Who wants to lay some cash on the legal prospects of the six Muslim imams ousted from a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix last November after their behavior -- e.g., chanting in Arabic -- scared passengers who thought another 9/11 might be in the offing?
The imams now are suing U.S. Airways and the complaining passengers for deprivation of their civil rights. How about even odds on their walking away from the U.S. judicial system richer than when they got ejected from the plane?
In this, the 21st century after Christ, minds no longer boggle. Pretty much everything gets a least a test run these days, including the claim that the United States, which fought a war to free the slaves, is the most racist nation on earth.
What we used to deride as mere "political correctness" holds considerable sway in American, as in Western, culture -- the view that critics of "xenophobia" and "sexism" and "homophobia" merit the benefit of the doubt. We know we're just so bad. When our country locks up terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, the terrorists, rather than their putative victims, get editorial and legal sympathy.
Humiliations visited by a few -- repeat, few -- weirdo soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison send us into fits of remorse. We can't "profile" particular air travelers for extensive attention at the gate, so we pretend that random Joe and selected Jane qualify as objects of valid suspicion.
No doubt, if the imams get their way, and their money, the government will devise a screening procedure for Methodists who hum "Amazing Grace" while checking luggage.
There used to be a rule of thumb: Better safe than sorry. Applied to the imams -- who, besides praying aloud and chanting, asked for seatbelt extenders and may have cursed the United States -- U.S. Airways should have boarded the six and waited to see what happened. Who knows, it might all have gone well.
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