Shahrukh Khan detained at US airport
This sort of thing has happened before (SRK has spoken about being frisked and checked at US airports before), but unless the Indian media is misrepresenting what happened, it’s just been taken to new levels…
Apparently, Shahrukh Khan was detained for 2h at Newark airport yesterday. He was only released after the Indian embassy interfered. The reason? Khan is a popular Muslim surname.
It’s rather ironic, considering he just recently finished shooting for My Name is Khan, which, from what I understand, is the story of a man with Asperger’s syndrome (a very mild form of autism), who becomes obsessed with the idea of telling everyone that his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist.
Part of me even wonders whether the film has had something to do with it. The film was shot in the US and I’ve never heard of any Bollywood film having as many visa problems as this one did - many of the Muslim crew members were denied visas.
It’s stories like these that make me wonder what American officials are thinking. They’ve just made headline news in India, Pakistan (which is a very strategically important area to them) and probably a few other Muslim countries as well (Shahrukh Khan is apparently the most popular film star in Afghanistan as well). Needless to add - the publicity they’ve given themselves is very negative.
And this isn’t the first such case either - what were they thinking when they frisked former Indian president Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in April?
Every time they do something like this they shoot themselves in the foot. According to a recent poll conducted by Al Jazeera, the majority of Pakistanis now consider the US to be a bigger threat than the Taliban or even India! How is antagonising more Muslims a good security policy? I just don’t get it…
