[karajorma]

http://www.bbc.com/news/36075317

An Iraqi university student in California says he was escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight for having a conversation in Arabic.

Southwest Airlines said that Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was removed from a 9 April flight before it took off.

Mr Makhzoomi said he was talking to his uncle on the phone about attending a speech by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

A Southwest employee then escorted him off of the plane.

"I was very excited about the event, so I called my uncle to tell him about it," Mr Makhzoomi told the New York Times.

A woman on the plane began staring at him after he used the phrase "inshallah," meaning "god willing," in the conversation, he said.

After an Arabic-speaking Southwest employee escorted him off the plane, he said "This is what Islamophobia got this country into."

Mr Makhzoomi, who came to the country as an Iraqi refugee and studies at the University of California at Berkeley, was then told he could not get back on the plane.

"My family and I have been through a lot, and this is just another one of the experiences I have had,'' he told the New York Times.

"Human dignity is the most valuable thing in the world, not money. If they apologised, maybe it would teach them to treat people equally."

Southwest said in its statement that he was removed for "potentially threatening comments made aboard our aircraft" and that it does not tolerate discrimination.

"We wouldn't remove passengers from flights without a collaborative decision rooted in established procedures," the company said. "We regret any less than positive experience onboard our aircraft."

For those of you who don't know any Muslims, "inshallah" is basically used at the end of any comment about doing something you want to in the future and basically is the equivalent of saying "if I'm lucky". It most certainly doesn't have any threatening meaning. Yeah it mentions a deity but it's as natural for a Muslim as saying "God bless you" to someone who sneezes would be for a Christian.

What is really bad about this though is not the stupid overreaction from the staff on the plane, but the idiotic response from Southwest who have had time to do some basic research.

[Luis Dias]

So that's the first correct usage of the term "islamophobia" I've probably seen in months. People were driven to this ridiculous action through fear. I totally understand this fear, but the company was crazily incompetent. That guy should sue for thousands, tens of thousands, nay, millions of dollars.

[Bobboau]

yeah, that's not going to cause controversy, because it's obviously retarded.

[Dragon]

This is exactly what lawsuits are made for. That's clearly islamophobia in its most blatant form. It also happens to show the great utility of the word "inshallah" ("God willing") in the Musilim parlance, especially these days. If you don't make it, you can at least say, "well, God didn't will it this time". Unfortunately, it seems that they'll be getting a lot of mileage out of this excuse, especially if Trump gets his way in the elections...

I hope Southwest is gonna lose a few millions of dollars over this. Fortunately, this is the kind of lawsuit that is generally known to work in the US.