Profiling and the war against terror

Posted on March 13th, 2007 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Declaring that airport screeners shouldn’t be hampered by “political correctness,” House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King has endorsed requiring people of “Middle Eastern and South Asian” descent to undergo additional security checks because of their ethnicity and religion.

Discussing the recent revelation of an alleged plot in England to blow up U.S.-bound airliners, the Seaford Republican said yesterday that, “if the threat is coming from a particular group, I can understand why it would make sense to single them out for further questioning.”

King, who has said that all Muslims aren’t terrorists but that all recent terrorists are Muslim, favors an ethnic and religious profiling scheme that would include foreign and American-born travelers. “I would give the investigators and screeners a lot of discretion as to where it ends,” he said.

Despite King’s endorsement of such a process, it is a technique that has been widely dismissed as a legitimate law enforcement tool. A recent article in the Washington Post makes clear how difficult this profiling is with the example of a Moroccan-Dutch woman arrested because of alledgedly helping her husband with his (also alledged) terrorist plans:

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