Minneapolis flight:
Imams booted for praying, CAIR springs into action
Allahpundit
... Six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and questioned by police for several hours before being released, a leader of the group 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…
Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, Shahin said.
CAIR’s promising a formal complaint in the morning to protest law enforcement’s inexplicable suspicions about a group of men onboard a commercial flight rising out of their seats in tandem and praying to Allah.
Interesting tidbit from Lileks:
Imam booted from flight doubted Muslims were behind 9/11
Allahpundit
U.S. Airways refused to sell him a new ticket this morning so he’s calling for a boycott. And why wouldn’t he? It’s not like there have been any major airborne terrorist attacks in the United States involving Muslims:
Shahin and Saadeddin expressed doubt that Muslims were responsible for the Sept. 11 attack. They also said they don’t trust much of what the FBI has divulged - including the hijackers’ identities…
Shahin of the Tucson Islamic Center said more than 1,200 Muslims died in the World Trade Center catastrophe, and no genuine member of Islam would do such a thing. Nor, he added, would Muslims have gone to strip joints prior to the attack, as several of the terrorists in Florida reportedly did. As for Al-Qaeda nests in America, Shahin said, “All of these, they make it up.”
He also admitted that members of his mosque might have helped out Osama Bin Laden back in the early 1990s, when he was still one of America’s good guys. But once we stopped backing him, they stopped backing him. Scout’s honor. ...
More on the Six Traveling Imams
John Hinderaker
See our post this morning on the six imams who were taken off a US Airways flight bound for Phoenix, on their way home from an imams' conference in Minneapolis. Their conduct alarmed passengers, who notified the flight crew, and the decision to remove the imams from the airplane apparently was made by the pilot. The latest is that Omar Shahin, who has acted as the group's spokesman, is calling for a boycott of US Airways. Shahin professes outrage that he and his colleagues were tossed off the flight:
"They have no reason to refuse service to us just because of the way we look," he said "It's terrible. We want America to stay the way it is because we love this country."
The supervisor asked Shahin to leave the ticket counter.
"This is prejudice," he replied. "This is obvious discrimination. No one can argue with this."
"I am calling for a boycott of US Airways because I'm not going to stay silent," said Shahin, who is Jordanian. "I came to this country to enjoy justice and freedom."
At the same time, word is starting to leak out as to what it was that alarmed the passengers:
Pat Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said that witnesses to Monday's events told police that before the flight that besides praying, the imams were spouting anti-American rhetoric, talking about the war in Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
One of the imams was heard saying that he would do whatever is necessary to fulfill his commitment to the Qur'an, witnesses told police, Hogan said. Other witnesses said some of the imams were repeating "Allah, Allah," he said.
And a couple of the imams asked for seat-belt extensions, even though it did not appear they needed them, Hogan said.
All of this made passengers, the attendants and the pilot uncomfortable, Hogan said.
It doesn't take much Googling, either, to find that Omar Shahin appears to have ties to terrorist-supporting groups. On July 13, 2005, Steven Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, testified before the Senate Banking Committee on investigations into the funding of terrorist groups. His testimony focused, in part, on an Islamic charity called "KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development." (I have omitted the footnotes to Emerson's testimony.):
There is evidence, however, that KindHearts may possibly be filling the void created by the closure of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). In early 1994, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook, who had given the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) $210,000 in initial funding, decided that the charity would serve as the primary fundraising arm of HAMAS in the US.
The HLF was in operation until the Treasury Department froze its assets in December 2001. KindHearts was incorporated in Toledo, Ohio in 2002, and is registered in a number of other states, including Oklahoma, Nevada, Indiana, Colorado, while awaiting renewal in Pennsylvania.
An assessment of its operations indicates a close business relationship with the
Holy Land Foundation network as well as with other charities that have been designated for being conduits for terrorist financing.
[...]
KindHearts, the charity that Shahin represented in 2004, has now been shut down:
The same day government officials descended on KindHearts, three Toledo-area men were arrested, charged with plotting to carry out terror attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and other overseas targets. One of them had an additional charge of threatening the life of President George W. Bush. The three – Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, and Wassim Mazloum – had spent over a year weapons training and trying to acquire and/or build explosives, including suicide belts.
When asked if there were any connection between the closure of KindHearts and the arrests, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated that they are “separate investigations, but they're coordinated.” From Amawi’s apartment, authorities seized knives, battle fatigues, computers, and records from KindHearts. KindHearts documents were also found in El-Hindi’s home and in the travel agency he ran in Chicago.
All of which puts Mr. Shahin in a somewhat different light. Perhaps the passengers' instincts about the traveling imams were not entirely due to religious bigotry after all.
Paul [Mirengoff] adds: My daughter is coming home from college on a U.S. Airways flight in about two hours. I take comfort from the fact that this airline seems to value safety over political correctness, and will be looking to book passage on it whenever possible.
Flying imams, leaping CAIR
Michelle Malkin
Yes, I've followed the case of the six praying imams removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and questioned by police for several hours before being released.
As sure as the rooster crows, CAIR is screaming and the Muslim leaders of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage are calling for a boycott.
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes that "Omar Shahin, one of the imams removed from the plane, has links to Osama bin Laden and Hamas." Power Line has more. Allah has background and Jim Hoft sums it up:
As long as Muslims are trying to explode their shoes on Trans-Atlantic flights, planning to use baby bottles as bombs from London to New York, and smashing jets into skyscrapers, we will see more instances like this one.
The six imams might as well get used to it.
Even as more and more passengers and airlines take reality-based preemptive and precautionary measures to prevent the next 9/11--and even as the headlines bring us daily evidence of al Qaeda's continued airport/airplane terrorist plots--we have a Democratic Congress ready to criminalize airport investigations of any Muslims at any time for any security reasons. ...
