“The recent settlement in the case of the six imams, or Islamic religious leaders, who said their rights were violated in 2006 when they were removed from a US Airways flight in Minnesota should not prevent anyone from acting on legitimate security concerns. But reports based solely on anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias and hysteria should not be used as the basis for a ‘flying while Muslim’ incident.

“Absent actual suspicious behavior, merely offering one of the five-daily Islamic prayers in a terminal, speaking Arabic to a fellow passenger, wearing a head scarf, or ‘looking Muslim’ is insufficient justification to detain passengers or remove them from a flight.”

Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR at USA Today, 26 October 2009

See also “Flying imams in the rear-view mirror: What was the evidence against them?”, MinnPost, 26 October 2009