From BoingBoing. If you need a refresher about The War Against Tees, click here.

It seems Arab-looking people are not allowed to wear Arabic lettering on their tee-shirts in American airports, or at least not if JetBlue has anything to do with it.

Now, I can tell you from personal experience that white people can.

It’s true the sample size wasn’t large, but it was in this case equal to the other test, so I’m calling it equivalent. And it’s also true that I was wearing it in gold, rather than printed on 100% cotton or even a poly/cotton blend, which would naturally be somewhat suspicious, especially in business class.

But then again, the only item I had that identified me as an Arab sympathizer was a nameplate necklace, the name of which did not correspond to the name on the expired passport I was carrying as my only ID.

And the nice formerly-Iranian lady at US Customs and Immigration who could, as it happened, read Arabic perfectly well, which is a helluva lot more than I can do, laughed when she read my passport and said “So I guess your name is not Cheryl then? That’s what your necklace says.”

And indeed it is not. I said that in that case my sister had my necklace, we shared a chuckle, she handed my passport back, and I got on the plane. End of story.

Then again, not only is my name not Cheryl, but I don’t even look like a Cheryl. 

More to the point, I don’t look like an Almira, either.

T-shirt: “I am not a terrorist,” in Arabic
Tim Murtaugh tells BoingBoing,

 After reading about blogger Raed Jarrar’s experience at JFK (he was forced to take off a shirt with Arabic writing on it or miss his flight), I finally stopped being depressed about the war on terror and began being proactively pissed off. I made this shirt, which says “I am not a terrorist” in Arabic. I plan to wear it every time I go to the airport from now on.

On the t-shirt site, Tim says: “All the shirts are set to $1.00 more than the Spreadshirt base price — all profits will be sent to the ACLU.”