![](\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.08\/thumbnail\/57a4b6b5c3618872558b45c9.jpg\")
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A Muslim American couple says they were kicked off Delta Airlines plane after an airline employee complained to the pilot she had not been comfortable with having them on board, based on their appearance.<\/p>\n
The husband and wife, Faisal and Nazia, had boarded their flight from Paris, where they had celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary and were returning home to Cincinnati. The plane had been waiting to take off for about 45 minutes when a flight attendant became suspicious about the couple\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n
A flight crew member reportedly said that Faisal had been \u201csweating<\/em>\u201d and had been heard saying the word \u201cAllah<\/em>.\u201d Nazia was wearing a headscarf. The pilot was notified and he instructed the ground crew, saying he would not take off until the couple was removed from the aircraft.<\/p>\n “The ground agent said, \u2018can you step out with me? We’d like to ask you a few questions.\u2019 So I said, \u2018Do you want us to get our things?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Yes, please grab all of your personal belongings. You’re not going to be on this flight,<\/em>\u2019\u201d Nazia said Thursday at an Ohio office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Cincinnati.com<\/a>\u00a0reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n The couple, who both are Pakistani-born US citizens, were forced to stay overnight in Paris and were put on a flight back to Cincinnati the following day.<\/p>\n A US customs official interrogated the pair when they arrived at the airport. Faisal asked what they had done wrong, to which the agent replied, \u201cyou have done nothing wrong, unfortunately this is the way the world is right now. It is Delta\u2019s word against yours.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The whole incident has left the couple angry regarding how the crew made \u201cassumptions based on appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n “It was humiliating. Why\u00a0were we treated like criminals?”\u00a0<\/em>Nazia said. “We are American citizens. You can’t do this to us.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Cincinnati) alleges that the coupe have been the victims of discrimination and filed complaint against Delta.<\/p>\n \u201cBy falsely construing their simple and normal actions into something scary and threatening, it is clear that Mr and Mrs Ali were being singled out due to their Muslim appearance and name<\/em>,\u201d wrote staff lawyer Sana Hassan, as cited by the Independent.<\/p>\n The organization also wants the US Department of Transportation to look into the issue and come up with guidelines to try and avoid similar situations in the future.<\/p>\n Delta Airlines says it is looking into the incident and will carry out an investigation.<\/p>\n “Delta condemns discrimination toward our customers in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or gender,<\/em>\u201d the statement read. \u201cWe are concerned by the allegations and are looking into what transpired.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In a separate incident this week, two American Muslim women were asked to leave an American Airlines flight bound for Washington from Miami.<\/p>\n The pair, Niala Mohammad, a journalist for Voice of America and her friend, who did not want to be named, but works for the US government, were kicked-off the flight because an air steward said he had been uncomfortable about their presence on the aircraft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Muslim American couple says they were kicked off Delta Airlines plane after an airline employee complained to the pilot she had not been comfortable with having them on board, based on their appearance. The husband and wife, Faisal and Nazia, had boarded their flight from Paris, where they had celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-260472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}