Muslims offer to help ‘John Does’ sued by imams
Lawyers and a Muslim group say they will defend at no cost airline passengers caught up in a lawsuit between a group of imams and U.S. Airways if the passengers are named as “John Does” and sued for reporting suspicious behavior that got the Muslim clerics booted from a November flight. The six imams are suing the airline, Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission, and the unnamed “John Does” to be named later, for discrimination, saying they were removed from the flight for praying in the airport.
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix-area physician and director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy — a group founded in 2003 to promote moderate Muslim ideas through its Web site (www.aifdemocracy.org) — told The Washington Times his group will raise money for legal fees for passengers if they are sued by the imams. “It’s so important that America know there are Muslims who understand who the victims are in air travel,” said Dr. Jasser. “But I hope it doesn’t get to that point because the backlash will be even greater when Americans see Islamists trying to punish innocent passengers reporting fears.”
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Gerry Nolting, whose Minnesota law firm Faegre & Benson LLP is offering to represent passengers for free, says the judicial system is being “used for intimidation purposes” and that it is “just flat wrong and needs to be strongly, strongly discouraged.” “As a matter of public policy, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] presently tells traveling passengers to report suspicious behavior as part of its homeland security program,” Mr. Nolting said. “This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but trying to intimidate and discourage reporting of suspicious behavior and [also discourage] the promotion of safe travel.”
While noble, leaving defense funds and pro bono lawyers to stand alone against the intimidation tactics of CAIR will only ‘lawyer up’ our airline and national security. What about the dockworker who spots a suspicious container? What about the elderly lady on the train who sees an unattended briefcase? And what about the young couple with a newborn and a neighbor with a license to haul hazardous materials who they hear say, “they ought to blow up DC?”
We need to start by protecting the millions of passengers who fly each day, those who report suspicious activity, and our first responders in the air, the flight crews. Federal law should be enacted that says if someone, acting in good faith, reports or acts upon reports of suspicious behavior or items in airports or aboard a plane, they are not subject to civil liability.
Thousands of lawyers will scream ‘bloody murder’ about such legislation yet thousands of people screamed for real while they were being murdered on 9/11.
Update, 8:40 EDT: Hot Air has more details and video of Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser talking about this today.
To think that I was so saddened by the losses of the 9-11 families. We raisded over a million dollars for them in my small town alone. I was so excited at the fomation of the 9-11 commission, I had been following Politics for years and knew from everything I was reading in the Online and had told my husband several times,” god help whoever the next President would be after the 2000 election”. Of course if you only depend on the NYT,WP, and the cable shows it seemed everything was “Wonderful in the world” and then 9-11 happened. the morning the 9-11 commission interviewed Richard Clarke I was asstounded to hear what he was saying! It was the total opposite I had been hearing and reading about from him over the past few years! I was shocked at the his testimony , why in the world would he be saying all of this , what about everything he had just written in his book? The biggest shock was the atmosphere in the room itself. I knew the Day that Condi Rice “took the stand” , and all of the rude conversation from the commissioners themselves, in the room at the time , as well as all of the cable shows in the lead up to that day. you see my whole problem with all of this wasn’t the behavior of the commissionors or the news media, my shock was th NON-Reaction of the 9-11 families. You would think that they would have been before the T. V. camera’s asking these questions after the first 3 days of testimony from the Commission.
If their job is to connect the dots as to what events led up to 9-11, the families first question would have been…
1) Why are you starting your invetigation from 1998 instead of 1993( first WTC attack) or 1983(183 US service members killed by the Iranian sponsered group Hesbulah)
2) Why are members from the last administration on the panel?
3) Would Commissioner Gorelick please come from behind the table and explain the “Wall” to us and the memo that US attorney MaryJo White sent to your office worried at what damage this would do to those trying to do their jobs!
4) Mr Clark ,now that you have tesified ,there seems to be some discrepancies between your testimony to the commission and your book, could you please come and straighten this out for us?
Questions that should have been raised from the down the road:
1) Why would Mr. Berger steal and destroy classified information preparing for testimony before the commission, What did he take?
2) What was the commission told about “Able Danger” and why were they so quick to say it wsn’t true , there IS NO SUCH group , only to find out a couple of days later you did know about it , you just didn’t think it was a) important, and B) It wouldn’t have changed any our our findings. Aren’t you even curious?
3)Why isn’t the administration prosecuting the people in the CIA,FBI,some members of Congress and the press for leaking classified progams and information that can protect us?
I could go on with a hundred more questions I expected from them, but I’ll leave it up to the readers to come up with some theirselves.
[...] 911 Families for America says “We need to start by protecting the millions of passengers who fly each day, those who report suspicious activity, and our first responders in the air, the flight crews. Federal law should be enacted that says if someone, acting in good faith, reports or acts upon reports of suspicious behavior or items in airports or aboard a plane, they are not subject to civil liability. Thousands of lawyers will scream ‘bloody murder’ about such legislation yet thousands of people screamed for real while they were being murdered on 9/11.” [...]