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.
And if Coulter and her ilk didn't participate in the frenzied, bigotted, right-wing fearmongering, we could dispense with all of this crazy paranoia and actually focus on people who are real security threats instead. The hatred of people like Coulter who actually believe that Islam is a 'death cult' and that Allah is a 'devil' always comes from those who are so ignorant and scared that they don't even take a moment to admit that fringe elements in any group ought not and do not define the whole. I can't imagine living with that kind of bigotry. It must be a sad, pathetic existance.
In September, an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from a Canadian flight because passengers felt his behaviour was 'suspicious' as well.
"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.
"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.
The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.
"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.
As if she would have been more justified in kicking him off the plane had he been Muslim instead.
Yes, 9/11 happened and yes, people are more cautious. But when common sense flies out the window and people buy into mass hysteria, no one's concerns are served and hatred explodes to an almost irreversible boiling point. And we've all seen what happens in the world when those conditions are allowed to fester.
If anything should be boycotted, it's the writings of people like Coulter whose only purpose in life is to promote extreme divisiveness and ignorance.
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