Waris Ahluwalia was banned from his flight after he refused to take his turban off. Ahluwalia is a designer who specializes in designing jewelry for his label “House of Waris.” This morning, he posted a photo on Instagram of his missed flight as he was suppose to be traveling from Mexico City to New York to be apart of fashion week.
Ahluwalia’s ticket read, “Secondary Security Screening Selection,” or “SSSS.” He says the security started to let people board at around 7:15am. They kept him back so that they could check his luggage. In addition to checking his bags, they also swabbed him and ran their hands by the bottom of his feet. Ahluwalia was not worried about the searching. He even says he is pretty use to that type of searching but once they asked him to remove his turban, he felt as though they were going a little too far.
Ahluwalia released a statement saying,
“That is not something that I would do in public. That’s akin to asking someone to take off their clothes.”
After asking for a private room screening, they told him that he needed to book a new flight. After posting the photo, the designer received a lot of comments from people who were totally against what this airline security did. One user said,
“This is outrageous. Sikhism is not even related in any way to terrorist extremists. What a sad day, a beautiful faith of love and peace in treated in such a horrible way.”
Ahluwalia released a statement to The Daily News saying,
“It was a big conversation about diversity that we needed to have and if you can take a hateful situation, and then have people respond with love and put more love into the world, you win.”
He says he will not be booking a flight with Aero Mexico again until he receives an apology and also until they learn how to respectfully work with Sikh passengers.
Source: Complex
