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Wow - some anonymous person named ‘Pauline’ who is conveniently fearful of her life due to ‘Hamas connection’ of one of the Imams, writes an e-mail - most of it conjectures - and it is considered as ‘facts’ by the venerable Pajamas media !!! Well done.

Some of the comments on the post are priceless too:

example:
“My response? If I am anywhere near this type of behavior, my gun speaks for me and then we ask questions later. At least I will be alive to answer them. The others will get what they want - having been sent to Paradise. It’s a win-win situation. Time to stand up against this outrage America!”

yeah - lets just shoot anyone we find ‘suspicious’. Yeehaw !

Just for the records - I am not against the airlines removing these people from the plane. Most reports suggest Imams behaving strangely and that is bound to make people suspicious and uncomfortable. I fly around 7-10times in a year and in the current atmosphere, would definitely not want people with suspicious behavior on planes. Personally, given my skin-color, I try to behave as unobtrusively as possible whenever I am flying. Its not something I enjoy, but I am practical enough to realize the ground-realities.

However, to stretch the story into a possible hi-jack attempt , based on the ‘facts’ such as one of them was speaking rapidly in Arabic over the cell-phone, is pretty ridiculous.

Jatayu, I really don’t believe that this was a hi-jack attempt. If anything, this either sounds like a dry run to probe security concerns or at the minimum an attempt to get thrown off the airplane so they can sue the airlines for some money.

Whether you are an Imam or not, if you don’t sit in your assigned seat, wander around and babble in a language others don’t understand, my guess is that you will be thrown off the airline regardless of your skin color….

My initial reaction to his whole imam story was knee-jerk. Here we go again, a bunch of racist rednecks see brown people with beards and automatically assume that they are Muslims and, thus, terrorists. Discrimination was on my mind.

But as more of the story came to light, the more my perspective on events changed. These imams weren’t discriminated against, they were intentionally behaving in an odd manner in order incite an incident which they would either benefit monetarily or gain publicity.

Whatever their motives their motives were highly suspect and US Airways acted in the correct manner. The imams were later questioned and then released.

And before charges of racism come to the fore, let us remember that countless Muslims fly unmolested and without incident.

Finally, it is their behavior that got them thrown off that plane, not because they were Muslim.

GASP! Brown people not speaking English? There oughtta be a law!