Muslim discrimination on United flight
A simple request for an unopened can of Diet Coke on a United Airlines flight left Tahera Ahmad in tears.
A
Muslim chaplain and director of interfaith engagement at Northwestern
University, Ahmad, 31, was traveling Friday from Chicago to Washington
for a conference promoting dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian
youth. She was wearing a headscarf, or hijab.
For
hygienic reasons, she asked for an unopened can of soda, she said. The
flight attendant told her that she could not give her one but then
handed an unopened can of beer to a man seated nearby. Ahmad questioned
the flight attendant.
"We are
unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a
weapon on the plane," she recalled the flight attendant telling her.
I am sitting on a United airlines flight in the air 30,000ft above and I am in tears of humiliation from discrimination. The flight attendant asked me what I would like to drink and I requested a can of diet coke. She brought me a can that was open so I requested an unopened can due to hygienic reasons. She said no one has consumed from the drink, but I requested an unopened can. She responded, "Well I'm sorry I just can't give you an unopened can so no diet coke for you." She then brought the man sitting next to me a can of UNOPENED beer. So I asked her again why she refused to give me an UNOPENED can of diet coke. She said, "We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a WEAPON on the plane." So I told her that she was clearly discriminating against me because she gave the man next to me an unopened can of beer. She looked at his can, quickly grabbed it and opened it and said, "it's so you don't use it as a weapon." Apphauled at her behavior I asked people around me if they witnessed this discriminatory and disgusting behavior and the man sitting in an aisle across from me yelled out to me, "you Moslem, you need to shut the F** up." I said, "what?!" He then leaned over from his seat, looked me straight in the eyes and said, "yes you know you would use it as a WEAPON so shut the f**k up." I felt the hate in his voice and his raging eyes. I can't help but cry on this plane because I thought people would defend me and say something. Some people just shook their heads in dismay. #IslamophobiaISREAL
Posted by Tahera Ahmad on Friday, May 29, 2015
Saturday
evening, United spokesman Charles Hobart said that a flight attendant
had tried several times to accommodates Ahmad's beverage request but
that there was a "misunderstanding." He did not elaborate on the details
of that alleged confusion, but said that on Saturday afternoon United
officials spoke to the chaplain to "get a better understanding" of what
happened and to apologize for "for not delivering the service our
customers expect when traveling with us."
Ahmad
described more rude behavior on the flight, however, saying that when
she told the flight attendant she felt she was being discriminated
against, the attendant abruptly opened the beer can.
"It's so you don't use it as a weapon," Ahmad said she was told.
Shocked, Ahmad asked other passengers if they had seen what happened.
A man sitting across the aisle turned to her and yelled, "You Muslim, you need to shut the f--- up," she said.
"What?"
The man leaned over, according to Ahmad, and looked her in the eyes.
She said that the man told her: "Yes, you know you would use it as a weapon. So shut the f--- up."
"I
felt the hate in his voice and his raging eyes," Ahmad wrote on
Facebook while the plane was still in flight. "I can't help but cry ...
because I thought people would defend me and say something. Some people
just shook their heads in dismay."
After
her Facebook post, people took to social media to support her, using
the #unitedfortahera hashtag. Some pledged to boycott United.
Suhaib
Webb, a prominent Muslim American imam, tweeted, "I'm asking all of you
to let @united know that you are disgusted with this bigotry." He also
tweeted a photo of a can of Diet Coke over #unitedfortahera.
In a statement, United spokesman Charles Hobart said the airline "strongly supports diversity and inclusion."
"We
and our partners do not discriminate against our employees or
customers," the statement said. "We are reaching out directly to Ms.
Ahmad to get a better understanding of what occurred during the flight."
"We
are also discussing the matter that Ms. Ahmad describes with Shuttle
America, our regional partner that operated the flight. We look forward
to speaking with Ms. Ahmad and hope to have the opportunity to welcome
her back."
Ahmad, who has Premier frequent-flier status with United, said Saturday that she had not heard from the airline.
"I'm
not doing this to go after United Airlines. This is about bigotry and
racism and our country is going through a very difficult time right now.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others worked so hard ..." Ahmad
said, breaking into tears.
"They
strove so hard so that Americans would not mistreat each other on the
basis of the color of their skin or religious or ethnic background but I
guess we're still on that journey."
The flight attendant as well as the pilot later apologized, she said.
"She
said she's working on her rude behavior and that the man (sitting
across the aisle) should not have said anything," Ahmad recalled.
Ahmad
was recognized at the White House last year "as a leading Muslim female
in the United States" during Women's History Month, according to Northwestern University. She had previously attended a Ramadan dinner hosted by President Barack Obama.
In
2013, Ahmad sparked outrage among Islamic conservatives when she became
the first woman to recite the Quran at the Islamic Society of North
America convention in Washington, the nation's largest Muslim gathering,
according to Northwestern.
Ahmad was
born in India and grew up in Morton Grove, Illinois. She said she has
been spat on and had her hijab ripped off in Islamophobic encounters
after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
"This
time I was being treated as a threat to everyone around me 30,000 feet
above the ground and being told that I could use a can of Diet Coke as a
weapon," she said. "And no one said anything."
The incident comes amid growing hostility toward Muslims living in the United States.
On Friday, protesters at a "Freedom of Speech" rally outside a Arizona mosque
were met by counterprotesters. The two groups lined opposite sides of
the street in front of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. They
yelled at each other as a line of police officers kept them apart, CNN
affiliate KNXV reported.
The Islamic center is the mosque once attended by Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi,
who drove from Arizona to a Dallas suburb to shoot up a Prophet
Mohammed cartoon contest there. Both were killed by police early this
month. Many Muslims consider demeaning depictions of Mohammed to be
blasphemous and banned by Islamic law.
In
Washington, activist and conservative blogger Pamela Geller of New York
wanted to place ads showing cartoons of Mohammed in the capital's
transit system. She hoped to display the winning cartoon from her
group's contest in Texas -- the one where Simpson and Soofi were killed
by police. The Washington Metro board voted to stop showing
issue-oriented ads throughout its system.
Events such as this have some Muslims scared, said Imraan Siddiqi with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"Recently,
the mosques here in Phoenix actually received threatening letters --
very specific threats, saying that we are going to massacre your
congregations," he said.
In a national survey by the Pew Research Center in 2013,
42% of respondents said Islam was more likely than other religions to
encourage violence among its believers. In addition, Muslim Americans
are seen as facing more discrimination than other groups, including gays
and lesbians, Hispanics, African Americans and women.
In
the same survey, 45% of the respondents said Muslim Americans face "a
lot" of discrimination, and 28% said Muslims are subject to some
discrimination.
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