By On December 6th, 2015 Mohammed Ahmed Radwan, a 40 year old senior manager at a manufacturing company, boarded a Detroit-bound flight at North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International airport. As he settled into his seat, he heard a flight attendant call out his name, saying, “Mohamed Ahmed, seat 25-A, I will be watching you.”
At first Radwan thought the attendant was addressing someone else, but she soon followed up her statement with, “Mohamed Ahmed, that is a very long name, Seat 25-A: I will be watching you,” and then, “25A: you will be watched.”
Radwan asked the attendant about her blunt remarks and she replied that she was watching everyone and that he was being “too sensitive.”
Then, two other American Airlines employees questioned Radwan before kicking him off the flight for making the original flight attendant “uncomfortable.”
Though he was offered another flight, Radwan “felt too unsafe to fly with American again” and booked a much later flight with another airline at the cost of $1,500.
Radwan, who became a citizen of the U.S. over 13 years ago, stated:
“I think it was a shattering moment for me because I’ve lived in this country for 20 years, and I’m a proud and an honored American.”
Following the incident Radwan posted a complaint on the airline’s Facebook page and later contacted American Airlines with the help of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). However, a spokesperson for American Airlines said in a recent statement:
“We thoroughly reviewed these allegations and concluded that no discrimination occurred. We serve customers of all backgrounds and faiths and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”
Unable to reach a satisfactory resolution with the airline, Maha Sayed, a member of CAIR and Radwan’s attorney for this matter, has now asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to investigate the case. In addition, CAIR is calling on the DOT to establish a clear set of guidelines for removing passengers from flights.
Currently, flight crews use “flight safety” and general discomfort as a blanket justifications for the discriminatory removal of passengers who have done nothing besides looking Muslim or having an Arabic name.
In her open letter to the DOT, Sayed writes:
“Given the continuing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes occurring throughout the United States, this type of reckless and harmful conduct should not be tolerated by our nation’s airlines, which are legally charged with safely carrying all individuals who are rightfully present in an equal and nondiscriminatory manner, without regard to their religious affiliation or ethnicity.”
Radwan’s case is part of a larger trend among airlines. In March, United Airlines removed a Muslim family from a flight after they asked for an extra strap for their child’s booster seat.
This April a man was kicked of a Southwest Airlines flight for saying Inshallah, the Arabic word for hopefully.
In June, a bearded man was escorted off an Alaskan Airlines flight because he looked “Arabic and scary.”
Being arbitrarily thrown off flights has become common place for Muslims, just like being randomly selected by the TSA. Without proper guidelines Muslims will continue to be treated like second class passengers. We can only hope that the DOT’s results will show that airlines clearly discriminate against Muslims, a fact that Muslims have known for years.
Contributed by Zarina Iman
do y’all not find it hilarious that this is news, or some sort of rebuke of western society, an implicit ‘racism’, while muslims are actually killing scores of people?
As a Muslim myself, I ask this too but then am reminded of all the biased news outlets and non critical thinking groups who give into xenophobia and fear mongering of an easy innocent target group. I really don’t mind being fully checked out at the airport, but I have the right to respect and non threatening behavior from ‘oh goody two shoes ‘… ? ??
that is funny. i remember my first flight after 9/11. i guess the were doing the ever 10th person thing, because they pulled me out of line. now i’m a white guy, but i did have a beard at the time, but i looked at the guy behind me, he was southeast aisa, a pakistani maybe or east pakistan [as in bangladesh], or maybe a indian hindu [maybe a jain, i know y’all get particular on such things]. anyway, he looked at me and shrugged. he was thinking that this makes no sense.
anyway, have you ever read the koran?
You didn’t have to tell us that you’re a white guy. Your dumbass name and dumbass comments gave that away.
LOL. what was dumb about it? are muslims not killing scores of people? or let me guess, the MSM made up the nice attack. the two german attacks. paris, orlando, san bernadino and the list just keeps growing.