Flying while Threatening

You must have heard all about the Muslim holy men (imams) who were taken off of an airplane. The original reports indicated that they had done nothing wrong. According to their statements they had discretely performed normal prayers before boarding. Some of them had requested seat belt extensions because of their weight. In order to keep from scaring people by sitting together they moved to other seats. They were even talking about how harmful Islamic violence is. Regardless, a passenger became alarmed and passed a note to the flight attendant who passed it to the pilot who, in turn, had them removed for the crime of flying while Muslim.

There is a lot more to it.

The spokesman is about 100 pounds lighter than he claimed and did not need, or even use, the seatbelt extension. They prayed both before and after boarding the plane which is not standard practice. They did not ask before moving to other seats. A passenger who speaks Arabic heard them saying things in favor of Saddam and against Bush.

And they were not the only Muslims on the plane.

It was announced today that three different probes dismissed their claims of discrimination. These men were acting in a suspicious manner which is grounds for removal from a plane.

The silliest part of this was when a CAIR (Council on American/Islamic Relations) suggested that these men should have been above suspicion because they were acting suspicious. According to this logic, real bombers would never call attention to themselves therefor the only people the authorities should ever be suspicious of are the ones who are not suspicious.

Somehow this seems like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch, or possibly Abbott and Costello.

There has been a lot of speculation that this was actually a protest. If so, it is on par with telling the fight attendant that you are carrying a bomb then complaining about discrimination against comedians.

It is also possible that it is part of a campaign to make it easier to get terrorists on planes by making the flight crews think twice about suspicions.

On the morning of September 11, the ticket clerk who sold Mohamed Atta his ticket thought to himself that this was a man who looked like a terrorist. He then kicked himself for racism and sold him a ticket.

Sometimes suspicious people do mean you harm.