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Founders would be aghast at airline’s treatment of imams
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A Christian fellowship group is traveling from the Minneapolis airport to the Valley after a religious conference. Shortly before boarding their flight, the ministers and worshippers form a prayer circle and conduct their daily devotion without preaching to anyone else in the terminal.
But one witness wonders why these people would make such a public display of faith unless they knew something about the safety of the plane. Were they planning an attack? Did they just ask for God’s blessing? The nervous passenger passes a note to a flight attendant suggesting the Christians are “suspicious.”
Later, another airline employee will report overhearing some of the Christians discuss their opposition to the Iraq war, and interprets the statements as “anti-American.”
Would Americans accept the airline’s decision to eject the Christians from the plane without further evidence of a threat? Would we nod with approval as the Christians, understandably upset about their disrupted trip, are led away in handcuffs and questioned for more than five hours by the FBI and Secret Service? And would we still support the airline in refusing to place the Christians on another flight after law enforcement has cleared them of any possible harm?
The only reasonable answer to these questions should be “no,” if we still live in the same United States originally colonized by people seeking freedom from religious prosecution and intolerance. But too many people have been answering “yes” since six Muslim imams found themselves in this exact situation Monday.
Days later, Tempe-based U.S. Airways was still trying to sort out exactly what happened in Minneapolis. But many people here in the Valley were willing to excuse what happened on the flimsiest of suspicions as appropriate in a post-9/11 world. They argue American Muslims should accept special, even unfair, restrictions on what they do or where they go so other air travelers will “feel” safer.
Such rationales invoke memories of one of America’s lowest moments during World War II, when the U.S. military rounded up thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans on the West Coast (but not German- or Italian-Americans on the East Coast), and sent them to live in isolated internment camps for years.
If we allow vague, irrational fear toward Muslims to overrule our love of liberty and common sense, then the terrorists are winning this global war.
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