The headline reads:

Muslims face extra checks in new travel crackdown

Well, duh.  Was anyone expecting less?

Muslims face extra checks in new travel crackdown

THE Government is discussing with airport operators plans to introduce a screening system that allows security staff to focus on those passengers who pose the greatest risk.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

Oh no…the "P" word…

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

Asian?  Well yes, Southwest Asia…but Asian usually brings a different image.

Officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) have discussed the practicalities of introducing such a system with airport operators, including BAA. They believe that it would be more effective at identifying potential terrorists than the existing random searches.

…

The DfT has been considering passenger profiling for a year but, until last week, the disadvantages were thought to outweigh the advantages. A senior aviation industry source said: “The DfT is ultra-sensitive about this and won’t say anything publicly because of political concerns about being accused of racial stereotyping.”

And now the "S" word…

Three days before last week’s arrests, the highest-ranking Muslim police officer in Britain gave warning that profiling techniques based on physical appearance were already causing anger and mistrust among young Muslims. Tarique Ghaffur, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “We must think long and hard about the causal factors of anger and resentment.

yes…but…

“There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law-enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalising minority communities.”

Sir Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, criticised the random nature of security searches. He said that it was irrational to subject a 75-year-old grandmother to the same checks as a 25-year-old man who had just paid for his ticket with cash.

In a word: duh…

The question is essentially, is it ok to profile suspected terrorists?  The Muslim groups complain this is discriminatory and such, but honestly is it?

The question becomes one of reasonable suspicion.  When so many acts have been committed by a single racial/religious subset, is anyone really surprised that someone wants to open that sub group to additional scrutiny?  Is that reasonable?

There is a racial profiling "test" that has been floating around the internet, that goes something like this:

In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:

a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40 

In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:

a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill’ s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

You get the point.

So is it true?  Not entirely, some Muslim women have been involved now too, with their children as well:

Bottle and baby used as bomb

Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby’s bottle to hide a liquid bomb.

The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies’ milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights. 

…

Cossor took her baby with her to the police station during last week’s raids but her son is now being cared for by grandparents.

…

Police in England have reportedly recovered bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling centre close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects.

So the profile is not quite so narrow, but still the trend has been clear enough for the most part.

Now, opponents of profiling are quick to remind us of the tragedies of the Japanese internment camps in WW2, and rightly so.  There ought to be restrain, reason and sense used in this debate.  But that does not preclude profiling entirely, it just argues for a sensible restraint and a caution against overreaction.

What is needed is an understanding that there does exist a pattern of behavior.  There can be profiling and scrutiny without total internment and excessive harassment.

To all the people of Southern Asian descent who read this, I am sorry that because of the actions of a few militant assholes you may be watched more closely.  I truly regret any offense this causes, but try to understand it from the larger picture.  People are scared.  9/11 woke people up to the terrifying reality that there are people who may be in our country now that want to kill us, based on reasons of faith as much as politics.  You are as much the victims of their stupidity as anyone else.

But we cannot make that reality go away to make you feel better, I’m sorry.  I don’t have all the answers to this, but pretending it is not a factor is not one of them.

Maybe it is time we dealt with the realities and dropped the political niceties.

When 12 people were arrested in Toronto, the reports were they were from a broad strata of society.  In reality every one of them appeared to have a Muslim name and connection.

Likewise, when the UK suspects arrested, they were only identified as British Born Asian suspects, yet all had Muslim sounding names.

Pardon my over generalizations and stereotypes, but it is true.

There is this sensitivity, this need to avoid even the slightest appearance of profiling.  And really it is doing nothing but making the situation worse.

Was this really necessary?

Passport photograph of girl’s bare shoulders rejected ‘as it may offend’

A five-year-old girl’s passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders.

Hannah Edwards’s mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.

And she was just going to France mind you, not Iran.

This uber sensitivity has permeated a lot of areas of our society, and push the common sense right out of people’s brains.  We cannot, must not offend, even if those whom we worry might be offended are the very ones who want to kill us.

And frankly I am getting sick of it. 

Where internment camps and harsh monitoring may represent one end of the extremes, doing things like this out of a false sense of obligation to political correctness is the other.

My bottom line:

When Militant blonde Norwegian Mormon girls begin a series of terror plots and attacks, line them up and scrutinize them.  Until then, the plots seem to be coming from somewhere else.  You may want to focus your attention there.

Can we please have some common sense here?