Burkas in Airports

I know that many people will not agree with this blog post but it is something that drives me absolutely crazy. Airports are secure areas and need to be treated as such. An airport is somewhere that should be a neutral area, where religion and beliefs should not come into play. The fact of the matter is, in a secure environment you need to be able to identify individuals that are in those area.

The topic that I will be addressing is Burkas being worn in airports. I totally respect an individual’s right to wear whatever clothing they want, and their freedom to partake in whatever religion they want. Don’t get me wrong and take this as an attack on any specific religion or belief system. When boarding a plane or any other form of public transportation, the officials in charge need to be able to identify whatever individual is underneath the Burka. Wearing a Burka is simply not appropriate while going through airport security.

I find it quite troubling for numerous reasons:

1.      Any person who boards an aircraft needs to be able to be identifiable. You should not be able to produce a passport picture that includes an individual covered in a Burka (which does happen). Part of the reasons that we have passports is to produce government issued identification. How can you possibly identify a person which is covered by a Burka in their passport photo and in real life?

2.       Any person in the world could dress up in a Burka and refuse to unveil for “religious reasons”. It is a huge security risk, not only to airport and airline personnel, but to the public as well. Someone who is not allowed to fly on a plane could easily cover themselves and claim that it is for religious reasons.

3.      The public that are put in the situation of a veiled/unknown individual boarding a plane are put in an uncomfortable position.

Again, I am not writing to say that individuals who are devout to a religion should not be able to practice it freely, but there is a time and place to take place in those religious activities. I fully believe in freedom of speech and freedom of choice, but in an environment such as an airport, precautions need to be taken and all individuals should be totally identifiable at all times. In a secure area, security overrides everything else, including religious beliefs.

Mexico 2013

In the summer of 2013 I took a trip to Mexico. I went to Cancun with 4 friends, which meant 5 of us in total. I should have known that an odd number of people never works out the way you want it to since one person is always left out, but at the time I hadn't thought about it. I thought we all would have gone and had a good time but I could not have been more wrong.

Keep in mind, all the individuals I had gone with were related in some way, two being siblings and two being cousins. I was related to none of them which should have set off some internal alarm bells but alas, I had to learn the hard way.

One of our evenings consisted of the cousins arguing about who had grown up in a harsher environment. The argument took place in MY hotel room, which led to myself and one of the other individuals leaving the room for two hours. After accidentally leaving the secure area of the resort, we managed to find our way back into our safe zone and returned back to the room once we thought it was safe. We were dead wrong. Upon placing my ear up against the door, I once again heard the muffled argument. My accompanying partner and I decided to take a little bit of a longer walk down to a near-by pool and stuck our feet in while we discussed the days events. At approximately 2 AM, we returned to a now silent and vacated room (my idea of heaven) and went to bed.

The next day, we had gone on an excursion which included rappelling, zip-lining, snorkelling and swimming with dolphins. Most of the day had gone extraordinarily well. All of us had been getting along, chit chatting and exploring the jungles of Mexico. Upon all of us piling into the van to take us to swim with Dolphins, more exciting (note the sarcasm) events unfolded. Not only were we driving down a gravel road full of bumps and quick turns, but one of the expedition leaders had found a Python slithering around the floor of our van. That was slightly terrifying, but the rest of the excursion was fine.

The next night, the siblings had got into another argument about God knows what, and one had stormed off back to their room without saying a word to the rest of us. These people are driving me nuts at this point so I had tried to FaceTime my family back home in Canada (a country that I was missing very much). Long story short, the internet is so crappy in good ol' Mexico, the FaceTime attempts had failed numerous times.

I could not wait to get home. And I will not be returning to Mexico with this group of nut jobs.

Hey there world