Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling
on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all
airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.
Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before
boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" — coincidentally, the last words heard by
hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died.
Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and
denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the
imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments.
After boarding, the imams did not sit together and some asked for seat belt
extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets
and no checked baggage.
Also they were Muslims.
The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves
that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan
taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of
irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to
bathe.
Come to think of it, the whole affair may have been a madcap advertising scheme
cooked up by US Airways.
It worked with me. US Airways is my official airline now. Northwest, which
eventually flew the Allah-spouting Muslims to their destinations, is off my list.
You want to really hurt a U.S. air carrier's business? Have Muslims announce that
it's their favorite airline.
The clerics had been attending an imam conference in Minneapolis (imam conference
slogan: "What Happens in Minneapolis — Actually, Nothing Happened in
Minneapolis"). But instead of investigating the conference, the government is now
investigating my favorite airline.
What threat could Muslims flying from Minnesota to Arizona be?
Three of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 received their flight training in Arizona. Long
before the attacks, an FBI agent in Phoenix found it curious that so many Arabs
were enrolled in flight school. But the FBI rebuffed his request for an
investigation on the grounds that his suspicions were based on the same invidious
racial profiling that has brought US Airways under investigation and into my good
graces.
Lynne Stewart's client, the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving life in
prison in a maximum security lock-up in Minnesota. One of the six imams removed
from the US Airways plane was blind, so Lynne Stewart was the one missing clue that
would have sent all the passengers screaming from the plane.
Wholly apart from the issue of terrorism, don't we have a seller's market for new
immigrants? How does a blind Muslim get to the top of the visa list? Is there a
shortage of blind, fanatical clerics in this country that I haven't noticed?
Couldn't we get some Burmese with leprosy instead? A 4-year-old could do a better
job choosing visa applicants than the U.S. Department of Immigration.
One of the stunt-imams in US Airways' advertising scheme, Omar Shahin, complained
about being removed from the plane, saying: "Six scholars in handcuffs. It's
terrible."
Yes, especially when there was a whole conference of them! Six out of 150 is called
"poor law enforcement." How did the other 144 "scholars" get off so easy?
Shahin's own "scholarship" consisted of continuing to deny Muslims were behind 9/11
nearly two months after the attacks. On Nov. 4, 2001, The Arizona Republic cited
Shahin's "skepticism that Muslims or bin Laden carried out attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon." Shahin complained that the government was "focusing on
the Arabs, the Muslims. And all the evidence shows that the Muslims are not
involved in this terrorist act."
In case your memory of that time is hazy, within three days of the attack, the
Justice Department had released the names of all 19 hijackers — names like Majed
Moqed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi and Ahmed
Alnami. The government had excluded all but 19 passengers as possible hijackers
based on extensive interviews with friends and family of nearly every passenger on
all four flights. Some of the hijackers' seat numbers had been called in by flight
attendants on the planes.
By early October, bin Laden had produced a videotape claiming credit for the
attacks. And by Nov. 4, 2001, The New York Times had run well over 100 articles on
the connections between bin Laden and the hijackers — even more detailed and
sinister than the Times' flowcharts on neoconservatives!
Also, if I remember correctly, al-Qaida had taken out full-page ads in Variety and
the Hollywood Reporter thanking their agents for the attacks.
But now, on the eve of the busiest travel day in America, these "scholars" have
ginned up America's PC victim machinery to intimidate airlines and passengers from
noticing six imams chanting "Allah" before boarding a commercial jet.
