Muslim woman detained in UK for reading Syrian arts book
A Muslim British woman has been detained on board a plane while reading a book about Syria, suspected of committing acts of terror.
Faizah Shaheen was taken into custody at Doncaster Airport on her way back from her honeymoon trip to Turkey after being reported by Thomson Airways cabin crew and flight attendants for “suspicious behavior,” which amounted to reading a book on Syrian arts and culture.
“I was completely innocent – I was made to feel like a culprit…, I was queuing at passport control and saw police staring at me. I just got through passport control and then two police officers approached me and took me aside and asked me to show my passport again,” Shaheen said.
“I asked what was going on and they said I had been reported due to a book I was reading and was to be questioned under the Terrorism Act,” she added.
Describing the experience as "hurtful and unpleasant", the 27-year-old said she had been quizzed by the airport anti-terror police for less than half an hour and subsequently released.
The award-winning book titled, Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, includes literature and photographs by artists and writers who are "challenging the culture of violence in Syria", according to its publisher's website.
“I became very angry and upset. I couldn’t understand how reading a book could cause people to suspect me like this. I told the police that I didn’t think it was right or acceptable,” Shaheen noted.
She has planned to make a formal complaint against the police, and against Thomson Airways.
The hostility towards Muslims in the UK has deepened over the past years, with more than a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds in the country saying they do not trust them.
This is while, according to a new survey, British Muslims are facing an “explosion” in faith-based hate crimes, which will get much worse following the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) that was decided by 52 percent of the country’s voters on June 23.
Tell MAMA, an anti-Muslim hate monitoring group based in London, said in its annual report that Islamophobic incidents in the UK increased by 326 percent last year, rising from 146 to 437 cases.
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