Song of the Six Imams

Unlike the anemic report from the AP, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in a story linked at Powerline actually tells readers why the six imams were taken off the US Airways plane:

Pat Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said that witnesses to Monday’s events told police that before the flight that besides praying, the imams were spouting anti-American rhetoric, talking about the war in Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

One of the imams was heard saying that he would do whatever is necessary to fulfill his commitment to the Qur’an, witnesses told police, Hogan said. Other witnesses said some of the imams were repeating “Allah, Allah,” he said.

And a couple of the imams asked for seat-belt extensions, even though it did not appear they needed them, Hogan said.

All of this made passengers, the attendants and the pilot uncomfortable, Hogan said.

Wow. If I had been a passenger seeing these goings on, I sure would have said something to the airline authorities too. You’d have to have the brains of a cabbage not to.

But, if Nancy Pelosi has her way, the kind of prudent and necessary action that the airline took in this situation will be illegal, perhaps criminal. As discussed in Investor’s Business Daily, the incoming House Speaker has said:

“Since Sept. 11, many Muslim Americans have been subjected to searches at airports and other locations based upon their religion and national origin. We must make it illegal.”

On top of all this, as Powerline tells in detail, one of the six, Omar Shahin, appears to have extensive terrorist ties. John at Powerline concludes: “All of which puts Mr. Shahin in a somewhat different light. Perhaps the passengers’ instincts about the traveling imams were not entirely due to religious bigotry after all.”

As a final note, let me suggest that instead of getting caught up, as the conservative blogosphere tends to do, in the particulars of this incident,—the imams’ disturbing behavior, the complaints by the passengers, the airliner’s decision to remove the imams, the inevitable charges of anti-Muslim bias—let us remember this. Such incidents will continue to recur, FOREVER, so long as a significant Muslim population continues to reside in our country.

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LA writes:

The blogger Vanishing American shares the interesting theory that the six imams incident was a deliberate set-up.

This is hardly an original observation on my part, but I smell set-up. I think incidents like this are planned: the Moslem ‘victims’ probably did behave weirdly for the purpose of arousing suspicion and complaints. When the plan works and they get sufficiently ‘discriminated against’, then the incident hits the media, the cries of prejudice and Islamophobia are heard , CAIR shifts into gear, and we the American people are sat down for another lecture on how we have to learn more about the Religion of Peace and can’t we all just get along?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 21, 2006 08:39 PM | Send