A Reply to Craig Lindsay of Totara Park

Today’s Dominion Post almost made me lose all faith in humanity. Nestled quietly in the Letters to the Editor section was a letter from one Craig Lindsay. If this seemingly innocuous letter passed you by here is what it said:

There is a simple answer to this
With regard to the aviation security that’s come about after worldwide hijackings – it nearly happened in New Zealand, too – and suicide bombings, the one and only answer lies with the cause, which are Muslim peoples.
If all Muslims were sent back to the Middle East and barred from New Zealand and other Western nations, we’d not have this time-consuming and annoying but necessary, screening.
They are obviously the root cause so take away the cause end the hassle.
But the Silly PC brigade will start to raise their ignorant voices at this suggestion, to seek attention and parade themselves. They have eyes but do not see. Their brains are permanently switched off.CRAIG LINDSAY
Totara Park
from the Dominion Post 12/03/2008

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Dear Craig Lindsay

With regard to your letter to the Dominion Post 12/03/2008:

“With regard to the aviation security that’s come about after worldwide hijackings – it nearly happened in New Zealand, too – and suicide bombings, the one and only answer lies with the cause, which are Muslim peoples.”

A quick visit to airsafe.com lists nine fatal hijackings worldwide in the past thirty six years world wide, four of which were on September 11 2001. Out of the remaining five, four were perpetrated by people who were of western/European descent. As for your claim that it nearly happened in NZ, I would like you to read this, an extract from the NZ Herald regarding ‘the Somalian woman’, on 09/02/2008:

“When fighting began in Mogadishu in 1991, she was separated from her family and spent time in refugee camps on the Kenyan border. In a 1999 interview with Waikato‘s This Week newspaper, Abdille said she was raped a number of times by soldiers and bandits.”

Nowhere does it say, in any article anywhere that she was a Muslim, most articles do make out her violent and traumatic upbringing. The meanderings of a crazed, obviously mentally-unstable woman with a history of psychological distress who wanted a 19-seater airplane to fly to Australia are evidence of someone who needs help. That situation could have been averted had she not slipped through the net.

Now Craig, let us look at suicide bombings. Where do most suicide bombings occur? In Palestine/Israel/Lebanon/Middle East. Take a close look at what is going on there. Israel has illegally occupied vast amounts of Palestinian land, used high-tech weapons against civilians, and has pushed local Muslim populations against a wall where to them, the only way out is to fight out. Not too many suicide bombings are happing in suburban Wellington. Those suicide bombings which have occurred outside of the Middle East, in London say, are because the UK has been seen to be supporting causes which limit the freedom of Islamic states.

“If all Muslims were sent back to the Middle East and barred from New Zealand and other Western nations, we’d not have this time-consuming and annoying but necessary, screening.”

Yeah sure Airport security would be more like going to the supermarket if we rid our country of all those pesky Muslim types.

Would you send Ashraf Choudhary home? Ahmed Zaoui? Dr. Najibullah Lafraie. Would you stop Yisuf Islam (Cat Stevens) from coming here? Islam is the fastest growing religion amongst the Maori community! But I guess this would fit into your racist conception of the world, all those cheeky darkies out there worshipping Allah. Not just people of Arab descent are Muslim, heaven forbid that a European New Zealander could be a practising Muslim! Should it be a requirement that everyone’s passport say what religion they practise, perhaps we could even get them to wear some form of identification… Oh wait that has been tried before in the 1930′s.

What do we do with all the Maori who have converted to Islam, all the Pakehas, all those who are legitimate New Zealand citizens who have never broken the law, who are upstanding members of our community. Should we send them to Iran, Egypt, and Malaysia? Uproot them from their home, boot them out, the story starts to sound familiar doesn’t it?

“They are obviously the root cause so take away the cause end the hassle.”
I put to you Craig, that you, and the racist bigotry you instigate are actually the root cause of the problem and that if we remove people like you from our society we could solve a few more problems than the hassle of having to go through airport security checks. Fear and hatred only beget more fear and more hatred.

“The Silly PC brigade will start to raise their ignorant voices at this suggestion, to seek attention and parade themselves. They have eyes but do not see. Their brains are permanently switched off.”

It is your brain that is switched off. You are more willing to go along with your prejudices and glance at news reports and make summary judgements based on demeaning stereotypes, than actually use your brain to think about things logically. I am not part of the “Silly PC brigade” and I am not ignorant. The only attention I seek is to bring attention the futility of thinking in the patterns you are currently thinking in. The futility of spreading hate, mistrust and fear. My eyes are wide open, my brain is switched on.

I would like to ask you to come onto campus and have a meeting with me. I would like to understand how someone can be so dysfunctionaly parochial. I want to meet a person whose views border on Nazism. I would like to ask you some questions about why you think this way. I would also like you to meet with the Muslim Students of VUW group, talk to them about your paranoid fears.

Jackson Wood
Salient Office

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Possible reasons why Craig Lindsay wrote this:

Perhaps he votes New Zealand First.
Perhaps he is a member of National Front.
Perhaps he had some nasty incident with airport security (think the type that involves rubber gloves).
Perhaps Craig Lindsay is a closet Muslim.
Perhaps he was drunk off the blood of aryan school children.
Perhaps he is looking for a scapegoat for his own problems, and those of the world.