Terrorists Who Defy Our Biases

By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services on Mar 14, 2010

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Thank you, "Jihad Jane" for making a point about racial profiling that I've been trying to make for years: You can't judge a potential terrorist by his complexion -- or, in this case, her complexion.

For years we have been hearing pundits and politicians argue for profiling Arabs and Muslims, as if ramping up our prejudices were all we need to do to protect ourselves from bombers and hijackers.

Indeed, prejudices are convenient. On some level we are all like George Clooney's frequent-flyer character in "Up in the Air." He is accused by a young aide of being "racist" because he thinks his airport security line will move more efficiently because it has Asian businessmen in it. "I'm like my mother," he responds instructively. "I stereotype. It's faster."

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, ramped that up quite a few notches during Senate hearings in January: "When you hear that not all Middle Easterners or Muslims between the age of 20 and 35 are terrorists," he said, "but all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners between the age of 20 and 35, that's by and large true." Uh, never say "all."

Even so, conservative columnist Ann Coulter has gone farther, calling on airlines to brag about how often they are sued by unfairly inconvenienced Arabs and Muslims. "Imagine the great slogans the airlines could use," she wrote in a 2004 column: " 'Now Frisking All Arabs -- Twice!' "

Coulter came to mind when I heard about "JihadJane," (cq) the curiously conspicuous moniker used online by Colleen LaRose (cq) of Pennsburg, Pa., who was indicted last week on terrorism charges.

In pictures released to news media, LaRose doesn't look Middle Eastern. She looks more like, say, Ann Coulter.

That was part of LaRose's plan, according to reports. With her blonde hair and her eyes that are either blue or green, depending on whose news you read, she figured she could slip more easily through the ethnocentric profiling that folks like Coulter favor.

Since profiling has such obvious appeal, it didn't take Islamic terror groups like al-Qaida very long to figure out that they should try to enlist terrorists who don't fit our usual stereotypes.

According to LaRose's indictment, she trolled the Internet for future terrorists who looked like herself, had American or European passports and could, as she allegedly put it, "blend in."

It is not yet clear whether LaRose, who apparently never received al-Qaida training, posed much of a real danger to anyone but herself. Yet she illustrates what counterintelligence experts call a disturbing trend, a growing number of Americans from a variety of backgrounds who are finding their way into Islamic terror groups.

Take, for example, Daniel Patrick Boyd, a white drywall contractor was arrested in 2009 as the alleged ringleader of a seven-man group in the Raleigh, S. C., area charged with supporting "violent jihad" movements overseas after receiving training from Islamic radicals in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Or take Adam Gadahn, the FBI's most-wanted American member of al-Qaida. Born in Oregon in a family of Jewish ancestry and raised in California as a home-schooled Christian, he worked his way up to top al-Qaida ranks and is the first U.S. citizen since the 1940s to be charged with treason. He's still at large.

"There really is no longer any one profile of the terrorist," Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor and consultant to the government on terrorism, told National Public Radio after LaRose's arrrest. "We want to believe that there is, but there isn't."

The boldest profilers on the planet, for good reasons, may be the Israeli airline El Al. Yet they don't simply single out individuals with Arabic-sounding names. They also single out single women in general as "extremely high risk," for example, because they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs. It happens.

That's why I don't oppose all profiling. To quote one of my Palestinian-American friends, "I don't want to get blown up, either." But the El Al example shows how profiling needs to have some intelligence to it, not just kneejerk reflexes. We all have our prejudices, but think twice before you bet your life on them.

========

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.