A weapon of mass destruction?
(BBC) A US Airways flight was diverted to Philadelphia after a young Jewish man’s prayer items triggered a bomb scare, Philadelphia police said.
The incident arose when the man used a phylactery, a small black box Orthodox Jews strap to their head as part of their prayer rituals, police said.
The man was not arrested and the plane landed without incident.
In the Global War on Terrorism, objects from any orthodox religion are alarming.
Eh. If you ask me, anybody who straps a black box on his head on an airplane deserves whatever he gets. Dumbass.
Totally agree.
If you allow Jews to fly, the terrorists will just disguise themselves as Jews. Only fat white people with slacks caught in their ass crack and huge purses should be allowed to fly.
Jesus Charles, can you read TODAY’S news and post about that?
I’d be more worried about the guy who doesn’t turn off his mobile when asked and texts throughout the flight. A tefillin isn’t going to hurt anyone, unless they’re using it to tie off so they inject their drugs.
I heard he was praying because he was nervous about flying. In fact, I bet he was nervous about terrorists.
See, we should just ban religion on planes.
A-duh.
Build some religion detectors and make people go through ’em at security screening. What do I see there? Are those some feelings of shame and insignificance? Please step into this room over here. Nice try, god-lover, but you’re not flyin’ anywhere today. *sounds of unnecessarily rough strip-search and detention*
Charles, you will appreciate that when I interviewed August Wilson back in about 1988 for a college paper at Yale, where many of his plays were first staged, he was talking about the culture split in the U.S., where everything that blacks did was viewed with hostility and contempt if it varied from the mainstream white culture. I have the tape somewhere, but he cited things like shouting back in movies, and boisterous behavior. I raise the example that Jews were subject to the same suspicions: that their religious behavior in public often caused non-Jews to have strong reactions to things like their clothing, their prayer, and so forth. He did not agree.
Tefillin have been used for at lest 2,000 years. It’s pretty easy to differentiate an Orthodox Jew from other people even if they don’t use tefillin. I somehow doubt if terrorists are trying to appear as Jews, since the terrorists now plying their trade in the world consider Jews to be vermin and wouldn’t dress themselves as such. But maybe I just haven’t read the reports of Orthodox Jews blowing up airplanes with tefillin. Share those reports with us, Charles, for the sake of fairness.
@1: You’re the dumbass since you evidently don’t know shit about anyone else’s different tradition. Just because you’re a white bread Baptist with no knowledge of any other religion doesn’t make you cool or hip. It just makes you look stupid and ignorant.
Really, Charles. Objects from any orthodox religion? Then I guess anyone who pulls out a Koran or a bible had better be strip-searched.
This is plain ignorance on the part of the crew. And you.
Just a clarification – most American orthodox Jews don’t use these. The man in question was probably a Hassid of some kind, dressed in very distinctive clothing.
(A garden-variety orthodox jew would just be wearing regular clothing plus a kippah, and some kippahs just look like other hats.)