Coulter advocates Muslim profiling
Coulter's column this week is a defense of racial profiling. She is, unfortunately, more concerned with justifying her own bigotry than providing constructive recommendations that would help protect citizens against terrorism.
Of the six Muslim religious leaders removed from an airline flight last week, Coulter says:
The clerics had been attending an imam conference in Minneapolis… But instead of investigating the conference, the government is now investigating [US Airways].
Coulter offers no reason why this conference should be investigated, other than the fact that it was attended by Muslims. Ironically, the conference of the North American Imams Federation that the men attended included a segment on how to improve Muslim-to-non-Muslim relations.
She continues:
One of the [imams] complained about being removed from the plane, saying: "Six scholars in handcuffs. It's terrible."
Yes, especially when there was a whole conference of them! Six out of 150 is called "poor law enforcement." How did the other 144 "scholars" get off so easy?
Coulter has abandoned profiling in favor of arresting anyone of Muslin descent, even though they have committed no crime. She even puts "scholars" in scare-quotes to imply that these men aren't what they appear to be.
There is little distinction between Coulter's suggestion of mass arrests based on race and religion and the shameful detention of 120,000 Japanese during World War II. Those people, like the Muslims Coulter has targeted, had committed no “crime†other than their ethnicity.
As early as September 20, 2001, Coulter was advocating racial profiling of "swarthy" (i.e. dark-skinned) people. In a 2003 interview, she acknowledged, "You'd be searching a lot of Italians, Greeks and Jews," though she fails to explain how that would be productive or practical.
Jose Padilla, the accused dirty bomber, is Latino. Richard Reed, the shoe bomber, is half-Jamaican, half-British. The vague racial profiling Coulter proposes could let these men pass by. The seventeen alleged terrorists arrested in Canada in June came from various countries , including Pakistan, African nations, and even Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.
The profiling Coulter advocates simply would not be effective. It isn't possible to identify a Muslim by sight, although Coulter often ignores the distinction between Muslim and Middle Eastern.
Sources:
- "An appalling magic." Guardian. May 17, 2003.
- "2006 Toronto terrorism case." Wikipedia. Retrieved November 30, 2006.