If he gets what he wants from United, it will send the signal that passenger concerns about Muslim passengers will not be tolerated. And our guard against genuine jihad terrorists will be that much lowered. From CBC News, with thanks to F.:
A Winnipeg doctor is demanding an official apology and compensation from United Airlines after being kicked off a flight in the U.S. this week, an incident he has characterized as “institutionalized discrimination.” Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a Muslim, was escorted off an airplane in Denver on Tuesday. According to Farooq, reciting his evening prayers was interpreted by one passenger as an activity that was suspicious.
“The whole situation is just really frustrating,” Farooq said. “It makes you uneasy, because you realize you have to essentially watch every single thing you say and do, and it’s worse for people who are of colour, who are identifiable as a minority.”
You do have to watch every single thing you say and do. So do we all when flying these days. My work involves the Qur’an and other Islamic texts, but I no longer do work while flying that would mean having out in plain view books that would make other passengers concerned. Flying is a serious business nowadays. But this “people of colour” remark is just a cheap attempt to make this out to be a racial problem. It isn’t. Farooq was “reciting prayers” — when he could have done it silently. I have been in the presence of Muslims who have done so, so please don’t tell me that that is impossible. These are the same prayers that jihad terrorists have prayed, so a passenger was concerned. I am sorry he was inconvenienced, but we all have been in so many ways since 9/11, haven’t we? He should seek an apology from Osama bin Laden for indirectly occasioning his being taken off this flight.
Farooq said the allegation came from a passenger who appeared drunk and had previously threatened him during the trip.
Oh really? Did he report the threat? What was its substance? Did he tell the airline officials about this threat when they approached him to take him off the plane?
When flight personnel were alerted, the 27-year-old radiology resident and two colleagues “” a man and a woman “” were taken off their flight. They had been returning from a conference in San Francisco.
Farooq said that even officials from the Transportation Security Administration soon realized the flight crew had overreacted, but by the time that conclusion had been reached the trio were forced to stay in Denver for the night and catch a flight the next day “” at their own expense. “There’s no recourse,” Farooq said. “There’s no way to really be able to talk to anybody to really be able to reason it out. The police officers who talked to me afterwards and subsequent officials within the first three to five minutes, they were like, ‘You know what? The crew made a mistake. We apologize that they took you off. They overreacted.'”
So then why is he still seeking more?
Brandon Borrman of United Airlines told the Winnipeg Free Press this week that the airline is obliged to take any allegations threatening passenger safety seriously, particularly in the wake of last week’s arrests in the alleged bomb plot on flights from Britain to the U.S.
Yes.