Outrage as Ryanair chief exec says Muslim men should be profiled at airports

Ryanair’s chief executive has sparked outrage after saying Muslim men should be profiled at airports because “bombers” will “generally be of a Muslim persuasion”.

In an interview with the Times published on Saturday, Michael O’Leary said: “Who are the bombers? They are going to be single males travelling on their own… if you are travelling with a family of kids, on you go; the chances are you are going to blow them up is zero.”

You can’t say that stuff, because it’s racism, but it will generally be males of Muslim persuasion. Thirty years ago it was the Irish.

“If that is where the threat is coming from, deal with the threat.”

The Muslim Council of Britain has said the comments are “racist and discriminatory” and “the definition of Islamophobia”.

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood has said O’Leary was “encouraging racism”.

“In Germany this week a white person killed eight people. Should we profile white people to see if they’re being fascists?” he asked.

Last week, the far-right German Tobias Rathjen killed nine people in an attack on two shisha bars, then called for the elimination of a number of countries in the Middle East.

READ: Far-right German terrorist calls for elimination of Middle East countries

Some people are calling for a boycott of the airline, which has come under fire in the past for suggesting customers should be charged to use the toilet and floated the possibility of a “fat tax” for obese passengers.

In the same interview O’Leary referred to these obese passengers as “monsters” who “may need to buy two seats”.

Muslims already suffer discriminatory treatment at airports and from fellow passengers, which has become known as “flying while Muslim”, and which includes extra questions, formal searches and secondary security screenings.

In December 2018 Egyptian journalist AbdulRahman Ezz told MEMO how he was prevented from boarding a flight from Edinburgh to France and held under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act Law 2000, with no explanation offered as to why he had been pulled off the flight.

This law has been described by advocacy group Liberty as a broad and intrusive power “invariably used in discriminatory fashion, with stops based on stereotype rather than genuine suspicion.”

He was held against his will in a public toilet, beaten, detained and denied medical care.

READ: Not all Uyghurs are terrorists, Turkey tells China