By now you are probably tired of hearing stories about the six imams who are claiming that their rights were violated on a recent trip from Minneapolis when they were taken off the plane before departure. Like so many other stories of this nature, there is the first rush of news, and then the rest of the facts drip out, bit by bit. What’s really happening is that the first telling receives the widest audience and is more than likely going to be regarded as the truth.
In this instance, the six imams and their colleagues understood this very well, and consequently have won the war of dueling narratives long before the facts were out.
Here is their version of events that they disseminated so quickly, as re-told by Audrey Hudson of the Washington Times: “Six imams, after conducting their Muslim prayers in the concourse, get on a plane headed from Minneapolis to Phoenix. They take their assigned seats, except one blind man who asks a passenger to switch seats. Wishing to conform to U.S. aviation laws, three of them ask for seat belt extensions, one flight attendant assists the blind man and attaches the belt for him. And yet having done nothing wrong, they are hauled off the flight in handcuffs, humiliated and detained for hours, then denied flight service by the airline.”
That’s pretty much what every news organization on the planet reported after the Nov. 20 incident.
And that’s what the imams and the Muslim PR machines want most folks to remember. A news conference that was probably organized before anyone on the plane landed at their destination helped solidify this early impression.
But it didn’t happen that way. These passengers behaved in ways that would have caused them to be removed from any aircraft whether they were Muslims or Catholics or Hindus or Jews.
Here’s what the other people who were there said happened: Police records tell us of a pattern of behavior that was corroborated not just by the passengers who might or might not be experienced fliers, but by “a gate agent, flight attendant, second flight attendant who was dead-heading to another location.. the captain (of the flight), a police officer and federal air marshal.” They all found “the imams’ behavior suspicious”Ö(Washington Times, Nov. 28, 2006) Most damning of all was the manner in which they moved about the cabin into seats that they weren’t assigned. They went from their assigned seats to two seats in the front row of first class; two in the middle of the cabin; and two near the exit in the rear of the plane. It’d be too much of a coincidence for them not to know that this was the same seating configuration used by Sept. 11 hijackers.
If there were nothing else, the provocative, willful, seat switching was serious enough to have them removed from the plane for questioning, but there was more. They asked for seatbelt extensions, normally used for overweight passengers, though none of them appeared to need them; they voiced loud negative opinions in Arabic about the U.S. (An Arabic speaking passenger volunteered this). Richard Miniter of the Wall Street Journal interviewed passengers who felt intimidated by their words and actions. One of the passengers noted that there was no outcry on the plane when they boarded even though passengers passed by them in the terminal saying their prayers, but after the discourteous, provocative and disruptive behavior once on the plane, passengers applauded their removal.
There is more. Three of the imams were without luggage, and three had one-way tickets. These kinds of things trigger scrutiny for any passenger.
At the core of all of this was the well-coordinated media exposure around the narrative the imams sought to promote. CAIR, the megaphone of Arab-Muslim victimhood in America, led the charge, and stories started appearing almost immediately about the violation of these Muslims’ religious and civil rights. ëFlying while Muslim’ became the cutesy media bumper sticker phrase of the week. It was all too slick to be spontaneous.
The end game here is also becoming fairly clear. The “anti-profiling” lobby in Congress has additional grist for its mill and will work to alter the laws that protect us all. The “victims,” it turns out, are destined to become litigants looking for money from USAir. USAir, for its part, already a financial basket case, could easily be intimidated by these lawsuits, and we’ve already heard that they along with American, Continental, United and Delta have announced that though they didn’t do anything wrong, they’ll send their employees to civil rights sensitivity training.
There was a time that all Americans just walked on planes at airports. No metal detectors, no elaborate security and few restrictions as to what could be carried on. Today, the situation is vastly changed, due to the constant attacks on our airlines. Screening started with the hijackings of the 70’s and 80’s and increased as planes started falling out of the sky. International airlines were made to pay a price, and oft-hijacked TWA disappeared while Pan Am 103’s crash helped bring that venerable name to its knees. Security measures became the burden of every airline and increasingly the bane of every passenger.
Now our domestic airline industry is the target. Changing our laws and reshaping our system to our detriment is their objective.
These six imams engaged in provocative behavior that at the very least is a nuisance, and at worst, as some specialists say, is a probe of our security and methods. Either way, their actions are clearly an assault on air travel.
What happened on Nov. 20 aboard Flight 300 in Minneapolis can only be understood if the objectives of those involved are seen for exactly what they are.

–nrg

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