Muslim Women Barred From Flight After Refusing Full Body Scan

AFP:

LONDON (AFP) - Two Muslim women were stopped from boarding a flight from Britain to Pakistan for refusing to go through new body scanners, citing religious and medical reasons, airport officials said Thursday.

Read the whole story: AFP

Comments

[Usama]

10:44 AM on 03/06/2010

BTW, folks need to wake up to the reality of terrorism. Its a pretext for all kinds of things and governments have been using that pretext for centuries. They have even manufactured terrorist threats to justify their subsequent actions to accomplish their original objectives. Bend over backwards at your own peril.

[infidel2]

05:14 AM on 03/06/2010

No special privileges for anyone. If you don't want to have the scan, which a lot of us don't, them you'll have to make a choice: scan & fly or no scan and find another way.

The excuses have worn thin, especially when they are always made by the proponents of the religion that has & is causing all of this extra screening for the rest of us.

[sassafra]

06:21 AM on 03/05/2010

if certain religion's adherants wish to fly under relaxed security measures due to their religion's peculiar dogma, i have no problem if they wish to fund and operate their own airline with their own security protocols, or absense thereof. caveat emptor.

[Whinger]

04:58 AM on 03/05/2010

Nobody really wants body scans, but given the devious determination and intent of terrorists it is a necessary inconvenience to ensure the safety and security of airline passengers!
Anyone who's not prepared to be scanned should seek alternative means of transportation!

[Usama]

03:59 AM on 03/05/2010

It is correct for these women to refuse full body scanning. NonMuslims perplexed by the notion that religion could address security are confined in their own inaccurate interpretation of what a religion is. Your ideological parameters demand that all thought be categorized accordingly. Islam transcends your manmade parameters, just as it transcends the logic by which you have constructed the World Order.

The reality is there are far more cost effective ways to check for bomb materials, such as bombsniffing dogs. But certain 'security' industry lobbyists have convinced govt officials of their technology so they can win lucrative contracts. Since 2001, the security industry has bloated into 100s of billions of dollars annually just in America.

As for these women and all women who protect their modesty and hold it in high value, private measures should be allowed for them, including an all female security staff and private security screeening.

[GSR]

08:22 AM on 03/05/2010

The problem is -and there is no way around this- the people who statistically are overwhelmingly more likely to carry explosives onto a plane are Muslim and yet people of the Muslim faith are the very people that you want exempted. Sorry pal get scanned or stay on the ground.

[GSR]

08:36 AM on 03/05/2010

By the way please save us the lecture about Islam transcending our man-made parameters. You are free to believe that your superstition has primacy over our civil laws however you are not free to test that belief.

[Usama]

10:40 AM on 03/06/2010

GSR, I didnt say Muslim women should be given security exemptions.
Im saluting them for holding their modesty and dignity to a higher value than the value granted them by the global security network of America's World Order ;)!
GSR, spare me the recalcitrant rebuttals ans lamentations about your civil perogatives. America rules the world by maintaining a gun to my head and using drones to kill my brothers' families throughout the world.
America's headaches with the Muslim world really started when it chose to plant 100s of 1000s of troops in Saudia Arabia with the design of securing the world's biggest oil reserves for American interests in the Gulf. American GREED and THIRST FOR POWER. Read power Faith and Fantasy by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US. American plans for dominance in Central Asia, including a pipeline from the Casian to the Gwadar port to fuel India's development has dropped America into the AfPak quagmire. And many more. Greed can be violent. And the human response to violent greed is most often violence. Do you carry a concealed weapon by chance someone will try to rob you?

[KIVPossum]

03:02 AM on 03/05/2010

Sure there are plenty of women of other faiths who don't want body scans, yet they accept them as part of the 'joy' of airline travel.

If you want modern conveniences like flight, you accept modern inconveniences like intrusive security.

[Usama]

03:48 AM on 03/05/2010

Im not sure I agree with your logic.

An arrested female suspect can request a female police officer to retain charge. In fact this practically universal policy. Its only reasonable that the same applies for such intrusive security measures. Female security officers and security measures should be done apart from male security checks, and all measures of privacy within the realm of security should be awarded. I suspect this is NOT the current practice regarding these full body scans.

[KIVPossum]

04:05 AM on 03/05/2010

I have not yet been through one, so don't know. My understanding is the screen is not positioned so anyone else except the operator can see the image. So to anyone in the waiting line, it is just a person standing, much like waiting to walk through the metal detector. My guess would be that the operator can be male or female, and would look at the images for both sexes.

[zakon]

10:37 PM on 03/04/2010

War on Terror = lies

[zakon]

09:57 PM on 03/04/2010

War on Terror is Peace:

Though the War on Terror is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.

The War on Terror, it will be seen, is a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all.

The War on Terror is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.

This - although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense - is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War on Terror is Peace.

1984

[SensibleJoe]

09:07 PM on 03/04/2010

Religion entails sacrifice. If your religion forbids you to go through body scanners or airport security, it should be your pleasure to forgo traveling by airplane to remain true to your God. Convenience and faithfulness don't always go hand in hand.

[DawnK]

05:06 PM on 03/04/2010

Oh well. Their religion does not trump my or anyone else's safety. As for the medical reasons, what are they? Are they even legitimate?

[overcat]

04:47 PM on 03/04/2010

I wonder what the medical reasons were that they felt should exempt them? I appreciate that the Brits won't allow religious exceptionalism. I'm no great fan of these scanners, however the criteria for selection for these scans as laid out in the article is clear, and there should be no room for religious exemptions. Flying is not a right. With few exceptions, passenger airplanes are privately operated though heavily publicly regulated conveyances. No one has an absolute right to get on a plane. Years ago I was going through security at London's Heathrow airport with a substantial amount of photographic film. I wanted it hand inspected as one is entitled to in the US, and was repeatedly refused. Finally the security agent said "if it doesn't get xrayed, it doesn't get past this point, period". There was no room for discussion. If that's equally applied to all then it's fair, whether I like it or not.

[JustMeInNY]

04:43 PM on 03/04/2010

Using religion as an excuse not to be scanned? Talk about WTF? what they thought that the scanner is interested in seeing the "udders"?

What kind of a religion says "You can't go through a scanner"???

Please, you want to fly, go through a scanner, want a driver's license, take off that veil.

[alysheba 3]

04:59 PM on 03/04/2010

The Muslim religion gives the same reasons as the Roman Catholic Church.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church spoke out against the use of body scanners at airports, saying human dignity must be preserved even as countries attempt to protect their citizens against acts of terrorism.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/22/pope-body-scan.html

How about you stop the Islam bashing now?

[JustMeInNY]

05:23 PM on 03/04/2010

First, unlike you who consistently bashes an entire nation of people, I've done no such thing.

Second, I'd love to read the passage translated that calls for not allowing females to go through scanners.

If you have that, please feel free to provide that quote. Otherwise, stick to your normal stuff, you know, bashing Israel because it's raining in Vietnam today!

[loutreverte]

05:57 PM on 03/04/2010

A) The article is about a Muslim, not a Catholic, so people are naturally going to discuss Islam.

B) Many of us dislike Islam and Catholicism alike. Just because some else whines for the same privileging of superstition does not make the first person to do justified.

[justadood]

04:23 PM on 03/04/2010

no commiseration from me---if you want to be religiously modest, you can always take train and ship.

People are spoiled with Air travel...nowhere in the world more than 24 hours distant. This 'privelege' though, comes with certain liabilities/responsibilities.

Can't handle it, don't fly....there are travel alternatives.....

[JNarragansett]

04:13 PM on 03/04/2010

All the airports are but a stage, and the screeners merely players. This expensive new naked picture machine wouldn't have even caught the Nigerian on Christmas. Do you know what has actually made us safer since 9/11? The hardening of cockpit doors (the Nigerian didn't try to take over the plane) and the knowledge among passengers that compliance is a death sentence (the man who jumped on the Nigerian). Most of this is just theater to give the appearance of security. I'm with FCSakes, if enough people stand up and say "no" then we could turn the airlines into advocates as they lose business.

[T D Goggin]

03:53 PM on 03/04/2010

If I wanna bowl I need to wear the right shoes
If I wanna go on a ride at Disney I need to be this tall
If I wanna smoke I have to go outside

If they wanna fly they need to do as they are told.