Plane Prayers
When are airline officials being too cautious?

A US AIRWAYS CREW invited controversy — and a bevy of unanswered questions — last week when it kicked six Muslim imams off a flight. That decision led to, among other things, a “pray-in” protest at Reagan National Airport on Monday. There’s a disturbing possibility that innocent passengers were removed from their flight, handcuffed, detained and denied the opportunity to purchase another ticket home just because of a preflight expression of faith.

Many facts of the case are still the subject of debate, but we know this much: Last week, six imams heading home from a conference in Minnesota unrolled rugs before boarding a US Airways flight to Arizona and said their evening prayers. When they boarded, they sat in different sections of the aircraft. Another passenger passed a note to a flight attendant expressing discomfort that Arabic men were moving around the airplane. The captain threw them off, and the local police and the FBI detained them for questioning. The imams were later cleared for flying.

The Washington Post editorializes on the issue of the six imams thrown off a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last week. I can’t disagree much with their position.

If the imams acted as they were reported to have done [See earlier posts here], then they should have been thrown off. If those allegations are not factual, though, then a different issue comes to the fore. There certainly have been cases of overzealous airlines and passengers who have decided that particular passengers represented unacceptable risk. That the vast majority of these cases have been the result of ignorance or general bias against Arab or Asian looking passengers only adds to the indignity and unfairness.

The UK’s Independent on Sunday published an article last month about a passenger who was throttled by other passengers, to the approbation of other passengers. His crime? “Looking Arab.” His religion? Jewish. His nationality? American.

There have been other cases as well when passengers have overreacted to innocent behavior. Most of these have been the result of overactive imaginations and fear. A distressingly large number of these incidents, however, get excused on the grounds that the person of interest ‘could be doing a dry run for a terrorist attack.’ How does one refute that charge?

Based on the reports of this most recent incident, though, I find the imams’ behavior to have been intentionally provocative, if the allegations are indeed factual. If they are not, then I have to split the blame. The other passengers get their share for being ignorant and overly suspicious; the imams for behaving as though it were still 9/10.