LOS ANGELES: It seems Southwest Airlines easily confuses Muslims with terrorists, misinterpreting “I have to go” as “it's a go” from a veiled Muslim woman aboard one of their flights. This is exactly what happened to San Diego County resident, 31-year-old graduate student at San Diego State University, Irum Abassi, who was removed from her flight heading from San Diego to San Jose on March 13. Abassi, who wears the Islamic headscarf, or hijab, and has lived in the United States for the past 10 years, was on her phone minutes before take off when a stewardess, who was passing to check on seat belts, mistakenly over heard Abassi say “I must go” with “it's a go,” which to the Southwest employee sounded like an “operation” of sort was under way. The imaginative and now alarmed stewardess warned the deck crew over the “suspicious passenger.” Not long after, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a Homeland Security agency responsible for travelers' safety in the US, was alarmed and boarded the plane. “Did I do something wrong?” Abassi asked when she was approached by the TSA agents. They responded that the flight attendant thought Abassi “suspicious.” When she asked “what did i do?” she was met with confused and unclear answers of how the flight attendant heard Abassi say “something” with a “go” in it. “They were not even sure of what I said,” Abassi said in a press conference that was held outside San Diego International Airport on March 16, “and I said I gotta go because I was on the phone.” Abassi was later offered a seat on the next flight heading to San Jose that day. An apology was issued to Abassi by the airline on Wednesday, March 16, three days after the incident, yet the airline spokesman claimed that the airline apologized twice to Abassi previously. The first apology was the same day of the incident. Abassi said she now wants a written apology, the launch of an internal investigation into the incident and a guarantee from the airline that the stewardess will be disciplined. “We sincerely apologize for the customer's inconvenience and we regret that she was unable to travel as scheduled. We accommodated her on the next flight to San Jose, and we issued her a travel voucher as a gesture of good will for her inconvenience,” the Southwest apology read. Abassi said she gave away that voucher and intended to not travel with Southwest Airlines in the future. The anti-Islamic sentiments in the US have been manifested in many cases where ignorance, media incitement and racial profiling play a large role in creating a negative impression of Muslims in the country. “We find this incident particularly troubling and shows a growing trend of Islamophobia in this country,” said Edgar Hopida, Director of Public Relations Council at the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), via telephone. CAIR has been supporting Abbassi's case and was present with her at the press conference on March 16. The Islamic organization knows where to point the finger this time, saying that they “feel this incident is a by-product of Congressman [Peter] King's hearing on radicalization of American Muslims and has caused everyday Americans to have hysteria and paranoia toward American Muslims,” Hopida added. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, is holding controversial hearings that he defends by claiming it will assess the threat of “homegrown terrorism “among American Muslims. Many experts warn that these hearings will only widen the gap between Muslim Americans and the police. They say it could add to alienation of the Muslim American community and might contribute to social isolation. King's search into the loyalty of Muslim Americans also took place at an appropriate place: a room once used by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The hearing, which has been widely criticized and has been compared to the Joseph McCarthy's hearings of the 1940s. McCarthy is well known to have questioned the loyalty of American citizens and a couple were sentenced to death for treason as a result of those hearings. Many are criticizing the senator for being a person of Irish-Catholic descent and a supporter of the Irish Republic Army (IRA), which was listed as a terrorist organization by the US and Europe. King is a major proponent of anti-Islamic messages. BM
