The Case of U.S. Airways and the Flying Imams
Vs. 
Omar
Shahin, leader of the flying imams
On Monday, November 20, 2006, an incident occurred on a U.S. Airways plane headed from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Phoenix which became huge news because of the way in which it exemplified so much of the controversy surrounding the U.S. government's present day War on Terror and the various side effects that this "war" has engendered. While traveling home from a conference, six Muslim clerics, or imams, were removed from the plane due to passenger complaints about their "suspicious" activities, i.e. praying to Allah in the waiting area and on the plane.
As the media uproar after the fact has shown, U.S. airways picked on the wrong imams. Omar Shahin, the apparent leader of the group, immediately did everything in his power to provoke public outrage over what he considered to be the unacceptable treatment of loyal Americans (three of the imams were American citizens, two had green cards and one had a work visa) simply on the basis of their religious beliefs. "The police came and take us off the plane in front of all the passengers in a very humiliated way," Shahin said. "I never felt bad in my life like yesterday. It was the worst moment in my life when I see six imams, six leaders in this community, humiliated." Most of the news coverage in the immediate aftermath of this story breaking generally took the imams' account of the event as legitimate. This perception was aided by the fact that U.S. Airways immediately announced their intention to launch a full investigation of the events in question.
As time has passed, it has become clear that there are two sides to this story, which has become more and more convoluted by the day. Not surprisingly, as the story became increasingly complicated, it receded further and further from the front pages. After all, who in America's mainstream media wants to deal with the ugly details of racial profiling of Muslims in airports (which most people probably have no problems with) or, worse yet, the idea that these imams actually caused enough of a disturbance to warrant the airlines actions? Well, for those of you who are more interested in the truth, rather than misleading and biased accounts from the imams or Muslim-hating right-wingers like this one, It's Still News is here to give you the straight scoop.
The key to understanding what happened lies in determining whether or not one accepts the imams' account of the events in question or that of most of the passengers on the plane. If one accepts the latter, these holy men suddenly seem more like conmen and opportunists. An outline of the discrepancies between the two stories can be seen in the difference between this MSNBC story written the day after the incident and this strongly anti-imam editorial whose author seems to believe that the whole incident was simply a publicity stunt designed to weaken American airport security, which was written two weeks later. This article also cites some ominous, though not conclusive, connections between the imams, especially their leader Omar Shahin, and radical Islam, and even with Al Queda operatives. With regard to the specific incident at the airport, these appear to be the key points of dispute:
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Passengers claim the imams' actions before boarding the plane went beyond anything that can be described as simply praying quietly. They puportedly blocked the entryway to the plane, made anti-American statements and loudly chanted Allah's name in a scary and intimidating manner.
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The Imams did not take their assigned seats, instead taking seats at the front, middle and back of the plane in a manner that appeared reminiscent of other hijackings. They also supposedly asked for seatbelt extensions despite having no apparent need for them. The imams claim that only one of them, Marwan Sadeddin, asked to change seats, which he did only because he is blind and needed assistance from his colleague. Passengers claim that this "sick" imam only pretended to be blind in order to change seats (It's Still News Side Note: though despicable, this seems like a clever strategy for getting a seat upgrade and one that may be worth emulating, but only for really long international flights when the extra leg room, plentiful alcohol and edible food is worth the certain eventual trip to hell). The only problem with the passengers' claim is that the man actually is blind.
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Three of the imams had one way tickets and did not check any luggage, inspiring more comparisons to the September 11 hijackers. The imams claim that they only got one way tickets because they had decided to stay in Minneapolis for an extra day and thus had to get one way tickets in place of their original round trip flight.
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An Arab-speaking passenger on the plane claims that the imams conversation involved anti-American rhetoric such as harsh criticism of American policy in Iraq (understandable even to non-Muslims) as well as positive allusions to Osama bin Laden (this one is tougher to justify). Of course, the imams deny all these claims.
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Two claims made by the imams appear to directly contradict police and FBI accounts of the incident. The imams' claim that they were handcuffed and threatened by police dogs is not corrabarated by the police report, nor is their claim that U.S. Airways refused to sell them different tickets after the incident (they were given full refunds).
A week after the incident, a pray-in was organized near the U.S. Airways counter at Reagan Airport in Washington by leaders of the American Muslim religious community, who were joined by representatives from the Christian and Jewish clergy. The Washington Times, a newspaper every bit as "fair and balanced" as Fox News responded with a truly openminded analysis of the events, entitled "How the imams terrorized an airliner."
Thus, a couple of weeks after the initial incident, this story began to look like a typical American left-right political dispute, with various lefty civil rights groups backing the imams, bashing Americans' intolerance of Islam and calling for an end to all racial profiling and various righty pro-America groups declaring that sometimes security concerns can legitimately trump civil rights and that in any case these particular imams deserved what they got because they are liars, phonies and maybe even terrorist sympathizers. We here at It's Still News generally don't like to take sides and will leave it to our readers to draw their own conclusions from the facts at hand.
The latest update on this story came just a couple of days ago, on March 14, when the imams finally filed suit against U.S. Airways and the Minneapolis-St.Paul Airport for violation of their civil rights after earlier attempts to reach a settlement were unsuccessful. At the same time, they are also cosidering suing the individual passengers who reported their suspicious activity. In our minds, while this litigiousness is a positive in that it offers conclusive proof of the imams' Americanization (what can be more American than hiring a New York lawyer to sue everyone in sight whenever possible?), going after individuals is a major mistake that may reduce public support for the imams. Just ask the music industry how effective going after individuals is...
It's Still News will keep you posted on this story as it continues to develop...