<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><h1 itemprop="headline" id="headline" class="">College Student Is Removed From Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane</h1>
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<p class=""><span class="" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <span class="" itemprop="name">LIAM STACK</span></span>APRIL 17, 2016
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<a class="" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/student-speaking-arabic-removed-southwest-airlines-plane.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-4&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0#story-continues-1"></a><span class=""><br></span>
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<img src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/17/us/18xp-southwest/18xp-southwest-master315.jpg" alt="" class="" itemprop="url"><div class="">
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<span class="">A Southwest Airlines plane at Los Angeles International Airport.</span>
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<span class="">Credit</span>
David McNew/Getty Images </span>
<p class="">A
college student who came to the United States as an Iraqi refugee was
removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California earlier this
month after another passenger became alarmed when she heard him speaking
Arabic.</p><p class="">The
student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a senior at the University of
California, Berkeley, was taken off a flight from Los Angeles
International Airport to Oakland on April 6 after he called an uncle in
Baghdad to tell him about an event he attended that included a speech by
United Nations Secretary General <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/ban-kimoon">Ban Ki-moon</a>.</p><p class="">“I was very excited about the event so I called my uncle to tell him about it,” he said.</p><p class="">He
told his uncle about the chicken dinner they were served and the moment
when he got to stand up and ask the secretary general a question about
the Islamic State, he said. But the conversation seemed troubling to a
nearby passenger, who told the crew she overheard him making
“potentially threatening comments,” the airline said in a statement.</p><p class="">Mr.
Makhzoomi, 26, knew something was wrong as soon as he finished his
phone call and saw that a woman sitting in front of him had turned
around in her seat to stare at him, he said. She headed for the airplane
door soon after he told his uncle that he would call again when he
landed, and qualified it with a common phrase in Arabic, “inshallah,”
meaning “god willing.”</p><p class="">“That is when I thought, ‘Oh, I hope she is not reporting me,’ because it was so weird,” Mr. Makhzoomi said.</p>
<p class="" id="story-continues-1">That
is exactly what happened. An Arabic-speaking Southwest Airlines
employee of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent came to his seat and
escorted him off the plane a few minutes after his call ended, he said.
The man introduced himself in Arabic and then switched to English to
ask, “Why were you speaking Arabic in the plane?”</p><p class="">Mr. Makhzoomi said he was afraid, and that the employee spoke to him “like I was an animal.”</p><p class="">“I
said to him, ‘This is what Islamophobia got this country into,’ and
that made him so angry. That is when he told me I could not go back on
the plane.”</p><p class="">Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of the <a href="http://www.cair.com/">Council on American-Islamic Relations</a>,
said there had been at least six cases of Muslims being pulled off
flights so far this year. The conduct of Southwest Airlines was of
particular concern, she said, after <a href="http://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/13484-cair-to-call-for-bias-probe-after-maryland-muslim-removed-from-southwest-flight-in-chicago.html">another Muslim passenger was removed</a> from a flight in Chicago last week.</p>
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<p class="">“We
are concerned that Muslims are facing more and more scrutiny and
baseless harassment when they are attempting to travel,” Ms. Billoo
said.</p><p class="">Brandy
King, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, said the company was unable
to comment on the conduct of individual employees. Efforts on Saturday
to contact the employee in Los Angeles, whose name was provided by Mr.
Makhzoomi, were unsuccessful.</p><p class="">“We
regret any less than positive experience a customer has onboard our
aircraft,” the company said in a statement. “Southwest neither condones
nor tolerates discrimination of any kind.”</p><p class="">Law
enforcement officials arrived shortly after Mr. Makhzoomi accused the
airline employee of anti-Muslim bias, he said. He was brought into the
terminal and searched in front of a crowd of onlookers while half a
dozen police officers, including one with a dog, stood watch.</p><p class="">Three
agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived and brought him
into a private room where they questioned him, he said. They asked
about his mother, who lives with him and his younger brother in Oakland.
They also asked about his father, Khalid Makhzoomi, a former Iraqi
diplomat who was jailed in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein and later
killed by the dictator’s regime, according to Mr. Makhzoomi. His family
came to the United States in 2010.</p>
<p class="" id="story-continues-2">Mr.
Makhzoomi said an F.B.I. agent told him the Southwest Airlines employee
who was upset by the allegation of anti-Muslim bias said a passenger
reported hearing him talk about martyrdom in Arabic, using a phrase
often associated with jihadists. He denied the charge and was allowed to
return to the terminal, he said, where the same Arabic-speaking
employee refunded his ticket.</p><p class="">A
spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Los Angeles, Ari Dekofsky, confirmed that
agents responded to the airport that day but had found there to be no
threat. “We determined that no further action was necessary,” she said
on Saturday.</p><p class="">Mr.
Makhzoomi was able to book a new flight on Delta Air Lines and arrived
in Oakland eight hours after he originally planned. He said he has no
plans to pursue legal action against Southwest Airlines but he does want
the company to apologize for the way its employees treated him.</p><p class="">“My
family and I have been through a lot and this is just another one of
the experiences I have had,” he said. “Human dignity is the most
valuable thing in the world, not money. If they apologized, maybe it
would teach them to treat people equally.”</p><p class="">from the NYTimes 4/18/16<br></p><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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