Posted on 11/22/2006 2:59:00 PM PST by Vinny
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 Qaeda 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
whatever happened to the 'flying carpet'?...
That's going to leave a mark.
5.56mm
So why aren't we profiling? Obviously the people in charge would rather have thousands of people dead than be accused of "racism".
PC kills every time.
This article is well written.
I have always been an Ann Coulter fan, and this inceases my admiration.
Billhilly, I know you think she's poor lookin,' but since we ain't eatin' her it really don't matter.
Hope all my FR friends have a great Thanksgiving, filled with friends, family, good dogs (mine love this holiday, they get a few exxxtra special treats)good food, good health, and a wealth of all the good things we have to be thankful for.
Exactly. These clowns should have been shot to death.
<< Vinny
Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline.
From now on, I'll fly only on US Airways. >>
Certainly just got moved off my 'Never Fly' list, too.
(NW, AA and UA stay on. For ever!)
I love Ann Coulter. I wish I WERE Ann Coulter.
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."See also, from Muslim Imams: The New Rosa Parks?:
“...I never felt bad in my life like that. I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”
So spoke Imam Omar Shahin, director of the Islamic Center of Tucson, after he and five other imams were removed from a Phoenix-bound US Airways flight at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. What were they doing to get removed from the flight?
Some reports suggested that they were merely praying.
However, there were indications that this was not a straightforward case of prejudice and profiling. Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport official Patrick Hogan said that “there were a number of things that gave the flight crew pause” about the imams...-- snip --
...Omar Shahin, meanwhile, was involved with the Islamic charity Kind Hearts, which has had its assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department because of its connections to the terrorist group Hamas.
And according to a September 2001 story in the Arizona Republic, Shahin “said members of the Tucson mosque may have helped bin Laden in the early 1990s...”
I can't believe I'm going to agree publicly with Coulter, but this airline would have been idiots to not kick these guys off the flight.
They requested seat belt extension straps- the stewardess refused, saying they weren't heavy enough to need them.
so a poor "imam" is is seat #1 of first class...........
F*ckers are prolly majority stockholders.
Hmmm
Ann makes a pgood case. There was more here than praying (which ought to be one of the most protected things a person can do).
I've changed my mind - before I read this I thought security was at fault for letting the guy with Hamas connections get on the plane at all but the others were mistakenly taken off.
I see now there was more to it.
You are such an astute jerk-class analyst that you have picked out the one and only well-stated Coulter column. Congratulations! You must be much smarter than Ann, not to mention much smarter than her editors, publishers, and TV hosts, to have noticed this one exception to her generally unintelligible spouting of errors and lies.
Sounds like that to me, too. I think that they should be free to do this. I also think that the airline should be free to legally recover damages in the amount spent to eject them from the flight. It would appear that the actions of the airline were the intended effect.
They requested seat belt extension straps- the stewardess refused, saying they weren't heavy enough to need them.From powerlineblog.com:
...Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune carries more original reporting on the incident, as well as the photo below.Who's the big imam on campus?
Who needed the seat belt extensions?
The "not so fat" imams...
Thanks for the ping.
She had a good point in 'How to talk to a liberal (if you must)' that instead of asking travellers if they packed their own bags, that asking them if they loaded their own concealed pistol would make for a safer flight. I agree!
LOL!
Indeed! LOL!
I still think that the best action for Americans to take when they see Muslims saying their prayers in airports and other public places, is to join hands and surround them, saying forgive them father, for they know not what they do, and then recite the Lords prayer, out loud, in unisen. I bet that would freak them out.
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