[lg policy] You YouTube Stars Say They Were Removed From Delta Flight for Speaking Arabic

Wed Dec 21 21:55:13 UTC 2016

You YouTube Stars Say They Were Removed From Delta Flight for Speaking Arabic

By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICHDEC. 21, 2016

Two Muslim American YouTube stars who were returning home to New York after a world tour said they were removed from a Delta Air Lines flight at a London airport on Wednesday after other passengers expressed discomfort with their presence on the flight.

Adam Saleh, 23, a filmmaker from Manhattan, and his friend Slim Albaher, 22, from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, said they were asked by the captain to leave their flight at Heathrow Airport after Mr. Saleh spoke in Arabic to his mother by phone and they followed up by speaking to each other in Arabic, setting off anger and alarm among British passengers on the flight.

The news was met on social media with anger against the airline industry, but also skepticism, though passengers who were on the plane when it landed in New York corroborated their story. Mr. Saleh, who has more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube, has a history of perpetuating video hoaxes and pranks, some of them aimed at exposing stereotypes about Muslims. In his latest YouTube video, posted this month, he pretended to smuggle himself onto a plane in a suitcase.

In a phone interview Wednesday from Heathrow before he and Mr. Albaher boarded a new flight, Mr. Saleh insisted this was not a stunt: "The only thing I can say is, I would never film a phone video. That's when it's really serious, and I must film." His video camera was in his luggage.
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Delta is reviewing the incident. Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for the airline, said in a statement that two passengers had been removed from the flight after "a disturbance in the cabin resulted in more than 20 customers expressing their discomfort."

He did not identify the passengers nor would the airline elaborate on the statement.

"We are taking allegations of discrimination very seriously," it said. "Our culture requires treating others with respect."

Camilla Goodman, a spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police, confirmed that two passengers had been removed from the flight and that they "didn't do anything lawfully wrong." They were not arrested, she said. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher later boarded a Virgin flight to New York.

In Periscope videos and the interview with The Times, Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher gave their version of events.

Mr. Saleh said he had just spoken to his mother on the phone, in Arabic, to tell her when his flight would land. After the call, he and Mr. Albaher continued to speak briefly in Arabic, when they were interrupted by a woman in front of them who asked them to speak English because they were making her uncomfortable.

They did not respond aggressively, Mr. Saleh said, but told her that they were speaking Arabic and asked whether she had ever heard another language. Then, Mr. Saleh said, a man with a British accent who appeared to be traveling with her swore at them and said they should be "chucked" off the plane.

"At this point, me and Slim looked at each other," Mr. Saleh said in the interview. "We didn't know what to do. We felt like we were terrorists."
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The situation escalated, Mr. Saleh said, and other passengers joined in asking that Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher be kicked off the plane. Some of them mentioned Monday's terrorist attack in Berlin, he said.

After the disturbance continued for what Mr. Saleh said was about seven minutes, the captain was summoned, and he asked that the two men leave the plane with their baggage.

At that point, Mr. Saleh started filming with his phone. He later shared the video and others from the airport on Twitter, where he has more than 250,000 followers.

Chris Ashford, 47, who was aboard the plane after a layover in London, said that he believed that the woman had "overreacted."

"She heard somebody speaking in Arabic, and assumed the worst," he said.

He added that while he thought Delta acted in the interest of some of its passengers, that "I do think it was heavy-handed, kicking the guy off the plane and then removing his bags."

In the footage, Mr. Saleh was being escorted from the plane as he pointed out passengers who were heckling him, yelling goodbye and waving at the camera.

"You guys are racist," Mr. Saleh shouts in the video, as he retells the story of the confrontation. "Six white people against us bearded men."

With Mr. Saleh's large following, the story quickly took off, and many people were immediately critical of Delta.

Reports of Muslims being asked to leave planes have risen in recent months, according to advocacy groups. Zainab Chaudry, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the United State's largest Muslim civil rights group, said in a phone interview on Wednesday, "More and more reports have been made of Muslims or Arabs, or people who were perceived to be Muslim or Arabs, who were removed from planes by airline personnel.

"There isn't one particular airline I can point to and say, 'We've been hearing more reports on this airline than others,' " she said. "Delta has not been one of the more common offenders."

In April, a college student was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California when he was heard speaking Arabic, a week after a Muslim woman was asked to leave another Southwest flight when she asked to switch seats. In May, an Italian professor was removed from an American Airlines flight when a passenger reported becoming alarmed by his handwritten notes, which were in fact math equations.

Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher, who are best friends and frequently work together, had recently traveled to Kuala Lumpur and Sydney to perform their stage show, which mixes comedy with inspirational speaking. Their audience largely consists of young English-speaking Muslims from around the world, Mr. Albaher said, though he added that "a bunch of other people watch us too."

Mr. Saleh was born and raised in New York City. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was afraid to tell people he was Muslim, but he later embraced his culture and religion: "I wanted to show people we can have fun, we can be normal just like everyone else."
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