A Test Interview: An Australian Cabin Crew

I have been wanting to interview people, regular people that are still only concerned with partying and having a good time and nothing else—just like a lot of the anti-Jihad bloggers were before 9/11—to see what their thoughts on Islam are and how they respond to questions about politics and whether they realize that the world is in a mess because of Islam or not.

In the interest of my crazy idea to interview random people, I thought I would first try to interview one of my colleagues. Now, some of you might be thinking, “How does that count? Your colleagues are not “random” people!” Well, the truth is, my colleagues are as random as meeting someone on the street that I have never met before. Whenever I fly, I fly with a different set of crew and rarely do I get to fly with the same people I have flown with before.

What I have in mind, of course, isn’t like your typical interview—I ask a question, the other person replies and then I put that down on paper in a question/answer layout. It is a very casual sort of interview (if you can call it that) and whenever I do something like this, it will accompany my commentary (sorry, no escaping my loathsome writing skills).

Anywho…onto the interview.

About The Interviewee:

This 20-something girl’s from Australia; she is tired of Dubai and wants to go back home. She misses Australia and is actually proud to be an Australian. She says she has a good life in Australia and she just came to Dubai to work for this airline because she wanted to see the world. Now that she has seen enough, there is nothing else left for her to do in Dubai. She will resign in a month or so and move back, not really knowing what lies ahead.

The Interview (39,000 ft above ground level):

In my hotel room before I left for the flight I had scribbled a set of questions to ask on a piece of paper. I safely put the paper in my suitcase and left for the flight…not realizing that I won’t be able to get a hold of those questions during the flight as they were put away in a very cold place called the “cargo hole”.

“Crap!” I thought to myself and then followed that by, “Oh well…” and proceeded to think of questions in my head. To begin with, I asked her if she knew anything about politics in general. Her very quick response was, “I know enough about politics.” The girl wasn’t rude but for some reason her reply sounded more like, “what the heck’s the matter with you?!” I prepared myself to run to the nearest exit in case she looked like she was about to blow up…she didn’t blow up and I mustered up enough courage to proceed with the interview.

Catch-22:

I wanted to know if there was anything about her government’s policies that she was specifically not happy with. That was a stupid question for me to ask; not because it was a bad question but because the girl was confused. At first she said she was fine with all the government policies, then she told me she wasn’t happy with the strict immigration laws of Australia, then she went ahead and said that she supports the immigration policy to some extent because it preserves their heritage and she is proud of that.

At this point, I started searching for my non-existent Magnum .44 to shoot my brains out but the fake journalist inside of me slapped me and brought me to my senses. I asked her to elaborate and she said, “The immigration policies are not good in the sense that a lot of poor people go through a lot of dangers to get to Australia to have a better life and when they do get to the borders alive, they are arrested and put in detention centers. However, what’s good about the strict immigration policies is that it keeps Australia safe and preserves the culture. So to me it’s sort of a catch-22 situation. I want these illegal immigrants to have a good life but I also want Australia to be safer.”

She started to make sense; I almost saw a light bulb go off above her head (but my sources cannot confirm that report just yet).

Islam:

I wanted to know what she thought about Islam (because I don’t give a rat’s butt whether she is proud of her heritage or not, I don’t even know what her heritage is…I bet she doesn’t even know). I asked her what she knew about Islam. She was honest and told me, “I have minimal knowledge of Islam; it’s mostly based on what I have heard and seen. Before I came to Dubai, I had a negative impression of Islam. There is a lot of stereotyping of Muslims in Australia.”

I asked her, “Has your perception of Islam changed since you have come to Dubai…do you see Islam in a more positive light now?” Her answer was a straight, “Yes.” I thought, “We’re onto something here.” So I asked her (in these exact words) to tell me specifically what she thought was negative about Islam that had now come and bitten her in the butt in a positive way. She thought for a moment and said, “I can’t tell you anything specifically, I can’t put my finger on anything.” And then followed the nervous laughter. It was awkward; mission accomplished.

I decided to move on. I asked her to tell me the first thing that comes to her mind when I say, “Shariah law.” She said, “terrorists!” I thought, “yay!” and asked her why she said what she said. She told me, “This perception of mine is only based on what I’ve seen around me and in the newspapers. It is not based on any research or any facts. That is just the first thing I think of. I have never had any personal problem with either the Shariah law or Islam. Even though there are a lot of Muslims in Australia, we live with them peacefully.” She wasn’t making me happy but then it was what she thought and how she thought was what I was after anyway.

What If:

I asked her, “Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Let’s say Australia imposes Shariah law on all its citizens. What would you do? 1. Convert to Islam 2. Accept it and live as a second class citizen 3. Not accept it and rebel quietly 4 Band up with other rebels and overthrow the government?” She said, “I will accept it…um, I will not accept it and rebel quietly. I will not overthrow the government. I might convert, I don’t know. I just don’t think it is ever going to happen. Australia has never done anything against Muslim countries so they will never bring Shariah to Australia.”

At this point, she had stopped making sense, the light bulb had burst! I gave her a huge lecture on Islam and Jihad after the interview but I won’t include that here because that’s not the point of all of this. I should mention, however, that she added, “I think the terrorists have hijacked Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. Terrorists just twist Quranic verses.” This was coming from a girl that had just told me less than half an hour ago that she knew next to nothing about Islam and had never read the Quran.

To finish the interview, I asked her if she would like to say something to her fellow Australians. She said, “Read up on Islam to form an informed opinion.” I loved her advice. I thanked her for the interview and we shook hands.

Conclusion:

What I wanted to get from this interview was the view of a lay person. A person that doesn’t constantly eat, breathe and drink anti-Jihad. The reason being, when the time comes and the world goes completely crazy, we are not only going to have to know Islam and Muslims like the back of our hands but we are going to have to know what to expect from our neighbors who never cared about all of this. These sort of interviews, I think, will also give us an idea about how surprised the regular populace will be when faced with another attack from Islam, what their first perception will be and how close they are to understanding the threat of Islam among other things.

I understand that interviewing a cabin crew is probably not the best thing and putting one person’s opinions up does not give a fair representation of the majority of the population but this was just a test interview. I am going to Australia in a couple of days and I will try to interview people on the streets if at all possible. So, I would really appreciate feedback on this. Just let me know what you thought about it. I could use a lot of constructive criticism because, in all honesty, I am not really a journalist. I don’t even know how to spell “journalist”. I know I am doing a lot of things wrong and if you can tell me what they are, I’d really appreciate it.