Two Muslim Imams wearing traditional garb and traveling from MEM to CLT to attend a conference on Islamophobia were removed from the flight by TSA after the pilot refused to takeoff with them aboard!
“Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CNN the two men contacted his office and said they were told that other passengers did not want them on board the small commuter plane.”
“TSA came on and pulled them off and said the pilot was refusing to fly with them because passengers were uncomfortable with them,” Hooper said, referring to the Transportation Security Administration."
IMHO this was VERY poorly handled. The passengers who allegedly found themselves uncomfortable flying with the two gentlemen are the ones who should have been asked to leave the aircraft. If the pilot was the one who decided to leave them behind for no reason other than prejudice then he should be grounded until he realizes the error of his or her ways.
+2
This is a clear demonstration of why it must not be a matter of individual discretion whether someone else is allowed to fly. TSA should be following specific rules for determining whether any passenger still represents a realistic threat. For example, after secondary screening, how could there still be a plausible risk? If there is, then what good is secondary or primary screening?
It’s unconstitutional to hold a passenger based on the unfounded opinion of a pilot or another passenger, with no appeal or legal recourse. “See something, say something” shouldn’t mean broad veto power for each person on the plane. What if we had that kind of veto power over a biker with a huge upper body and extensive tattoos? I hope this goes to court and the imams win big – so the airlines and TSA will be forced to sharpen their rules.
These guys were not on the “No Fly” list, they passed the TSA security screening.
The captain should have made the passengers that didn’t feel conformable leave the flight or gave them the option to leave the flight.
I’ll bet my left n*t that this “Captain” is a 4000 hour super pilot that thinks he can do no wrong and that his word is law.
I’d say that he has laid his foot down for the last time- have fun running checks on the back side of the clock Cpt. Important
No doubt these Imams were victims of intolerance but what about them? What are *their *beliefs and teachings? In Islam we see daily examples of intolerance towards other groups, e.g. Christians, Jews and Gays. Women who do not follow the strict tenets of Islam are subjected to severe punishment under sharia law and are otherwise treated as second class.
Is this a case of injustice or a case of getting a taste of their own medicine?
Are you talking about the same no-fly list that had Teddy Kennedy on it?
Unlike the more liberal minded people here who cannot seem to understand who the enemy is, I will not pass judgement on pilot until I know what the passengers were nervous about.
I especially won’t judge the pilot because he wouldn’t let the Muslims back on after being rescreened because rescreening does not guarantee that they were not terrorists. The TSA has yet, in 10 years, stopped a terrorist from getting on a flight.
Hmm, so you’re saying all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world believe exactly the same things. All this Sunni/Shiite infighting is a sham.
Similarly all 2.2 billion Christians (Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Mormon, Eastern Orthodox, Adventist, Pentacostal, Unitarian, UCC, Jehovah’s Witness, FLDS, etc. etc.) believe exactly the same things.
Political and economic conditions, education, history, and nationalism are irrelevant.
Life is thankfully so simple (who knew?). And thus because Osama bin Laden and his small band killed 3000 people on 9/11, we can eject anyone who is Muslim – or looks Muslim – from an airplane, so the rest of us can feel better. Then surely you agree that because of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the KKK, David Koresh, and Jim Jones, etc. we should feel free to eject anyone wearing a clerical collar, a cross, or a Jesus t-shirt. And because thousands of people are killed by non-Caucasian drug dealers every year, we can eject blacks (how dark?) and anyone who appears to be Mexican or Colombian. Or speaks with a Spanish accent – or whatever sounds like Spanish to me. Is that what you meant?
If so, then you are breathtakingly poor at making distinctions between humans of any sort. And you are hopeless at distinguishing friend from foe, harmless from dangerous.
It is you who fears everyone with a few Muslim stereotyped characteristics, rather than making distinctions between real and imaginary threats. I am at least as concerned as you about not being caught in the next suicide hijacking, but I know the attack is very likely to be from someone who doesn’t match the template.
I don’t care what the passengers were nervous about. They were wrong. They didn’t ask the men any questions before deciding about them, and they don’t have any perspective on the range of risks and the telling features of each. Their amateur judgment just isn’t reliable.
Any given Muslim you see has an extremely low probability of being one of the small number of actual terrorists. That means Muslim or Arab appearance is a very poor starting point for catching a terrorist. And it does not meet the standard of proof we normally demand for depriving someone of their rights and freedom of movement. That is, it’s unconstitutional.
I agree that primary screening doesn’t catch all weapons, but secondary screening makes it such a low probability that there is no longer any justification for holding the men. Secondary screening including El-Al behavioral profiling would make it safer than my car. This would make it effectively impossible to carry out an attack, AND improbable that they ever wanted to. Where else would you ever get that level of assurance on the strangers around you for the next 1.5 hours of your life?
BS. Prove it. You haven’t any idea what attempts may have been intercepted or deterred. And even as porous as TSA is, it catches enough that we haven’t yet seen a successful attack launched from a US airport. I’m not saying I’m satisfied, just that TSA has been sufficiently effective so far.
If they are conservative believers then ANY Muslim, regardless of sect, is very intolerant of non-Muslims. I’ve read the Qur’an. I’ve read commentaries on it. It states without any ambiguity that it is the duty of Muslims to convert others to their “religion.” If they don’t convert then they
are to be killed.
If so, then you are breathtakingly poor at making distinctions between humans of any sort. And you are hopeless at distinguishing friend from foe, harmless from dangerous.
Reductio ad absurdum
It is you who fears everyone with a few Muslim stereotyped characteristics, rather than making distinctions between real and imaginary threats. I am at least as concerned as you about not being caught in the next suicide hijacking, but I know the attack is very likely to be from someone who doesn’t match the template.
I don’t care what the passengers were nervous about. They were wrong. They didn’t ask the men any questions before deciding about them, and they don’t have any perspective on the range of risks and the telling features of each. Their amateur judgment just isn’t reliable.
Any given Muslim you see has an extremely low probability of being one of the small number of actual terrorists. That means Muslim or Arab appearance is a very poor starting point for catching a terrorist. And it does not meet the standard of proof we normally demand for depriving someone of their rights and freedom of movement. That is, it’s unconstitutional.
BS. Prove it. You haven’t any idea what attempts may have been intercepted or deterred. And even as porous as TSA is, it catches enough that we haven’t yet seen a successful attack launched from a US airport. I’m not saying I’m satisfied, just that TSA has been sufficiently effective so far.
Show me any article where a true terrorist has been stopped by the TSA. Sure, they are great at taking away explosive liquids like mother’s milk and have discovered guns and knives from forgetful travelers. They have even frisked 72 year old ladies like my mom because she has metal in her knees. That really prevented terrorism in the skies.
But as far as stopping true terrorists, again, I ask you to show me that they have. You know that they would be boasting about it all over the place if they did.
What about the “underwear bomber?” He was stopped by passengers, not the TSA.
Very few Muslims believe that non-Muslims are all supposed to be killed. You follow the meager reasoning of terrorists by which they justify their deviance, and then you attribute the same view to all 1.6 billion.
Christians also have been commanded by Jesus to convert others to Christianity - The Great Commission. Christians also have often interpreted various passages of Scripture as a mandate to kill outsiders. That ain’t true Christianity, but it does illustrate that any major religion can be misinterpreted and misapplied. The fact that you excuse all Christians for the errors of the few, but do not extend the same generosity to Muslims, is a double standard with no justification.
Correct. That is the rhetorical technique I used. The point is that you have given up on understanding the complexity of the Muslim world, preferring oversimplifications to save time. These shortcuts prevent you from understanding the security problem or developing realistic, feasible, and effective solutions.
You first, RW. You said they had never stopped a terrorist from getting on a flight. Any terrorist who delayed a plan, had their liquids seized and silently disappeared, or chose a different method of attack, is a counterexample for your claim. There would not be evidence of it, so you cannot prove your claim that it has never happened.
Meanwhile, I am only claiming that there has not been a successful or near-successful attack launched from a US airport. That does not prove TSA is an impenetrable protective shield, just that it has been sufficiently effective so far. And you cannot prove otherwise.
He entered from outside TSA jurisdiction. And his innovative approach – setting his nuggets on fire – has now led to advanced imaging and intensive pat-downs. And BTW, there’s been no successful or near-successful attack launched from a US airport since then either. So however stupid it all seems, it’s working OK so far.
Regardless of your political/religious beliefs, the captain was wrong. Plane and simple.
I’m talking about the command dis. that the PIC made when he chose the “safety” of other pax based on the way two men were dressed.
It was not prudent. It was basised on the assumption that they were a threat to the flight because of the way they were dressed and not an actuall threat.
Capt. Important will be fired. If not everything that MLK, Rosa Parks etc. Fought for wad in vane.
For the next month or so I am living right in the middle of the 1.9 Billion and feel safer here than I have in any major US city. Part of that feeling is economic, even the foreigners from Somalia, Yemen and Sudan don’t want to screw up a good thing by offing a westerner. The $300 a month they make is more important to their everyday life than killing me. But I doubt there are more than .01% of them that even thought of doing something violent anyway.
Now, driving is another story. But that has nothing to do with religion, they learned how to drive by watching Italian TV or reruns of Cannonball Run.
I love how some people jump all over one group of people because of a few nuts. Following rw’s logic we should outlaw Ryder trucks driven by white Christians within the city limits.
EVERY religion says you will go to hell if you are not a believer in THIS religion, every religion says something about converting your neighbor.
The old testament is the same in all three Judeo-Christian religions, they all acknowledge Abraham, Moses etc. The Muslims even acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, just not as the son of God.
Think about this, when Moses was up on the mountain the pyramids were 4000 years old.
slate.com/id/2275448/
“Artfully concealed prohibited items” includes such things as a wrapping a sweater around a container of hand cream so that if the hand cream leaks it doesn’t ruin everything else in the suitcase. This happened to my girlfriend.
Do a Google search using “has tsa ever caught a terrorist” as the search terms.
He entered from outside TSA jurisdiction. And his innovative approach – setting his nuggets on fire – has now led to advanced imaging and intensive pat-downs. And BTW, there’s been no successful or near-successful attack launched from a US airport since then either. So however stupid it all seems, it’s working OK so far.
TSA regulations are suppose to be followed at foreign airports for going to USA airports.
Regardless of your political/religious beliefs, the captain was wrong. Plane and simple.
I’m talking about the command dis. that the PIC made when he chose the “safety” of other pax based on the way two men were dressed.
It was not prudent. It was basised on the assumption that they were a threat to the flight because of the way they were dressed and not an actuall threat.
Capt. Important will be fired. If not everything that MLK, Rosa Parks etc. Fought for wad in vane.
I would have flown them, reseated away from the bigots of course.
I have friends that are Iranian and Syrian (AKA Disney Land for terrorist), none of them are terrorist or radicals. They have some very valid complaints with US foreign policy just as these to Imams do with the locals.
There is a huge difference between Radical-Islam and Islam. Hopefully the mainstream Muslims can push out the radicals and get the rot out of their religion.
The loud active minority overshadows the quiet majority just like our politics (left & right). That said Islam is only overshadowed by the Mormons in their teaching of intolerance.
Yes, there is a difference between radical and non-radical Muslims. There’s a difference between radical and non-radical Christians, Jews, and environmentalists.
As long as the non-radical element of a group does not nothing to protest the radical element, as far as I’m concerned they are just as guilty as if they were radicals themselves.
So what you’re saying is that if they don’t stand up and try to distance themselves from those who are the problem, in your view, they are simply guilty by association? How could you ever come to that conclusion? That’s like saying that if I was in Los Angeles at the time, and didn’t say anything to distance myself from others there, just because of the colour of my skin, I’m equally as guilty as others who were in the Rodney King riots.
There is no way you could jump immediately to that conclusion based on their clothing.
Either way, someone definitely missed the note about colour of their skin (or their clothing) vs. content of their character… M.L. King… very wise man. I’ll leave it there.
Let’s make up a group called the Elephant Admirers Society (EAS).
Let’s say 98 of the 100 members do not believe in killing elephants. 2 do believe in it.
Based on the above, which would be the more correct answer?
The majority of EAS haven’t killed elephants AND they have condemned those that have killed elephants. Therefore the logical conclusion is that the 2 killers are rogue elements of the EAS and do not reflect the beliefs of the majority.
The majority of the EAS members haven’t killed elephants AND they haven’t condemned those who did kill elephants. Therefore all EAS members must condone the killing of elephants because they haven’t condemned those who did killed elephants.
This would make it effectively impossible to carry out an attack, AND improbable that they ever wanted to. Where else would you ever get that level of assurance on the strangers around you for the next 1.5 hours of your life?