Amar Ashraf: Asian pilot banned from plane

This is getting ridiculous. He works as an airline pilot, he checks in to his company's parnter airline, gets on the plane, falls asleep in business class. Then he gets woken up and told to leave the plane. Now, of course, he may be being paranoid, but when he gets off the plane, the police are there to question him.

He believes his removal was down to having a "Muslim-sounding name".

Mr Ashraf, 28, a British Pakistani who was returning to his job as a pilot for one of Continental's partner airlines in the US, will lodge a formal complaint with Continental Airlines, with whom he was travelling, as well as with the US authorities.

Mr Ashraf? Good luck. Told a friend in Canada about it. His reaction is here. Summary:

That's right, they dragged a guy WHO FLIES *THEIR* JUMBO JETS FOR A LIVING off a plane because THEY WERE AFRAID HE MIGHT DO SOMETHING BAD WHILE HE WAS A PASSENGER ASLEEP IN BUSINESS CLASS.

Hey, everyone who's afraid of brown people: Remember the terrorists?

They won, and you helped them do it.

Good job!

Tomorrow, when I go back into the office, I have to find accommodation for two lawyers planning to come study English with us for 6 months on an executive course. Normally, not a problem at all, executive long term bookings are sought after by our host families. Problem? They're from Kuwait. I shouldn't need to have to persuade people to let me pay them money, just because the client is from a muslim country; Kuwait is one of our major allies out there, right?

The politics of fear. I was bored of it. Now I'm getting fucking scared of it. One side wants to kill us "because of our freedoms". The other wants to deny us our freedoms in order to protect us. Excuse me? Why are we letting the terrorists win by default?

Technorati tagsearch: freedom, terrorism, air travel, politics of fear, Amar Ashraf, Islam