A college student who came to the United States as an Iraqi refugee was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California earlier this month after another passenger became alarmed when she heard him speaking Arabic.
\nThe student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, was taken off a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Oakland on April 6 after he called an uncle in Baghdad to tell him about an event he attended that included a speech by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
\n\u201cI was very excited about the event so I called my uncle to tell him about it,\u201d he said.
\nHe told his uncle about the chicken dinner they were served and the moment when he got to stand up and ask the secretary general a question about the Islamic State, he said. But the conversation seemed troubling to a nearby passenger, who told the crew she overheard him making \u201cpotentially threatening comments,\u201d the airline said in a statement.
\nMakhzoomi, 26, knew something was wrong as soon as he finished his phone call and saw that a woman sitting in front of him had turned around in her seat to stare at him, he said. She headed for the airplane door soon after he told his uncle that he would call again when he landed, and qualified it with a common phrase in Arabic, \u201cinshallah,\u201d meaning \u201cgod willing.\u201d
\n\u201cThat is when I thought, \u2018Oh, I hope she is not reporting me,\u2019 because it was so weird,\u201d Makhzoomi said.
\nThat is exactly what happened. An Arabic-speaking Southwest Airlines employee came to his seat and escorted him off the plane a few minutes after his call ended. The man asked, \u201cWhy were you speaking Arabic in the plane?\u201d
\nMakhzoomi said he was afraid, and that the employee spoke to him \u201clike I was an animal.\u201d
\n\u201cI said to him, \u2018This is what Islamophobia got this country into,\u2019 and that made him so angry. That is when he told me I could not go back on the plane.\u201d
\nMakhzoomi says he has now been \u201cblacklisted\u201d by the Southwest, following the incident where he was searched in the terminal with an audience and up to six police officers watching.
\nHe says he was questioned by the FBI on subjects including his mother, who lives with him and his younger brother in Oakland since they moved to the US in 2010.
\nHe was also quizzed on his father, Khalid Makhzoomi, a former Iraqi diplomat who was jailed in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein and later killed by the regime.<\/p>\n
Source: World Bulletin<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A college student who came to the United States as an Iraqi refugee was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California earlier this month after another passenger became alarmed when she heard him speaking Arabic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n