The Weeks Review

PEOPLE POWER

Mutiny on Flight 613
Passengers refuse to allow holiday jet to take off until two Asian men are thrown off plane

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.

The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America.

It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'.

I just love that last paragraph. First, some major "passenger profiling" is in order. The problem is Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists! And another thing, these people didn't "take the law into their own hands", they simply chose not to place themselves in a potentially threatening situation.

Whether or not these two "Asian" (what happened to "Middle-Eastern", is that all of a sudden politically incorrect?) men were treated unfairly is really not the point. The point is that all of the people involved in all of the terrorist activity are Middle Eastern Muslims. Sorry if that's an inconvenient fact that flies in the face of all of this politically correct kumbaya claptrap, but it's indeed a fact. I'm sorry if these two men were treated unfairly, but given the current situation, I think it's a natural reaction. They should blame their brothers who use their religion as a justification for murder.

Certainly, all Muslims are not terrorists, but it would appear that all terrorists are Muslims.

Perhaps if the people at CAIR (Council on American and Islamic Relations) and other like institutions, not to mention Muslims in general, would spend a little less time whining about "profiling" and more time forcefully denouncing the large swath of terrorist activity that calls Islam home, people could get back to the pre-9/11 mindset with regard to Middle-Easterners.

I think before 9/11, most people didn't have much of an opinion one way or another about Arabs or Middle Easterners. Now, one sees two Arab men in an airport or sitting across the aisle on an airplane and one tends to think "potential terrorist." Do I have this reaction? You better believe it. As a Flight Attendant, I mentally "profile" every person on my aircraft. I don't treat them any differently and I am equally hospitable to all passengers. That said, when I see Middle-Eastern men, I tend to watch them more closely than I would some "good ol' boy" wearing a NASCAR cap. If the IRA had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks and I knew there were thousands of IRA terrorists in this country plotting against us, I would have the same reaction to everyone I encountered sporting an Irish brogue.

I don't call this racism, I call it realism.