Now on ScienceBlogs: Oldest Human-Made Object in Space
Thoughts From the Interface of Science, Religion, Law and Culture
Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)
Ed Brayton also blogs at Positive Liberty and The Panda's Thumb
« Klayman Strikes the Martyr Pose | Main | Sarah Palin and the Media »
Posted on: December 31, 2009 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton
From Rep. Peter King (R-egressive):
"100 percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today. So why we should not be profiling people because of their religion?"
Yes, 100% of all Muslim terrorists are Muslim. Nothing gets past you, does it Pete?
Politics
Comments
Well, nothing except perhaps the concept of proofreading:
Huh. I wonder what percentage of abortion clinic terrorists aren't Christian.
Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 9:18 AM
It seems that pzisdead is going for tomorrow's Dumbass Quote of the Day.
Posted by: Imrryr | December 31, 2009 9:21 AM
I like cognac.
There is a classic phrase.
"All cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is cognac."
Rep. King needs to remember that all Muslim terrorists are Muslim, but not all Muslims are terrorists.
By Rep. Kings logic, we should be religiously profiling Christians due to Timothy McVeigh.
Finally, I would note that Muslims who engage in terrorism are roundly shunned by mainstream authorities of their own religion.
Posted by: Jim Ramsey | December 31, 2009 9:23 AM
Looks like King is going to make a pious crusade out of this, where was he for the Richard Reid incident?
Posted by: Naughtius Maximus | December 31, 2009 9:26 AM
Oddly enough, I heard the head of the Muslim Congress of Canada on the radio two days ago, arguing in favour of profiling. His opponent was some white guy, who was against it.
Posted by: Captain Mike | December 31, 2009 9:34 AM
Perhaps someone should remind Rep King that Islam is a religion not a race, ie. not all Moslems are brown scary people.
Posted by: Una Walsh | December 31, 2009 9:54 AM
We are not and should not profile people based on their religion because it is ineffective. It is far to easy to fake another religion to the casual glance. (Well that and pesky things like the Constitution, something that I thought Rep King had sworn to uphold.)
Posted by: Dave | December 31, 2009 9:56 AM
I wonder if Rep. King has noticed that 100% of Congressmen are politicians...
Posted by: Steve | December 31, 2009 10:17 AM
If being of Middle Eastern origin was not one factor among many in trying to discern who might be a terrorist, we would be fools; if being of Middle Eastern descent was considered sufficient cause to consider someone a terrorist, we would be even bigger fools. There is nothing wrong with profiling, but what the right is advocating is not profiling. Profiling is the use of a number of different traits that are common (common - not invariable or inevitable) to a given type of criminal to screen a large group of people and pick out which ones might be a bad guy. Focusing on a single trait, particularly one that is usually impossible to know, like whether someone is a Muslim, is a ridiculous form of profiling that undermines the entire point of the exercise because it overwhelms the screeners with possible candidates, the vast majority of whom are not going to be dangerous. The point of profiling is to narrow a very large group down to a much smaller group that then merits closer scrutiny. This is a crucial tool of law enforcement when properly done. When badly done, as the right is now loudly demanding, it is worse than useless; it is actually dangerous and undermines the entire process.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | December 31, 2009 10:22 AM
I think the R is for R-etarded.
Posted by: MPL | December 31, 2009 10:50 AM
No, no ,no. You don't get it Ed. We're only worried about by Islamic terrorists - we don't care about being blown up by anyone else.
Posted by: Bob O'H | December 31, 2009 10:58 AM
Somewhat related
http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/datamining-would-be-lovely-if-it-worked/
Posted by: Naughtius Maximus | December 31, 2009 11:00 AM
Last time I checked, you don't check off a "religion" box when you buy an airline ticket, so how exactly would this work? And as others have pointed out race/physical appearance is not a proxy for religion. I love all the talking heads who think we need to profile "Middle Eastern" or "Arab" people while being completely oblivious to the fact that the Christmas attack was carried out by a man who looked like neither. I also love the ignorance our politicians show when they conflate "Middle Eastern" with "Arab". Tell someone who is of Iranian descent that they're an Arab and see what happens. It isn't pretty. I'd like to see Rep. King to pick out the Muslims in a room full of Sephardic Jews. My husband is half Iranian, but his father is Jewish, not Muslim. However, the family changed their last name several generations ago to something Persian to better get along in Iran. When I hear people call for profiling it does freak me out and I worry about my husband and my father-in-law's family. We have so little understanding about Muslim, Middle Eastern and Eastern cultures (look how many people think Sihks are Muslim) that even if I thought profiling was a good idea I wouldn't trust the TSA or anyone else in government to do it correctly. They'd spend all their time focused on people with turbans or those who "look like terrorosts" while the real terrorists would walk on through.
Posted by: Liz | December 31, 2009 11:12 AM
"We are not and should not profile people based on their religion because it is ineffective. It is far to easy to fake another religion to the casual glance."
Just make it mandatory to wear one's religious symbol sewed on every piece of clothing.
A Cross for the true Christians,
A crescent for the muslims,
a yellow star for the Jews,
a fat Buddha for the buddhists
a trumpet for the mormons
a teapot for the atheists
a melting snowflake for the agnostics
and so on a and so forth.
Severe penalties would be enacted for non-compliers and cheaters.
As a second line of defense, every passenger would be make to eat bacon, drink a shot of cognac, and spit on the Holy Koran before boarding.
Posted by: _Arthur | December 31, 2009 11:16 AM
Ed @ 10 - this is what I was arguing in yesterday's thread about profiling; however I consistently saw my argument reduced to a strawman to defend a liberal sacred cow.
Bob O'H @ 11 stated:
I realize you're being facetious, but I think your implied point is weak as well. There's no reason we can't have screening factors that focus specifically on attributes and behaviors common to Muslim terrorists and also utilize other screening factors, both random and targeted, in hopes of containing other types of terrorists or criminals as well. There's probably also common attributes between both sets of groups.
But your point that others want to commit terror avoids the reality that the vastly disproportionate risk of suicide terror attacks on the U.S. is coming from Muslim terrorists and not other groups. To ignore this reality when developing targeted screening methods will guarantee a higher defect rate (which equates to more lives lost).
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 31, 2009 11:20 AM
Liz-I suppose you could say that most Muslims have identifiably Muslim first names. It's certainly not foolproof (Richard Reed is Muslim, while Ali MacGraw was not).
The issue of profiling is really a red herring in the recent case though. There are really 2 questions that until we know the answers, all discussion is simply posturing for the cable news:
1. How did this Abdulmutallab get a US visa in view of his father's report to the US embassy and his associations at University College London? Without a US visa he could never have boarded the flight.
2. Why were the whole body scanners routinely used at Schiphol not used for US-bound flights? Was this a policy of the Dutch government? Fear of lawsuits by litigation-happy Americans? Or was it US policy?
This is where the focus needs to be, not on profiling.
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 31, 2009 11:24 AM
Justice League, my point was that names don't correlate to religion, nor does physical appearance. I know quite a few Abduls who are not Muslim, and my husband's family have an arguably Muslim last name but they are Jews. And Indonesian, African and Asian Muslims will not have "Muslim" sounding names. That is just conflating "Muslim" with "Arab"
The Dutch were not using full body scanners because of US policy due to privacy issues, we're really squeemish about the idea of someone seeing a computer generated fuzzy image of us with no clothes on. The US has backed off that policy so they scanners are now being used. All that means is the terrorists will start putting this stuff in their rectums. I wonder if a bomb sniffing dog would have picked up the explosives and if they could pick up explosives in a body cavity.
Posted by: Liz | December 31, 2009 11:35 AM
100% of the congresspeople making America a shittier place are congresspeople. That's where we should be focusing our efforts. Lock up congress!
Posted by: James Sweet | December 31, 2009 12:07 PM
You people aren't giving him enough credit. At least he used numbers and didn't screw up on his math. He could have said, corn percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim or 110 percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim.
Posted by: holytape | December 31, 2009 12:13 PM
@Arthur - Penn Jillette proposed Bacon & a Kiss Airlines. There would be no security whatsoever, but in order to board the plane, one would first have to eat a piece of bacon and kiss a member of the same sex on the genitals.
Bacon, of course, is the candy of meats, so the only part of the plan that could possibly be objectionable is the same-sex genital kissing. But can that really be worse than dealing with the TSA goons?
Posted by: barry | December 31, 2009 12:20 PM
Also, 100% of greedy Jews are Jews, so shouldn't we write some prohibitions against Semites into the Uniform Commercial Code?
Posted by: barry | December 31, 2009 12:22 PM
Liz-I am not sure that the Dutch were not using the scanners because of US concerns over privacy. There have been significant privacy concerns raised in the Netherlands and the EU Parliament as well. As a result, the scanners have been optional. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2009/gb20091231_873028.htm
As far as dogs, they are not practical for mass screenings. There aren't that many trained dogs and they tire after an hour or so. The training is very time-consuming and expensive. They are more useful as a secondary screening of people identified by some primary method. As for the digestive tract, I would guess that would be a good hiding place for bombs as it is for drugs, but I don't really want to go there.
The issue still remains as to how this guy got a visa. Nothing to do with his religion, but with the information available about him personally.
Posted by: JusticeLeague | December 31, 2009 12:27 PM
The thing about profiling is that Muslim terrorists are going to try to make themselves look as unIslamic as possible. The 9/11 hijackers all had hair cuts, were clean shaven and wore western clothing. They do their best to blend in. You can full cavity search pious Muslim men with beards and skull caps all you want, but they are not going to be the ones trying to sneak a bomb on a plane.
I agree in part with Michael Heath that you can profile, but it should be in conjunction with other factors, such as did the person only buy a one-way ticket and did he or she pay in cash?
As for Peter King, he was once my congressional representative. Then when they redrew the district lines, I ended up in Steve Israel's district.
Posted by: Tommykey | December 31, 2009 12:49 PM
Has anyone ever suggested "Bacon & a Beer" as an alternative?
Posted by: DaveL | December 31, 2009 1:01 PM
Even if his sophisticated reasoning has allowed him to deduce that 100% of Muslim terrorists are Muslim, how do we know that 100% of Muslim terrorists are terrorists? This is a much more difficult proposition to prove. We need to get some more of our brightest Republican congress folk on this ASAP.
Posted by: AL | December 31, 2009 1:08 PM
I saw the video of this statement, and he clearly make a misstatement. See it in context, and you'll see that the point he was trying to make was "Most muslims are fine people, but 100% of the terrorists are muslim." He just slipped up and put muslim or islam before terrorist.
Watch the video, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Not that Peter King isn't a dumbass, but this particular thing was a misstatement, which becomes clear when you see his remarks in context.
Posted by: steve s | December 31, 2009 1:47 PM
Or better yet:
100 percent of congresspeople sending texts to 16-year-old pages are congresspeople. Therefore, put all of Congress on the sex offender registry.
Posted by: James Sweet | December 31, 2009 2:04 PM
Sorry, but you shot yourself in the foot on that one. The exact second you wrote the line about the blue-eyed swede, you walked directly into the stereotype of the right-winger arguing that only brown people with funny names are terrorists, and all hope of civil discussion was gone.
...
I'm curious what common attributes you think there might be between Timothy McVeigh and Mohamed Atta.
I find it interesting that you chose to limit your argument to one specific type of terrorism where you knew your argument was true, rather than acknowledging terrorism in the U.S. as a whole. Before I decide that you're arguing in bad faith, I need to ask: what do you propose we do about the overwhelmingly-Christian (in this country at least) forms of terrorism such as stalking and attacking medical personnel, bombing clinics, and using (non-suicide) truck bombs on federal buildings?
Posted by: Seraph | December 31, 2009 2:43 PM
Oh...and lynchings. How could I forget lynchings? That's for white Christians.
Posted by: Seraph | December 31, 2009 2:46 PM
He's had one since mid 2008, which was well before any "warning" was given.
From what I could tell from news reports, the "warning" given by his father was that his son had turned his back on his family and gone into a more fundamentalist form of Islam. That's really not enough information to predict that he had violent tendencies or that he was turning to terrorism as a behavior.
Posted by: gwangung | December 31, 2009 4:26 PM
DaveL wrote: "Has anyone ever suggested 'Bacon & a Beer' as an alternative?"
As I understand it, the Quran explicitly allows Muslims to be deceptive about their faith in order to preserve their lives. By extension, they are also permitted this in order to continue a holy mission. Therefore, any such test would be unreliable in detecting Islamic terrorists on a jihad. They would bite the bacon, down the beer, pat their stomachs, and board the plane.
True, some tests are harder than others. They might have trouble sipping from a vial of simulated menstrual blood. Personality and intelligence enter into it too, of course. I would guess that Richard Reid and John Walker Lindh would be less likely to pass such tests than Mohammed Atta. (OK, Atta is dead, but you know what I mean.)
TommyKey wrote: "The 9/11 hijackers all had hair cuts, were clean shaven and wore western clothing. They do their best to blend in."
Just so. I believe the 9/11 hijackers looked at porn and visited prostitutes while in the U.S. So it's hard to imagine a foolproof test.
Posted by: Chris Winter | December 31, 2009 5:00 PM
Arthur @ 14. I don't want a teapot. Can I has a unicorn instead?
Posted by: ambulocetacean | December 31, 2009 6:48 PM
Having a hard time finding something to blog about today, Ed? Looks like you went for not just the low hanging fruit, but the stuff that's been rotting on the ground for a month already.
Posted by: mroberts | December 31, 2009 8:07 PM
This must be the current right wing talking point. The Newt was on Meet the Press on Sunday pushing the same idea about terrorists being 100% muslim. He called out maybe 3 terrorist incidents and pointed out that the one thing they had in common was that the perpetrators were all muslim. Therefore, he "reasoned," all terrorists are muslim and they should be profiled.
He conveniently neglected to identify any incidents that did not fit his profile (mcveigh? bader-meinhof? tiller murder?) And surprise, surprise -- none of the other talking heads on the panel called him on it.
Posted by: Gerry L | December 31, 2009 8:23 PM
"Arthur @ 14. I don't want a teapot. Can I has a unicorn instead?"
There they go again. Atheists are worse than anarchists. You can never find to to agree on the tenets of their satanic religion.
Posted by: _Arthur | December 31, 2009 9:47 PM
He conveniently neglected to identify any incidents that did not fit his profile (mcveigh? bader-meinhof? tiller murder?) And surprise, surprise -- none of the other talking heads on the panel called him on it.
Gerry, Gerry, Gerry, surely you can put political correctness aside and acknowledge that the VAST majority of terrorist incidents today are perpetrated by Muslims. Terrorists can be found in virtually any group, but all the non-Muslim terrorist incidents combined are dwarfed by the amount of terrorism done in the name of Islam. It's just reality, and the world operates based on reality with no regard to political correctness or hurt feelings.
Posted by: mroberts | December 31, 2009 10:45 PM
I kinda agree, Ed. But maybe they should get their profiling up to scratch enough to criminalize those wh actually do crimes. Call me controversial...
Also, mroberts, as usual you're lying. You deliberately ignore such terrorist acts as are orchestrated by the likes of pastor parsley.
Posted by: eddie | December 31, 2009 11:50 PM
Well, if you count state-sanctioned terror as terror, then the U.S., dominated by white Christianists, would be way out in front of others in perpetrating terrorism. But one of the lessons of the past decade (which does in fact end next year) is that an act is only terrorism if it is performed by an approved enemy. The terrorism that we have done and that we do - well that just doesn't exist, because we have always maintained the best of intentions and therefore have only "committed crimes" or "made mistakes", or whatever euphemistic, politically-correct term that the cowards posing as cowboys want to employ.
Posted by: jws | January 1, 2010 1:35 AM
How exactly can you profile a person based on something non-appearance-based like religion? What, do all Muslims walk around wearing two-shirts saying "I love Islam?"
Posted by: daniel rotter | January 1, 2010 6:21 AM
Yes, but apparently sp is are all the costly and cumbersome "security theater" we've put up with since 2001. If they're going to subject me to useless security procedures, I'd much rather it be a BLT and a Guinness. ;)
Posted by: DaveL | January 1, 2010 8:45 AM
That's "so are all the costly and cumbersome".
Posted by: DaveL | January 1, 2010 8:47 AM
@#11 Michael
I don't want to start another argument here, I agree with you on most of what you say, but this is what I was disagreeing with in the last post. You're assuming that adding racial/ethnic profiling will actually help in finding terrorists, but adding another factor to the screening formula can just as easily hurt our effectiveness and efficiency in screening for terrorists. My argument has nothing to do with being politically correct, rather it's been that the potential pool for al qaeda recruits is so large (and diverse) that adding racial/ethnic profiling will end up making any efforts to find them less effective. (although, I agree with you that behavioral profiling should definitely be part of the formula)
Posted by: mxh | January 1, 2010 12:53 PM
"Gerry, Gerry, Gerry, surely you can put political correctness aside and acknowledge that the VAST majority of terrorist incidents today are perpetrated by Muslims. Terrorists can be found in virtually any group, but all the non-Muslim terrorist incidents combined are dwarfed by the amount of terrorism done in the name of Islam"
There are several hundred terrorist attacks per year. Can you show us numerical evidence that the vast majority are done by muslims? Have you ever looked at any such breakdown, or are you just reacting to what you see on the news?
Posted by: steve s | January 1, 2010 7:20 PM
Probably somewhere in excess of 90% of the Islamic terrorists are right-handed and male.
Why isn't the US profiling right-handed males?
Posted by: Ian Gould | January 2, 2010 7:19 AM
"Gerry, Gerry, Gerry, surely you can put political correctness aside and acknowledge that the VAST majority of terrorist incidents today are perpetrated by Muslims."
You can but it wouldn't be true.
While the US media focuses on Muslim terrorists (for the obvious reason that they target the US), the largest terrorist organisations in the world today and the ones that cause the most casualties are the Tamil Tigers (at least until the reason offensive by the Sri Lankan Government) and the Naxalites (Indian Marxists).
Posted by: Ian Gould | January 2, 2010 7:28 AM