A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling

Sorry about your ordeal Atif, but most Pakistanis will be proud to undergo such a thorough exam for the prospect of being mistaken as Arabs (also for being frisked).

The scary thing about profiling, is that this is now accepted as a new norm. What is sad is that majority of american blacks, themselves the biggest and the oldest victims of racial profiling, are in favor of muslims profiling too.

Just yesterday media was abuzz with news that three ``middle eastern`` men driving a cargo truck tried to make an illegal entry into Miami port, that they did not know what was in the truck, that the manifest did not match what was in the truck, and that the driver tried to enter the port by lying that he was the only one in the truck whereas the two others were hiding behind the seats.

It turns out that the only true part in the above news, which was reported for nearly 6 hours as breaking news on many news channels, was the fact that the men were middle eastern. All the rest turned out to be untrue.

While the media went out of breath reporting this news and scaring the heck out of Americans, it perhaps did not occur to many people that this was yet another case of profiling.

Well told! Profiling is a fact of our existence now. Some of us too have to go through such humiliations occasionally even though we are neither Muslims nor Arabs but could be mistaken as such.

But let`s be honest, atif. What would you do if you had to design an easily administered filtering system? The fact is that, as the cliche goes, while 99% of Muslims/Arabs are innocent, 100% of those whom the authorities fear are troublemakers, are also Muslims/Arabs. So, you can either design a system which is inefficient and chokes air transportation or use profiling to get at the people with the highest probability of being troublemakers.

I should add, however, that future terrorists will probably go after targets that are less rigorously defended than the airplanes.

thank god for the vigilant American security personnell. may allah give them all the power and foresight to pluck friggin terrorists out of the line.

#4 - Americans have a higher likelihood of dying in a violent crime than in terrorism related incident. This suggests that there is a higher and more urgent need of profiling black, white and latin Americans than muslim Americans who register quite low in perpetuating violent neighborhood gunning, car jacking, drugs / alcohol related crimes etc

Re: # 3

Dostmittar Sahib, there are kinks in the system that are being addressed and appropriate measures taken to get them fixed. Once Senator Kennedy was refused to board a plane at Logan (same airport where Atif was assssed, and same airport where Mohammad Atta was not). That’s a tiny price to pay for the safety and security of the innocents.

Re: # 5: you are equating violent crime with terrorism. latter being a subset. Americans also have a higher chance of dying from heart disease. what is your point?

If you going through a significant screening process means that my family can travel more safely..then I am sorry malik. assume the position..

#5 by malik99 on January 8, 2007 1:59pm PT

you have a higher probability of being killed by a fellow jihadi than US/Israeli/Indian forces...yet you rail about the later..

except for the constant references to sex, which is a given with atif, the article flowed well and was a good read

atif buys the playbos for the articles..

if the mags were about young boys, then scout`s post would be valid..

A good read.

I am o.k with Profiling since that`s the only way to keep the likes of Urstruly, Zeemax in check..

Re: # 9
i agree with scout...:P

atif, do u by any chance have one of those 1 ft. long beards?? Shaving it off might help on ur next trip out of Boston.

Atif, this was good. Scout was right in her comments. Reading this made me sad.

Funny you say that. I end up in security line more than my muslim friend. I wonder why??

Neverthless, it was a fun read.