In 2014, Adam Saleh published a video showing an NYPD officer profiling and harassing Muslims. It was sensational, it was shocking, it was clear evidence of NYPD “Islamophobia.” It went viral and made international news. There was just one catch: it was a hoax. Saleh had staged the whole thing. The incident was so embarrassing that even Ibrahim Hooper of Hamas-linked CAIR, a veteran purveyor of fake hate crimes against Muslims, demanded that Saleh apologize.
Now, coincidence of coincidences, Saleh claims that he was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight for speaking Arabic. Even aside from Saleh’s history as a hate crime hoaxer, his story just doesn’t ring true. I fly all the time — almost every week. I’ve been on many flights, including Delta flights, on which people were speaking Arabic. No one batted an eye. I’ve been on flights with bearded Muslims wearing kufis and thobes who while waiting at the gate assembled for prayer and began making prostrations in full view of the non-Muslim passengers. No one bothered them. The idea that Adam Saleh or any other Arabic speaker would be removed from a flight strains credulity beyond the breaking point. There must be more to this story that Saleh is not telling us. I expect it will come out sooner or later.
“Youtube star Adam Saleh speaks out after being kicked off Delta flight,” CBS News, December 21, 2016:
Delta Air Lines responded Wednesday to accusations from a YouTube star that he was kicked off a flight because he spoke Arabic to his mom on the phone before takeoff.
In a statement, Delta said: “Two customers were removed from this flight and later rebooked after a disturbance in the cabin resulted in more than 20 customers expressing their discomfort. We’re conducting a full review to understand what transpired. We are taking allegations of discrimination very seriously; our culture requires treating others with respect.”
Delta was responding to a series of widely circulated tweets by Adam Saleh, who has over 1.6 million subscribers to his TrueStoryASA YouTube channel, and over 2.2 million subscribers to his Adam Saleh Vlogs YouTube channel. Saleh’s YouTube channels are full of prank videos as well as videos about Muslim life, and he is a self-described “professional idiot.”
In an interview with CBSN, Saleh said he takes numerous flights every month, and he was upset because something like this never happened before.
“I speak to my mom on the phone every flight,” Saleh said. “She only speaks Arabic.”
He said when he was speaking to her, a woman in the seat in front of him turned around and told him he ought to speak English. Saleh said he told her he can speak whatever language he likes, and her husband responded by standing up and screaming at him.
Then about 20 people allegedly said they were uncomfortable with Saleh and his Arabic-speaking companion. The pair were approached by the captain, who Saleh said “seemed ashamed and embarassed” when he asked them to leave the plane because of the other passengers’ complaints.
In one video Saleh posted to Twitter that was retweeted 83,000 times in just 2 hours, Saleh can be seen getting escorted off the plane.
As he is slowly walking down the aisle of the jet, Saleh says he is being kicked off for “speaking a different language.” He said he was just innocently talking to his mother when “white” people around him began complaining about his use of Arabic. This led to a handful of Delta personnel asking Saleh to leave the flight.In the video, some passengers can be seen telling the apparent Delta employees that they did not want Saleh removed, while others can be seen waving and saying “bye” as he walks away.
It is not clear in which city the incident took place, although according to Saleh’s social media accounts, he was on his way from Australia to New York.
He later tweeted that police and security officials interviewed him and the other person kicked off the flight multiple times.
Saleh later said he got on a flight to New York with a different airline after being “checked” for 30 minutes.
“I’m not gonna let this go,” Saleh said. “What if they do this to people like my mother who can’t even speak English?”
No official accounting of what exactly transpired on the flight has been released by the airline or airport security. Mediaite reports that Saleh has a history of faking anti-Muslim incidents.
However, Delta employees have been accused of discriminating against Muslims in recent years….