Islamic Attacks On Our Airline Industry

Doug Hagmann reports:

Once aboard the plane, they spoke loudly in Arabic. They changed seats without authorization. They roamed the plane over the objections of the flight attendants, entering the first class area without permission or legitimate purpose. They moved their stowed luggage from the overhead bins for no apparent reason. One even attempted to open the cockpit door, explaining that he mistakenly thought it was the lavatory. Their behavior was described as disruptive and suspicious, which so alarmed the flight crew that the Muslim passengers were removed from the airplane by order of the captain.

The above describes the activities of Hamdan al-Shalawi and Muhammed al-Qudhaieen, two passengers aboard an America West flight from Phoenix to Washington, DC in November 1999. Despite the FBI’s eventual admission that this incident was a “dry run” to assess airline security and flight crew response in preparation for the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, the incident earned only a footnote in the 9/11 Commission Report and its significance was deliberately downplayed. At that time, there were allegations of profiling by the airline, flight crew and authorities, and accusations of hypersensitivity and hysterics by many who believed that witnesses were making “too much” of the incident.

And of course the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) immediately came to the aid of the two Muslim passengers and arranged their legal representation to file racial profiling.