Bottle-Thrower and the Flying Imams

Hate Crime! Chemical Warfare in America! Anti-Muslim Attackers!

Or maybe irresponsible kids with too much time on their hands in August.

The Reuters headline read, Arizona mosque targeted in "acid bomb" attack" - what the article actually said was that a couple of guys in a red car threw a soda pop bottle with "pool cleaner and strips of tin foil" in the general direction of a mosque in Glendale, Arizona.

The soda pop bottle hit a sidewalk (or maybe a street- more of that later) around 20 to 25 feet away (about 7 meters) from one of the "Flying Imams" or "Minnesota Imams" and another man.

Police sergeant Jim Toomey said that there have been five other soda-pop-bottle attacks in or around Glendale over the last three days. This attack on a mosque and/or one of the Flying Imams is the only one with a religious connection.

"The bottle ruptured in front of them and they smelled a strong chemical smell when it went off," sergeant Toomey said in the article. "We are treating it as a hate crime. We are taking it very seriously ... Until we know (the reason), we are going to assume that (the mosque attack) was religiously motivated," he added.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the Flying Imams and their lawyer have had death threats: and that the Glendale police should those threats as part of their investigation.

As usual, I've got quite a few opinions about this event.

• "The Flying Imams" would be a good name for a rock group
• The Glendale police deserve commendation for including religious motivation in their investigation
• With 5 other attacks like this one, except on non-religious targets, in the last 3 days, this "acid bomb" attack might not be religiously motivated
• Reuters was remarkably, low-key and vague about just what the Flying Imams did to get themselves inconvenienced
• The Reuters article doesn't mention where the car was, relative to the mosque

azcentral.composted an Arizona Republic article with information that Reuters considered unimportant.

• The bottle bomb hit the street, not the sidewalk, according to the A.R. article
• The mosque was a "converted mobile home" with no markings to show that it was a mosque
• Back in 2004, there was a suspicious fire on the outside of Al Sadiq Mosque in Glendale
• That mosque had no markings to show the nature of the building
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is "grateful for the attention being given by Glendale police," according to the Arizona news source.

Ibraham Hooper, CAIR national communications director in Washington, D.C., said, "We appreciate the professional response of the local law enforcement authorities and urge the FBI to add its resources to the investigation," quite a different impression than the one left by Reuters.

The no-hate-crime-here statement about the 2004 fire came from Deedra Abboud, a former Arizona CAIR chapter.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it may be that two reports of the same incident can state only objective facts, and still give two very different impressions of the incident.

Minnesota Imams Change Lawsuit Hit List

The six "Minnesota Imams," also called the "flying imams," have changed their minds. They say their civil rights were violated last fall when they were removed from a US Airways flight in Minnesota.

They still say that they're victims of something, but they've changed their minds about who is to blame.

Originally, they were going to sue the airline and the passengers who tattled on them.

Now, the Minnesota Imams have decided to drop the passengers from their give-me-money list. They are, however, going to sue the airline employees and police officers who they say are responsible for handcuffing the Imams and making them miss their flight.

Why were the civil rights of these self-described devout Muslims violated so cruelly? They just happened to

• Wear unseasonably bulky clothing
• Change their seat assignments to match the positions of the 9/11 hijackers
• Make anti-American comments about the war in Iraq

How could anyone reasonably think this was suspicious?

In case that question sounds serious, let me suggest a very hypothetical situation.

Let's say that Scandinavian Lutherans had, for decades, been blowing up airplanes, buses, and themselves in what they called a Ragnarokathon. Learned scholars explained that the Scandinavian Lutherans were doing this because western culture didn't appreciate lutefisk and lefse.

Then, in the fall of 2001, Scandinavian Lutherans, mostly from Sweden, blew up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Thousands of people were killed. The skyscraper was destroyed by crashing two airliners into it. The airliners had been hijacked by Scandinavian Lutherans carrying weapons under their overcoats. There were seven hijackers in each plane.

Five years later, at Boston's Logan Airport, one of seven tall, blond, blue-eyed men wearing bulky overcoats say, loudly enough to be heard near the boarding gate, "Ya, vell, hvat can you expect from dem crazy lefse-haters? De so steupid, de probly tink ve eatin' cardboard!"

Another of the blond giants says, "You said it, Sven! Lutefisk forever! Down vit de tasteless Eu Hess Hay!"

Once on the plane, they refuse to sit in their assigned seats, and arrange themselves in the same seating pattern used by the Scandinavian hijackers.

Then, they start singing "Sång till Norden." In Swedish.

Let's say you were a passenger on that plane, and remembered details about the 2001 hijacking. Would you be just a little suspicious? Would you be shocked if someone else was?

(The imams' lawyer says that the homeland security bill discussed last week, with language that would protect people who report suspicious behavior from lawsuits, had nothing to do with his clients' decision.)

(Information from FOXNews.com Imams Removed From US Airways Flight Drop Passengers From Lawsuit.)