How the imams terrorized an airliner
Audrey Hudson

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted “Allah” when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.

“I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud,” the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks — two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

“That would alarm me,” said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. “They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane.”

A pilot from another airline said: “That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry.”

But the imams who were escorted off the flight in handcuffs say they were merely praying before the 6:30 p.m. flight on Nov. 20, and yesterday led a protest by prayer with other religious leaders at the airline’s ticket counter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

As I noted in a post last week, this situation seemed to be an exercise in manufactured outrage. The imams in question were ‘just exercising their rights’, they claim. Well, they do have a right to behave stupidly, and they certainly did exercise that right.

As this article from The Washington Times makes clear, these imams are not foreigners who might not—five years after 9/11—understand how sensitive American airlines and airline passengers are to unusual behavior. They are all Americans and should know that without a doubt. The behavior they exhibited would have raised suspicion no matter their religion or lack of religion. By seeking to create a sensation, it appears they hoped to don the cloak of ‘victim’, if not ‘martyr’.

This does not seem at all to be a case of religious profiling as it was based purely on the behavior of the six. Peculiar behavior should attract attention, particularly when that behavior is so closely related to the behavior of the 9/11 hijackers. In fact, one could suspect that this group intentionally modeled their behavior to match.