The mainstream media, Islamic whiners and a Labour MP have stepped forward to join the chorus of ‘it’s the Islamophobia’ over the case of the Mahmood family who were stopped from flying to California, USA. What much of the media, the MP for Walthamstow Stella Creasy nor the Mahmood family themselves are saying is that it is purely the fault of Muslims themselves that Muslims have trouble travelling to certain destinations. If Muslims and the ideology they follow had not been so consistently hostile to Western values, if Muslims had not committed so many acts of violence and had not been implicated in so many terrorist plots, then we might honestly say that being refused flight privileges was being unjustly revoked. In this case it is likely to turn out that the US authorities were taking an admirable and sensible ‘better safe than sorry’ route.

Here’s how the Sky News website reported this case. As is usual policy for this blog, the original text from Sky is in italics whilst this blog’s comments are in plain text.

Sky News said:

“A Labour MP has called on the Prime Minister to intervene after a British Muslim family were stopped at Gatwick Airport and prevented from flying to California.

The group of 11, including nine children, was about to travel to Los Angeles on a dream holiday last Tuesday when they were approached by US Homeland Security officials in the departure lounge.

At least someone at Gatwick is on the ball with regards security, shame it has to be US Homeland Security and not our own people.

The officials told Mohammad Tariq Mahmood and his party, which included his brother and nine of their children aged between eight and 19, that their authorisation to travel on the flight had been cancelled without further explanation.

If the Homeland Security officials and other staff are not giving an explanation then this gives rise to the suspicion that the Mahmood family may not exactly be ‘clean hands’ types of people. DHS officials must have had some signals or human intelligence information available to them that flagged up the Mahmoods as being dodgy in some way. Of course we have to bear in mind this could be a gross miscarriage of justice for example their names looked similar to those in lists of suspect persons, (if you look on the UN Security Council sanctions list, there are many common Muslim names on there) but that still doesn’t mean that a grave risk should have been taken by letting them fly. My own opinion is that it is better to have a bunch of Muslims whining about ‘Islamophobia’ at the airport than have said Muslims explode on a plane or in some resort in the United States. A policy of better safe than sorry is one that I can easily and readily support.

Labour’s Stella Creasy, who is the family’s local MP, has written to David Cameron to try to find out why the family were stopped.

It didn’t take Ms Creasy long to spring out of the trap like a greyhound on amphetamines to ask questions on behalf of this family. She was so quick in fact that it makes me wonder whether she is starting her Islamopandering as early as possible so as to increase her chances of retaining her seat at the 2020 General Election. Unfortunately as Walthamstow has become increasingly Islamised, politicians there have to keep at least one eye on what the local Muslims want, even if what the Muslims want is less attention from security forces, as in this case.

She also said a growing number of British Muslims claim they have received similar treatment.

Ajmal Masroor, an imam in east London, told Sky News he was also banned from flying to the US last week, something he described as “crazy” and an “insult”.

The words ‘Imam’ and ‘East London’ would or should ring alarm bells with any security operative. East London is fast becoming a hotbed of jihadism and being suspicious of Muslims from East London is the height of common sense.

Mr Masroor had been invited to lead Friday prayers at a mosque in New York.

What mosque? What is the reputation of said mosque? Is it dodgy? Mr Mansoor’s whine leaves us with more questions than it answers.

But when he arrived at the gate to board his flight, he was told by someone who said they were a US official that his visa had been revoked.

Mr Masroor said: “He would not give me any reason, he said he was only a messenger.

“But when I questioned him a bit more, he said ‘maybe you’ve done something wrong, you need to speak to the embassy’.

“I was very furious he would make accusations against me without any proof or any substantial evidence that he could provide me and they would arbitrarily refuse or revoke a visa.”

With what has been going on in America as regards Jihadism and with a lethal terrorist attack at San Bernardino fresh in the memory, it’s right that the US authorities are taking more care with what Muslims they allow to enter.

A week on from the cancellation of their flight, Mr Mahmood said they still had not been given a reason.

If that is the case then it is likely that the information comes from a secure source which means that it cannot and should not be passed on to the suspect. The information that this refusal was based on may well have come from a HUMINT (human intelligence) source that may be endangered if data was released to the person refused flight privileges.

But he told The Guardian: “It’s because of the attacks on America – they think every Muslim poses a threat.”

Well bearing in mind that a lot of Muslims are a threat to security I don’t blame the US authorities for taking the view that certain Muslims need to be kept out of the USA.

The family have also reportedly been told by their airline, Norwegian Air, that the £9,000 cost of their flights will not be refunded.

Oh dear, my ‘give a toss’ meter is stuck somewhere below zero about this.

Ms Creasy believes a lack of information from US authorities about why they were prevented from travelling is fuelling resentment within British Muslim communities.

Ms Creasy, what about the resentment felt by many in Britain’s non Muslim majority about Muslim terror, Muslim rape gangs, Muslim corruption of the voting system, Muslim welfare poncing and other problems? Shouldn’t the majority, rather than a loud and often dodgy minority be your priority?

The claims come after Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump recently called for all Muslims to be stopped from entering the United States.

I’d love to see a ‘President Trump’ if only for the era of ‘Islamorealism’ that it may herald. All civilised countries should have draconian restrictions on the entry of Muslims.

Ms Creasy said: “It is not just the family themselves who are livid.

You are right there Ms Creasy, some of us are extremely livid about the fact that politicians such as yourself feel that pandering to Muslims comes a long way ahead of security.

“The vacuum created by a refusal to provide any context for these decisions is fuelling resentment and debate.

My answer to that would be so what. Let them be resentful, after all it’s the fault of Muslims themselves that their ‘religion’ is portrayed by many as a violent intolerant death cult. If a significant number of Muslims behave as if they were members of a death cult then that is how Islam and Muslims are going to be viewed.

“Online and offline discussions reverberate with the growing fear UK Muslims are being ‘trumped’ – that widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s call for no Muslim to be allowed into America contrasts with what is going on in practice.”

As I have stated before, the reasons that Muslims feel that they are being targeted is primarily because of the behaviour of Muslims. There is no way that this refusal to fly can be blamed on anyone or anything else other than Muslims and Islam.

She also said there has been no further contact from either the UK or US security services to follow up any potential threat the family were perceived to be.

In that case it is probably safe to assume that the US Dept of Home Land Security and MI5 in the UK know a bit more about this family than Ms Creasy does.

The family, from her Walthamstow constituency in northeast London, had applied for and were granted travel authorisation online a number of weeks before their flight.

Maybe the travel authorisation was given before additional information that made it necessary to refuse flight came in?

Mr Mahmood said the children had been excited about the trip for months, and were devastated not to be able to visit their cousins in California and go to Disneyland and Universal Studios, as planned.

Ms Creasy has hit a “brick wall” in her own inquiries and has asked Mr Cameron to press US officials for an explanation as to why the Mahmoods were prevented from flying.

Both Disneyland and Universal Studios are the sort of soft targets beloved of violent Muslim Jihadists. We also don’t know at this stage how dodgy the Mahmood’s cousins are, I wonder if Ms Creasy has considered the scenario that some of those they may be visiting may be suspect?

A Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister would consider the issues raised and respond in due course.”

It will be interesting to see what happens to this case in a few weeks and whether this was a genuine mistake, or whether, as with Ahmed the Clock Boy, the family are more than a little dodgy.

Sky News has asked the Home Office to comment.

Norwegian Air said in a statement: “We can confirm that a group of passengers were denied the right to board a flight from London Gatwick to Los Angeles on Tuesday at the request of the US Department of Homeland Security.

“Norwegian fully complies with requests from the border controls of each country we serve.”

Norwegian Air have done the right thing here. They had a security request to refuse flight and did so. No airline wants to be responsible for letting potentially explosive Muslims on board their planes and neither do they want to deal with the fallout should said Muslims explode or commit other terror offences in their destination.

There are additional aspects to this story which appear to back up the Homeland Security case and the first is tha the Mahmood’s were not travelling with their wives, who were alleged to be going to travel later. Now why would that be? Surely if the family were travelling as a family unit then the wives would have travelled with the men and with the children. Something really doesn’t smell right when it comes to the Mahmood’s explanations of their travel arrangements and we will have to wait and see what pans out. The second aspect of the story concerns a statement from Mr Mahmood’s sister in law, Sadaf Mahmood, who was quoted as saying that Mr Mahmood had been arrested in Israel for a reason that she will not specify.

She said to the LBC radio station in London:

Sadaf Mahmood explained she had been ill and was hoping to join her family later in the holiday.

Be interesting to see if there is any evidence that Sadaf is telling the truth about this ‘illness’.

And she insisted that they had made a big deal out of the incident because of how heartbroken her children were by being stopped from flying.

Yeah it’s not nice that the children were disappointed but if their parents didn’t follow a death cult like Islam them maybe non Muslims would be less suspicious about them.

She told LBC: “A lot of people are asking why we’re making such a big deal about it, why does it have to be an Islamic thing?

“We were the only Muslim family on that plane. The fact that we had our Esta cleared a month in advance, I think that would have given the US Government enough time to do any research they want to do on us and stop us beforehand.

‘The only Muslims on the plane’ is that the best you can do? As regards the previous clearance of the visa maybe the visa was granted and other information came in that made honouring that visa troubling.

“But I think it’s pure cruelty to take us to that point and get the kids’ hopes up.”

I think I could find a lot more cruelty in Islamic culture that trumps being disappointed about not going to Disneyland, such FGM and beating kids who are unable to memorise the Koran.

Ms Mahmood also dismissed claims her husband had previously been arrested in Israel, claiming the incident had been blown out of proportion. 

Now we have some meat to get our teeth into, and yet more questions that the Mahmood’s need to answer. What was he doing in Israel, when was it, and why did he come to the attention of the Israeli authorities that led him to be arrested? It may well be the case that the Israelis have uncovered something unsavoury about this family and passed this information onto US Homeland Security that caused their visas to be revoked. For the record, I’ve been to Israel and once you’ve got past the significant and visible security at the airport and allowed onto an El Al plane and into Israel, then the authorities will leave you the visitor very much alone, unless you behave like a total dickhead, or endanger national security. What did Mahmood do to draw the attention of the Israeli authorities is something that could be extremely enlightening if we are ever told.

I have the sneaking suspicion that one day in the near future Ms Creasy is going to be pulled to one side at the Palace of Westminster, or have a visit from someone from ‘Thames House’ and be quietly told that all is not right with the Mahmood’s. If that does happen I will laugh loudly at the sight of yet another Islamopandering Labour MP with egg all over her face because she gave it large over those she should have stayed silent about.

To conclude, well done Homeland Security, you’ve taken the cautious route here and taken the view that a few whining Muslims is a price worth paying for security.

Links

Original story from Sky News

http://news.sky.com/story/1611036/us-stops-uk-muslim-familys-dream-holiday

Additional information including details about the arrest of Mr Mahmood in Israel from LBC here:

http://www.lbc.co.uk/we-were-banned-from-us-for-being-muslim-says-london-family-122070