Two Muslim women were stopped from boarding a flight from Britain to Pakistan for refusing to go through the new body scanners, citing religious and medical reasons, airport officials said Thursday. Muslim rights activists have called the incident a “knee jerk reaction.”

The pair travelling together at Manchester airport last month - are the first confirmed cases in Britain of anyone being refused travel since body scanners became mandatory at the airports using them on 1 February.
 

The two women, who are British residents, were travelling on a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Islamabad from Manchester Airport in northwest England on 19 February.
 

They were randomly selected to go through the scanners but refused to do so, Britain's busiest non-London airport said.
 

"Two female passengers who were booked to fly out of Terminal 2 refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons," a Manchester Airport spokesperson said. "In accordance with the government directive on scanners, they were not permitted to fly."
 

No security sense
This, according to Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, is “totally unacceptable and outrageous. And worse, he says, “it really doesn’t make any security sense.”
 

Shadjareh claims that in terms of airport safety procedures, unless they are adhered to internationally and by everyone, [they] do not make any security sense: “Unless [airport security measures] are implemented at a standard right across the world, it doesn’t make any security sense.” Besides, he says, “ There is always some loophole somewhere that criminals use for implementing their evil.”
 

Manchester Airport said security officers spent half an hour with the women listening to their concerns and explaining how the scanners worked but they still chose not to fly.
 

London Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest passenger air hub, is the only other British airport with a body scanner so far but has no record of anyone refusing to use it. Manchester started using a body scanner on a voluntary trial basis in October last year. However, following the Christmas Day Detroit airline bomb plot, Britain made their use mandatory as of 1 February.
 

Around five percent of all Manchester passengers go through the 80,000 pounds sterling (90,000 euro) scanner. Around 15,000 people have done so since 1 February.

Grounds for selection
People go through on four grounds: random selection; on their request; if they have triggered an explosive trace detection test; if a security pat down has failed to find what triggered a metal detector.
 

It is being reported that while the scanners do not produce an image of the naked body, they have caused concerns among privacy advocates because they do faithfully reproduce a body's curves hidden beneath clothing.
 

“The scans do not just give you an outline of the body but actually give you very descriptive photographs”, says Shadjareh whose organisation claims to have done some research on the scanning procedures. When colour is added to them, he says, “they do become nude pictures where parts of the body are very visible.”

Subsequently, one of the main issues in this situation is that, according to Shadjareh, “to some communities, being nude means a lot more than others.”
 

The United States has accelerated the installation of body scanners at airports since the attempted Christmas Day attack on a jet bound for Detroit from Amsterdam. Britain is among several European countries, including The Netherlands, installing the scanners after the attack.