http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trave ... -scan.html


Since when did the Koran ban women going through body scanners.

Muslims like to be martyrs - whether it’s blowing themselves up or just being banned from places by not conforming. It appears to be their way.

Nothing to see here. Business as usual. Move along.

I suspect that the relgious grounds come down the modesty and public decency guidance or (sharia) law in some interpretations of the Koran and subsequent judgemetns of Muslim scholars.

As the scanner essentially shows a semi-naked image of the person being scanned to an unkown person then the woman presumably felt it was incompatible with the varriation of Islam she follows.

She declined on medical (some sort of infection) and religious grounds. Quite what sort of infection would be a problem for the scanner is a little curious but I suspect some sort of rash. Whether such a thing would show up I'm not sure.

As far as I can tell from the article the women refused to be scanned and so was not permitted to fly and left the airport peacefully. It's not even clear whether the article has been written as a result of a complaint by one of the woman or if the story came from the airport.

I don't think it's fair to say she was being a martyr. If she'd kicked up a huge fuss about religious persecution then that would be different. I doubt she'll be the last person to refuse to be scanned and I doubt it'll just be muslim woman who refused to be scanned either.

The first woman declined on religious grounds i.e. that to be viewed would be immodest.

It was a second woman, companion of the first, that refused on medical grounds

Good for them I say. The scanners are a by-proxy stripsearch and, without reasonable cause, arguably a breach of ECHR Art. 5,6,8,9 & 10.

I have my concerns about the scanners as well, but am happy enough to be padded down. If someone is not well then they should not have checked in. They should have contacted their doctor first. So that eliminates the medical grounds. The scanners really should be a last measure for those that fit the profile or are going to or from certain destinations.

Given that a frequent flyer may be required to have a number of scans a year I wonder how much x-ray dose you are getting given that there is a recommended annual maximum

Also can I get “Airport Scanner pants” to either
- Protect the vital parts thaI do not want irradiated
Or
- Ones impregnated with something that will show a “bigger shadow” a sort of x-ray scanner wonder bra (pants) for men

What happened to the option of being patted down/frisked instead?
I thought that was an alternative given for people who had privacy fears when the scanners were first brought in.

That conveniently went out the window after the attempted bombing in the USA. Once the government realised it had enough political capital to push these through it threw privacy concerns and all previous concessions to the wind and implemented the scanners anyway.

As women are being targetted by miscreants for terrorism duties (apparently), this is potentially a near miss for the other passengers.

The airlines are welcome to use any rules they like to keep their multi-million dollar planes (and by extension, their passengers) safe. If it doesn't fit in with organised religion of any sort, all the better. If you can't be at least padded down on medical grounds, you probably shouldn't be flying anyway.

You could argue that it is all a bit 1984-ish, but when it comes to being a few thousand feet up, travelling 500mph in an aluminium can, it just isn't worth taking chances!

Great [/sarcasm] So that means next time I pass through EMA someone's going to be laughing at how big my stomach is and how small my penis is. ...... [/joking]

It doesn't use X-rays, but saying that, it isn't known what side effects this process has, the manufacturers claim that it is harmless...

I think that the process uses what it calls T Rays. They are much weaker than X rays so you could undergo thousand of scanners per year. I am more concerned about the privacy aspect of the scanners. I am sure that they must have a print out option for court proceedings.

AFAIK the T stands for terahertz as that's the region of the electromagnetic spectrum it's from.
T-rays sit between the far infra-red and the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum so are pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum from x-rays.

Totally agree (+1)

I take it you don't fly with Ryanair either then