Lesson learned: If you're a devout Muslim, don't fly US Airways?
OK, by now you've heard about the six Muslim imams (clergy) who were removed from a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis as it sat on the runway. Here are the facts, as stated in the papers:
- Three members of the group prayed in the terminal before the six boarded the plane. Another report says they prayed on the plane.
- They entered the plane individually, except for one member who is blind and needed to be guided.
- The six did not sit together.
- A passenger passed a note to the crew who asked them to get off the plane. They refused.
- The police showed up and the six were forced off the plane. One report says that they were put in handcuffs.
- They were left on the ground in Minneapolis after the airline refused to put them on another flight.
OK, so I can understand passengers being afraid, de facto racial profiling being what it is; I can also understand the clergy being outraged at being asked to sit down and shut up, this being America and all. What I can't understand is how this all ended up with them being dumped off the plane (in handcuffs?) and stranded in Minneapolis with no offer of another flight home, with no apologies offered. No cooler heads could prevail?
When Glenn Beck asked Rep. Ellison if he was "working with our enemies," I guess that was just a warning shot? And that Muslim kid who got tossed out of the UCLA Library because he had no ID -- did they really need to taser him again and again?
Be careful that you don’t conflate Islamophobia (which I believe is real – thank you, George Bush & Co) and the creeping authoritarianism in law enforcement. I just heard an almost unbelievably shocking story of overreaction and abuse of power by local police toward a former employee of mine – a small, blond single mom living in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Long story short, her teenage son, feeling depressed calls a crisis hotline and next thing she knows there’s a SWAT team on the lawn and she and her son are in handcuffs. A lot of bellicoseness and coercion by police in between while she and the son try to explain that he’s fine.
Right now, the rules of engagement by police have drifted dangerously toward the notion that it is the police who should be protected from the citizenry, rather than the citizenry by the police. That should be being talked about in its own context.
I see your point. But isn't it true that Beck's comment is revealing of the underlying attitudes about Islam that drive the response of the police in these stories?
Absolutely. Richard Clarke had the un-hysterical take last night. Paraphrasing:
"The TSA people's job isn't to respond to a small group of frightened people by taking Muslims off a plane, their job is to explain to those people that, even if others seem strange and frightening to them, they should try to deal with it."
Only, more eloquent. That's the guy who should be in charge of national security.