airline who's employees stopped him of boarding because of the shirt.
News sources:
BBC Online
Democracy Now!
Read Jarras Blog
website describing the story in detail
It may not only be your Tshirt
I've boarded planes more than once whilst waering my "Fuck el Police" Tshirt from Dutch street fashion designers Dashiki. The text is written in clear arabic on a bright blue shirt. I was once stopped at Schiphol (amsterdam airport) by a customs officer that could read arabic. He had a sense of humor and let me go on although the shirt was insulting him. I guess he appreciated the fact that I was recognising his cultural beckr=ground by wearing an Arabic text in my chest.
So why can I pass customs with arabic on my shirt? Probably because I do it in Europe. And probably also because I look too dutch to trigger arabophobia...