Actually I did suggest what would work better – behavioral profiling, along with local, state, federal and cross country interpol cooperation. First and foremost it is a law enforcement issue and it takes monitoring over a period of time, which is how they caught the last two would be terrorists in NYC – one of whom was Latino. Again racially profiling for Middle Eastern men would not have caught the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, Jhad Jane, Virginia LeT guy who used to work for CAIR, and actually several others. It has been ALREADY a racially diverse group of terrorists. Also Middle Eastern people are in the US considered WHITE. So even if you still want to racially profile, you have to racially profile white people anyway.

The KKK IS about race. They are a white only group. So in this case it would make sense to look only for white people.

By the same token Al Qaeda is about religion. Are you saying you’d be okay if the profiling for airport security were strictly by religion ?

As an American, it’s important that you explain to them that it’s not because of any blind racial hatred that you have to go through this but because more than a negligible number of people who follow your religion indulged in some rather sad activities that unfortunately led to this mass stereotype about all Muslims. It’s sad but logical and to be expected.

The hardest thing about travel is explaining to them why I keep getting pulled aside for extra screening (probably because of the hijab), and why they aren’t allowed to come near me during then. Freaks the younger one to no end. And the TSA folks are not very sympathetic that there is a kid wailing for mommy.

The thing is, I never felt comfortable with the whole stand up and make my voice heard about things to protest. Because wouldn’t that mean I am putting myself up as a target – I might get in trouble with the TSA for being “un-American”

I think you are missing the point. Profiling is a composite tool, with gender/racial/religious/ethnic/behavioral data forming weighted factors in building an approximate model of the kind of terrorists one is looking for. To entirely sweep off any factor is short sighted. Depending on the context, the weightage attached to each factor is a sliding scale. Israel uses a bunch of these techniques to thwart attacks very successfully.Is any technique totally fool proof ? No. Like the line goes, every time you build a good mouse trap, a smarter mouse comes along. Does that mean you wont catch atleast some of the dumber mice ? No. So what do you suggest as a way to prevent and apprehend terrorists and prevent innocent people being sometimes harassed? Even cancer cures sometimes raise your risk for getting other kinds of cancer. Those are the breaks. Everybody knows what supposedly “will not work”. But nobody has any suggestions of what will work.

The KKK IS about race. They are a white only group. So in this case it would make sense to look only for white people.

Terrorism that we face now is NOT done by one racial group. The terrorist network is multiracial and multinational, those born into the faith who became radical and those who converted and then became radical. So racial profiling will not work when the organization is multiracial. Not only does it include men but another report wrote about terrorist recruiting women to implant explosives in the breast so to beat the super scanners airports have installed in places like Britain.

I am still trying to figure what makes her such a perceived risk