Sheikhs on a Plane

James Tarranto of the Wall Street Journal scooped me by a bit on that headline, but I am using it anyway.  From USAToday:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Tuesday for an investigation into the behavior of airline staff and airport security in the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight a day earlier.

A passenger raised concerns about the imams — three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one — through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways.

"We are concerned that crewmembers, passengers and security personnel may have succumbed to fear and prejudice based on stereotyping of Muslims and Islam," Nihad Awad, the council's executive director, said in a news release.

The six were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Omar Shahin of Phoenix, president of the group.

"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," Shahin said after the incident.

This story represents a set of disjointed generalizations.  On the one hand, the vast majority of Muslims neither condone nor participate in terrorist acts, and so represent no threat to anybody.  Here are the results of a Pew poll:

On the other hand,  almost all those who support or condone terrorist acts are Muslim.  It is neither possible nor wise to ignore this when making security decisions at airports.