Don't be a Muslim Asshole

Once again the whole world has to bend to accommodate Muslims.

A Winnipeg doctor is demanding an official apology and compensation from United Airlines after being kicked off a flight in the U.S. this week, an incident he has characterized as “institutionalized discrimination.” Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a Muslim, was escorted off an airplane in Denver on Tuesday. According to Farooq, reciting his evening prayers was interpreted by one passenger as an activity that was suspicious.

“The whole situation is just really frustrating,” Farooq said. “It makes you uneasy, because you realize you have to essentially watch every single thing you say and do, and it’s worse for people who are of colour, who are identifiable as a minority.”

Farooq said the allegation came from a passenger who appeared drunk and had previously threatened him during the trip.

When flight personnel were alerted, the 27-year-old radiology resident and two colleagues — a man and a woman — were taken off their flight. They had been returning from a conference in San Francisco.

Farooq said that even officials from the Transportation Security Administration soon realized the flight crew had overreacted, but by the time that conclusion had been reached the trio were forced to stay in Denver for the night and catch a flight the next day — at their own expense. “There’s no recourse,” Farooq said. “There’s no way to really be able to talk to anybody to really be able to reason it out. The police officers who talked to me afterwards and subsequent officials within the first three to five minutes, they were like, ‘You know what? The crew made a mistake. We apologize that they took you off. They overreacted.’”

Look, folks, it’s real simple. You shouldn’t be allowed to do anything on a plane that’s going to freak out other passengers. And in the post-9/11 world a 27 year old Arabic male praying to fucking Mecca in Arabic is, no matter how legitimate, going to really set people on edge. Passenger comfort and safety should be beholden to nobody’s religious rituals. We wouldn’t let a voodoo priest dance around the cabin and chant for exactly the same reason.

Rather than be a team player, this guy is assuming the typical indignant Muslim posture, that it’s ignorance of Islam and western racism which are the culprits here, rather than the fact that his coreligionists are currently battling western society at every possible opportunity.

Planes are shared space. We all need to be prepared to sacrifice some of our freedoms when we enter a common area like a plane. It’s not too much to ask for Muslims to just try a little understanding, and to understand why the other passengers might find this type of prayer to be a little disconcerting.