There has been a recent battle cry by the right in the United States and its talking heads that the TSA and law enforcement in general need to begin the profiling of Muslims in order to prevent terror attacks.
"Of course, the sane way to protect Americans in the sky is to stop looking for nail files and begin profiling people who might actually cause terror damage. That is not "racial" profiling; that is "terror" profiling. Most of the recent terror activities have been perpetuated by young Muslim men. So it is these people that need greater scrutiny when they check in for a flight." BillOReilly.com*1
This is asinine for a number of reasons. Lets stick to the most glaring if you please. You can see the obvious spin on this "no spin" commentary. Its veiled racism and thinly veiled at that.
When O' Reilly and his peers say Muslim you can bet you're bottom denar he means Arab. You cant even attempt to pick a Muslim out of a line up, but "fly over state" Dick and Jane sure will be quick to tell you what an Arab looks like. That's who this kind of talk plays to. These people mean well, they really do. My mother is "fly over Jane". Someone that thinks in sound bites and
believes that her job as an American is to support the government not the other way around. Speaking of my mother, my mother is white and my father is black. I'm also 25 years old so by O'Reilly's logic that makes me a......... (say it with me) you guessed it Muslim. I have brown skin and Caucasian features. I stopped wearing a costume for Halloween years ago because I figured my every day look scares the hell out of Americans. There are over 1 Billion Muslims around the world. A BILLION! Now taking those numbers in to account it is safe to say that a nice chunk of the Muslim world doesn't hang their hats in middle eastern countries. So if you follow the train of logic right in to the station you will come to the conclusion that there is a good chunk of the Muslim world that is not olive skinned. Also if law enforcement locks in on what a "bad" Muslim looks like. The real bad Muslim extremists will just recruit different looking Muslims. Chechnyan rebels for example. Who with their white skin would easily slip by law enforcement agents only interested in young Arab looking men.
Ok lets give Mr. O'Reilly the benefit of a doubt and say that he's not being racist. That he really thinks that a religious profiling of Muslims is actually the right way to go here. How would you go about doing such a thing? Would you put a religion box on passports? I got it! How about make Muslims wear yellow crescents on all their clothing that way we would know exactly who they are. Oh, that's all ready been done you say.... By that guy.. Oh yeah Hitler.. That's right.
O'Reilly and others like him make a living off of fear and as long as people let their xenophobia get the best of them their cash cow will never run dry.