Islamic Like Me: "Do You Have Sky Miles?"

Danielle Crittenden wore a burka for a week during her daily life in Washington, D.C. Click here to see a video of her experience, which appears in Canada's National Post. Click here to read previous posts.

Last of Four Parts: "Do You Have SkyMiles?"

"I'd like a one-way air fare to New York on the next available flight. I have no luggage. Could you make sure the ticket is refundable...in case I change my mind?"

I was standing at the Delta shuttle counter at Washington's Reagan National Airport, dressed in my Saudi burka.

"Sure, no problem," the clerk replied brightly. "Do you have Skymiles?"

"Uh, no."

"I'll need some form of identification."

I handed her my driver's license, which showed the occupant of the black tent to be a blonde, blue-eyed resident of the District of Columbia.

"Thanks." Tap, tap, tap at the keyboard. Out popped my boarding pass. "Have a great flight. Next passenger please."

I scooped up a plain black canvas carry-on bag and head over to the security line. I had no intention of flying to New York. This was an experiment. I'd become suspicious of the lack of suspicion I'd received during my week-long veiling. I'd encountered no fear, no hostility, hardly even any curiosity. If anything, my fellow Washingtonians showed unusual courtest to a woman in a burka.

And so it continued at the airport. The ticket agent had registered zero reaction when I'd approached the counter, except to offer an extra cheerful greeting: "Hi! Where are you travelling?"

It had been he same the day before on the Washington subway. I entered the train at morning rush hour carrying a large black backpack, which I clutched to my chest in the center of the train. With the exception of one elderly passenger who bolted up from his seat when I got on, scurrying to the most remote end of the carriage, everyone else aboard resolutely ignored my appearance. The woman closest to my mysterious backpack glanced up and then resumed her Blackberrying. Two women beside her carried on gossiping about their childrens' school. The huddle of office workers in the space by the doors appeared untroubled by me or my unusual parcel.

I can't know what they were thinking, obviously. A few must have wondered whether I was about to explode. But evidently they'd rather be blown up than exhibit any behavior that might be construed as intolerant.

And good for them, I suppose. "The vast majority of Muslims abhor terrorism," we are frequently reminded, and of course that's true. And yet, even tolerance can be taken too far.

If I had chosen to walk about Washington in a white hood and sheets rather than black ones, I doubt I would have encountered such universal politeness. And yet, what the Klan outfit represents to someone of African-American descent is exactly what the burka should represent to every free woman. Those who impose it upon women believe that a whole category of human beings can be treated as property; that this category may be beaten, sold into marriage, divorced at whim, denied education and work, raped with impunity, and stoned to death for offenses that would be pardoned in a man. For the wearer of the white hood, the subjugated category is defined by race. For the wearer of the black hood, it's defined by sex. Otherwise the two garments carry the same meaning--with the slight variation that one is worn by the would-be oppressor, the other by the oppressed.

Ironically, the few people who exhibited hostility to my costumer came from a Muslim immigrant group. Many of Washington's taxi drivers originated in Somalia. These drivers glowered at me in traffic. When I tried to hail a cab, four empty taxis drove past without stopping. My teenage son then stepped forward to flag one--and was picked up immediately.

Or maybe it's not so ironic: I'm sure many of those drivers fled their countries to escape the ideology represented by my burka. The native-born Americans, however, seemed determined to take the opposite view: to welcome me as a walking tribute to religious and ethnic tolerance in our free society.

Ditto for the security agents at Reagan National airport. The officer who checked my identification hailed me with a friendly "And how are you doing today, Ma'am?" He drew a red mark on my boarding pass. "You know the deal," he said, ushering me on.

I nodded, but thought, "Uh oh. What deal?" Maybe now I was to be regarded with suspicion?
I moved forward and struggled to remove my shoes (I couldn't see anything below my shoulders because of the face mask, but I was becoming adept at being partially blind). I placed them alongside my bag on the x-ray belt. But before I'd even approached the metal detector I heard a voice over the loudspeaker say, "Female assistance in Aisle 4."

Okay, now I was nervous. I wasn't sure how far I was willing to take this experiment. Certainly not so far as an internal examination...

A female guard signalled me to walk through the metal detector and then to enter a plexiglass passage off to the side. She said--So nicely! And with such a big smile!--"You have been selected for secondary screening," as if I'd won a grocery store sweepstakes.

I waited in the passage for about five minutes. I tried to remain calm. Another extremely pleasant female guard--"Right this way, hon"--let me out of the passage and directed me to an open search area just beyond the detectors. A grandfatherly man was already there, another lucky recipient of secondary screening. At least they hadn't directed me to a private room--yet.
Now two female guards--still friendly but definitely brisker in manner--told me to stand with my legs apart on a small mat. How they could tell if my legs were apart under the copious folds of the burka I didn't know. One of the guards began riffling through my passport while the other hesitated in front of me.

"Should I wand her?"

"Yes."

"She didn't set off the alarm." The guard was clearly uncomfortable that she may be breaching some sort of protocol.

"Wand her."

The guard obeyed, but not before saying to me, gently, "If it goes off you'll have to be physically patted in that area, okay?"

I then received the most thorough wanding I'd ever had. At no time, however, did they ask me to lift my cloak. They did it all through the burka. A male guard came over to inspect my tote bag. The woman wanding me said, apologetically, "He's going to touch your things but he'll have gloves on, okay?"

Meanwhile her colleague was puzzling over a stamp in my passport.

"What's this place?" she asked me. "I don't recognize it."

I squinted through my eye slit. "Warsaw."

"Oh." She smiled.

Their inspection of me was finished but the man had taken away my bag to be x-rayed another time. The guard who had been examining my passport pulled up a chair for me and another one for herself. She smiled again.

"I hope you know we're not doing this because you're dressed--you know--the way you are. It's because, well, your face on your identification is not what you'd expect for someone...in that kind of dress."

"I understand."

"May I ask you--and I don't want to cause offense, okay? So just let me know if I'm crossing a line here--but are you a convert?"

I couldn't tell if she was asking me this because she was trying to check my "story"--and thus assess my security risk--or whether she was just being chatty to pass the time until my bag returned. I assumed the former.

"Yes," I said. This was true. I am a convert, just not to Islam.

My answer unleashed a gush of questions about my beliefs and my outfit--"What drew you to your faith?" "Do all women have to dress like this? Because not all of them do obviously..."--each one of them painstakingly phrased so as not to "cause offense," and always with the option not to answer. I answered all her questions truthfully, if somewhat misleadingly, conveying everything I knew about the rules governing the burka. The male guard returned with my bag and stood listening a few feet away.

"This is really interesting," he interjected. "We don't usually get to hear about this."
"Yes, you're so open!" exclaimed his colleague.

"Do you have to wear black?"

"No," I replied. "But black is more traditional, more conservative. You blend more in."
"Not here." He laughed. "You stand out."

The woman began telling me about her religious upbringing. It was at this point I realized my security inspection was over, and I was now conducting an Islamic tutorial: Burkas 101. Other passengers selected for secondary screening came and went. I'd been held back for a good quarter hour.

Then the female guard, growing cautious again, asked if it was "culturally okay" for me to remove my face covering. "When women like you come through, we don't know what's 'correct.' Like if I want to see that your face matches your ID, can I ask you to show me your face?"

It's a good thing I was wearing a mask so the guard could not see my astonishment. The security agents at the airport serving the nation's capital--bare seconds of air distance from Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the White House--did not feel entitled to check the identities of veiled women. Clearly, they hadn't even received any special sort of instructions about it.

I assured the security agent that it was indeed okay for a woman officer to ask a veiled woman to show her face. More than okay! I stressed again and again: So long as only women saw my face I'd have no trouble removing my mask if you wanted to check my ID!! Really, it's fine...!

The guard nodded. "Thank you--you've been so helpful," she said, rising. "We don't want to keep you. Hey, have a great time in New York!"

And so I passed through security without ever having to show my face.

Fortunately, my ticket was refundable. Just as the friendly Delta agent had promised.

Comments

[barbara0309]

Wow, you tried to "educate" the airport screener about Islam? I would have loved to hear that one. Islam does not "force" anyone to wear anything. Just like Christianity does not "force" anyone to be celibate: you either do it or you don't. As stated in previous posts, only ignorance allows subjugation of women, and that goes on in THIS country as well.
You seem to have wanted the people you encountered to be intolerant and hateful to the "Muslim" you were pretending to be. Shame on you.
It seems like WWII all over again. Will there be Muslim interment camps next?

[JustAnotherScreenname]

To the first commenter who said that women in Iran wear burkas... are you f'ing crazy???? I have never seen any burkas in Iran, you're thinking of the chador, which is a black piece of cloth but hardly as restrictive as the burka. The vast majority of Iranian women wear the bare minimum the law allows and go our with just a scarf and coat. Jesus Christ.

[SisterJ]

"And yet, what the Klan outfit represents to someone of African-American descent is exactly what the burka should represent to every free woman."

Stunned. Silence.

All these years admiring Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and my hardworking ancestors, but I'm not a free woman.
Who knew?

Your obvious goal was to spook everyone with your DANGEROUS burka-monster impression.
When you encountered nothing but politeness, professionalism, and even intellectual curiosity, you abandoned the pretense of objectivity.
I found myself cheering for the people on the train, the airline employees, and the security guards. Good for them.

I do commend you for NOT doing anything overtly suspicious or hateful while disguised as a Muslim woman.
But, if you equate a Muslim woman's clothing with that of a reviled hate group like the Klan - and expect people to run screaming in the other direction - then, I don't know what kind of 'technical­ly-correct­' answers you could have given.

By the way, judging by the photograph you posted, you weren't even wearing a burka. What you have on is the black jilbab (long dress), possibly an abaya (cape/shawl), with khimar (head scarf), and niqab (face veil) - common in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, UK, and USA among other places. A burka is a one-piece garment more often worn in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is frequently bright blue and rarely seen in America. It would have been interesting to see the reaction had you found an actual burka to wear.

Thanks.

[klondiker]

How is forcing a woman to wear a burqa different than saying that women who choose career over family make the wrong choice??

Same subjugation, different form.

And, as someone who has supported the latter VERY vocally, Danielle Crittenden should have thought twice before taking on this "experiment".

[Freethinkingchick]

Radicalization in young men translates into a level of anger that could turn violent, and for women, a return to fundamentalist Islamic values like the veil. That's why you'll find that with my parents' generation - the sixties - the in thing to do was to ditch the veil. Now, in my generation, burkas and veils and abayas are making a huge comeback, and if you ask me, it has a lot to do with people like you who equate the veil directly with stupidity and oppression, and Islam with backwardness (and the KK it seems).

I think you have a very 'romantic' view of women in the Middle-Eas­t... damsels in distress held captive at home, dreaming of a world beyond their four walls where they'll be free to fall in love with whomever they want and wear the latest Victor& Rolf minidress to the movies with said soulmate.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but trends and polls and voting patterns are showing that many, many women out there don't want this at all, and those I think you are talking about - abjectly poor, uneducated, hungry, sitting-in­-the-dark-­because-Is­rael-cut-t­he-power, or in mud huts in the depths of Afganistan - those women, would benefit far more at this stage from having something to feed their kids, the freedom to dream that maybe those kids can grow up and make a decent living, that their country will not fall under attack and they will not be left widowed or orphaned or destitute - than the freedom in their wardrobe choices.

The only thing those women have to hold onto right now is their religion. The entire world watches as their countries turn to rubble, and you still have the nerve to talk about the veil as a symbol of oppression? I would love to hear you explain that to them, in their mud huts or their "secular" universities.

[Freethinkingchick]

In case you didn't understand that - let me make it more clear: it is a trend nowadays - pretty much since the first Gulf War until now - for both men and women in Muslim countries to become more radical in their thinking, not less, and this in spite of secular governments trying to 'modernize' their countries so they look (at least in appearance if not in true spirit) like freer countries like yours. They also tend to do this against their parents' wishes, sort of like American kids do when they smoke pot behind their parents' back. Except when Muslim kids choose radicalization, there's a lot more behind it than just being rebellious for the sake of it: there's the fact that they know now, via uber-accessible media, how much you despise them and how stupid and backward you think they are. Most are very well educated but can't find jobs - even those in oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, or secular countries like Lebanon and Tunisia and Egypt and Syria - so they can take a look at your values, your market economies, burkas-less streets, and tell you to shove the whole lot because clearly, while everyone is free and equal, some people seem to be freeer and more equal than others.

Attemps at democracy in Iraq and Palestine have failed, with Western powers punishing the people one way or another when the preferred party did not win the popular vote. It will be very hard to convince Muslim women - who voted for Hamas - that they are being oppressed by the men around them when they see their electricity cut off and have to go back to using candles because they voted for Hamas and Hamas is taking a hard line against Israel. When you decide to punish people in order to force political outcomes, they tend not to care for your values very much after that.

[Freethinkingchick]

Danielle,

I cannot believe that with all the exposure Americans and Westerners in general have gotten with regards to Islam as a religion this past decade, all the attemps at understanding the 'Arab mind' or the 'Arab Street' or why-the-he­ck-are-the­se-people-­like-this people are still focused on the veil as a feminist (or anti-feminist) issue rather than a socio-poltical and economic one. Also to suggest that the veil has absolutely anything in common to the white garb of the KKK is hugely insulting to both African-Americans and Muslim women who choose to wear the veil everywhere.

So the veil is a symbol of male oppression of women?

How do you explain then the militancy of Pakistani female students against the secularization of their campuses recently? Or Hamas's victory over secular Fatah?

[aaronhbridges]

Your comparison between the burka and the white sheets of the kkk is preposterous, as is your contention that every Muslim husband treats his wife as chattel. Your ignorance renders your little experiment at best inconsequential and at worst intolerant and disgusting. The respect that the TSA personnel paid you was directed at whom you impersonated and would have been misplaced had you shown your real face.

You remind me of the people I see every day in front of the abortion clinic with their alarmist signs and endless catcalls. They claim to care about life but never do anything to help anyone. If you really care about Muslim women why don't you do something to help them?

I just read the author's bio. She is the wife of David (axis of evil) Frum. Her islamophobe street cred (and ignorance) is unmatched. So, for her family's part, by helping to instigate the Iraq war, which has made Iraq completely unsafe for women who do not wear burkas, she has most certainly caused more burka donning than shedding.

Wow the hipocrisy of some people is staggering. Huffpo I am truly ashamed of you today.

[michaeljwsiegel]

These articles are really problematic as part of the racist attack on Islam. You are not going to empower anyone by launching an attack on an entire culture.

[BuffaloMeridian]

Great experiment, Danielle. And I applaud you for bringing up a subject that many of us on the Left seem to be reluctant to talk about these days: the oppression of women in fundamentalist Islam. A few of my fellow commenters (on other threads seem to think that to criticize the treatment of women by Islamic fundamentalists is to disparage Islam and support right-wing justifications for war.

These people have taken cultural relativity to the point of absurdity by claiming that all (non-Weste­rn)cultura­l expressions are equally valid, and that to condemn another culture's practices is racism and cultural imperialism.

But sometimes wrong is wrong regardless of local custom, and someone needs to say so.

Keep up the good work.

[Beachrunner]

"And yet, what the Klan outfit represents to someone of African-American descent is exactly what the burka should represent to every free woman."

Amen, sister. Amen!

[JudyGee]

The burka is creepy, and I have witnessed this same sort of free pass to women wearing them in airports, department stores, hospitals, and everywhere that we are vulnerable. We are creepy because we are too lazy and stupid and too full of our bizarre political correctness, to know anything about or take measures against cultures who breed hatreds with regard to western civilization and the foundation of democracy. This deepening ignorance shows up in our educational system. Ask any college professor, with the exception of the elite top-tier names, what they are faced with. They will tell you their classes are not just ignorant, with virtually no frames of reference to credible world history, but unteachable. They will end up as bottom feeders in the abyss we are falling into.

[moderate1]

"I can't know what they were thinking, obviously. A few must have wondered whether I was about to explode. But evidently they'd rather be blown up than exhibit any behavior that might be construed as intolerant. "

Obviously, you don't know what they were thinking. Its perfectly plausible that they weren't "trying" to avoid exhibiting intolerant behavior..­.they just aren't intolerant people. It seems to me that you went into this experiment expecting to find an America filled with racism and and intolerance. I am pleased, and proud, that America has proved you wrong.

[lankasphinx]

MamaBird62

they were shoplifters.

[profounddogs]

Okay, so does your story imply that most are going overboard to show allowance for intolerance? I truly wish the radical Islam religion would become a little more modern (moderate Islam instead, for example) and give women equal rights -- ESPECIALLY if they want to live and thrive in this country!