Muslims increasingly racially profiled on US planes in 2016

Passengers have been removed from flights for speaking Arabic, completing math equation or staring at flight attendant

A Muslim group has urged the United States Department of Transportation to take action to address the profiling of Muslims, people of colour, and persons perceived to be either by US airlines.

“Since September 11, 2001 the unlawful profiling of airline passengers on the basis of race or religion has become disturbingly common. Within the past six months alone, 11 racial and religious profiling incidents have been reported, including five since April 1,” the group, Muslim advocates, posted on their website.



Summing up the recent instances of religious and racial profiling, the San Francisco based group along with NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund, Inc (LDF) said passengers have recently been removed from flights for, among other reasons, speaking Arabic, completing a math equation, or “staring at” a flight attendant. In each case, police and airline officials eventually concluded that the individuals posed no threat to the airline or its passengers.

In one highly publicised incident in March, an Arab-American family was asked to leave a plane headed from Chicago to Washington. The flight attendant did not give the Shebley family a reason for the request, saying only that authorities were “investigating”.

“The family was asked to leave for “no reason [other] than how we look,” wrote Eaman-Amy Saad Shebley in a Facebook post that has now been shared more than 54,000 times.



Airplane security was heightened in the US after terrorists hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001 and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Since the terror attacks in London, Paris and Brussels, fears of attacks have led to even more strict security at airports. It’s not the first time civil rights advocates have accused air safety officials and airlines of discriminating against Muslims, and the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month it would examine claims of racial profiling allegedly carried out by the Transportation Security Administration.

This article originally appeared on International Business Times.