Religious Leaders Demand Apology From Airline

Imams, ministers, and a rabbi staged a "pray-in" demonstration yesterday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and demanded an apology from US Airways for barring six Muslims from a flight last week. The religious leaders demanded an end to racial profiling, saying it was unacceptable in America.

"These things are troubling to us," the executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, Mahdi Bray, said. "Driving while black, flying while Muslim, traveling with a Torah, or getting with Jesus."

Imam Omar Shahin, one of the six detained last Monday at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in the north-central state of Minnesota, said they had done nothing suspicious.

The imams, returning from a religious conference, had prayed on their prayer rugs in the airport before the flight. After they boarded the flight to Phoenix, Ariz., a passenger, alarmed by their activity, passed a note to a flight attendant. The men were taken off the airplane, handcuffed, and questioned. "It was the worst moment in my life," Imam Shahin said.

US Airways Group Inc. spokeswoman Andrea Rader said prayer was never the issue. "Apparently, as they were boarding, one passenger overheard them saying what they thought were anti-U.S. statements," Ms. Rader said.

She also said the men got up and moved around the airplane, forcing the flight crew to consider whether they might pose a security risk.