Muslim Imams Bounced From Flight

Six Muslim imams were forcibly removed from a flight in Minneapolis following complaints from passengers:

Six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis- St. Paul International Airport on Monday and questioned by police for several hours before being released, a leader of the group said.

The six were among passengers who boarded Flight 300, bound for Phoenix, around 6:30 p.m., airport spokesman Pat Hogan said.

A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. She said police were called after the captain and airport security workers asked the men to leave the plane and the men refused.

"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," said Omar Shahin, of Phoenix. ...

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

If anyone on a plane, whether Muslim or anything else, get up and start to pray before the plane leaves the gate, I'm probably going to be concerned too. The Muslims love to blame everyone else's "ignorance" of their beliefs, and yet ignore the fact that their beliefs, especially when exercised on a commercial airliner, might create a conflict. Instead of everyone else being required to be tolerant of Muslim practices, maybe the Muslims should be a little sensitive to the infidels as well (I know, that'll never happen).

UPDATE: Airlines offer Muslim praying sections on flights.

UPDATE 2: More info from Lileks:

According to the TV, the men said they were in town for “a religious conference.” Interesting. I was talking today with a guy I know; he’d been at a suburban hotel for an annual company sales meeting. The regional manager was having a difficult time speaking, since the party in the next conference room was praying about as loudly as is humanly possible, and had followed the prayers with a speaker who expressed in rather . . . forceful terms the depth of Muslim oppression in America. Unless there are several Muslim religious conferences going on in Minneapolis at the moment, I’d guess that might be the one. If so, I wonder if the reported truculence of the men might have been influenced, or at least reinforced, by the speaker. Whoever he was.

UPDATE 3: One of the aggrieved Imams is calling for a Muslim boycott of US Airways. I hope they go through with it, and if they do, I'll be flying US Air...along with every other sane American.