Here we go again. Another terrorist bombing and another call to profile Muslims, or shall I say Moz-lums. Here is a great gem from NYC Councilmember Oddo:
It is important to acknowledge that nearly every Jihadist who has
engaged in terrorist attacks has been a young man who called himself
Muslim – the common denominator among the recent bombings in London and
Madrid, the 9/11 attacks, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the
would-be millennium bombers, the destroyer Cole, the embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania, Pan Am Flight 103, TWA Flight 847 and the bombing of the
Marine barracks in Lebanon.
Errmmm…good luck. Just how do we start to profile Moz-lums? Race, Ethnicity, Colour, Mosque attendance, Gender? I as a Muslim often do not know when I meet other Muslims that they are indeed Muslims. Maybe my MuslimDar needs some new modules, but I have consistently made mistakes both false positive and false negative about the "Moz-lumness" of a person. Its just a stupid way to identify people.
Andrew Bevridge, has done some thinking and writing on this. He has actual data from NYC:
But even if the New York Police Department wanted to do so – and it has
said clearly that it doesn’t — profiling young Muslim males is
virtually impossible. They are not as easy to spot as Oddo and Hikind
seem to think…..Muslims will be much more difficult to pick out from a New York crowd. They are not racially or physically distinct.But even if one could pick out Muslims as they boarded the subways
or airplanes, there is demographic evidence that it would be a wasted
effort. When compared with other New Yorkers those whose heritage is a
Muslim-majority country are richer, better educated and more likely to
be married than other New Yorkers. Most are citizens.
| Characteristics of Those With Muslim Country Heritage |
||
| Ancestry Muslim Country | All Others | |
| Male | 55.8% | 45.6% |
| Black | 9.2% | 28.9% |
| White | 56.8% | 47.3% |
| Asian | 35.6% | 10.1% |
| Other | 14.6% | 17.3% |
| Four Years or More College | 37.3% | 27.3% |
| Married With Spouse | 61.3% | 44.3% |
| Non-Citizen | 43.7% | 19.9% |
| Working | 58.5% | 52.9% |
| Owned House | 25.7% | 30.4% |
| Median Household Income | $40,000 | $37,000 |
This will be a fool’s errand for Law Enforcement and we will surely have cases like that poor brazillian chap who was mistaken to be suicide bomber by the London Bobbies. What we need is better integration of these immigrant communities in our societies and we need to help them defeat this stupid, fatalist, violent ideology. Profiling me, my wife or my daughter is not going to help this one bit.
Profiling wont work. I am a white Males convert to Islam. I am blonad haired and blue eyed. I have tattoos. How do you profile that?
I suspect that Oddo is simply being dishonest. He thinks that when he says “Muslim” people will hear “Arab,” even though he clearly knows that many jihadists are not Arab. A tactic for securing the racist vote?