When Your Work Is Too Good
I took a Qur’an class in college and my professor assigned us a major project due at the end of the semester on some facet of Islam. We were allowed to pick any topic except for religious extremism. He said that topic wasn’t allowed because of what had happened a few years back.
Apparently, a student of his had chosen Bin Laden as his project. He was a psychology major so he found radicalization interesting and wanted to develop a paper on how someone became a terrorist.
This involved him reading a bunch of writings from Bin Laden and researching terrorist movements and people associated with terrorism. Mind you, this was all for a paper. The student was not religious at all.
He had absolutely no interest in extremism. Well, at the end of the semester, he turns in this awesome project and the year ends. The student is from out of state and is going to fly back to his family except he’s stopped at the airport. That’s when it all falls apart.
He gets told by TSA that he’s on the no fly list. Apparently, his extensive research flagged him as an extremist and there’s now an investigation on him. They literally took him into another room and gave him a bunch of questions.
They even called my professor to have him show the paper to corroborate his story. It all got cleared up in the end, but it was a nightmare. Because of that, the class stayed away from religious extremism.
My professor said he was even nervous about researching terrorism at all because he didn’t want a repeat of what happened. Story credit: Reddit / SleepyxDormouse