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Man gets kicked out of plane for talking in Arabic: Islamophobia or fake news?

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Pathikrit Sanyal
Pathikrit SanyalDec 21, 2016 | 21:31

Man gets kicked out of plane for talking in Arabic: Islamophobia or fake news?

Post 9/11 America has seen an onslaught of Islamophobia, which has gotten only worse with the years. Discrimination on the basis of one’s brown skin, alien tongue, or crying terrorist even at the mere instance of someone mentioning “Allah” is, sadly, an everyday affair now. The phenomenon is likely to only get worse in the coming years under Trump’s America (with its white-Christian supremacist lean).

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The latest instance of unabashed Islamophobia comes from Delta Airlines. Planes and Muslims have been a touchy topic for Americans but kicking someone out of the plane, for speaking in Arabic, is pathetic even by American racist standards. YouTube vlogger Adam Saleh claimed that he was kicked off of a Delta Airlines flight because he spoke in Arabic on the phone with his mother.

Saleh recorded a video of him being escorted off the aircraft, because of fellow passengers complaining about their apparent discomfort with him.

In his video, where Saleh can be seen being escorted off the plane, he says, “We spoke a different language on the plane and now we’re getting kicked out. This is 2016. I cannot believe my eyes. I spoke a word and you said you feel uncomfortable. Just because I spoke a different language.”

Several people can be seen waving them off of the plane as the camera pans across the flight.

Is this what America has come down to?

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To be fair, this is not the first incident of its kind. In April, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a senior researcher at the UC Berkeley, was removed from the Oakland-bound flight from Los Angeles international airport, after a fellow passenger heard him speak Arabic on his phone.

In August, two American Muslim women were removed from an American Airlines plane after a flight attendant said the women made him feel “unsafe”. 

In January, a flight attendant kicked four Brooklyn men off a Toronto-to-New York flight for “looking too Muslim”, claiming their appearance made the captain uneasy. One of the men were, in fact, a Sikh.

Last year, a British Muslim family heading for Disneyland was barred from boarding a flight to Los Angeles by US authorities at London’s Gatwick airport.

Such stories make up a depressingly staggering list.

Delta Airlines has issued a statement, saying “Two customers were removed from this flight and later rebooked after a disturbance in the cabin resulted in more than 20 customers expressing their discomfort. We're conducting a full review to understand what transpired. We are taking allegations of discrimination very seriously; our culture requires treating others with respect”.

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Delta’s actions and this practice of catering to a white man’s “discomfort” (read xenophobia/Islamophobia) is but a part of a bigger scheme that asks for a global boycott of the “Moslem” and anything to do with the Middle East. Associating every Muslim with ISIS or Al-Qaeda, not helping refugees and simply asking for all “Moslems” to prove their loyalty (Trump actually said that) is just small cogs in the giant right-wing machine that is waging a holy war to wipe out Islam (much like Hitler did with the Jews).

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If Adam Saleh is creating prank videos to “educate” people about Islamophobia, he is as complicit (if not more) in its growth in America. [Photo: Screengrab]

But there exists a flipside to this story, which is as much of a modern-day pest as is racism:  Fake news. While Delta has admitted to this incident, what may have sparked it is questionable. Adam Saleh is a YouTube star who is famous for making prank videos.

Prank videos have evolved over the ages. They are no longer goofy footage of someone replacing sugar with salt and getting a laugh at the victim’s expense. No. Prank videos now have turned into elaborate hoaxes that sometimes have some rather bad effects.

The 2016 US presidential elections saw quite a few of these prank videos being circulated under the pretence or perhaps ignorance of them being real. A rather famous example of these so-called prank videos was that of a group of African Americans demolishing a car with baseball bats and pipes, because it had “Support Trump” stickers on it. The video was later debunked but it had done a lot of damage in the meanwhile.

But what is more disturbing than that, if possible, is the fact that Adam Saleh himself has previously been guilty of manufacturing Islamophobia for a fake internet points.

In 2014, Saleh released a video titled “Racial Profiling Experiment”, which claimed to be a real example of an NYPD officer purposefully singling out teens in Muslim American dress to be stopped and frisked.

The video shows a police officer taking no notice of him and his friend when they were wearing jeans and t-shirts. But later, when they walk by him wearing traditional long shirts and scarves, the officer forces them against a wall and searches them for weapons.

Once the video’s authenticity was brought in question, Saleh quickly issued a revision to the description of the video, calling it the dramatisation of real events and that it was created to raise awareness about real Islamophobia.

Actions like these do more harm than good for any cause. Even as thousands are calling out Delta Airlines and its highly racist practices, the scent of this being a fake or manufactured story would only do well to the beliefs of the white Christian majority of America who live in utter denial of their own racism and xenophobia.

If Adam Saleh is creating prank videos to “educate” people about Islamophobia, he is as complicit (if not more) in its growth in America.

Last updated: December 21, 2016 | 21:31
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