Airline Imams Apparently Featured Keith Ellison At Their Minneapolis Pity Party/ Convention

Remember the Imams who were kicked off that flight out of Minneapolis back in November? They're back in the news. Allah links to an interview with a passenger on the plane who confirms what everyone else said about how they were treated by the police: pretty darn well.

But what caught my eye was the schedule from the conference that the Imams were coming from. I remember James Lileks wondering about the particular conference they attended, because he talked to someone who was in a hotel in Minneapolis shared by a fire-and-brimstone Islamic conference that same day (ellipsis his, bold is mine):

According to the TV, the men said they were in town for “a religious conference.” Interesting. I was talking today with a guy I know; he’d been at a suburban hotel for an annual company sales meeting. The regional manager was having a difficult time speaking, since the party in the next conference room was praying about as loudly as is humanly possible, and had followed the prayers with a speaker who expressed in rather . . . forceful terms the depth of Muslim oppression in America. Unless there are several Muslim religious conferences going on in Minneapolis at the moment, I’d guess that might be the one. If so, I wonder if the reported truculence of the men might have been influenced, or at least reinforced, by the speaker. Whoever he was.

I phoned the info in to the paper, as a good citizen. Wonder if there’s anything to it.

Update: the paper removed all reference to the gentlemen's ethnicity.

A week later, after more stuff had surfaced about Imam Omar Shahin's interesting background, Lileks went back to the well:

I mean, given the questions and peculiarities of some of his associations, I am certain a full accounting is forthcoming.

Because I can’t see any reason why such a piece wouldn’t be written.

Ergo, I’m certain it’s en route.

Quite certain.

Absolutely dead-bang positive.

Really. I also expect that a reporter will have called the hotel where the conference took place, found out who was in the adjacent room, contacted a representative of that organization, asked for a recap of what they heard, and ran the assessment past a newly prominent local politician who was in attendance to see if it squared with his recollection. Said politician would also be asked about the deplaned imam’s connections, regardless of whether this seemed like recrudescent Islamophobia, because these are crucial issues –

Sorry. Got the vapors for a moment.

It's pretty clear that this is the same conference, especially since (according to the program linked at Hot Air) Rep. Keith Ellison addressed it. So now I'm certain the Strib is going to be on this like CAIR on a perceived slight!

If not, there's always Audrey Hudson.

P.S. The conference brochure includes this priceless excerpt:

Posting Imams’ Opinions by Media Releases about Denouncing Violence
For sometime now, Islam has been constantly on the media accused of terrorism and claimed
Page 6
to be encouraging acts of extremism and violence. Hence, NAIF thought it necessary to take some action against this and publicize messages supporting peace and moderation.

In this regard, NAIF intends to select a number of Imams to be in charge of this task of responding to the media. Each Imam will be responsible for one or more specific week(s) of the year. Given the unfortunate state of the world, it is likely that during each week there will be an opportunity to condemn extremism and violence.

The Imam in charge of this week would write a short message, perhaps 50 to 200 or 300 words, responding to the specific event released in the news during their week. Then, this message would be sent via e-mail to all the Imams on NAIF mailing list seeking their approval or disapproval of the event that occurred. Afterwards, an official statement representing NAIF’s stance condemning violence and extremism would be issued.

The part I bolded is classic, but I also like the necessity of getting the approval or disapproval of specific violent events from the other Imams. One can imagine the form such a conference call might take:

"Um, we do condemn this car bombing, right, brothers? What's that? They think it was Hamas. No, just Jews. Why? Oh--um--right, in that case, we'll just deplore the cycle of violence, then."