PROBATION Does that teach him anything
Posted on 10/19/2016 | About Albuquerque, New Mexico
A North Carolina man who acknowledged grabbing and pulling off a Muslim woman's hijab on a flight from Chicago to Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been sentenced to a year of probation that includes two months of home confinement.
Federal prosecutors say 37-year-old Gill Parker Payne of Gastonia also was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
Payne pleaded guilty in May to a misdemeanour charge of obstructing a person's free exercise of religious beliefs in connection with the Dec. 11 incident on a Southwest Airlines flight.
In his plea agreement, Payne said he grabbed and removed Khawla Abdel-Haq's hijab, a religious headscarf, midflight. He was seated several rows behind her and did not know her. Clearly unaware, or uncaring, that the American Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, he told her, "Take this off! This is America!" before grabbing the hijab.
Abdel-Haq told Judge Steven Yarbrough that she was afraid to leave her home for three weeks.
There is something really wrong with a society where a grown man is so intimidated, infuriated, afraid, or angered by a woman’s headscarf that he rips it from her. Will ripping off yarmulkes be next, or wigs off Orthodox Jewish women? Should Indian women be prohibited from wearing saris or salwar kameze? Will ministers and priest’s collars be snatched from their necks or nuns habits be slashed. And if we don't like them should it be okay to rip the low-slung-buttock-exposing pants off everyone wearing them?
Fear of others, fear of differences, fear of what we do not understand is ignorance, and those of us who fear others because they look, sound or dress differently, or because they have different beliefs need to examine ourselves first and find out what we are really afraid of.
For a 37 year old man to rip off the headscarf off a woman seated in a plane several rows ahead of him is a telling indication of his own inadequacies and a sorry reflection on of our society today. That such attitudes and beliefs are being encouraged and fuelled and fanned by the increasingly vitriolic campaign rhetoric south of our borders is both sad and frightening.
