Recently, I attended a show entitled "Comedy's Odd Couple: One Muslim, One Jew, One Stage," hosted by Islam On Campus and the Jewish Student Association.
Rabbi Bob Alper, the first Jewish man to obtain a doctoral degree from Princeton University, and Azhar Usman, a Muslim attorney who has also been performing stand-up comedy for eight years, had me convulsing with laughter over sensitive issues that I wouldn't dare joke about myself.
Their witty antics united students of all backgrounds and faiths; Muslims, Jews, Christians and Atheists alike.
But there was one point during the show at which everyone fell uncomfortably silent.
Usman asked the audience if it knew that Muslim mosques were being monitored for radiation.
There were no angry outcries.
There was just that impenetrable silence.
After conducting a little research into the matter myself, I found Usman's claims to be true.
The U.S. News & World Report broke a story on a top secret government program approved by the Bush administration that was aimed at detecting nuclear radiation.
The program monitored more than 100 Muslim sites in Washington, D.C., and sites in five other cities, according to the report.
So is this monitoring protecting U.S. constitutional rights, or is it infringing upon rights to privacy by invading places of worship?
The answer federal law enforcement officials gave was "no," according to the article.
Since the monitors only checked the air in the immediate area for radioactive activity, no warrants were necessary and rights to privacy were not an issue in the first place, government officials told the U.S. News & World Report.
Although the nation is at war, there is a fine line between protecting American citizens and simultaneously alienating a large portion of them.
Homeland security is an issue when a nation is at war, but racial profiling is an issue as well.
The U.S. Constitution was written so that it could be interpreted strictly or flexibly, but flirting with those rights can lead to an outright abuse of them.
So, when is invasive too invasive?
U.S. News & World Report article on radiation monitoring.
