Muslim Group Opposes Use of Body Scanners at Airports

Zakariyya Adaramola26 August 2010


The Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) says Nigerian Muslims should object to the use of body scanners at the country's international airports because it violates their human and religious rights.

MPAC's Director of Media and Communications Mallam Disu Kamor said yesterday that the scanners should not be used on Muslims because they would expose naked bodies which would then be seen on a monitor by another person.



Mallam Kamor said though Muslims agree that airports must be made un-friendly to terrorists but due to the explicit nature of the pictures that the body scanners bring out, they believe that "government's choice of the measure without due public consultation is unacceptable."

According to him, in Islam the right to privacy includes the right to decide who views your body, whether in person or via images.

He said the fact that the screener is unable to identify the passenger does not change the fact that he or she is viewing a near naked image of the passenger, adding that by forcing the passenger to go through the body scanner he/she is being stripped of his/her privacy and his/her right to decide who takes and views his/her near nude images.

The MPAC's director, in a statement made available to Daily Trust, said the Quran commands Muslims, both men and women, to cover their private parts; as such the enforcement of nudity under the guise of maintaining air passenger safety and security was unacceptable.

Mallam Kamor said a pat down search would be just as effective in finding explosives strapped to the body instead of body scanning.

He said: "The use of the body scanners produce detailed 3-D images of passengers' figures on a computer screen as if they were unclothed and the MPAC objects their use", he said.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201008260335.html

u cant have your cake and eat it, Africans covering themselves like arabs should prefer that their country provides security against radical idiots than bogus religious ideology. There's no right to privacy anything. The husband, abi men decide on your attire. Period.

Ah! Na bus dem go use go saudi be that!