Can We Still Fly Safely With Muslims?

Since FlyDubai Flight FZ1073, a question has been drifting down airplane aisles. Passengers glance at the name on a boarding pass, the bearded man in the next seat, the pilot rolling past the gate, even a flight attendant in a veil. Few say it aloud, but many are thinking it: Is this person one of them? Families who once boarded without a thought now study the faces around them, and Muslims who have done nothing wrong feel the stares.

We now know that the FlyDubai Indian captain was stabbed in his own cockpit by a Muslim. Imagine he had grown suspicious of his co-pilot and refused to fly with him. The airline would probably have disciplined him, and social media would have branded him a bigot and — wait for it — an Islamophobe. Instead, he trusted his co-pilot, who then stabbed him and tried to crash a plane carrying 174 people, 27 of them children. The “Islamophobe” label would have cost the captain his reputation. Political correctness nearly cost him his life and the lives of many innocents.

So, can we still fly with Muslims? It’s complicated, and the honest answer has two parts.

Yes, we can, with the many Muslim pilots who love their families and want nothing more than an uneventful landing like anyone else. And a hard no for anyone whose public statements endorse jihadist violence, or who invokes Islam’s poisonous texts against non-Muslims as a warrant for it. The first group deserves our trust. The second should never be near a cockpit door.

The question is no longer hypothetical. This week it surfaced in the case of United Airlines Captain Ibrahim Mossallam. On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas murdered some 1,200 people, he posted that the attack was “resistance by a brave people.” United removed him from service with pay while it investigated, yet about a month later he was flying again. Now, with FZ1073 back in the headlines, United has reportedly again taken him off the schedule through at least October. United says only that it has “withheld this pilot from service pending an ongoing review.” However, the pilots’ union reportedly blocked his firing. Still, United hasn’t confirmed that claim, and no one alleges that he has harmed anyone.

But look at how it was handled. Praise for mass murder was treated as an HR matter, a speech issue to be reviewed and quietly forgotten. In a cockpit, it is a safety hazard. A post celebrating the slaughter of civilians as “resistance” is not a tax-policy opinion, as it adopts and advances a poisonous ideology that treats Jewish existence as an offense and violence as a duty.

Meanwhile, the ordinary Muslim pilot pays. Every terrorist and every complacent airline turns the Muslim who flies without incident into a suspect in the eyes of nervous passengers. Those who damage Muslims most are those who insist on turning a faith into a global threat profile.

Fanciful Westerners like to say that the West hates Muslims and fights them just because they are Muslims. That is not the reality. The world does not reject the Muslim human being merely because he is a Muslim. The problem begins when their Islam turns from a personal faith into a system that wants to rule the lives, laws, and freedoms of others.

A person’s religion should never bar him from a cockpit, but public endorsement of terrorism and terrorists should bar anyone from one. Aviation already works this way. Pilots live under a fitness-for-duty standard that reaches far past ordinary free-speech rules, covering alcohol, medical conditions, and psychological stability, because one person’s failure can kill hundreds. A pilot who fails a breathalyzer is grounded at once, yet one who cheers a massacre is back at work in a month. This is bizarre.

A reasonable standard for ideology is no more exotic. Any pilot who publicly praises, justifies, or celebrates mass violence against civilians should face a serious, independent review before he flies again. The review should weigh his statements, his affiliations, and any evidence of radical material. It should not be left to a union grievance process. Airlines should state the standard in advance, apply it to everyone, and explain every reinstatement in writing.

Passengers will keep asking the question, whether airlines like it or not. If those are the choices, many will take the “phobia” stigma over a political correctness that ignores warning signs. But we shouldn’t have to choose. Every airline already knows how to ground a pilot who endangers a flight, and does so without apology.

What’s missing is the courage to apply the same logic to an ideology, built on ancient texts deemed “sacred” by jihadi zealots, that announces its intentions in public. Airlines will ground a pilot over a single drink. Surely they can ground one who applauds a massacre. Judge the post, not the prayer, or learn the difference at 34,000 feet.

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A. S. Ibrahim holds two PhDs in Islamic Studies. He is the author of “Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution: Why Americans Must Choose Freedom” and “Islam and the West.” He has also authored “Muhammad’s Military Expeditions” (Oxford, 2024), “A Concise Guide to the Life of Muhammad” (Baker Academic, 2022), “Conversion to Islam” (Oxford, 2021), “Basics of Arabic” (Zondervan, 2021), “A Concise Guide to the Quran” (Baker Academic, 2020), and “The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion” (Peter Lang, 2018), among others. Follow him on X: @al2ostaz