veiled4allah: the "crime" of Flying While Muslim

Forget Snakes on a Plane, how about Islamophobia on a plane?

First some British passengers "mutinied" because two apparently Muslim men were on the flight.

Then a Canadian doctor was removed from a flight because a drunk passenger thought his Muslim prayers were suspicious.

Now a British pilot was removed from a flight apparently for being Muslim.

Where will this end? Muslim-only lines at the airport?

Sara Robinson at Orcinus has some good commentary on this:

There's only one word for this. It's vigilantism, pure and simple. It's no different than any other kind of lynch mob. And it is beneath the dignity of a civilized society... ...But there's far more at stake here than meets the eye. If these vigilante mobs are allowed to get their way on airplanes, what's to stop them from taking their show on the road? Are we going to see subway mobs assaulting brown people on train platforms to "prevent" subway bombings? Are restarauters going to find themselves under pressure from upset diners not to hire -- or seat -- certain "frightening" classes of people? Will neighborhood groups press realtors to stop selling local homes to specific ethnic groups, for fear property values will drop? Or will they, perhaps, subject "undesirable" neighbors to harassment campaigns until they're forced to move on?

This all sounds far-fetched -- until you realize that we're hardly forty years past an era when most of this was standard operating procedure in much of America. Vigilante justice, racial segregation in public accommodations, real estate redlining, and sundown towns are part of a past that we've worked hard to leave behind. It will be a disgrace to all of us if we allow a few irrational bullies on airplanes put us on the road to bringing it all back.

This is something that we should not allow to continue. It is beneath us.

Update: As if that isn't enough, there's more:

All 12 passengers arrested after a US airliner returned to Amsterdam will be released, Dutch prosecutors say. Northwest Airlines flight 42, bound for Mumbai (Bombay) in India, changed course over Germany and flew back to Schiphol airport on Wednesday. The 12 men, said to be of Asian appearance, reportedly aroused suspicion by fiddling with mobile phones and plastic bags.

God forbid that a passenger should ever fiddle with their mobile phone.

Security expert Bruce Schneier explains why this is exactly what the terrorists want. Let's not do their job for them, mm'kay?

Later: I should have included this one earlier. Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar was made to cover up his T-shirt with Arabic writing on it (see some pictures with the T-shirt here). It appears that some people may not realize that Arabic is a language spoken by some 200 or 250 million people, of all religions and of none. It isn't some kind of "terrorist language" for God's sake.

Meanwhile, what do you want to bet that this flight was diverted because of a Muslim name? This is getting out of control here.

More reports of passengers refusing to fly with Muslims. Then they should leave the flight, not have people arrested and removed for having the "wrong" religion.

Aside: This is no better:

Some fellow passengers are questioning why an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight in Montreal last week for praying. The man was a passenger on a Sept. 1 flight from Montreal to New York City when the incident happened.

The airplane was heading toward the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray.

"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.

"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.

I love the part where they "recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim". Would that have made it better?

Update: Thankfully, this has been quieter for awhile, but here we have a Spanish professor and a Jewish architect, whose apparent crime was simply to be brown-skinned. This racist hysteria can stop now, thank you.