Our security at airports should be modeled like that of Israel and El-Al, They have never had so much as an incident.

I find what happened to this family to be outrageous. Their “suspicious” conversation consisted of where is the safest seat to sit on a plane. I have read articles on this subject. I have seen television news segments on this subject. Should Diane Sawyer not be allowed to fly and/or pulled from her plane?

For all those who say Muslims create the problem since they are behind a majority of the incidents–please at least examine your statement. Of all the Muslim related terrorism incidents, not one involved someone taking their entire family along for the journey.

The rule of thumb on “suspicious” behavior should be: if you saw the same behavior from a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl would you think the same.

I guess you need it to be spoon-fed to you since you can’t grasp the basic logic. Your Catholic “example” is useless because there is no commonality between the two groups. Name the last flight that a Catholic terrorist brought down. While you are Googling that…

“and statistics are evidence not reasons in and of themselves” Really? Since statistics are based on factual data scientifically compiled they are indeed reasons. Grab Webster’s and look them up, the two words are quite similiar indeed. Or just look at it another way, which is that the evidence provided by the statistics can only be judged to mean one thing. The stats don’t lie…

Get your profiling system right. The stats say Middle East Muslims, not Muslims.

The bottom line is that we have not had any major incidents that have not been stopped since 9/11. Someone is doing something right. Take it like it is. Don’t wear something that is in question when boarding a plane. Everyone here is talking about the poor people that have been inconvenienced. What about the people on the plane that were scared to death. If I was on a plane and felt strongly enough and felt that uneasy about someone, I would say something and expect the airlines to react. The fact is that the person wearing the T-shirt was looking for attention and he got it. He does not deserve to compensated for being a jerk.

I think he should experience st louis driving, get in an accident with me (being his fault of course) then, make it up to me over sushi dinner, where he would fall in love over my devilsh red headed womanly ways:)

My reaction is yes responding to this level of paranoia goes too far. I think we can ask some of the elder Japanese Americans about this. There is nothing dangerous about arabic script - one of our rights in America freedom of speech. If the passengers expressed discomfort, then they should have been asked to leave. Also, America needs to wake up - there are many more majority languages in this world besides English.

What does a “Muslim” look like? I haven’t a clue, any more than what a Catholic (excluding clergy and religious) looks like. I couldn’t tell the difference between a Muslim and any other person of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean ethnic heritage. Would it make me uneasy that someone had Arabic script on his/her shirt? No. I might wonder what it said, since I don’t read Arabic, but that would be as far as it went, unless said person was also acting suspiciously–sweating profusely, looking around constantly, gingerly carrying a package, or so forth. Hey, the fellow got through security, apparently unhampered.

Unless someone has religious paraphenalia with them– fingering a rosary, carrying a Bible or Quran, was obviously Semitic, with a full beard, long forelocks and wearing a yarmulke — I wouldn’t even hazard a guess about a stranger’s religion, which is none of my darn business, anyway.
What is amazing to me about worrying about airplane hijackings, although the first one recorded was in 1931 in Peru, is that they weren’t a common US phenomenon until the Cuban revolution. From 1958 through the 1970s, most hijackings were either to or out of Cuba, or had some Cuban connection. See http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/hijacking.html for details, but we have a decade of Cuba related aircraft hijack attempts, and a period 1968-72 where they happened at a rate of one a week by people of assorted ethnic backgrounds and for assorted reasons– now, we have 4 planes hijacked on one day 8 years ago, and suddenly all hijackers are Muslims? I think not.
Glad Mr Jarrar got some compensation.

When I read this story I kind of felt bad for this guy. But then I started to think about September 11th, my fellow friends who have died in Iraq and I started thinking about how many people have died in the past 30 years because of crazy Muslim ideology.

I like many other guys have served in this war on terrorism and what I see and feel is strong. I think that there are good Muslim folks out there. I’ve met them, talked to them, had good conversations with them. This particular incident with this guy and his shirt in my opinion isn’t overreacting on the airlines part. I think they should have done what they should have. What IF this guy really planned on something later and we never stopped him beforehand? What then? Well we all know what would have happened. We can’t take chances with people of Muslim origin IF we are led to believe that we have a legitimate suspicion to stop them and search em.

I think what happened here is ultimately a result of this guy suffering for the actions of many other Muslims who have committed terrorist acts against the U.S. and other countries. I don’t feel that bad for him anymore when I start to think of how many people died on Sept. 11th.

Re the various remarks about screening Grandma– My aunt (not a grandma, but a lady 75+) and her traveling companion, another woman of the same age, have both been taken to task on several occasions by the TSA. Once, my aunt had her plastic round tip kindergarten sissors taken from her before boarding an international flight. (For some reason, she got to keep her knitting needles, but couldn’t knit, with no way to snip the yarn.)

I think the US should require a course in comparative religion (not proselytizing, just familiarizing people with the world’s great religious histories) for high school graduation. Maybe some of the madness of judging people by religious background would stop, once they realize that Muslims accept Abraham and Jesus as prophets and part of their heritage, in addition to Mohammad. Jews, Muslims, Christians– we’re all kissing cousins on this little blue bus. I haven’t a clue why we can’t all get along.

What’s ‘going too far’ is awarding this fool $240,000 in compensation.

Simply incredible…

…and, of course, the ACLU was right in the middle of this nonsense.