Imams on a plane, the saga continues

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Five of six Muslim imams who were taken off a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last month want an out-of-court settlement from the airline for the ordeal.

After the Nov. 28 incident, the airline offered to meet with the group of clerics Dec. 4, but the men declined and instead sought legal help from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington.

"With the hopes of reaching an amicable resolution to this matter, we would like to take this opportunity to ask for a formal meeting with US Airways executives and legal counsel," Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR's national legal director, wrote to the airline.

I absolutely agree. A wrong has occurred and those responsible should pay what they owe and do whatever else is required to make things right.

To start with the US Airways flight had to be delayed in order to remove the imams from the plane. Whenever a plane is delayed the costs to the airline are significant. The imams should reimburse US Airways for the costs which it was forced to bear due to the imams' behavior.

Next the other passengers on the plane were inconvenienced due to the delay and were subjected to considerable mental anguish because of their reasonable fear that the plane was about to be hijacked and turned into a flying suicide bomb.

For this reason the imams should pay each passenger a substantial sum in compensation. They should also apologize in both writing and in person.

Finally the entire incident was obviously a terrorist probe intended to test the airline's security measures and to create doubt in the minds of air travelers and airline employees. The hope was that the next time a group of Muslims act weird on a plane everyone will be too timid to take any action, making the next 9/11 that much easier to pull off.

For this reason the imams need to make full confessions. They need to sit down with the FBI, Homeland Security and CIA officers and reveal who approached them with this idea and how they were to report the results.

After this they need to publicly renounce Islamic extremism and affirm Israel's unconditional right to exist within defensible borders. They then need to dedicate the rest of their lives to the preaching a new reformed and tolerant form of Islam which is divorced from its murderous warlord founding prophet and his vile example.

If the imams do this then I would say that their debt is paid.