“We applauded and cheered for the crew,”
Pajamas Media has the police report – and much more – on the six imams taken off a flight in MInneapolis.
The case of U.S. Airways flight 300 gets stranger by the minute. When six traveling Muslim clerics were asked to deplane last week, it looked like another civil rights controversy against post-9-11 airport security.
Now new information is emerging that suggests it was all a stunt designed to weaken security….
Yesterday I spoke with a passenger on that flight, who asked that she be only identified as “Pauline.” A copy of airport police report, which I also obtained, supports Pauline’s account – and includes shocking revelations of its own. In addition, U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader also confirmed much of what Pauline revealed…..
The passenger, who asked that she only be identified as “Pauline,” said she is afraid to give her full name or hometown. She is spending the night at “another location” because she does not feel safe at home. She credits reports that one imam is apparently linked to Hamas. “It is scary because these men could be dangerous.”
Pauline said she never wanted media attention. She wrote an email to U.S. Airways and cc:ed her daughter, who unexpectedly emailed it to her friends. As the letter took on an internet life of its own, it made its way to the inbox of a retired CNN executive producer. Then, to her dismay, the feeding frenzy began.
Pauline revealed to the Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying – an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said.
Here is her story, along with corroborating quotes from the U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader and the official report, another Pajamas Media Exclusive.
There’s a “Drudgealanche” in progress, so expect slow loading.
Thanks to Kate for posting this.
I, for one, will be following up on the claims being advanced about these events, and will post what I discover here on this blog.
Obviously the Flying Immams were up to some hanky-panky. Let’s hope the Airline Co. stays strong and refuses to bow to PC. I think the Muzzis were doing a bit of pre-softening for the next horror show they are planning.
For some time, I’ve been trying to encourage my 32 yr. old daughter to begin paying attention, connecting the dots.
But an incredibly busy life of work, small child and a husband with a brand new small business, is coupled with an innate fear of confronting what she does not want to see.
The night following the murder of Pierre Gemayel, I told her that it was the next step in the overthrow of the Lebanese government by Hamas. She didn’t want to hear about it and while I don’t agree,I understand why.
Today, hundreds of thousands of Hamas suppoters are amassing to do just that.
Immams in airplanes just aren’t on most peoples radar.
Pauline said “It wasn’t that they were Muslim…”
I’ll ask forgiveness in advance for generalizing but U.S. Air witness Pauline is trying to be more PC than honest about her anxieties to avoid the prolonging the glare of MSM. There were no non-muslims involved in the 9/11, Bali, Madrid and London attacks. There were no non-muslims indicted in T.O. early this year for planning to build a fertilizer bomb 3 times the size of the bomb used on Oklahoma City’s Federal Building. There were no non-muslims caught planning to blow up trans-Atlantic flights this fall. There were no non-muslims involved with this latest test of American security resolve in Minneapolis.
Until muslims start taking consistent and forceful action to face down extremism within their faith, muslims will as a group IN GENERAL will attract a growing distrust and suspicion from non-muslims. It’s unavoidable that non-muslims are growing intolerant of Islam. Non-muslims are simply beginning to reflect back a moderate version of the extreme intolerance believers of Islam already have cultivated towards outsiders.
I’m very aware of ME looking males sitting near me when I fly. I’m sure Pauline will be looking even more closely on her next flight.
I dont give a flying (pun intended) **** about whose religion, ethnicity, politics, social status WHATEVER.
you dont dick around in the *** **** PLANE !!!!
there are other people on board and if it ever came down to it I would be the first passanger to use my dinner fork or ballpoint pen to pierce their eyeballs and render them neutralized.
martin b pegged it.
I found grisly pictures of the Indonesian Christian school girls beheaded by the muslims and sent them to the local muslim church-thingy with a warning.
Randy:
Don’t you mean Hezb’allah instead of Hamas?
I agree though, it is quite disconcerting.
The “Imams” were definitely being provocative in their behaviour. Good for the airline personnel for acting on passengers’ and their own suspicions.
One of the commenters at Pajamas Media pointed out that every airport has a non-denominational chapel where people can pray, indisturbed. So, the Imams’ praying ostentatiously in the airport for all to see was totally unnecessary, unless, of course, they wanted to make a scene.
Another commenter pointed out that we in the West are “at war” with Muslim extremist Islamofascists, something we need to always keep in mind. As far as I’m concerned, no more Mr. Nice Guy, no more PC, suicidal nonsense, no more scruples about “racial profiling.”
As Martin B. points out above: “There were no non-muslims involved in the 9/11, Bali, Madrid and London attacks…[or] in T.O….planning to build a fertilizer bomb 3 times the size of the bomb used on Oklahoma City’s Federal Building, [or] caught planning to blow up trans-Atlantic flights this fall, [or] involved with this latest test of American security resolve in Minneapolis.”
We in the West have grown far too comfortable, prosperous, and complacent. That’s the scourge of modern-day Western “liberalism”: We’re all supposed to feel guilty about our well-being and translate it into self-flagellation while falsely elevating those whose own religious and poltical philosophies and actions place them where they are: less well-off than we are, less free, and less democratic.
The White man’s burden. Well, it’s time to shuck that weight and lay whatever blame there is where it properly belongs: with the Islamofascists and their murderous, illiberal, and envious plans to annihilate us.
Has anybody here seen or heard any mention of this in the MSM? I haven’t, although, of course, the local MSM are left-wing even by MSM standards.
It is disturbing. I was in the US when 9/11 happened. On my flight home I remeber watching every passenger get on the plane and thinking to myself, thank goodness no arabs….then I immeadiately felt guilty for what I thought….
It isnt correct in the sense that I shouldnt need to think like that.
My bet is they were doing one of three things
1) Stunt to loosen security through bad pulicity
2) Dry Run, almost based on number 1
3) Distraction, meaning they were trying to draw attention to themselves and away from something or someone else.
If I ever find myself in an airport lounge with Muslims who decide it is a good time or place to begin their prayers, I am going to stand right in front of them a give a fire and brimstone evangelical rant that would make Billy Grahan weep and invite the rest of the lounge to join me. I wonder what would happen??
…one thing I find disturbing is the time frame of FBI response time.
I, for one, do not want to be sitting beside or near an agitated or cornered animal for the length of time these folks had to on the plane.
On the other hand, don’t these so called “inmans” clue in that certain actions isn’t really bright in today’s day and age? Are we not at War?
If this was to be a real hijacking, I doubt they’d bring so much attention to themselves.
Unfortuantely, as another poster put it, there are a lot of “dots” out there.
One of the dots I think is called “dry run”.
One of the sidebars to this story is that the imams have called for a boycott of U.S. airways.Now thier business is taking off(intended) as the public chooses a carrier that muslims refuse to use. I wonder what it would take to make them boycott North America.
CanForce 101, of course I meant Hez’bollah and not Hamas but it’t relatively easy to get the myriad Islamofanatics mixed up.
BTW, noting our spellings of Hez’bollah, just how many ways to spell evil are there? You can google it a dozen different ways and still get lots of links – all leading to depravity and inhumaness.
I find it interesting how the rhetoric shifted so effortless from ‘actual terrorist event’ to ‘terrorism-supporting stunt’ in order to keep the blame on the imams, and to avoid admitting that, once again, suspicions of an imminent terrorist attack proved unfounded once the panic of the moment subsided.
The initial suspicion aboard the plane was that these six imams were in fact terrorists perpetrating an attack. That was certainly the fear among the passengers and staff who wrote notes to the captain, give statements to the police, etc.
Once it became clear that no terrorist attack was actually occurring, however, the incident simply morphed in ‘a stunt designed to weaken security.’ So, what we have in effect is a closed system in which once a person is labelled as suspicious, they are guilty of something no matter what. If the initial suspicious activity (terrorist attack) proves unfounded by the emerging facts, then the nature of the accusation shifts (intentional stunt) to conform with the earlier verdict. Guilty until prove…well, guilty.
That all this undermines the official claim that these enhanced security measures are meant only to prevent future terrorist attacks is never really examined.
Also taken for granted is the idea that the concerned passengers’ and US Airways staff’s suspicions are grounded in some objective reality. Perhaps one ought to examine that assumption a little more critically. For instance, it’s well-established in the cognitive psychology field that people see what (i) they want to see; and (ii) what they are primed to see. Keep sending out the cultural message that all Muslims and/or people of Middle Eastern descent are potential terrorists and pretty soon anything a Muslim and/or Middle Eastern individual does will be interpreted as suspicious. This same filtering process applies to popular perceptions of other marginalized groups as well–say, the mentally ill, or the homeless, or young Black men.
This isn’t to suggest, of course, that suspicions are always wrong. But, it’s also well established that when fear is heightened, erroneous assumptions and false suspicions also increase significantly as well. Even from a genuine national security standpoint, it’s important to be aware of this, so as not to cry wolf and foster public complacency.
The notion that this was a “dry run” for a subsequent terrorist attack also doesn’t stand to reason. For starters, one of the six imams was blind. For another, in this day and age of real and perceived security threats from radical Islam, Lesson One of Terrorism 101 is this: Appear as non-Muslim as possible. The fact that they prayed at the airport gate (!) should have been as clear a sign as any for the other passengers that these six guys posed no real terrorist threat whatsoever.
Also, BATB (9:34 AM) writes: We in the West have grown far too comfortable, prosperous, and complacent…The White man’s burden…
Leaving aside for the moment your other points, I just want to point out how offensive (and perhaps revealing) it is for you to equate those “in the West” with being “White.” I hope that was just a careless slip-of-the-tongue; the implications otherwise are rather disturbing.
A writes – “I find it interesting how the rhetoric shifted so effortless from ‘actual terrorist event’ to ‘terrorism-supporting stunt’ in order to keep the blame on the imam”
If putting panties on someone’s head is “torture”, then saying Islamic prayers in an airport is “terrorism.” Indeed – it more closely fits the description than the former does. Any action that undermines airport security helps set up conditions for the next dedicated attack. Like sending money to Hamas under the guise of “charity”, it’s part of the war effort.
Kate: If putting panties on someone’s head is “torture”, then saying Islamic prayers in an airport is “terrorism.” Indeed – it more closely fits the description than the former does. Any action that undermines airport security helps set up conditions for the next dedicated attack.
And yet it strikes me as odd that if I, as per my Constitutionally-protected right to freedom of religion, recite–in a respectful though public manner, of course–a few lines from the Satanic Bible, perhaps in tongues while holding a goat skull for full effect, to calm my nerves prior to boarding a plane, that’s not at all a reason to notify the FBI or Homeland Security.
The reason, of course, is that we in the West are not fighting a war on Satanism, we are fighting a war on…well, what are we fighting a war on? Because the only way that saying Islamic prayers in an airport can even remotedly fit the description of “terrorism,” or undermine airport security in any meaningful way, is if we in the West first agree on the following: (i) Muslims praying in public terrify us; (ii) the fact that this terrifies us is entirely the fault of the Muslims doing the praying and not at all the result of our own deep-seated insecurities, misconceptions, assumptions, and prejudices about practising Muslims; and (iii) that the enemy in the war is, in fact, the Islamic religion and all its followers, and not, as everyone involved in the actual Global War on Terror–including PM Harper, President Bush, PM Blair, PM Howard, PM Olmert, the Afghan government, the Pakistani government, the Indonesian government, the Turkish government, other NATO and non-NATO allies, and all these nations’ respective military leadership, and so forth–has taken repeated pains to insist, Islamist terrorists alone. Saying Islamic prayers in an airport in Minneapolis approaches an act of terrorism only in the same way that, I dunno, running a sushi restaurant in Vancouver in 1944 approaches an act of treason.
A key component of true terrorism, both as a combat strategy and as a legal concept, is that of intent. It stretches credulity to suggest that the latest campaign in the Islamist terrorism strategy book is to destabilize and undermine our security network by instructing its agents and sympathizers to–gasp!–pray in public. And to argue that public prayer should be suppressed in the name of “airport security” is tantamount to arguing that security in the US should trump First Amendment rights. That is a slippery slope indeed.
So, suck it up, A: “how offensive (and perhaps revealing) it is for you to equate those ‘in the West’ with being ‘White’.”
You’re offended. Boo hoo. A lot of the cr…stuff that you write (go ahead, pshycologize all you want on how North Americans may be predisposed to regard Imams behaving suspiciciously in an airplane, spread out from front to back, ordering seat belt extenders which they then place on the floor, loudly speaking their own language which another passenger understands and indicates that Bin Laden’s name comes up frequently…) offends me, too, but I’m a grown up. I can take it.
“White man’s burden” is AN EXPRESSION that in latter days, rather than when it was first coined by Rudyard Kipling, means Western wo/man’s guilt at living so high off the hog while others, in developing countries and Third World countries, live well below our own poverty line and whose quality of living is wretched compared to ours.
“Revealing”: how? I, with my family, spent two years on the Mosquito Coast in an Afro-Caribbean community in the ’90s. ‘Did emergency relief work with this community and the indigenous people’s of the country after a 7.4 on-the-Richter-Scale earthquake, when international aid was being embezzled into government coffers.
Et tu?
This was either a dry run, or they were purposely trying to FUD the passengers/aircrew and the system in general.
In either case, they should still be behind bars.
Is this overreacting? Hardly. Try to cause a disturbance on an airplane, sometime. Especially why not imitate behaviour of terrorists who’ve crashed jets into NYC skyscrapers. Oh, yes… and you’re a white anglo male.
Think you’d be out of stir in time to enjoy Christmas?
Not too likely. Lock ’em up and let them (and the others who’d act otherwise) ponder that for a bit.
mhb23re
‘A’ says: “I find it interesting how the rhetoric shifted so effortless from ‘actual terrorist event’ to ‘terrorism-supporting stunt’…”
Will you do us the honor, A, on testing out what happens nowadays on a departing airplane leaving a Canadian city when you suddenly standup and screech out “bin Laden” interspaced with gibberish and refuse to stop? People in Canada must be more understanding than American rednecks in Republican controlled Minneapolis. Heck you might even get a pat or two and some gutteral laughs for showing everyone how tolerant and understanding Canadians are compared to our American cousins for such obvious innocuous behaviour.
My feeling is that air travel authorities on a whole interpret shouting “bomb” on a loaded airplane to be a terrorist event requiring immediate action. But it could just really be a kid with a leaking diaper (been there).
My hypothesis is that shouting the name of someone who’s done so much for air safety like “bin Laden” might elicit a similar response as “bomb” and be treated as a terrorist event. As I believe the hypothesis to be correct and I’m generally much more concerned with getting to my destination with as little fuss a possible, I’ll pass. But could an adventurous psychoanalyst type like you resist not knowing?