Mostafa Tabatabainejad and US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix

Islamists and others of Middle Eastern descent have often attempted to portray themselves as victims of aggression and persecution, while obscuring the fact that it is often they who initiate the use of force. They then make demands which would result in compromising American security against future transgressions. Two recent incidents illustrate the implementation of this victimhood strategy.

The University of California Police Department was recently criticized for its use of force against an allegedly peaceful UCLA student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, in UCLA’s Powell Library on November 13th. UCLA, like many universities, has a long standing policy which bars non-students from admission to its library after 11PM to protect students from property theft and assault by vagrants. To enforce this, it requires all students to produce their student ID when asked. Tabatabainejad, who was in possession of his ID, refused to produce it to student security and, subsequently, to police officers when asked. When he was later asked why he refused, he claimed that the policy was an effort to discriminate against people of Middle-Eastern descent. He refused to leave when asked, choosing instead to lie prone on the ground in an effort to resist police. He also attempted to persuade gathering students to participate in open rebellion against the authorities. In response to his repeated refusal to comply, UCPD officers tased the student. The student continued to resist by letting his body go limp (the taser causes paralysis for less than 5 seconds), and by loudly shouting obscenities at police.

To characterize this student’s behavior as “peaceful” fundamentally misrepresents the actual events which transpired at UCLA. The action of the student violates the property rights of the university, and thus constitutes the initiation of force. The UCPD, in defense of the university, properly removed him from the premises.

The criticism of UCPD officers is the result of what Ayn Rand identified as a “fraudulent distinction” between force and violence. The student and his supporters are operating under the implicit assumption that force is an appropriate means of dealing with others, so long as direct physical contact is not made. When police retaliate by removing the student from the premises, this is somehow reprehensible, since it involves physical coercion. This conception serves to obliterate the rights of citizens to engage in self-defense through the agency of law enforcement.

The behavior of this student is in principle no different from a thug breaking into one’s home, sitting on the floor and refusing to leave. Though he may not have initiated direct physical contact with the homeowner, he has violated the homeowner’s right to property and to be secure in his home. In such a situation, the homeowner has the right to defend his home by throwing out the thug bodily, or calling upon the police to do so.

The use of greater force by the UCPD was absolutely appropriate. Tabatabainejad demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the rights and safety of others. He behaved in a manner that suggested he was under the influence of mind-altering drugs and ought to have been considered a threat. The mere fact that UCPD officers have chosen a dangerous career does not mean they should be made the sacrificial fodder to every hoodlum with a penchant for anarchy. The UCPD officers should not be expected to risk sustaining one scratch for the sake of those who initiate the use of force.

In another incident on November 20^th, Islamic clerics, one with ties to Hamas, disrupted a U.S. Airways flight by engaging in loud chanting, praying, and denunciation of U.S. policy in Iraq. The men got up from their assigned seats and sat separately in a pattern associated with the 9/11 attacks – two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear – giving them control of exit routes to the plane. They asked for seat belt extensions even though they were not obese, and placed them on the cabin floor in the aisles. In response to this disruptive and intimidating behavior, the captain, along with airport security, exercised their right to ask the men to leave the flight peacefully. The Imams refused. They were subsequently handcuffed, led off of the plane, and questioned by police.

Both UCLA and U.S. Airways have a right to dispose of their property as they see fit, which includes the right to expel those who threaten the lives and safety of their patrons and customers. In both cases, the offending parties violated the rights of the owners. Muslim activist groups including CAIR have used the press to portray the individuals involved in both incidents as innocent victims of brutality and bigotry. In fact, it was the alleged “victims” who actually began the use of force, which were deliberate provocations, designed to produce the results they did.

It should come as no surprise then that Tabatabainejad has hired a high-profile civil rights lawyer who plans to file a brutality lawsuit in response to the taser incident. In response to the U.S. Airways incident, incoming Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., has already drafted a resolution, which would give Muslims special civil-rights protections. Representative-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress, will no doubt use this incident to fuel his effort to pass legislation that would criminalize Muslim profiling at airports, dangerously compromising the ability of other citizens to protect ourselves.

These incidents should be treated as a concerted attack on individual rights of all American citizens. Americans must identify these aggressors for what they are, and have the moral fortitude to respond accordingly. The very existence of our civilization depends on it.