Stop the Presses: A Muslim Woman Was Allegedly Denied a Can of Coke on an Airline Flight

Stop the Presses: A Muslim Woman Was Allegedly Denied a Can of Coke on an Airline Flight June 1, 2015

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My husband David French writes about the lead story on CNN right now:

The media is losing its mind. Ramadi has fallen, ISIS is on the march in Syria, Libya is a jihadist playpen, and the grim toll of jihadist violence is well into the hundreds of thousands in the Middle East and beyond. Since 9/11, thousands of Americans have fallen to jihadist war criminals, tens of thousands more have been maimed, and the conflict rages on. So what does CNN lead its website with this morning? This story:

A simple request for an unopened can of Diet Coke on a United Airlines flight left Tahera Ahmad in tears.

A Muslim chaplain and director of interfaith engagement at Northwestern University, Ahmad, 31, was traveling Friday from Chicago to Washington for a conference promoting dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian youth. She was wearing a headscarf, or hijab.

For hygienic reasons, she asked for an unopened can of soda, she said. The flight attendant told her that she could not give her one but then handed an unopened can of beer to a man seated nearby. Ahmad questioned the flight attendant.

“We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane,” she recalled the flight attendant telling her.

So allegedly anti-Muslim microaggressions are national news now? If this event happened as she described (why do I suspect there might be more to this story?) Ms. Ahmad was subjected to mere momentary rudeness. So what? Americans of all races and classes experience rudeness throughout their lives.

Read the rest of this story on National Review.

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