A Muslim Speaks Out on the Need for Profiling

Arsa Q. Nomani is a Muslim who is calling for rational profiling at airports. In an article in The Daily Beast entitled, "Airport Security: Let's Profile Muslims," she writes:

In the debate, I said, “Profile me. Profile my family,” because, in my eyes, we in the Muslim community have failed to police ourselves. . .

This is the kind of honesty we need if the Muslim component of Western societies is to become truly a part of Western society. She argues for racial and religious profiling using facts and common sense:

As an American Muslim, I’ve come to recognize, sadly, that there is one common denominator defining those who’ve got their eyes trained on U.S. targets: MANY of them are Muslim—like the Somali-born teenager arrested Friday night for a reported plot to detonate a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Oregon. . . .

Profiling doesn’t have to be about discrimination, persecution, or harassment. As my debating partner, conservative columnist Deroy Murdock put it: “We are not arguing that the TSA should send anyone named Mohammad to be waterboarded somewhere between the first-class lounge and the Pizza Hut.”

But to me, profiling isn’t about identity politics but about threat assessment.

According to a terrorism database at the University of Maryland, which documents 60 attacks against airlines and airports between 1970 and 2007, the last year available, suspects in attacks during the 1970s were tied to the Jewish Defense League, the Black Panthers, the Black September, the National Front for the Liberation of Cuba, Jewish Armed Resistance and the Croatian Freedom Fighters, along with a few other groups.

In each of these groups’ names was a religious or ethnic dimension. For that time, those were the identities that we needed to assess. Today, the threat has changed, and it is primarily coming from Muslims who embrace al Qaeda’s radical brand of Islam.

This article reinforces my earlier post on the morality of profiling and the immorality of political correctness. I respect this person's decision to place the safety of her fellow citizens above the her own interests narrowly construed. But above all I admire her desire to protect the innocent from the depredations of the wicked. If all Muslims were like her, no one would need to profile any of them.