Northwest Airlines Apologizes, Dodging Potential Jihad from Muslim Group

According to the Encarta Dictionary, Jihad is translated as meaning "a campaign waged by Muslims in defense of the Islamic faith against individuals, ORGANIZATIONS, or countries, regarded as hostile to Islam." So when a Muslim group from Detroit Michigan threatened a boycott, or Jihad, against Northwest Airlines, the airline caved and apologized for an incident that took place on January 7th.

The incident the airline apologized profusely for involved 40 Muslim pilgrims that had been trying to return from the Hajj earlier this month. The group of 40 Muslims had been refused boarding for a connecting flight while in Germany, in order to return to Detroit, after their long trip to Saudi Arabia. The group cited "racial profiling" and decided as a group, they were going to issue a statement to which the Muslim community would "boycott" Northwest airlines unless an apology was released, along with compensation as well as disciplinary action be taken against the employee that did the actual "profiling".

Al-Qazwini released a statement after the groups return stating "With tens of thousands of Muslim customers, Northwest could be hurt financially by such a boycott. I hope Northwest will be wiser."

According to the airline, the group had showed up at the gate late, which was the initial problem. For international flights, such as this one, Northwest requires that passengers check in at least one hour before the flight and board the plane at least 30 minutes before they take off. This has turned into a case of "he said, she said" since Al-Qazwini has stated that the group was actually at the gate and hour and a half before the scheduled flight. There were also other issues that occurred such as misleading and apparently incorrect information printed on some of the tickets as well as some of the baggage had not made it to Germany for the next flight (and some passengers lacked the required receipts for luggage).

Another passenger in the group, Jennifer Zreik, stated that some of the group was allowed on the plane but 40 of them were not and "they were treated really, really, really badly."