Now the 6 arrested passengers are suing their accusers. Boy, there was sure a whole lot of nasty racism going on that day. It’s hard to figure out who should sue who, isn’t it? Psst, the airline probably has more money. —MEGHANN MARCO
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@nomad73: It doesn’t matter. Saying “someone of this origin/race/appearance did something bad so the rest are therefore bad” is racist. In the past, blacks were denied rights given to whites just because they were black. We locked up Japanese-Americans and German-Americans just because of their ancestry, even though they were Americans; we now behave as if it is a crime to be Muslim and pray even though we live in a nation founded on the notion of religious tolerance and even though some of our earliest settlers came to what is now the US because of religious persecution elsewhere; and we justify it all using the same lame arguments that we are now forced to apologize for!
Apologies for slavery have been in the news lately once again. Just recently apologies were issued to the Japanese-American community for our imprisonment of those people just because of who they were, where they were from, how they looked, or who their ancestors were. I believe the German government has apologized for its past treatment of Jews just based on their faith and I would imagine that other countries allied with the Germans in the 1940s have likely done the same.
And here you sit, DEFENDING this?! Who do you think you are? How can you, considering what this country has done and then apologized for? Haven’t you seen how it never works out and only ends up being looked down on as unacceptable, and we ask “how could we?” And people like you want to DO IT AGAIN!
I am ASHAMED of people like you. You do not belong in this country. If you believe in persecution, go live somewhere where the government specifically not only allows it but does it itself. Like China. You’ve certainly got the attitude down pat.
The first poster is right. This was a setup for publicity and money.
Chanting, anti-American ranting, seat belt extensions, strategic seating arrangements…what are people *supposed* to think?
In an effort to show their own religious tolerance, the Muslim clerics hired a Jewish law firm…
you know, I’ve just read more of the posts here and I’d like to say this: There are rules of behavior that must be followed if you want to ride on a freaking airplane. That is just how it is; it is not any kind of right but a priviledge burdened with security requirements. If I walk through security at the airport and make some off-hand comment or stupid joke involving the word “bomb” or “gun” it is almost certain that I will not be flying that day despite not looking at all middle eastern. Behavioral profiling is certainly a poor art, but there must be some guidelines to help judge who could be a potential threat, and unfortunately Muslims have a very bad reputation as far as planes, bombs and suicide attacks are concerned. Yes, only about 10% of Muslims are fundamentalists, but that’s about 150 million people worldwide. So boys and girls, DON’T fuck around on airplanes. Just be the good little fare-paying cattle that the airlines, FAA and DHS expect you to be and maybe you and your luggage will arrive at the same place at the same time.
Would like to point out one thing that I haven’t seen anyone else say, The comment has been made many times about the fact that they were praying loud and therefore drawing attention to themselves. Muslims do not pray the same as everyone, they dont simply close there eyes and pray silently like some, the have specific positions they move between and supplications and verses that are said. This would obviously bring attention to them from anyone who is not of the faith and does not understand their beliefs. They also have to pray at certain times of the day corrosponding with different positions of the sun, and therefore would not have been able to simply pray before they got to the airport. Just wanted to add something that had not yet been added.
Pretty much all I have to say has already been said by Pelagius, Rectilinear Propagation, and others. The problem isn’t with the passengers reporting their suspicion, it’s that they were suspicious. Sadly, suspicions and ignorance of the central tenets of Islam, e.g. daily required prayers, are rampant on this very thread. It is a simple fact that not all Muslims are Arabic or terrorists. In fact, I find comments like this disgusting:
“If i see anyone praying right before a flight i will say something. I dont know if they are saying their last prayer but it wont be mine. They have to understand that there will be some sort of reaction with their actions.”
@zentec:
“But if the Muslim community wants to counteract the fears, they need to become a whole lot more vocal about denouncing these acts. So far, that hasn’t happened.”
Maybe it’s just because I recently studied my local Muslim community and read a bunch of Muslim websites and opinion articles, but I do believe that HAS happened.