American woman taken off Newark flight, says it’s because she’s Muslim

An American woman says that after passing through regular security checks at Newark Liberty International Airport, she was taken off a flight — and alleges it was because she is Muslim.

Kameelah Rasheed, 30, of Brooklyn, told al Jazeera Wednesday that she was traumatized and unable to consider flying again after being forced to leave a Lufthansa flight for a holiday in Istanbul, and interrogated by an FBI agent,

According to the report, she was wearing a headscarf, and described herself as the "only visibly Muslim person" on the plane. She said she was also the only one who was asked to leave the flight, and a customers officer confiscated her passport and phone.

In Tweets on Thursday, she said she's been in touch with Lufthansa and United Airlines, trying to get a refund.

She described questions from a customs officer about where she was going, and how she could afford her vacation, as  "circular and nonsensical," according to the al Jazeera report.

"I wasn't going to the border with Syria. I was going to the tourist locations, to see the Hagia Sophia and take a ferry across the Bosphorus," the report quoted her saying.

The report said the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark Liberty airport, had not yet provided any comment.