I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen. But I’m shocked that they happened to me here, in the U.S.

—Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi architect, speaking yesterday about being asked to remove his shirt, which had the slogan “We will not be silent,” written on it in Arabic and English, when he was flying on August 12th on a JetBlue flight from New York back home to California. Although he had successfully cleared the security checkpoint at the airport, Mr. Jarrar was later approached and asked to remove and change his shirt, on the basis that several passengers — who were jittery because they could not read the Arabic on his t-shirt, regardless of the fact that the slogan was written in English and in Arabic — had asked that he change his t-shirt. Mr. Jarrar eventually wore another t-shirt, which was purchased for him at a store within JFK airport. What was  JetBlue’s response? “We’re not clear exactly what happened.”

Compounding the sheer racism and ignorance of this incident is the origin and use of the slogan, which was written bilingually on Mr. Jarrar’s t-shirt: opponents of the war and occupation in Iraq and other conflicts in the region have rallied behind the slogan “We will not be silent.” The slogan may have originated with the student resistance White Rose group, which opposed the Nazi regime in Germany and allegedly used the phrase in 1942, claiming “We will not be silent, we are your bad conscience; the White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

Mimi Hanaoka