Flying while Muslim

Flying while Muslim or Muslim while flying is an expression referring to the problems middle eastern or south asian Muslim passengers on airplanes can face in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks .¹ It is constructed in an analogy to the older expression walking/ driving while black , which similarly satirizes racial profiling of African Americans by police and other law enforcement.² An early usage of the phrase is dated by 2001. The issue was brought to media attention once more in 2006 when six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight after they allegedly engaged in suspicious behavior reminiscent of that of the 9/11 hijackers. Conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter and Robert Spencer argued that airlines have a right to treat Muslim passengers with suspicion as a consequence of Islamist terrorism . Omar Shahin , one of the six imams, countered that such fears were unfounded. "All the evidence shows that those involved in this terrorist act [9/11] were not true Muslims," he said. The phenomenon reached the courts in 2008 in Mhmood and Adnan Haider vs. America West, in which two passengers sued an airline for civil damages and asserted personal injury. The airline successfully demonstrated that the airline removed a father and son for unruly behavior, not because of their nationality. Michael Welner , examining the case at the request of the defense, demonstrated that father and son were opportunistic and attempted to exploit cultural sensitivities to extract monies in a lawsuit. His analysis raised the importance of the son’s earlier marginal functional history as well as the father’s effects from the strains of a previous life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, from where he emigrated, and more recent financial problems. In 2009 AirTran Airways removed nine Muslim passengers, including three children, from a flight and turned them over to the FBI after one of the men commented to another that they were sitting right next to the engines and wondered aloud where the safest place to sit on the plane was. Although the FBI subsequently cleared the passengers and called the incident a "misunderstanding," AirTran refused to seat the passengers on another flight, forcing them to purchase last minute tickets on another airline that had been secured with the FBI's assistance. A spokesman for AirTran initially defended the airline's actions and said they would not reimburse the passengers for the cost of the new tickets. Although the men had traditional beards and the women headscarves , AirTran denied that their actions were based on the passengers' appearance. The following day, after the incident received widespread media coverage, AirTran reversed its position and issued a public apology, adding that it would in fact reimburse the passengers for the cost of their rebooked tickets. "I've faced both kinds of profiling: driving while black and flying while Muslim" in: " Metro Matters; Last Week, Profiling Was Wrong " by Joyce Purnick, The New York Times , September 15, 2001 See suspicious acts Feel free to report them The Philadelphia Inquirer April 08 2007 "Not Flying While Muslim" by William Fisher (opinion piece). "Imam disputes tie to Hamas" , The Washington Times , December 1, 2006 Mhmood and Adnan Haider vs.³