So, there you are, happy with yourself for securing a seat in the emergency exit row (aka "Redneck First Class") and all stretched out catching some Z's, when you are abruptly awakened from a sound sleep by the member of the Junior Muezzin League above.
I'm thinking it's only grogginess that saved Ahmed from a startled nut punch, but maybe that's just me imputing my thoughts and reactions to our impromptu videographer. Look, I don't care if somebody jumps to the exit door and starts inviting me to the Methodist Fish Fry at the top of his lungs: It's rude, freaky, and disturbing. Normal people don't do that.
Now I understand that your religion requires you to pray x number of times per day, but there are specific instructions and dispensations for doing so in unusual circumstances so that you don't either drive those around you up the wall or startle the feces out of them, as the case may be.
In other words, you're just doing this because you've got the right to* and you're gonna exercise it and In Your Face, fellow paying passengers!
As somebody at p-f.com noted:
"So they are the Islamic Equivalent to Open Carry Activists."I snorted Diet Dew through my nose...
*FAA rules don't apply on an Etihad Airways flight from AUH to MNL.
25 comments:
Oh, that stings!
Had my groggy ass been awaken by this pious douchnozzle, something to the effect of, "Yo Ackmed, shut the f*ck up!" might have been said.
I would have taken advantage of the WiFi on the plane and looked up a religion that prayed by kicking people in the knee. And then excercized my tights on the assgole who just woke me up.
That just rude.
Had a roommate one that dropped on a mat and faced east to "pray".
5 times a day, unless something intervened. They do not make up prayers either as they have a little book they read from. They also touch their head to a little rock that comes from the sand in a given spot.
It is a real hoot to watch them practice their rites.
I flown to the UAE, Quarter and Yemen and never had that happen.
Gerry
It always puzzled me, after reading up on the requirements for the ritual (among them being clean and having on clean clothes) and having lived there for a time ..... how anybody ever got any work done in the Middle East, if they stopped whatever they were doing, got out of their sweat stained clothers and washed up at dawn, noon, mid- and late afternoon and sunset.
The extremists will shoot people in the back of the head for not doing the ritual properly, yet there is not enough water or laundry soap in the entire world to have clean clothes on in the sandbox 5 times a day ......
...... granted, not a whole lot gets done between noon and late afternoon- the arabs probably have an equivalent word for "siesta"- but seriously: no wonder they are stuck in the seventh century- a four to six hour workday in a land of near constant tribal and sectarian warfare, poor infrastructure and spotty water and electrical service is not exactly conducive to productivity .....
-jimbob86
Jimbob86 --
Water is not necessary for the ritual. Nor is soap. A dust bath counts.
He was begging for it.
"Allahu Akbar" is American for "shoot me in the face before I hurt someone and do it fast because it's about to happen".
Doing it on an airplane in flight is an obvious tactic to test responses and then make butt-hurt claims about racism and anti-Islamic bigots.
Choosing to start up yodeling next to the emergency exit was not a coincidence either, I'm sure.
Not that he could have done anything to get it open, being held shut by science and all.
What the (deleteding) (deleted) (redacted)....DUDE. Seriously?
Look, I get religious requirements, I do. I'm Catholic. However, I have never felt the urge to break into Gregorian chant in public, much less in an ordinarily quiet sort of place.
Well, aside from when I was a bookseller in college during the height of the DaVinci Code madness, and got saddled with a customer who spent ten minutes pitching a fit at me for shelving the stupid thing in "Fiction" rather than "Current Events."
Y'see, the Vatican's army of albino assassin monks were chasing Dan Brown around to keep him from publishing his next expose of them, or some such, so we owed it to him to at least shelve his book correctly, or some such. Which, having read the wretched book and being utterly disinterested in any more of Mr. Brown's drivel, I would have considered as good a use as any for an order of albino assassin monks, but I digress. When I finally got away from the idiot, who was quite personally offensive on the subject of corporate-directed book-categorizing policies, I confess to stepping into the next aisle and quite properly intoning "Miserere nobis" , which sent the moron scuttling out of the store at top speed.
Totally worth it.
Sorry for the rabbit hole, but...dang.
Was that on Air Force One? regards, Alemaster
Huh. Pretty sure you don't actually need a muezzin to do the daily prayers. It's tradition, yes, but it's kinda like church bells - they exist for a reason, to call the faithful to prayer. But if I'm saying vespers or matins on a flight, I'm not required to have my tablet imitate the sound of the bells at max volume.
As for 'why are Arab/Muslim countries so backwards', you can thank the victory of the Sunnis ('secondary causes deny Allah's omnipotence') over the Shias ('y'know, there might be something to this observation and experimentation thing'), wiping out the nascent Shia university-analogues, and any application of Aristotelian thought.
Also, the guy is offense-trolling, obviously.
A while back my random web surfing arrived at a travel board and a discussion on fulfilling Islamic prayer requirements on commercial flights. Interesting stuff. The consensus seemed to be "do the best you can without annoying your fellow passengers, and Allah will understand."
Nobody advocated being a jerk like this guy.
I'm thinking I would have done:
seatbelt release
apply boot to nuts
apply boots to head
continue until no further movement.
What, he wasn't a terrorist?
Do inappropriate things on any sort of public transportation these days, you should expect a hostile and quick reaction. Especially of the ala-hooboy type.
He might have been sporting quite a few footprints before I was totally awake and thinking clearly.
Back in the 1980s at my enormous state party school, the local Catholic church was located 2 blocks off campus, about 500 feet from many dorms filled with sleeping, overhung college kids every Sunday.
The church took wicked pleasure in ringing their giant carillon to announce every mass, on the hour, all morning every Sunday. Father Bob was quite the firebrand.
That said, nobody ever did more than call the vestry and request the bells stop, which would happen when someone called. There were a lot of half-finished hourly bells.
That said, this airline prayer guy was doing was attempting to incite violence, or running a test flight to see what the reaction of the passengers, flight attendants and Air Marshals would be.
mikee,
Why would there be Air Marshals on an Emirate-flagged aircraft flying from Abu Dhabi to Manila?
I'm sure at least a plurality of the passengers on that flight were one sect or another of Mohammetan.
Muslim TROLL
If I stood up and started yelling my prayers like that, I'd have gotten in serious trouble. Probably arrested on lading and band from flying.
Open carry activist - yeah that fits....
Here let me get all impractical, unsafe, annoying and IN YOUR FACE because i'm a TROLL.
In all my years in the Middle East -- regularly taking commercial flights for a while -- I never encountered that. People crowding into the aisles to pray, yeah; but muezzin-boy freaking out? Never.
As for the open carry analogy, to be an accurate equivalent, the OC folks would have to blow off a mag or two and scream orders at the top of their lungs to buy and carry guns. Even the obnoxious OCers are more like guys getting down on the sidewalk blocking traffic.
What would be the equivalent among Catholics? The Angelus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Angelus_(painting)
http://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-francois-millet/the-angelus-1859
http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?id=57781
Didn't happen on my flights to Egypt or Qatar either.
Test run. What will the infidels say/do?
The nature of flight is one thing, but in general that'd be the signal to beat him senseless. -- Lyle
Flown all over the ME on diverse ME carriers. Never seen that crap. Agree the solution would have been to get up to use the bathroom and accidently drop the f###er as you passed him in the asle.
--Descend low enough to open door
--Open door.
--Eject noise source.
--Close door.
Done. Screw it, $DEITY will catch him. Or not. ::Shrug:: Not my problem.
Test run, and it's just been proven that the trite "NEVER FORGET" stickers are BS.
"NEVER FORGET" must now equal " Pull out your iphone and record this for bookface"
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