Everyone these days trades freedom for safety if they want to fly the not-so-friendly skies. However, I’m not sure taking off a hat during a security check falls under more than a minor inconvenience, unless you happen to be a Sikh. In case you wondered the most distinctive feature of a Sikh is that they wear a turban. As I have recently discovered, there’s even a National Sikh Coalition.

Prablyit Singh, a Sikh who wears his turban as part of his religion, was stopped recently when he flew out of his home airport in Washington D.C. He objected to having his turban patted down after he had passed the metal detector, and says TSA agents gave him a hard time.

“What I had to go through was not only humiliating, but a demeaning situation to get onto this flight,” Singh says.

Singh finally agreed to the pat down, but as is required by his religion, asked it be done in private.

The National Sikh Coalition headquartered in New York believes this is racial profiling because agents seem to believe all turbans should be searched. This is hardly likely since all other passengers with hats were being searched during the security check. Under present circumstances, not to check Singh’s turban would fall more in line with special treatment and danger to other passengers than racial profiling.

The obsession with hats by the TSA comes after the national embarrassment of a monkey getting through Transportation Security Administration agents under a man’s hat and ending up on a plane departing Peru and bound for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and then onto another plane bound for New York City on Aug. 8, officials decided to make changes in policies regarding hats.

Ok, I admit that I don’t like what airports have become. They are absolutely tyrannous and a place were the customer is never right. You pay for the privilege to be humiliated with gestapo style tactics for a trip that could end abruptly as a fireball hurtling from the sky.

If Singh would like to complain, which I think he has every right, then complain to the people that are to blame. Since hijackers are 99.9% Muslim, perhaps he should take out his personal grievances with them. CAIR probably handles hat and turban issues next to the shoe complaint section.