Whether or not Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was treated unjustly, the effect of his charge of “Islamophobia” will be to intimidate people into thinking that they must not say anything when Muslims are behaving suspiciously on airplanes. The participation of Hamas-linked CAIR, which encourages Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement, is further reason to be suspicious. Hamas-linked CAIR’s Zahra Billoo said: “For whatever reason, he was not allowed to fly on the airplane and yet he was cleared by law enforcement. We worry that they’re being overzealous.” And so for fear of being “overzealous” in the future, law enforcement officials may let Muslims who are genuine threats fly on airplanes. More non-Muslims will be murdered, but what do Islamic supremacists care about that?
“Iraqi seeks apology after being removed from Oakland-bound plane,” by Steve Rubenstein and Kimberly Veklerov, SFGate, April 16, 2016:
A UC Berkeley student who was removed from a Southwest Airlines plane after a fellow passenger heard him speaking in Arabic on his mobile phone is still waiting for an explanation and an apology from somebody.
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a 26-year-old Iraqi refugee and the son of a slain Iraqi diplomat, had just boarded his Oakland-bound flight at Los Angeles International Airport on April 6 when he called and spoke with an uncle on his mobile phone.
After the call ended, Makhzoomi said a female passenger looked at him, got up and left her seat. A short time later, an airport employee told Makhzoomi to get off the plane.
Makhzoomi said his phone conversation had been with an uncle in Baghdad. They had discussed a meeting of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council that Makhzoomi had attended.
After he was led from his seat, Makhzoomi said he was questioned in the aircraft jet way by a series of security and police officers. At one point, he told them he was a victim of discrimination.
“I told them, ‘This is what Islamophobia looks like,’” he said. “And that’s when they said I could not get on the plane, and they called the FBI.”
Makhzoomi, who is studying political science and near Eastern languages and literature at Berkeley, said he was interrogated at length, sniffed by police dogs and subjected to an intimate body search in front of passersby. FBI agents arrived and questioned him some more….
Southwest, in a statement, confirmed it had removed Makhzoomi from the plane because of what it called “potentially threatening comments made aboard our aircraft” and “further discussion.” The airline said it would not have acted “without a collaborative decision rooted in established procedure.” It declined to elaborate….
Islamic leaders said they were disappointed to learn of what happened to Makhzoomi and worried that racial profiling was involved in his being removed from the plane.
“We’re concerned that this is part of a trend of Muslims being profiled and their right to travel being impacted,” said Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the [Hamas-linked] Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Billoo said the airline owed Makhzoomi and the public a clear explanation of the incident and a promise to review its procedures for handling similar incidents.
“For whatever reason, he was not allowed to fly on the airplane and yet he was cleared by law enforcement,” Billoo added. “We worry that they’re being overzealous.”
The incident in Los Angeles was followed by a similar removal of a Southwest passenger from a flight in Baltimore on Wednesday. That passenger, a woman wearing an Islamic scarf, was asked to leave the plane after she attempted to change seats during an intermediate stop on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. No other details about that incident were immediately known.
Makhzoomi, who said he has taken two dozen flights on Southwest in the past year or so and is a member of its frequent flier plan, said he was seeking nothing more from the airline than an apology.
“I don’t want money,” he said. “I don’t care about that. The message of Islam is forgiveness. That’s all I want.”