Saturday 14 December 2013



 Kenan Rahmani

 "The failure of Americans & the US government to understand the Middle East never ends. Yesterday I was held by Customs and Border Protection in Cincinnati for questioning and searches. I explained that I provide humanitarian relief to Syrian refugees.
Here is the most important part:


 Officer: "You've been questioned by CBP before, right sir?"
 Me: "Yes, sir."
 Officer: "You know why we need to talk to you?"
 Me: "Because a lot of people are fighting in Syria and you want to collect information and make sure I am not a threat."
 Officer: "It's because there are a lot of Muslim extremists and jihadists fighting and taking over northern Syria and a lot of the refugees are being converted to jihad."
 Me: "Refugees being converted to jihad? First time I ever heard of that. I thought that they were fighting the brutal Assad dictatorship that was killing them and their families."
 Officer: "No sir, these jihadists, they are the biggest threat to the USA so we need to make sure that the refugees you work with don't have connections to them."

 After this I proceeded to show and explain many of the projects we did with the young refugee kids in Reyhanli. But we need to confront the reality that Islamophobia in the West and the "Fox News perspective" on jihad are going to make it very difficult for us to have productive Middle Eastern foreign policy. It is necessary that the current generation of Muslim Americans understand their role here as Americans in changing the current reality."

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