Posted December 02, 2006 06:43 AM Hide Post
http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/12/the_faking_imams_pajamas_media.phpTHE FAKING IMAMS -- Pajamas Media Exclusive: Police Report, Passenger Reveals That Flying Imams Were Up to No Good
PJM in Seattle
December 1, 2006 5:58 PM
The Now Notorious Flying Imams Claim Their Only Crime Was “Flying While Muslim,” But Our Exclusive Reporting Reveals They Are Trying to Sweep Their Real Motives Under Their Prayer Rugs
Area Muslims pray near the ticketing area of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Friday, Dec. 1.
SEE ALSO: The first public publication of the official police report on the incident including handwritten statements from witnesses. Download file — PDF 3.8 Mgb
PLUS: The letter from US Airways passenger “Pauline” to U.S. Airways: Download file PDF 68K
[Bloggers are invited to examine these documents and provide theories for what happened. Please notify Pajamas Media. — Editors]
By Richard Miniter, PJM Washington Editor
The case of U.S. Airways flight 300 gets stranger by the minute. When six traveling Muslim clerics were asked to deplane last week, it looked like another civil rights controversy against post-9-11 airport security.
Now new information is emerging that suggests it was all a stunt designed to weaken security….
Yesterday I spoke with a passenger on that flight, who asked that she be only identified as “Pauline.” A copy of airport police report, which I also obtained, supports Pauline’s account - and includes shocking revelations of its own. In addition, U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader also confirmed much of what Pauline revealed…..
The passenger, who asked that she only be identified as “Pauline,” said she is afraid to give her full name or hometown. She is spending the night at “another location” because she does not feel safe at home. She credits reports that one imam is apparently linked to Hamas. “It is scary because these men could be dangerous.”
Pauline said she never wanted media attention. She wrote an email to U.S. Airways and cc:ed her daughter, who unexpectedly emailed it to her friends. As the letter took on an internet life of its own, it made its way to the inbox of a retired CNN executive producer. Then, to her dismay, the feeding frenzy began.
Pauline revealed to the Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying - an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said.
Here is her story, along with corroborating quotes from the U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader and the official report, another Pajamas Media Exclusive.
Sitting in Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Airport Gate C9, she noticed one of the imams immediately. “He was pacing nervously, talking in Arabic,” she said.
She quickly noticed the others. “They didn’t look like holy men to me. They looked like guys heading out of town for a Vikings game.”
Pauline said she did not see or hear the imams pray at the gate (she was at dinner in a nearby airport eatery), but heard about the pre-flight prayers from other passengers hours later.
As the plane boarded, she said, no one refused to fly. The public prayers and Arabic phone call did not trigger any alarms - so much for the p.c. allegations that people were disturbed by Muslim prayers.
But a note from a passenger about suspicious movements of the imams got the crew’s attention. A copy of the passenger’s note appears in the police report.
To Pauline everything seemed normal. Then the captain - in classic laconic pilot-style - announced there had been a “mix up in our paperwork” and that the flight would be delayed.
In reality, the air crew was waiting for the FBI and local police to arrive.
Ninety minutes after the flight’s scheduled 5:15 p.m. departure, the captain announced yet another delay. Still, Pauline said, there was no sense of alarm.
Still, it seemed like just another annoying development, typical when flying the friendly skies.
The situation in cockpit was far more intense, according to a U.S. Airways spokeswoman and police reports.
Contrary to press accounts that a single note from a passenger triggered the imams’ removal, Captain John Howard Wood was weighing multiple factors - factors that have largely been ignored by the press.
Another passenger, not the note writer, was an Arabic speaker sitting near two of the imams in the plane’s tail. That passenger pulled a flight attendant aside, and in a whisper, translated what the men were saying. They were invoking “bin Laden” and condemning America for “killing Saddam,” according to police reports.
Meanwhile an imam seated in first class asked for a seat-belt extension, even though according to both an on-duty flight attendant and another deadheading flight attendant, he looked too thin to need one. Hours later, when the passengers were being evacuated, the seat-belt extension was found on the floor near the imam’s seat, police reports confirm. The U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader said she did not dispute the report, but said the airline’s internal investigation cannot yet account for the seat-belt extension request or its subsequent use.
A seat-belt extension can easily be used as a weapon, by wrapping the open-end of the belt around your fist and swinging the heavy metal buckle.
Still, it seemed like just another annoying development, typical when flying the friendly skies. Days after the incident, the imam would claim that the steward helped him attach the device. Pauline said he is lying. Hours later, when the police was being evacuated, the steward asked Pauline to hand him the seat-belt extension, which the imam did not attach, but placed on the floor. “I know he is lying,” Pauline said, “I had it [seat belt extension] in my hand.”
A passenger in the third row of first class, Pauline said, told a member of the crew: “I don’t have a good feeling about this guy,” about the imam who wanted the seat-belt extension.
A married couple one row behind first-class, tried to strike up a conversation with the imam seated near them. He refused to talk or even look at the woman in the eye, according to Pauline. Instead, he stood up and moved to join the other imams in the back of the plane. Why would he leave the luxury end of the aircraft? Pauline wondered. The account of the married couple does not appear in the police report.
Finally, a gate attendant told the captain she thought the imams were acting suspiciously, according to police reports.
So the captain apparently made his decision to delay the flight based on many complaints, not one. And he consulted a federal air marshal, a U.S. Airways ground security coordinator and the airline’s security office in Phoenix. All thought the imams were acting suspiciously, Rader told me.
Other factors were also considered: All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers - even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.
And, Pauline said, they spread out just like the 9-11 hijackers. Two sat in first, two in the middle, and two back in the economy section. Pauline’s account is confirmed by the police report. The airline spokeswoman added that some seemed to be sitting in seats not assigned to them.
One thing that no one seemed to consider at the time, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with Islamic practice, is that the men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.
“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline said.
A lone plain clothes FBI agent boarded the plane and briefly spoke to the imams. Later, uniformed police escorted them off.
Some press reports said the men were led off in handcuffs, which Pauline disputes. “I saw them. They were not handcuffed.”
Later, each imam was individually brought back on the aircraft to reclaim his belongings. They were still not handcuffed. They may have been handcuffed later.
At this point, the passengers became alarmed. “How do we know they got all their stuff off?” Pauline heard one man ask.
While the imams were soon released, Pauline is fuming: “We are the victims of these people. They need to be more sensitive to us. They were totally insensitive to us and then accused us of being insensitive to them. I mean, we were a lot more inconvenienced than them.”
The plane was delayed for some three and one-half hours.
Bomb-sniffing dogs were used to sweep the plane and every passenger was re-screened, the airline spokeswoman confirmed. Another detail omitted from press reports.
The reaction of the remaining passengers has also gone unreported. “We applauded and cheered for the crew,” she said.
“I think it was either a foiled attempt to take over the plane or it was a publicity stunt to accuse us of being insensitive,” Pauline said. “It had to be to intimidate U.S. Airways to ease up on security.”
So far, U.S. Airways refuses to be intimidated, even though the feds have launched an investigation. “We are absolutely backing this crew,” Rader said.
Tucked away in the police report is this little gem: one of the imams had complained to a passenger that some nations did not follow shariah law and his job in Bakersfield, Calif. was a cover for “representing Muslims here in the U.S.”
So what are the imams really up to? Something more than praying it seems.
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http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=imam12106%2EhtmBy Beila Rabinowitz and William A. Mayer
December 1, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - The November 20 action by 6 Imams on a U.S. Airways flight was a pre-conceived exercise in cultural jihad.
The Muslim preachers had just returned from the North American Imam Federation conference and were merely putting into practice the media manipulation techniques which they had studied and discussed at the 2 day event.
It is no coincidence that the event took place in Minneapolis where Muslim voters had just elected Keith Ellison, a Wahhabist Muslim [who, incidentally is insisting on taking the oath of office by swearing on the Quran rather than the Bible].
The Minneapolis/St. Paul airport was also the site of a controversy that we reported on in September [Muslim Taxi Drivers At Minneapolis International Airport Subjecting Fares To Sharia] when Muslim taxi drivers, working with radical Islamist groups refused to transport passengers whom they believed to be carrying alcohol. A follow-up piece [Are Minneapolis Taxi Fares Going To Support Al-Qaeda?] explored the ties to terror that exist among the mostly Somali immigrant taxi drivers.
The imam's actions were the culminating event in a carefully executed plan that was preceded by a series of smaller incidents in which Muslims tested the tolerance level of the airlines and passengers by wearing T shirts to the airport reading "I am not a Terrorist." As part of this ramp-up in provocation, an Islamist activist goaded airport security personnel into preventing him from entering a plane because he was wearing a T shirt emblazoned with possibly threatening Arabic text.
Following this same template, the imams intentionally pushed all the right buttons to arouse the suspicions of airport security, Federal air marshals and passengers alike.
Specifically, some of the Imams had one way tickets and checked no baggage, they had prayed loudly and very publicly before entering the plane, shouting Allahu Akhbar ["God is great," an Arabic chant often used by terrorists as a war cry] they refused to take their assigned seats instead occupying seats strategically chosen to control all entrances and exits of the airliner. Passengers overheard them making anti-American remarks, statements strongly against the war in Iraq and mentions of al-Qaeda and bin-Laden. Two of the Imams demanded seat belt extenders [which could be used as weapons] when neither of them were overweight and thus realistically in need of making their seat belts longer. When confronted for their bizarre behavior and asked to voluntarily leave the plane for questioning, they refused and were then forcibly removed.
Their actions were thus consistent with either a terrorist probe - a dry run - or the real thing, the prelude to a hijacking attempt.
It is extremely troubling to consider the degree to which these supposedly holy men were familiar with the intricacies of the airline terror MO especially their request for heavy buckled seat belt extenders, which were placed on the floor alongside the imam's seats - supposedly ready for action - and their desire to be able to control entry and exit from the aircraft.
One explanation for the imam's apparent first hand knowledge of terrorist methodology might be due to the acumen of Omar Shahin who has a long history of involvement with terrorists and terror fundraising activities as Imam of the Islamic Center of Tucson which is linked to Hamas and al-Qaeda. The former director of Shahin's mosque, Wael Hamza Julaidan was the co-founder of al-Qaeda and current board member, Mir Ramatullah who also worked with Shahin sits on the ICT board today. Shahin has admitted that he supported bin-Laden "in the past." In addition, Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the airliner that was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 attended this same Tucson mosque.
Shahin's familiarity with incipient hijackers is personal; he defended two Muslim college students who had been removed from an America West flight for attempting to storm the cockpit in what the FBI believes was a dry run for 9/11. One of the students had trained in Afghanistan and the other was a material witness in the 9/11 investigations.
Shahin was also a representative for the Hamas terror financing faux charity "Kind Hearts" which was shut down after an investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Given the above realities it's obvious that the imams designed this incident, set it in motion and then managed the public relations aspect of it intending to create a sense of anti-Muslim victimhood, with lawyer/spokesmen and press releases ready even before they had to be wrestled from the plane.
Doubtless this group was emboldened by the Ellison election which they view as an important step on the journey towards eventual Islamization of the United States.
The imams see this whole event as an experiment in how far they might be able to manipulate the media. Any criticism of their actions is framed as religious discrimination and bigotry so it's not surprising in the least that Ellison has injected [he was a speaker at the NAIF conference after all] himself into this controversy, demanding high level meetings with the Minneapolis airport managers as well as US Airways.
The goal of all of this is of course to batter the airlines and security into submission through fears of financial liability for "discrimination" against Muslims.
The six Imams operated straight out of the handbook prepared for the NAIF Imam conference which described how Imams should handle the media.
"Islam is now almost constantly on the news, and Imams must be capable of dealing effectively with the media. Good communication skills encompass being able to respond to media inquires , fielding questions from journalists, addressing information about Islam and the media, generating positive story ideals, and writing letters to the editor when necessary. Communication should not be limited to responding to misconceptions, but Imams should also take advantage of opportunities to highlight activities in local mosques and the contribution of Muslims to local communities."
In this same document NAIF counseled extremely aggressive and thoroughly coordinated media manipulation:
"In this regard NAIF intends to select a number of Imams to be in charge of this task of responding to the media. Each Imam will be responsible for one or more specific week(s) of the year. Given the unfortunate state of the world. it is likely that during each week there will be an opportunity to condemn extremism and violence. The Imam in charge of this week would write a short message, perhaps 50 to 100 to 200 or 300 words , responding to the specific event released in the news during their week. Then this message would be sent via e-mail to all the Imams on NAIF mailing list seeking their approval or disapproval of the event that occurred. Aftwards, an official statement representing NAIF's stance condemning violence and extremism could be issued.. NAIF would then phone the editorial page editor or the city page editor of the local newspaper or the local broadcast station to post Imam's official statements, NAIF would tell this editor that his newspaper or broadcasting statement will have sole and exclusive right (sic) to print or broadcast the message within the next 24 hours. Afterwards the message will be sent to the national media."
Access entire NAIF conference handbook, in .pdf file format here.
In our opinion, by their actions these imams were waging psychological terrorism - cultural jihad - on America and therefore this event has to be considered a political act designed to degrade airport security by linking reasonable precautions with anti-Muslim bigotry.
The question remains as to whether U.S. Airways will hold their ground and refuse to succumb to this radical Muslim pressure.
We suggest that the U.S. Airways and Minneapolis/St. Paul airport refuse to meet with the imam's representatives, including Congressman elect Keith Ellison who sees the potential in this created controversy as payback for his Muslim constituents and a first test of how he can use his newly acquired Congressional clout to promote the radical Islamist agenda.
We further suggest that the Department of Justice investigate this incident as a conspiracy intended to destroy reasonable and prudent airport security measures, thus enabling future airline based terrorist activities.
©1999-2006 Beila Rabinowitz, William A. Mayer/PipeLineNews.org