Earlier this week, we reported on an incident with several Muslim imams…religious leaders…being denied boarding on a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix.
Passengers, police, and flight crew continue to insist the group raised the security warning flags…that it was a combination of factors that caused them to remove the group.
- They were praying very loudly in the gate area.
- The group switched their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the 9/11 attacks: two in the front row first class, two in the middle on the exit aisle, and two in the rear.
- They allegedly shouted “Allah” repeatedly when passenger were called for boarding.
- Three of the men asked for belt-extenders although they were not oversized, and placed them on the cabin floor instead of using them.
- The two men in first class said their tickets were upgraded. The gate agent advised police that when the imams asked to be upgraded, they were told no such seats were available. However, they were seated in first class when removed.
- One of the men made two trips to the rear to talk to their colleague during boarding, and again when the flight was delayed due to their behavior.
In contrast, Omar Shahin, one of the passengers in question, insists they did everything to avoid suspicion, wearing Western clothes, speaking English, and booked seats to not sit together. He also claims they conducted prayers quietly and separately to avoid attention.
Aviation security officials insist thousands of Muslims fly every day and conduct prayers in airports in a quiet and private manner without creating incidents. We are willing to accept the theory that Muslims may be singled out for scrutiny, and there is a statistical reason for that, but it is incidents like this that security officials make every effort to avoid. The two sides of the story do not match up.
Thus, yesterday, the Washington Times reports, led a protest by prayer with other religious leaders at the airline’s ticket counter at Washington National Airport(DCA). The protesters also called on Congress to pass legislation to outlaw passenger profiling. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee(Dem-TX), said the September 11 terrorist attacks “cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans.”
The collective, not individual actions of this group made them look suspicious. We agree that a look into passenger profiling and this incident is warranted, but if they can pull a man off a plane for smelling bad, why not for acting in a suspicious manner without it being a case of flying while muslim? They’ve pulled people off planes for breastfeeding, for praying onboard while Jewish, and so on…
A bunch of people acting in this manner is at least as suspicious as some of the other things they’ve pulled people off planes or diverted same for…At least their suspicions in this case sound more concrete than bathroom graffiti. We think that the Muslim community should be calling for the government and US Airways to work with them to improve the process instead of calling for boycotts and protesting.