Removed Muslim Airline Passengers Sue Airline

[Polly]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070330/ap_on_re_us/passengers_removed_lawsuit

And the passengers who took their "concerns" to the airline crew. The imans were spotted praying (Heaven forbid!):unreal and asked for belt extenders because they were overweight. (Would I freak if I someone praying near takeoff? No. I went to Ecuador when I was 20 and took a local airline "mountain hopper" to get from Quito to Cuenca. As soon as the doors closed for takeoff, everyone started praying the rosary. Apparently, mountain hopper planes have a high crash rate in South America! Think the movie, Alive, about the crash of the plane carrying the Uraguyan soccer team in the 70s where the survivors ate the dead. I became a tad nervous.)

Yes, I have a problem with prejudice. Everyone has it to some degree. I'm not debating that. What I do have a problem with are the people who let it control their behavior to the point of violating other people's rights. No, I don't think suing the weenie passengers will solve anything. Nor do I think it's a good idea or even legally viable. Some things lawsuits just can't change. Education is the only thing that seems to work. Be educated about Muslims and their beliefs-this will go a long way to helping people scarred by 9/11 deal with their fears and misconceptions.

Do I think they should sue the airline? Yep, at the end of the day, it was the airline that made the call. Even after everything was re-checked by security, the imams were still not allowed back on. The airline caved to the other passenger's prejudice, which is a punishable crime.

Ladies?

Polly

[gr8mommy]

I've heard other accounts of this incident. I think these imams were intentionally behaving in such a way as to cause alarm, and were looking to cause trouble. To 'prove' racism? Maybe. I tend to think it was so they could get grounds to sue for a lot of money.

But then, I'm a cynic that way.

[Lori]

I agree that suing the airline makes more sense than suing the passengers. In this case, I see no basis for suing the passengers. You're told over and over to report suspicious behavior, but not given any guidelines for what actually constitutes "suspicious behavior," so it doesn't surprise me that some passengers who are unfamiliar with Islam would assume that certain very normal behaviors for Muslims, like some prayer practices, were "suspicious." Personally, as a matter of etiquette, if I were flying and had a particularly disruptive or attention-getting prayer practice, I'd tone it down out of courtesy for the other passengers, but if someone's religion prohibits them from doing that, or they just don't want to, then I don't think they deserve to be treated like potential terrorists.

I have no doubt that many people are ready to call things "suspicious" when they're done by people of Middle Eastern descent than when they're done by someone else. I've been on flights where there were lots of people in their late teens, going on trips together, and they would continually get up out of their seats, talk on phones and pass the phones around, refuse to turn off their electrical devices, harass the flight attendants, be extremely noisy and rowdy, and just in general be disruptive and annoying. It's just disruptive and annoying when they're white Americans or Europeans, but I imagine people would have been about ready to jump out the emergency exit if a group of young adults of Middle Eastern appearance were doing the same things.

I can understand an individual passenger being concerned about one and not the other, but airlines staff have to be informed enough about what is culturally normal behavior for people of different cultures that they don't mistake normal behavior (even if it is disruptive) for suspicious behavior.

[Lori]

And just as a personal admission, I flew about six weeks after 9/11, and I was very nervous about it. I happened to get seated next to a man of Middle Eastern descent (I have no idea what his religion was). I was, I will admit, immediately wary and suspicious. I interpreted all the things he was doing--looking around a lot at the other passengers, writing down numbers on a piece of paper, declining to have a drink when the flight attendants came around to offer them--as evidence to fuel my suspicions. I had myself convinced that this man was a terrorist in about twenty minutes, because of his "suspicious" behavior.

I decided as a matter of an attempt at rationality, to talk to him. It turns out he was a very nice, quiet Middle Eastern (I can't remember what country he was from, but I think it was Lebanon or Syria) mathematician, who was finishing up his PhD at the University of North Dakota. I was also a grad student at the time, so we chatted about that for a bit, and it turns out he was a really nice, normal person, and once I realized that he wasn't a terrorist, suddenly his behavior didn't seem so "suspicious" anymore.

My perception of his behavior being "suspicious" was all about my fears and my prejudices, and not about his behavior at all. So now I'm much more careful, particularly when I fly (I usually end up flying 2-3 times a year to visit family), about making sure that I'm not basing my judgments of people on my preconceived ideas and fears. The Metro Detroit area has the largest Muslim population in the United States, so I meet people of Middle Eastern descent all the time and have a good number of Muslim students, so at this point, I'm aware enough of things that I might have perceived as "suspicious" before that I now know are normal. But I don't expect that everyone would know that or needs to know that. The airline workers, however, do need to know that, and I would say they're the ones who are responsible here.

[Marzipan]

I agree with both Denise and Lori. The accounts I've read did make it sound like it was possible that they were trying to "prove something." And I also agree that if anyone should be held accountable, it is the airline. The call was theirs to make. Airlines don't always give in to the demands of passengers.

As far as being more cautious than usual around men of Middle Eastern descent on a flight, part of that comes from prejudice, but part of it comes from accurate interpretation of the facts. I'm sorry if this sounds cold, but the overwhelming majority of people who are likely to be terrorists are Arab men between their teens and and early forties. I flew a month after 9/11 and they were pulling over kids and little old ladies and my husband and whomever else for random checks. Should we be focusing exclusively on Middle Eastern men? No, not at all. But acting like a 4 year old kid has the same potential to be carrying C-4 as a 25 year old guy from Lebanon is absurd.

[Polly]

Marci-the problem with an accurate interpretation of the facts is prejudice makes all of our judgements somewhat inaccurate. And skin color/ethnicity is the best way to distinguish the proverbial "other." For example, my brother, Andy, swarthy. Olive skin, black hair, black eyes. Our family is Hungarian. But, and I do not exagerate, he gets stopped by airport security everytime he travels. As he used to work as a legal researcher for a law firm in DC, Andy traveled a bunch. The reason this thought is fresh is he called me last night about getting stopped again. My parents and Andy flew to Champagne-Urbanna via Chicago yesterday for family stuff. Andy got stopped in Atlanta (where he lives) and Chicago.:steam He is a good sport about the whole thing and approches it with a sense of humor. Andy now wears a T-shirt with a list of every flight at every airport he has gotten stopped at since 9/11. It has over 35 stops! The lettering reads, "Prejudice Alert! I get stopped at the airport all the time because I look Arab! Here's the List:" It goes on to detail each place. Sometimes he gets whoever pats him to sign. He has tried to take pictures smiling with airport security but they always seem to be a bit...put out....:devious over the whole thing. It does cause a stir when he takes whatever jacket he has on, off in the line in front of everyone when he gets called for an advanced security check. Really, what else can he do? He's missed flights (he now arrives 2-3 hours early for domestic and 5 for international but it doesn't always help) and this doesn't seem to be stopping.

Anyhoo, on the subject of "the other" and prejudice, I didn't notice anyone in the US reacting suspiciously to white men in their 20s when Tim McVeigh blew up the Alfred Murrah Building in the Oklahoma City bombing. Or when the crazy (whose name I can't remember) caused the whole Waco standoff. It is the "other" and it historically always functions this way in prejudice.

Polly

[Lori]

I think the other "other" issue is that our perceptions don't always line up with the facts. Sikhs tend to look a lot more like the stereotypical terrorist than any of the men involved in 9/11 did, but they follow a religion that entirely prohibits such actions and are no more statistically likely to be a terrorist than a random non-Middle Eastern person.

On the one hand, I do agree that there's a certain absurdity to the idea that everyone is an equal threat. As far as I know, American moms in their 20s and 30s have never perpetrated any terrorist act, ever. So I think it's ridiculous when I get pulled aside for a random screening at the airport, and a guy in his 20s (and I don't care what ethnicity he is, guys in their 20s are far more likely to commit acts of violence than anybody else is, no matter what race or religion they are) just walks right through. But, on the other hand, going by physical features that we associate with terrorism isn't a good idea, either, because many of those features are based on false perceptions. If you look at the 9/11 terrorists, very few of them look like your stereotypical Middle Eastern Muslim, which is an image that fits Sikhs much better than Muslims, and there are other misperceptions like that.

So I don't know what the solution is, but I do think in any case it certainly can't be in the hands of the passengers to determine who is or is not a threat.

[gr8mommy]

Anyhoo, on the subject of "the other" and prejudice, I didn't notice anyone in the US reacting suspiciously to white men in their 20s when Tim McVeigh blew up the Alfred Murrah Building in the Oklahoma City bombing. Or when the crazy (whose name I can't remember) caused the whole Waco standoff. It is the "other" and it historically always functions this way in prejudice.

Baloney. People were and are questioned as to why they want to rent trucks, particularly if it is a one-way rental. My husband just had to show three forms of ID to rent a truck for a day to help his mother move. And the comparison with David Koresh is just silly---I think most people DO look at cult leaders as crazy, and watch their behavior closely.

It also isn't just 'the other'---those kids in Columbine were as white as daisies, but now any kid with a sullen expression and a black trench coat gets watched more closely, and I bet they are referred for counseling more often, whether they show any sign of needing it or not.

The other thing someone mentioned was teenagers behaving in a manner similar to these imams----moving their seats, going to the bathroom one after the other, swapping cell phones around, etc. Yeah, probably no one would think to much of it other than getting annoyed. Partly that's due to their age---teenagers (generality warning) are often self-centered and don't have a lot of regard for anyone's needs than their own. They're a lot like toddlers that way. These were grown men, and grown men should know better than to behave that way. I'd say that their inappropriate behavior was what attracted attention, and their race combined with that -rightly or wrongly- caused some people to sound the alarm.

[Lori]

These were grown men, and grown men should know better than to behave that way. I'd say that their inappropriate behavior was what attracted attention, and their race combined with that -rightly or wrongly- caused some people to sound the alarm.

I agree that passengers would be alarmed because of that. But, the fact that they were grown men, rather than young adults, makes them less of a threat, because in general it's much, much more likely for a young adult to perpetrate violence than a middle-aged person. A middle-aged person who fits the terrorist stereotype exactly is still statistically less of a threat than a Midwestern white guy in his early 20s.

If we were to profile in any consistent way, age and gender would play a far, far more important role than ethnicity, because they are far better predictors of violent behavior than ethnicity is.

I'm not sure how airlines can balance a realistic appraisal of who poses a risk with a respect for all of their passengers, but in this case, they really didn't.

[gr8mommy]

A middle-aged person who fits the terrorist stereotype exactly is still statistically less of a threat than a Midwestern white guy in his early 20s.


Do you have anything to back that up, please? And I mean as a perpetrator of terrorist activity, not just any violence.

[Jessica]

I won't even begin to quote Denise, I'm just going to say a big old ditto to every last one of her posts. ;)

[Lori]

Do you have anything to back that up, please? And I mean as a perpetrator of terrorist activity, not just any violence.

The age range of suicide terrorists, according to sources I've seen, is 14-27. That's exactly the same age range of most perpetrators of violence. While I've never seen a large-scale study done on the ages of terrorists, most of the terrorists we've caught or known about have been men in their twenties. Nobody's talking about people who might be running organizations or masterminding plots. The issue is who might be the actual perpetrators of violence, terrorist or otherwise, and that's men in their 20s.

Is there any evidence that the things we know about violence in general and who perpetrates it don't hold true for terrorist violence?

Terrorists (particularly the kind of suicide terrorists we worry about most) are not just Arab men. They are unmarried fundamentalist Muslims in their 20s who have been indoctrinated with extremist religious ideas from a young age. That's why the average Muslim I meet in Detroit poses no more threat than anyone else. They're not fundamentalists, and they have had secular or at least non-extremist educations, and they are married and have families, or are students in secular universities. To not make those distinctions is to miss the real threat. It's not the job of passengers, or even airline personnel, but we should be aware that not all Middle Eastern people are equally likely to be suicide bombers, in any way.

Targeting a 60-year-old Arab man who is acting "suspicious" is just as unfounded as somebody grabbing their purse when a 60-year-old black man walks by. Neither one of them poses any more threat than anyone else. To take race or ethnicity as the only indicator that counts when looking at violence, without taking age and gender, which are far more predictive, into consideration, is to target a whole lot of innocent people and to let a lot of potentially threatening people go by unchecked.

[gr8mommy]

The age range of suicide terrorists, according to sources I've seen, is 14-27. That's exactly the same age range of most perpetrators of violence. While I've never seen a large-scale study done on the ages of terrorists, most of the terrorists we've caught or known about have been men in their twenties. Nobody's talking about people who might be running organizations or masterminding plots. The issue is who might be the actual perpetrators of violence, terrorist or otherwise, and that's men in their 20s.

Is there any evidence that the things we know about violence in general and who perpetrates it don't hold true for terrorist violence?

Terrorists (particularly the kind of suicide terrorists we worry about most) are not just Arab men. They are unmarried fundamentalist Muslims in their 20s who have been indoctrinated with extremist religious ideas from a young age. That's why the average Muslim I meet in Detroit poses no more threat than anyone else. They're not fundamentalists, and they have had secular or at least non-extremist educations, and they are married and have families, or are students in secular universities. To not make those distinctions is to miss the real threat. It's not the job of passengers, or even airline personnel, but we should be aware that not all Middle Eastern people are equally likely to be suicide bombers, in any way.

Targeting a 60-year-old Arab man who is acting "suspicious" is just as unfounded as somebody grabbing their purse when a 60-year-old black man walks by. Neither one of them poses any more threat than anyone else. To take race or ethnicity as the only indicator that counts when looking at violence, without taking age and gender, which are far more predictive, into consideration, is to target a whole lot of innocent people and to let a lot of potentially threatening people go by unchecked.

Links, please? I know for a fact that more than a few of the 9/11 attackers were in their late 20s and early 30s. I'm not talking about perpetrators of ANY violence, and I don't think that is what this thread is about. I want information of Muslim terrorists bent on attacking the US. They aren't 85 year old Caucasian ladies in orthopedic shoes flying out of Myrtle Beach.

I also question They're not fundamentalists, and they have had secular or at least non-extremist educations, and they are married and have families, or are students in secular universities. There was a cell a few years ago (Florida?) that was made up of just the type of men you describe---their job was to blend in as best they could, so as not to attract attention. They were married, with kids, with the usual 'suburban' type of American lives---and they were planning to blow up shopping malls.