A few days ago an orthodox Jewish man was forced off an Air Canada flight for praying before take off. Yves Faguy, a passenger on the flight noted:
He wasn’t exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth . . . The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn’t a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave
Most of the news coverage seems to focus on the fact that the man was not Muslim, and therefore should have been left alone. I guess if he had been Muslim, it would have been Ok to get him off the plane, and there would have been no charges of violating his religious freedom, or some pathological hatred of his race or religion.
The paranoia of the people who seem to fly is becoming a bit scary. Just a few weeks ago passengers on a Monarch flight refused to allow the plane to take off until two Arabic speaking men were removed. At the time many right-wing commentators cheered for the passengers, and suggested that they had every right to determine who their fellow passengers should or shouldn’t be.
As I’ve written in the past, one of the great problems with practicing religious bigotry is that it’s hard to tell who you hate — no doubt this orthodox Jewish man was mistaken for a Muslim, or of an indeterminate religion, by the complaining passenger – better safe then sorry, after all.
