Wednesday’s Investors Business Daily editorial on the flying imams formulates a hypothesis that should be kept in mind as events unfold in the coming days. Asking whether the flying imams were victims or provocateurs, the IBD editorial observes:
All six claim to be Americans, so clearly they were aware of heightened security. Surely they knew that groups of Muslim men flying together while praying to Allah fit the modus operandi of the 9/11 hijackers and would make a pilot nervous. Throw in anti-U.S. remarks and odd demands about seat belts, and they might as well have yelled, “Bomb!”
Yet they chose to make a spectacle. Why? Turns out among those attending their conference was Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who will be the first Muslim sworn into Congress (with his hand on the Quran). Two days earlier, Ellison, an African-American convert who wants to criminalize Muslim profiling, spoke at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim-rights group that wasted no time condemning US Airways for “prejudice and ignorance.”
CAIR wants congressional hearings to investigate other incidents of “flying while Muslim.” Incoming Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., has already drafted a resolution, borrowing from CAIR rhetoric, that gives Muslims special civil-rights protections.
While it’s not immediately clear whether the incident was a stunt to help give the new Democratic majority cover to criminalize airport profiling, it wouldn’t be the first time Muslim passengers have tried to prove “Islamophobia”
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