Imams Removed From Flight May Sue Passengers
H/t Interested
The Imams who were “removed from a plane last fall after being accused of suspicious behavior are suing the airline and threatening to sue the passengers who complained.” Omar Mohammedi, their lawyer, said that “the intent is not to go after passengers who raise valid concerns about security.” No, they are only going after passengers who acted in bad faith out of prejudice.
More:
In reaction to the imams’ lawsuit, Congress has taken steps to legally protect passengers who report suspicious activity. Earlier this week, the House approved an amendment to a rail transportation security bill that would make passengers immune from such lawsuits, unless they say something they know is false…
Billie Vincent, a former director of security for the Federal Aviation Administration, said he is troubled by the mere attempt to identify the passengers who raised concerns.
Airline passengers “are your eyes and your ears,� said Vincent, who now owns an aviation security company. “If attorneys can get those names and sue them, you put a chilling effect on the whole system.�
Can the frightened passengers sue the imams for scaring the hell out of them?
Cross posted at my own blog.
25 Responses to “Imams Removed From Flight May Sue Passengers”
“Can the frightened passengers sue the imams for scaring the hell out of them?”
———–
They should!
I’ve heard differing accounts of what transpired. If they were in fact doing things that would look suspicious to ordinary people then it’s natural that passengers got nervous. On the other hand if all they did was prayed the passengers just let their prejudices get ahead of them. Mind you, I don’t think they should be sued. I think the airline should be sued for preventing them from taking their flight when they and their luggage had been searched and double-searched. I know some passengers where refusing to fly with them on the plane, that’s their prerogative, but an airline can’t just prevent you from flying on the grounds that you “look funny” when you are shown to be unarmed and with your passports and tickets in order.
One more thing, suspecting of religious Muslims praying in an airport is instinctive, but not really smart. If I were a Muslim terrorist, I’d shave, wear a smart suit and tap away at my laptop before boarding, without saying a word out loud in Arabic. Not bringing attention to yourself would be high on my priority list.
Lynx,
I totally agree with you. I think that the ‘war on terror’ has become an excuse for people to show their bigotry because they can cover it with the ‘they were acting/look suspicious’ excuse. They seem to forget that all the 9/11 hijackers did their best to fit into Western society in order to not draw attention to themselves.
I think Americans need to get out more and stop expecting everyone in the world to conform to our way of living. We look down on those who don’t as second class and dangerous. Heck, we even do it to people in our own country, our own citizens. If they don’t act white then they are dirty, lazy and dangerous. If they work hard and are still poor then they must have some character flaw, and are dirty, lazy and dangerous.
I’m also guessing also that all the passengers who freaked were white.
[...] Others blogging: Gaius / Blue Crab Boulevard:  Legal Abuse — The media is not giving favorable treatment … Michael van der Galien / The Moderate Voice:  Imams Removed From Flight May Sue Passengers [...]
Yep, Minneapolis is chock-full of rednecks; that’s why Al Franken is running for the Senate up there. Maybe that’s the reason the Flying Imams asked for seat-belt extensions — so that they could emulate the gargantuan belt buckles of these Flying Rednecks.
By the way, how does one act white? I’d like to know so that I can avoid airport hassles in the future.
But I do admire the euphony of your phrase, “dirty, lazy, and dangerousâ€?. It reminds me of Lady Caroline Lamb’s description of Lord Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.â€?
Lynx,
It was not the praying. They prayed before the flight and were allowed to get on the plane. The suspicious activity happened once they got on the plane. They happened to sit next to an arabic speaker who over heard them talking in arabic about bin laden, the injustice of Saddam’s execution, and “terrorism.” According to people on the plane, some of them paced nervously in the aisles while whispering in arabic. Some requested seat-belt extensions that were not needed. In addition to praying in the terminal they prayed again on the plane, but typical Muslim practice is to pray once at sundown and not twice. There were many more weird acts that were perhaps not suspicious singly, but suspicious as a whole.
Many passengers thought their activities were suspicious and they told the crew. None of the passengers were suspicious until they actually got onto the plane. The Captain, after conferring with the Air Marshall, airline and airport security – who all agree they were acting suspiciously, decided to get the FBI involved and they were taken off the plane.
It seems pretty clear to me their intent was to get kicked off the flight to generate this lawsuit and publicity. The fact they continue to make threats like suing the passengers, which is totally ridiculous, only indicates to me they are milking this incident.
I would agree with entropy on this. There seems to have been a clear attempt to cause provocation here.
The fact that they are not only going after the airline…but identifying the passengers is a clear sign that there was a plan in advance to make this a “federal case”. After all, from your last flight, how detailed is your knowledge of your fellow passengers? These imams have made detailed descriptions of those who identified them…not exactly typical of people just wanting to fly.
I would add, when the GOP surprised Congress by sending a bill back to committee to include a retroactive protection from litigation for passengers who identify suspicious behaviour on airlines…many Democrats responded with outrage. The votes against allowing such protection were all Democrats.
If this protection does not exist, it would be a weapon in the arsenal of any hijacker, as people would be terrified of even looking sideways at someone acting suspicious — like the shoe bomber Richard Reid was — for fear of a multimillion dollar lawsuit backed by CAIR and Saudi grants.
Who knows what they intended, perhaps publicity? There are radical Islamists who thrive on anger, and there are Christians who do so as well.
But my concern is with the climate of fear being generated by the current administration. After flying out of LA last week, I felt as if we were a bunch of sheep slowly being stripped of our freedoms in order to create in us a greater desire for “protection,” which “big brother” is more than happy to offer.
A frightened electorate is malleable in the worst ways.
Thus, I wonder just how real all of this is.
The neo-cons, neo-fascists, are not to be trusted; like Hitler’s shenanigans with the Reichstag fire and the alleged Polish intrusion, some minds will not stop at harming their own people in order to broaden their control.
Ashen,
Prejudice, strictly defined, is a preformed and unsubstantiated judgment or opinion about an individual or a group. “Assuming� anything about the individuals involved in the incident is, in fact, an example of the same bigotry that you lecture against. How do you profess to know what is in the hearts and minds of these people? People, with whom, you have never met or even conversed. What does that say? You “assume� that they were all white and apparently you also have assumptions about not just that race of people but the entire populous of the United States, excluding yourself of course.
This suit is an outrage and hopefully will be thrown out of court. Lynx and ashen shard, it’s equally outrageous for you to denigrate and label as bigots, decent Americans who rightly came forward after witnessing this bizarre behavior by those imams, who as Entropy said, acted that way for the purpose of being kicked off the plane and generating this suit. I would bet if you had been on that plane, you would have reported them to the authorities as well. I don’t think that either of you are so PC that you would take a chance with you or your own families lives.
Tom, the climate of fear has come about due to real world instances of muslim terrorism.
It’s a clear case of discrimination, no different from black persons suing because a restaurant or hotel threw them out after the white patrons complained. Though the defendant, as in those cases, should be the airline, not the passengers.
cfpete,
I am not assuming, but guessing that those who freaked were white, there is a difference. Strictly speaking, there could have been blacks, hispanics, and/or asians among those passengers who freaked. Actually, I would be interested in knowing whether my guess is actually correct or not, so if anyone could do either for this incident, I would be extremely grateful.
My guess comes from historical precedent of white Americans freaking over the culture of any other racial minorities in the US. If you look at the history of race riots for example, almost all of them are perpetrated by whites who are afraid of other racial groups settling near their homes.
I must confess I myself am white and have grown up in predominantly white neighborhoods. I am much more than aware of the attitudes towards other races held by whites and have been guilty of such myself. The problem is this country is too comfortable in its wealth to deal with these problems. Not all whites freak when confronted by members of other races, but I think they are more likely to do so since more than any other group, white citizens of this country are typically isolated from the rest.
Whether bigotry was involved or not in reporting ‘suspiciours’ behavior, is a separate question from the grounds for the lawsuit.
If someone calls the cops to report that lesbians live in the house next door to him, that’s bigotry; the caller hasn’t committed an actionable crime. It’s up to the cops (or airline employees) to decide, whether they need to take action.
If the caller directly harasses his lesbian neighbors, then he has crossed the line into actionable behavior.
No one should be subject to a lawsuit just for thinking inappropriately – or we’d all be in court.
Those Daring Young Imams in Their Flying Machines
We soar through the air with the greatest unease,
With prayer-matted imams, down on their knees.
“Board that plane, dhimmi,� shout the PC’s,
“Better step lively, or face civil pleas.�
They won’t scan my pork, or transport my booze.
I got the St. Paul Sharia Blues.
Laura, if you read my comment I said that the passengers MIGHT have been letting their prejudices get ahead of them. Or they might not have, it all depends on what they saw. Read the comment again, it’s not difficult to understand. I never said how I might have reacted in their situation, I certainly don’t consider myself above others in that regard. I, like all other Spaniards, looked more than a little leery at young Arab men with backpacks on trains after our train bombings. If one of them had by chance left his backpack behind I’d be the first one screaming for security. I don’t think that the passengers should be sued, but quite frankly I don’t like the idea of an airline being totally above sanction for preventing you from flying. They could have said “Bin Laden is the greatest man in the world” and, other than getting their airplane food spat on, as long as they were shown to be unarmed (both them and their luggage) and not harassing others, they should be allowed to fly.
Oh and you’re a fine one to talk about false accusations of prejudice, by the way. Tell me, have you ever, once in your entire life, taken the side of a Muslim on anything? Do enlighten me, because to judge from your time on TMV, not only are posts involving Muslims (or anything that could be associated to them) the only thing that interests you, they are ALWAYS wrong, no matter what. I generally take a fairly hard line myself, but stop short of deciding that if theirs a Muslim involved, he/she must be wrong.
Ashen Shard…
Are you saying that only people of colour have the right to report suspicous activity on airlines, when the suspicious person is apparently of Middle Eastern descent?
I remember that when Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, tried to ignite his shoe bomb, one of the passengers who subdued him was a very large African American basketball player.
Thus, in your analysis, that case is perfectly OK.
But a white person has to sit and watch Reid blow up the plane, because otherwise they would be guilty of racism?
I know, this is an “reductio absurdum” of your argument, but that is clearly the implication.
Have all of you forgotten that the gate attendant who checked Mohammed Atta on 9-11 thought he was suspicious, but then mentally second-guessed and dismissed any suspicious thought as being racist?
God save us all from liberal guilt.
Pretty good, because I hate everyone on flights. If one of them was the proximate cause of me getting $&% arrested, their awful visages would be seared into my memory.
The last woman that sat next to me was about 38, brown hair, bad perm, too much makeup, about 140lbs. And she wouldn’t shut up, even though I was conspicuously trying to read.
Factual accounts seem to differ, and courts are designed to parse differing factual accounts. So let ‘em sue. If the other passengers’ complaints weren’t in bad faith or totally retarded, they’ve got nothing to worry about. Heck, they’ve even got pro bono counsel lined up.
Lynx said: “…but quite frankly I don’t like the idea of an airline being totally above sanction for preventing you from flying.”
I would agree with this…although I think the airlines were fully right on this occasion.
Sometimes there are hysterias, and racism is a reality. I say this a someone who was regularly profiled back in the 80s-90s whenever I would fly through Heathrow…and I would always be pulled out of line by security and searched…mainly cause I did tend to look like a “Red Brigades/Baader-Meinhof” terrorist.
I just shrugged and went along. But I concede there should be no “Absolute” power on the part of airlines here.
Thus, while I thought this was all bollocks when they were going to sue the airlines, I just shrugged.
But suing the passengers is radically different…and, I feel, exposes their underlying agenda.
JPE said: how detailed is your knowledge of your fellow passengers?
“Pretty good, because I hate everyone on flights.”
Hahahahahaha!!!
No, he’s making a prediction that, like the trailer trash in Florida that saw swarthy muslims in a diner and called the cops, the complainants were probably white. He said nothing that should have caused your O’Reilly Factor trick knee do the “liberal guilt” jerk.
Don’t you? Oh, and don’t take my above comment personally – you could well be right about the liberal guilt thing – I’m just crabby today. I should probably get off the internet tubes before I say something *really* stupid.
I’m saying we shouldn’t all be paranoid and persecuting innocents for the crimes of the few. I’m also saying whites are more likely to be paranoid about others who are not white, though this does not preclude anyone else of another group being paranoid. Yes, be watchful, but be educated about different people. Someone whose religion or ethnic background which is obvious from how they look on the outside should not automatically make them a threat. As I said with the example of the 9/ll hijackers, we would likely overlook them because they did everything to cover up their cultural background. They did this because they knew who we are, they knew we would label them as different. They ‘conformed’ because they knew we would accept them and would think they would be the last person in the world who would commit such a crime.
Look, racism and bigotry is part of the human experience. We try to minimize it, but often it affects us in unconscious ways and we don’t eve realize it’s happening. Blaming the passengers is stupid. The passengers didn’t say, they’re muslim, middle-eastern, or whatever – they reported the BEHAVIOR. If Vanilla Ice was in the seat next to me doing those same suspicious acts, I’d be reporting it too.
Once the behavior was reported, then the authorities had a choice. They deliberated for a while as people sat on the plane and finally decided to take the men off to ask them WTF they were doing. I don’t see how that’s inappropriate, or racist, or anything. If they had acted like a typical person, no one would have reported any behavior and this incident would never have happened. This was a CAIR propaganda operation pure and simple, and an effective one judging by some of the comments here.
Marlow-
I thought your ‘hate everyone on sight’ response was marvelous.