L.A. Muslims Consider Crash Accusations Inflammatory

Southern California Muslims on Wednesday decried suggestions that EgyptAir pilot Gamil Batouty could have taken the jetliner down in a suicide mission, saying they fuel inflammatory stereotypes of Islamic fanaticism.

“The subtle tone that this is another fanatical Muslim who invoked a prayer and crashed a plane . . . is very unfair,” said Maher Hathout, the Egyptian-born spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.

At a news conference, Hathout and Abou Bakr Tawansy described Batouty--who occasionally attended prayer services at the Islamic Center of Southern California during his Los Angeles stopovers--as a friendly, religious family man devoted to his career. He would not commit suicide, which Muslims regard as a major sin, Hathout said.

The Muslim leaders were particularly outraged over reports that Batouty had whispered he had “made my decision” and uttered an Islamic prayer before setting the jet into its deadly plunge in the Atlantic. Batouty reportedly said, “tawakaltu ‘ala Allah,” or, “I put my trust in God,” moments before the autopilot was turned off.

Investigators suspect Batouty turned the autopilot off and then struggled with pilot Ahmed Habashy for control of the aircraft.

But Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim said he and other Muslims routinely utter that prayer--before driving or boarding a plane, for instance--but now are questioning whether to refrain from praying in public places because of the negative associations being placed on their faith. No observant Muslim would ever ask for God’s support before moving to kill himself and 216 innocent people, Ayloush insisted.

Ayloush said that one Muslim planning to travel to Jordan in a few days called his office and declared he would not pray on the plane as he usually does “in case someone looks at me and thinks I’m going to do something.” The man was just one of several who have called his office to complain that their religion is once more being unfairly tarred with the brush of violence, he said.

Rumors are swirling in the Egyptian community that the crash might have been deliberately engineered in an attempt to kill 33 elite Egyptian military officers who reportedly were aboard, Hathout said. Some rumors blame Israelis, while other conspiracy theories hold that the officers were planning a coup and might have been killed by Egyptian authorities themselves, Muslims here say.

Hathout, who lost a cousin and her husband in the crash, appealed to investigators, the media and the public for sensitivity to the grief of family members of the crash victims. “Families are not in the mood to have fingers pointed at them,” he said.