MSNBC: Co-pilot of missing plane said to be "extremely religious."

[MoonRiver]

Neighbors said he attended mosque about 5 times a day. No, I am NOT jumping to conclusions. This is just another interesting piece of information.

[elfin]

1. Whereas I have no problem jumping to a nasty conclusion

As co-pilot, he would know the best time to get "invisible" and do a vertical dive for Allah.

However, seems like some debris would have surfaced in the area by now.

Also doesn't explain the pings supposedly heard going in another direction.

But now I'm back to the suicide theory.

[kysrsoze]

28. or attempt to fly it somewhere and hide it for the time-being. Yes, another piece of speculation. :D

[jakeXT]

2. The same guy who had all the girls in his cockpit? /nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

23. That may not necessarily mean anything. The 9/11 hijackers went to strip clubs.

Now, this is NOT to suggest the co-pilot is even remotely analogous to the 9/11 hijackers. I'm just saying that your point, while a fair part of the overall conversation, is not definitive proof one way or the other.

[jakeXT]

24. Yeah the "9/11 hjiackers" had better training

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler is suspended from his post at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and is told he could face a court martial for writing a letter to a local newspaper calling President Bush a “joke” and accusing him of allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen. The military prohibits public criticism of superiors. (BBC, 6/5/2002; Monterey County Herald, 6/5/2002) What is not reported is that he may have had unique knowledge about 9/11: A hijacker named Saeed Alghamdi trained at the Defense Language Institute and Butler was Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs there (note that this is not the same person as the Steven Butler who later testifies before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry). (Gannett News Service, 9/17/2001) Later in the month the Air Force announces “the matter is resolved” and Butler will not face a court-martial, but it is unknown if he faced a lesser punishment. (Knight Ridder,

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060402stevebutler#a060402stevebutler

[kelliekat44]

33. Funny how only two of 9/11 ever showed up on any video of the passengers on any of the 3 planes. n

[yeoman6987]

3. Off topic a little

Sorry to go off topic but 5 times a day? Wow! I am Catholic and find it difficult to get to church once a week (laziness). Quite frankly, I just hope that the plane has landed somewhere safe but just cannot get communications together to contact anyone. Part of my naiveté is speaking I know.

[Fawke Em]

5. Muslims have dedicated prayer five times a day.

Maybe the acquaintances confused the dedicated prayer with attending mosque?

Besides, how was he attending anything five times a day if he was flying planes?

[MoonRiver]

8. I think they meant 5 times a day when he was home.

Don't know if they confused attending mosque with just praying. Possibly.

[Yo_Mama]

19. Five times a day is orthodox Muslim, not wildly religious

And there is no indication that this guy had anything to do with it. No need to slander him like this.

[Fawke Em]

42. I agree.

I was married to a Muslim man in my 20s. He wasn't overly religious. Didn't eat pork (neither do I. I'm allergic) and didn't drink. Certainly didn't pray five times a day, but considered himself Muslim.

I have a child by him. Our son considers himself agnostic.

[seveneyes]

4. History and trends

It's human nature to learn from historical events. If there was a religion in recent times that was related to terrorism events, which religion would that be? It would be wrong to condemn an entire religion, but there is no wrong in observing data points.

[Igel]

29. It's also human nature to misremember.

To assume that availability of memories trumps what information is really important.

And to really, really suck at both statistics and risk assessment.

[Loudly]

6. This disappearance is in solidarity with the Uyghur railway station attack.

Allah commanded that he should take a plane full of Chinese nationals and make it disappear.

[jsr]

7. This one?

[MoonRiver]

9. I don't know if that is the pilot or co-pilot.

My memory is telling me the pilot brought girls into the cockpit, but I'm not sure.

[jsr]

15. Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/malaysian-flight-mh370-copilot-teenagers-fariq-abdul-hamid
Malaysian MH370 co-pilot entertained teenagers in cabin on earlier flight

[randome]

11. Fundamentalism is nothing but contradictions and hypocrisy anyways.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[randome]

10. So he turned the plane toward Mecca and it went down?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[GeorgeGist]

12. I call bullshit.

He had boxes piled in his garage.

[pinboy3niner]

18. Thank God we have solid evidence of one thing in this investigation...

[okaawhatever]

13. Was the co-pilot the one who allowed the women to ride in the cockpit two years ago? nt

[Igel]

30. Probably.

Then again, I was at the baptism of a young man who, just a few years before, had had a range of girlfriends and liked to get drunk. The church he wound up in was very conservative.

A few years later he was married, had a couple of kids, and was just appointed as a kind of junior minister. And, no, there was no evidence that he still had affairs on the side or came home at 5 a.m. drunk. The only real evidence of a deep-seated problem was that he took to insisting he had never wanted to be a minister until the pastor asked him, even though his hair was still wet from baptism when he was saying he wanted to be a minister.

People can change. And when they change, sometimes the change is rather breath taking. (And when they fail to change, sometimes their response to their own behavior can also be fairly breathtaking.)

[okaawhatever]

41. I was thinking more along the lines of whether he was having a sort of rumspringa. I remember the

9/11 hijackers partied heavily while they were here, didn't act like they followed the Muslim faith. I was thinking that it was very reckless behavior for someone who wants to keep his job and future. I also thought it didn't sound like something a devout Muslim would do. So I was just wondering, could it be that he didn't see his future lasting too long and did he invite the women into the cockpit to throw everyone off? I don't know, but those actions don't seem consistent with someone who was a young co-pilot with a promising career ahead of him.

[dembotoz]

14. lets be careful how we phrase things--i take no offense, but i am not much of a church going of any

faith

[MoonRiver]

16. Just reporting what I heard.

[chelsea0011]

17. There is a difference from being extremely religious and and a radical extremist

Someone extremely religious wouldn't be looking to kill innocent people as it goes against all religious laws. The extremist uses doctrine to twist it to justify the means. I would need to hear much more than just someone who is very religious.

[Yo_Mama]

20. An entirely rational comment

Thanks for that.

[randome]

21. No, but the radical extremists all happen to be extremely religious.

So the religious nature of the co-pilot is a starting point for speculation, no matter how sparsely supported it might be.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[The Straight Story]

22. I heard he smoked, owned a gun, said nice things about the pope, and liked the SI cover

And lord knows what else!

[pinboy3niner]

25. He breaded his fried chicken with CORN FLAKES!1!!

[The Straight Story]

27. TMZ now saying - his smoking pit bull held open the door at olive garden for some lady

the clues! Why didn't we follow the clues to prevent all of this?

It was all right here on DU.

[frylock]

37. pit bulls shouldn't smoke if they are breast feeding

[mucifer]

26. That's just cruel.

If there is no evidence he did anything it is cruel to post stuff like this. IMO

[Igel]

31. No.

But speculation is often cruel. It forgets that speculation has a target.

In any event, the guy's probably dead, so the cruelty wouldn't be felt by him but by his relatives and friends, if they even got wind of this particular cranny of the Internet.

[haele]

32. I'd consider this more of a factor if he were a Christian "end timer" that talked to Gawd.

They're just as likely to take everyone with them if they snap and think Gawd wants them to dive into the ocean to ir it's time to come to Jaysus as a Muslim extremist will take an entire plane down as a morally political action.
Especially since the uberChristain psychotic will be less likely to give any sort of warning or final public comment as they pilot their vehicle and passengers into that great beyond, because they're closer to their god and savior, usually already estranged from society even if they can hold down a job, and they don't have the religious duty to promote any cultural show of family honor.

Anyway, from what I can gather, there is a very good chance that the religion or religious fervor of any of the crew or passengers had any causality to the disappearance of the airliner.

Especially on an airframe that has been built to automatically attempt to fly itself as long as possible so long as there are wings and a tail on the fuselage while it's in the air.


Haele

[hedgehog]

36. Congratulations! You have taken a thread speculating on whether one of the pilots crashed the

plane due to a misinterpretation of the teachings of Islam; and used that thread to denounce and defame Christians! I'm going to play too, and say that if he was a member of PETA, and he might have taken the plane down to protest the meat in the airplane food.

Or how about someone from GreenPeace, protesting global warming caused by the use of carbon based fuels in aircraft engines?

[Tom Ripley]

38. Congratulations! You seem to be declaring that some crazyass superstitions are more sacrosanct...

than other crazyass superstitions.
You're complaining because speculation about one type of insanity is okay, but it is not okay to speculate about another? Incredible.
You poor poor Christians...when will the persecution stop?!

[haele]

40. So what do I win? If you finished the post, you would have noted I only equated extremists.

And yes, I have met some Christian fundies that would be just as selfishly cruel and evil in their religion as Muslim extremists, with less "cultural" pressure than their Aramaic religion compatriots - otherwise "Godly" people who would just as casually kill you and destroy anything that you touched because you didn't "believe" as they would swat a fly if they thought they could get away with it.

I was making an admittedly dry comment that the whole speculation of a religious reason for the disappearance was ridiculous under observation of what little we know.
After all this whole thread is just an exercise in speculative flame bait, trying to set up a "let's pretend DU is a haven for muslim extremists that can do no wrong" thread. And I don't usually get the chance to kick the first ember, so I went ahead with it.

Now, let's get on to the "No True Christian" Strawman. I always loved that one from the hysterical "persecuted" members of the Christian majority who always forget that last nail is the hardest to pound in.


Okay, disclaimer:

I'm sorry for offending those people who truly believe that Christians are persecuted around here, because I happen to believe that the Christians that do wrong or are otherwise bigots in the name of their God cannot be called out as equally as anyone else who does wrong or is a bigot in the name of their cause or religion.

I can either call it as I see it, or stand back in silence. For once, I've called it as I saw it, even though I thought I had put in enough disclaimers that people could see I was no more attacking one particular religion over another.

I've lived through reading a lot of far worse posts that have offended me or insulted my particular causes or beliefs on DU over the past 13 years without going into a hissy over someone else's personal beliefs or opinions. I'm sorry to expect the same consideration in return for a minor snark.

Haele

Edited for Spelling

[Tom Ripley]

39. +1000

[Union Scribe]

34. And the rational, tolerant side of DU

shows its lovely face again.

[undeterred]

35. The pilot was said to have a flight simulator at home.

Which one shall we cast asparagus on?