In November 2006, he became a spokesperson in the flying imams controversy, in which he was personally involved; he and five other imams (Didmar Faja, Marwan Sadeddin, Mohamed Said Mitwaly Ibrahim, Ahmad Shqeirat, and Mahmoud Sulaiman) were taken off a US Airways flight before it left Minneapolis for Phoenix, Arizona.
The six imams filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court of Minnesota in March 2007.