Leaping to conclusions
A conversation a couple days ago made me interested in watching blogdex again. This morning there is a story near the top about airline passengers being really paranoid on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles.
She obviously spent a lot of time and effort on the story, but there's a couple things wrong with it, and a very plausible explanation. She says the men on the flight kept acting in unison and kept looking at each other. Well, she acknowledges that they were all in the same band, so wouldn't that be a pretty casual explanation of nodding, giving the thumbs up, making facial expressions across aisles? I've been on airplanes with college athletic teams, and even though they don't always sit with each other, they're always moving around the plane and making faces at each other. Why should a middle eastern band be any different?
The author of the story was also freaked out by the men 'getting up in unison' and going to the bathroom. And also thought it odd that someone that was very polite to her on the jetway stared passed her a little while later (while several of the men were "congregating."
Let me suggest this: she states that the plane boarded at 12:28pm. The flight to LA was 4 hours. Devout Muslims pray on a schedule that depends on time of day, date of year, and position on earth. A 5 minute Internet search tells me that today, Duhr (an afternoon prayer) is at 1:39, and Asr (late afternoon, what in the Catholic Liturgy of Hours would be evening prayer) is at 5:40 pm. Note that these times are about 4 hours apart, and roughly the same times as this lady's flight. Could it be that these men were simply confused about how and when to pray in an airplane?
She obviously spent a lot of time and effort on the story, but there's a couple things wrong with it, and a very plausible explanation. She says the men on the flight kept acting in unison and kept looking at each other. Well, she acknowledges that they were all in the same band, so wouldn't that be a pretty casual explanation of nodding, giving the thumbs up, making facial expressions across aisles? I've been on airplanes with college athletic teams, and even though they don't always sit with each other, they're always moving around the plane and making faces at each other. Why should a middle eastern band be any different?
The author of the story was also freaked out by the men 'getting up in unison' and going to the bathroom. And also thought it odd that someone that was very polite to her on the jetway stared passed her a little while later (while several of the men were "congregating."
Let me suggest this: she states that the plane boarded at 12:28pm. The flight to LA was 4 hours. Devout Muslims pray on a schedule that depends on time of day, date of year, and position on earth. A 5 minute Internet search tells me that today, Duhr (an afternoon prayer) is at 1:39, and Asr (late afternoon, what in the Catholic Liturgy of Hours would be evening prayer) is at 5:40 pm. Note that these times are about 4 hours apart, and roughly the same times as this lady's flight. Could it be that these men were simply confused about how and when to pray in an airplane?
1 Comments:
At 3:36 PM ,
Lisa S. said...
Public prayer tends to freak people out generally, Muslim or otherwise.... Unless you're about to start a football game other something. The alternate interpretation makes perfect sense to me. Looking for similar responses to this story....
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