Racial Profiling—Part Two

Another characteristic of profiling in general, and racial profiling in particular, needs to be pointed out: profiling is an inherently imperfect technique. One wouldn’t think that intelligent people would need to be reminded of this, but I have seen apparently intelligent people—even from those favorably disposed to some form of racial profiling—, time and time again, display just such a need.

The inherent imperfection of any implementation of racial profiling is rooted in the fact of limited manpower, resources and money—and the reason why such material limitations have a significant impact upon the implementation is because the pool of data being screened for is sufficiently large and amorphous that only unlimited manpower, resources and money could possibly yield anything close to perfect results.

This brings us to a balance which must be kept in mind with any methodology of racial profiling: this is a balance that must be maintained because of the imperfections and limitations that cannot be avoided. A methodology of racial profiling must balance two competing interests:

a) narrowing the focus down from Everybody,

and

b) maximalizing the focus—once its narrow focus has been precisioned—as far as possible.

The interest of (a) is self-evident: when searching for unknown criminals, and/or preventing against their potential crimes in the near future, law enforcement obviously should not be expending their manpower, resources and money on targeting everybody. Indeed, this would be impossible anyway.

It is with (b) that we get into the subtleties of this issue. Profiling in general is not an abstract paradigm that is the same for all types of criminals, and for all types of crime. It is casuistic—its paradigmatic methodology must always have reference to case-by-case data and trends. When we are dealing with the type of crime and criminals pertaining to the problem of Islamic terrorism, we have a problem that challenges and strains the methodology of profiling to the maximal degree, for the following reasons (this loosely follows our sub-adumbration in point #9 in our previous essay, The Problem of Islam):

1) Muslims can become ‘radicalized’ and become terrorists virtually anywhere geographically—almost anywhere in the world (only excepting obvious locales such as the North and South Poles). (This is not to say that the geographical dispersion of ‘radicalization’ is uniform: it is, for example, more likely to occur in greater numbers in Pakistan than in Finland.)

2) The ‘radicalized’ Muslims who have crossed the line into terrorism (whether as facilitators, planners, or actual front-line commando troops) may similiarly be virtually anywhere geographically—almost anywhere in the world.

3) Aside from geographical dispersion, we have the problem of relative invisibility: the ‘radicalized’ Muslims are virtually indistinguishable from the Muslims who are not radicalized. Or, if we assume the vast majority of Muslims are more or less already ‘radicalized’, we then fine-tune our problem as one of the virtual indistinguishability between Muslims radicalized to the degree where they are ready to engage in a terrorist plot (on any level, from merely helping with housing and keeping an eye out for police, on to more direct activities) from the ones who are not ready nor contemplating such a dramatic change in their personal lives, but who are, at least for the indefinite future, content to keep their profound resentment of Infidels in a relatively passive mode.

3b) There is a subcategory to #3 that needs to be stressed in its own right: socioculturally, there is a widespread tendency among ostensibly non-terrorist Muslims to aggravate the problem of distinguishing the terrorist Muslim from the non-terrorist, in varying degrees, ranging from:

i) passively enabling
ii) socioculturally participating in nourishing a climate conducive to extremism
iii) ambivalent support
iv) outright support.

These four factors increase the likelihood of ‘radicalized’ Muslims verging on terrorism as well as Muslim terrorists remaining camouflaged among the general Muslim population.

4) There are also qualitative features of the Islamic terrorist that distinguish him from the average criminal: fanatical zeal, eschatological motivation, supremacist intolerance, and a trans-national global network of potential assistance from members of the same global ‘family’. While the monolithic nature of Islam can be exaggerated, its trans-national unity on psychological and sociological levels can also be dangerously underestimated.

5) In addition to the problems of worldwide geographical dispersion and relative invisibility or indistinguishability, as well as the qualitative features noted, that characterize the Islamic terrorist criminal, we have the problems of the nature of the Islamic terrorist crimes:

a) quantity—the sheer numbers of terrorist acts already committed as well as the many more that have been aborted by law enforcement (in addition to others that intelligence has discovered were planned but temporarily suspended or abandoned for various reasons).

b) rate—the sheer numbers seem to be increasing as time goes on, whether we posit a starting point of 911, or 1993, or further back into the 1970s when Islamic terrorism began to be picked up on the Western radar.

c) geographical dispersion—as with the criminals themselves, the location of any future terrorist attacks could be virtually anywhere.

d) the gravity of potential attacks—law enforcement have every rational reason to believe that future potential attacks could be horrific, and for this reason, measures taken for self-defense must reflect this gravity and urgency by being more generalized and forceful. By way of analogy, compare what the police force of a major city, let us say New York, would do in the following two situations: in situation #1, we have the likelihood that on any given Saturday night, there may erupt fistfights in urban bars; in situation #2, we have three prior successful explosions in public places that have already mass-murdered thousands of people and law enforcement is now faced with a phone call from a purported perpetrator of those previous attacks, now threatening to detonate a bomb in Times Square. The police will galvanize itself to a far greater degree in scenario #2 and will furthermore behave in such rational ways that will ostensibly trample on the rights of ordinary people, in order to do what needs to be done to save lives from a likely horrific attack.

e) flexible type of attack—the type of attack of any future terrorist act is subject to almost infinite variation: more plane attacks, dirty bombs, chemical, biological, or any number of creative possibilities we have not yet imagined. This flexibility has increasingly shown signs of expanding into the ‘private jihad’ mode, whereby one Muslim or a small group of Muslims just happens to ‘go postal’ and starts trying to kill Infidels in almost any improvisatory manner (the Muslim student at a college in North Carolina who one day tried to kill fellow students by running them over in his SUV; the Beltway snipers; the Miami Seven; and so forth). This latter mode of flexibility could involve any degree of planning and premeditation, including virtually none (if we exempt the ‘premeditation’ that is simply a long period of emotionally seething in hatred and indignation at Infidels that finally snaps one day and realizes itself in going postal).

Conclusion:

In putting together and digesting the above five reasons, law enforcement would be perilously remiss in not trying to develop some kind of profiling methodology that would screen for ‘radicalized’ Muslims on the verge of becoming terrorists as well as those who have crossed that line. And because of the fact that, as our previous post explained, the vast majority of Muslims in the world are non-whites and the vast majority of whites are non-Muslims, it would irrationally impair our law enforcement techniques instrumental for our general self-defense should we refuse to implement some degree of racial profiling in screening for the Muslim terrorist.