Going for a direct insult to him is to ignore him? In any case it seems to me he has explained his case better than you have in this case.
Of course. I’ve never seen any mod complain about it, either. Most of us can take it as good as we give it. magellan01, as has become increasingly common lately, is being a pissant.
When I worked at the cubical farm I had two observant muslim coworkers who would quietly occupy an unused conference room for their prayers. For some reason this really bothered one of my other coworkers though I could never get her to explain to me why. At least not in terms I could understand.
Marc
May I blame you for being a cowardly numbskull who is willing to give up essential liberty for illusional safety? Home of the brave, indeed.
You’re being obtuse. The final decision is the pilot’s. Do you not agree that if someone thinks that someone else’s behaviour is suspicious then it’s perfectly reasonable for the first someone to report it? Then the powers that be can evaluate the information and make a decision. In this case, the decision was that these people would not fly that flight. End of story.
So basically, terrorists will probably act as western and inconspicously as possible to avoid raising suspicion, but they might be calling our bluff and acting as radically Islamic as possible to carry out an attack due to reverse psychology? Are we not back to square one where every Muslim is a possible suspect, no matter what attitude they project?
While the pilot has to make the decision, if they are making the decision on irrelevant and unlawfully dicriminatory grounds (e.g., banning people because they are Muslim or Middle Eastern, without further cause), then there might be problems.
(What if a pilot had a policy of banning people who were Jews or Israelis, because he believed they were “trouble-makers”? Would there be no problem with that?)
Well yeah, if 19 of them flew planes into buildings, and blew themselves in cafes, bombed trains in london, then yeah I would pass a note.
Stop with the infantile strawmen. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but so far the great majority of terrorists have been Muslims. A little caution is not a bad thing. Perhaps if someone had been more cautious on 9/11 things may have been different.
It sucks this happened to them, it really does. But as a pilot if I have a choice between pissing off 4, or possibly risking the lives of 100, you piss off 4. Sucks, but thats the world we live in now.
if you have a suggestion on how to change it, im all ears.
No. Everyone’s a suspect. Certain people make themselves more suspicious.
Sorry but “end of story” is the nonsense part, the powers that be should not have done that. The Imams were not on the no-fly list and there is evidence they overestimated the risk.
One can indeed say it is understandable why it happened, but saying “end of story” means we all should approve of the decision. We are not in a dictatorship. And that means also telling the powers that be that they screwed up.
Why shouldn’t they boycott the airline? If I were treated that way, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to fly on their planes any more. I’d tell all my friends to avoid them, too. Who wants to pay good money to be treated like that? If US Airways thinks this is a reasonable way to treat Muslims, I don’t see why any Muslim should patronize their airline.
All that does is make sure that this shit will happen again and again. Obviously, these Imams don’t like being treated this way. They’re perfectly within their rights to try to make sure they aren’t treated this way in the future. How else to do this, but by raising a fuss and trying to organize some sort of economic sanctions against the airline? If you were subject to such treatment, would you suck it up? Or would you bitch and complain and do whatever you felt was necessary (within reason, of course) to make sure it didn’t happen to you again?
It’s hyperbole, but not all that inaccurate. What we seem to be losing in this country isn’t religious freedom, so much as religious equality, and this incident is pretty much conclusive evidence of that. These guys were pulled off that plane for being visibly Muslim. No other religious group that acted in the same way would have received the same treatment. I very much hope that they take this to court, and take it all the way to the top. This is as clear-cut a case of religious discrimination as I’ve ever seen.
So, they have the right to be pissed, but not the right to act on or even express that anger? That doesn’t strike me as particularly fair.
Also, there’s a difference between behavior that’s unexpected, and behavior that’s unacceptable. Sad to say, the reaction these men received was hardly unexpected. That neither mitigates nor excuses how they were treated.
If this is how we treat them, why should they want us as friends?
If the airline has a problem with it then they can deal with it.
Latest reports mentioned that US Airways Group Inc. is investigating, indeed this is not the end of the story.
And if they don’t?
God forbid anyone flies Emirates or Qatar Airways. My God, those entire planes are full of Arabs! There’s a compass pointing to Mecca! They pray in the aisles! :eek:
They would of been in a line facing Mecca, probably North to Northeast. One may of been in front, facing the same way, leading the prayers. He would of been the one to recite the prayers outloud. They all would of said “Allahuakbar” when changing from standing to kneeling to standing. (You can google “how to pray islam” for videos and such.)
When traveling only three prayers a day are necessary and it would of been permissible for them to pray in their seats facing forward (in the direction they were traveling.)
Let me tell you about the terrorist cop who caught me wontenly sleeping in my car, with a Koran in plain view, in a shopping center with a Marine Corps recruiting station . I lost the car because of towing fines that accrued while I waited three weeks in jail for charges to be dropped ( I guess Homeland Security never answered the email he sent that evening.)
Too bad it wasn’t some Christian Arabs saying a version of this blessing in Arabic:
What would’ve been really classic is if the complaining passenger happened to be a member of the same denomination those guys saying that prayer was.
So, now do you understand why I’m “fixated on the complaining passenger?”
True story (aka, anecdote) time: I was accused of asking a Vietnamese shipmate if he were Viet Cong. The person complaining to his officer in charge heard me speaking with the other Sailor in Vietnamese. I asked him if he knew something. The last two words in the sentence were “biet khong.” The complainant did not know any Vietnamese at all and assumed the worst. As it turns out, the OIC actually knew some Vietnamese and realized what had happened. I got an apology from the complainant. And we got along famously after that.
It seems to me that’s what the Imams in this case want: an apology from the people who made a ridiculous assumption.
I take it by your non-responsive response that you recognize that your arguments are simply one more example of your persistent and unsupportable xenophobia:
Gee, I don’t care if they are ANGRY, but they have to UNDERSTAND that our citizens are just too stupid to distinguish between actual angry young men sneaking onto a plane to commit mayhem and a group of middle aged and out-of-shape clerics openly going home from a convention. Since September, 2001, Americans are simply compelled to shut down our brains and believe the worst about anyone different. It’s not our faul-l-l-lt! Being forced to have their travel plans interrupted, being dragged of a plane in handcuffs, and being denied a ticket on a common carrier is just the price they have to pay for living in the Land of the Free while daring to have foreign ancestors and continuing to practice their religion.
It all makes sense. (Like villages, do we have to destroy our freedoms to save them, too?)
And the way to deal with it is to pressure the Feds to take action against the airline for discriminating against them on the basis of religion and (perceived) national origin, both of which are violations of the law.
There is no action reported of the group or any member of the group that can be legitimately perceived as threatening or even disruptive. The airline had no basis on which to deny them passage and absolutely no reason to further deny them tickets for a later flight.
Straight up religious and ethnic discrimination.
(And if the Feds are too chicken to act, then to take both the airline and the Feds to court for violating and then failing to enforce the law.)
…a cite ffor any of these incidents would help determine whether or not you have a point or whether you are just talking out of your arse. The only incident I could find about mayhem in a Cracker Barrel Restaurant was this one, where I discovered that as recently as in 2004, some restaurants in the United States still practiced segragation!!!
As for the “traveling troupe” allegations, I can only assume that you are refering to the Syrian Wayne Newton and Annie Jacobson’s hysterical rantings on “Womans Wall Street . com.” To quote an anon. from the Federal Protective Service:
Jacobson’s rantings sure set the blogs a-fire, just look herefor a brief sampling…but as I said on another messageboard at the time, what Jacobson observed was a group of middle-eastern looking men sitting down, standing up to talk to each other, and then sitting down again. One of them went to the toilet with a McDonalds wrapper, and then “shock horror” when he returned to his seat, he didn’t have it again! Was this the incident you were thinking of?
Or were you talking about the many reports of “arabs rushing at cockpit doors” and taking photographs during flights that have never been verified by anyone? Please enlighten us as to what these “many incidents” since 9/11 have been please…