Profiling Robert Spencer

Spencer, in a notice about a Muslim woman who was profiled on an American airline (Southwest airlines) and now is suing for her supposed mistreatment, extrapolates:

More than once I have been held and questioned at airports because of my work. Once I was working on this website on my laptop, someone saw "jihad" on my screen, and presently I was surrounded by police and large dogs, and hauled off for questioning.

Another time I was in an airport, having hurried from a venue where I had just given a talk. I don't ever speak from a written text, but I sometimes do carry notes -- a page or two of quotations from various Muslim Brotherhood operatives, etc., including jihadist and Islamic supremacist statements by some putative American moderate Muslims, as well as quotations from the Qur'an and Hadith, etc. I had this material in my suit pocket, and it dropped out without my noticing when I took off my suit jacket to go through security. So a few minutes later I was again in the friendly presence of police and TSA personnel. One gentleman was holding up my notes and asking me why I had this material. I started laughing, because I realized that there was absolutely nothing in the notes to show that I actually opposed what was written there -- and realized that it might take awhile to straighten the whole thing out.

And it did. But I didn't mind. Because I knew what they were doing. I knew they weren't holding the bearded, swarthy fellow with notes full of jihad hate because they were racists and bigots, and didn't like people of Middle Eastern descent, or hated Muslims, or what have you. They were doing their job, which was to protect the American people. Irum Abbasi and Hamas-linked CAIR should realize that, and I think they do. They should also realize that we are on to them.

However, what seems to have escaped Spencer is that the authorities whose suspicions were attracted by him may have had the opposite motivation: they may have thought he was some Islamophobe planning to target Muslims (or, Breivikianly, other white Westerners deemed to be "suicidal liberals"). Given the PC MC anxiety we have seen from our various political leaders and law enforcement, it is eminently reasonable to suppose that they are on the lookout for white "bigots" at least as much (if not more so) as they are potential Muslim terrorists. Meanwhile, Spencer cheekily attempts to stack the deck by describing himself as "swarthy", when he's obviously white. At best, someone might mistake him for a Western Jew (with perhaps a very remote hint of a Turkish bureaucrat); and his beard may not be nearly enough to move him automatically to the Privileged Ethnic Category in which PC MCs see Muslims.