The new U.K. Muslim Brotherhood organization known as the British Muslim Initiative has posted a statement describing the recent Washington D.C. airport screening of Britain’s first Muslim MP as “casual brutality” and an example of “racial and religious bias in US border control procedures”:
The casual brutality of the USA’s anti-terror activities has been brought to the fore by the recent detaining and searching of Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik. Whilst the USA does not officially profile on racial or religious bases, the fact that Mr. Malik had been stopped on a previous occasion and that the other two passengers detained with him were also Muslims, clearly shows a racial and religious bias in US border control procedures. Even Mr Malik’s status as a Minster of the Crown was not able to spare him this indignity; an affront which countless people of various nationalities and faiths, even American citizens, regularly suffer…BMI spokesman Anas Altikriti commented “it is a sad day when members of Her Majesty’s Government, who are invited by the US with whom we share a ‘special friendship’, find themselves detained as common criminals on a racial and religious basis. What is even worse is that apart from an apology to Mr Malik for the distress, little if anything will be done by this government to help our long standing ally undo such harmful policies.
However, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has stated that Mr Malik was only subject to the same routine screening as other passengers and singled out for an additional search through a random “ticket-based” process that selects some passengers. According to the TSA statement, Mr. Malik’s religion was not a factor in the screening which surveillance videos indicated last eight minutes rather than the 40 minutes claimed by the British Embassy and reported in the British media which also noted that Mr. Malik had been “singled out and detained at New York’s JFK airport by the DHS last November.” Muslim Brotherhood organizations globally suggest frequently that anti-terrorism efforts are part of a war on Islam and in this case, it would appear that the BMI statement is an effort to drive a further wedge between the U.S. and the U.K. which are engaged in joint anti-terror efforts globally.