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- Saudi princess: What I'd change about my country by Staff writers, BBC
Profile Me
Once people who look like me stop blowing themselves up – then I’ll get upset at being profiled. Not before.
I never thought I’d write this but I have something in common with a member of the Young Fabians. Well, two things in common – but I promise you it stops there.
Shazia Yamin and I both have ‘Muslim sounding names’, as she so brashly articulates in her blog post on her recent visit to Israel. We also have both recently dealt with strict interrogation based on ‘racial profiling’ – though I contest that this was based on religion rather than race, we’ll use Shazia’s terminology for the sake of argument.
She writes about her recent ‘detention in the Muslim room’ while travelling to Israel – and goes so far as to say that while she ‘understands the need for Israel to contain security and terrorist risks’ that during her three hour wait, she felt an ‘invisible niqab of anger’ grow across her face. Pardon me for saying – this isn’t the calm rhetoric one would expect from this young leftist traveller. On the back of this, Yamin says she wonders whether the Israeli response to the security threat might exacerbate the threat it seeks to contain.
Yamin clearly does not understand the existential threat to the state of Israel as she so professes. Anyone with an iota of sense in this area could fully grasp why the border authorities would detain someone with Pakistani heritage and a Muslim name travelling with a political organisation based in the ‘delegitimisation capital of the Western world’.
My own experiences when recently travelling at short notice to the United States last month was not dissimilar, though I’ll give Shazia the fact that Israel is stricter – the Transport Security Administration (TSA) weren’t exactly all smiles when they found fifty pages of terrorist profiles in my hand luggage (research for work which I had read on the plane).
After a thorough bag search, almost identical to the one Shazia describes, I was on my way. I can’t help but wondering if she kicked up more of a fuss, rather than simply complying. Either way, here’s the kicker...
People with names like Raheem Kassam and Shazia Yamin are those responsible for atrocities that Israel experiences week upon week, as Kassam rockets themselves hail down on Israeli civilians. Why in heaven’s name should Israeli or American security be concerned with what John Smith is doing in their country, when the most virulent threat emerges from people who look and sound like me? I’m all for this kind of profiling.
As an Iranian friend once said to me within the confines of the British Parliament no less, “Once people who look like me stop blowing themselves up – then I’ll get upset at being profiled. Not before.” Hear hear.
Shazia’s blog post then delves into the ridiculous as she uses the BBC Question Time audience, usually a gaggle of hard leftists and welfare statists, to vindicate her ‘niqab of anger’. ‘This type of profiling would cause an outcry on BBC Question Time in the UK’, she adds – as if this were a representative or even sane model upon which to base your political analyses.
I urge that Shazia try to use models which are at least somewhat comparable. Britain and Israel are not under the same existential threat, even though both are under threat from domestic and international terrorism.
Ten years ago on Sunday, nineteen men with Muslim names boarded US aircraft and flew them into government buildings and the two towers that stood tall over the New York skyline. Since then, people with Muslim sounding names have gone on to radicalise, terrorise and delegitimize Western nations and Israel over and over again.
That isn’t to say that John Smith or Sean O’Connor pose no threat – but the response must remain proportionate to the evidence.
Ten years is one second on the clock of geopolitics. I for one hope that until jihadist threats against the West are truly diminished, that Western and Israeli authorities will not stop profiling visitors into their countries.
Raheem Kassam is the Executive Editor of The Commentator and tweets at @RaheemJKassam
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Terrorists do everything possible not to fit the profile. If you announce what you’re looking for, the terrorists will recruit exactly what you’re not looking for.
what a self serving piece...
"I for one hope that until jihadist threats against the West are truly diminished, that Western and Israeli authorities will not stop profiling visitors into their countries"
[Of the] 83 terrorist attacks in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three…were clearly connected with the jihadist cause. (The RAND database includes Abdulmutallab’s failed Christmas Day attempt to detonate a bomb on an airplane.) The other jihadist plots were interrupted by authorities.
Shazia needs to keep things in perspective. She is quite wrong if she thinks El Al's profiling is narrow. My friend and I are non-muslim, white, Brits. One of us has names so English it's almost stereotypical, the other has one - possibly - Jewish name. We're both women, we're hardly teenagers. We've flown El Al twice and on both occasions one or both of us had 'extra' questioning. Much of the profiling El Al does is psychological. You have no idea what they are looking for or how it works. We actively choose El Al because of it. I find it reassuring even when I'm the subjecct of it. If Shazia took the time to investigate this, she'd find even well-travelled journalists such as Michael J Totten have a tale or five to tell about being detained and questioned. If you've nothing to hide, really, you've nothing to fear.
i'm jewish, my family lives in israel and i live in australia and every time i visit i am interrogated because i look like a freak but i never complain, i never mind that the authorities there are being good at their job, i don't think it's a major problem. the last thing i want is to be having a beer in mikes bar and blown up by some one on a tourist visa from england. people should get real about israel instead of looking for issues to complain about.
I am a white British guy (I also happen to be a Catholic, but that’s neither here nor there). 22 years ago I spent several weeks in Israel backpacking; when I got to Ben Gurion Airport for my return trip, I too was put in what she calls “The Muslim Room”. I was interrogated for about 3 hours by 4 different people and my stuff was taken away to be examined. They were very polite and (paraphrasing) said we’re trying to contain terror threats – you don’t have evidence (hotel receipts etc) of where you have been; you are the right age to be a potential suspect; your pattern of travel is unusual; so we are interested in you. I just stayed polite and answered their questions and eventually they let me go and said sorry for the hold up, please understand this is really also for your safety as terrorism is a real threat here.
About 10 years later I was travelling on business to Israel. On my return to the airport I had a letter of invitation from a local company, business cards of people I met, receipts from hotels & restaurants – and I still got interrogated by the security people for about 1 hour. I guess I was on a database from the last time. And you know what? I didn’t mind. Ever since passengers got slaughtered by gunmen inside the terminal at Ben Gurion in 1972 the Israelis have taken security very seriously. I would prefer they took me aside on the grounds I was suspicious, for whatever reason, than didn’t check because they were worried about being accused of racism. Because that way I am unlikely to be killed by a wingnut Islamist Jihadi or Shining Path fellow traveller on the loose. Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists, but sadly, these days, nearly all terrorists are Muslim. So profiling people and disproportionately checking Muslims makes sense – because that is where the threat is most likely to originate. Holding up 93 year old seventh day adventist grannies from Barbados because they happen to be passenger no. 422 on your random check list, while young people of (say) Saudi origin walk past unchecked, is just nuts. I daresay when Muslims stop blowing people up, security people will stop worrying about Muslims.
Profiling is what it's all about to prevent terrorist outrages. Unfortunately Shazia is used to the MET, who are so terrified of being accused of being rascist, will seek to ensure that they annoy the hell out of the whole of Londoners rather than profile and act accordingly. Example, stopping and searching grannies and other old people or professional Anglo-Saxons who do not have a track record of blowing themselves and property to smithereens. The attitude of Raheem Kassam is exemplary and needs to be made a basic informative act to all, so that profiling can be understand for what it is, intelligent/smart policing which uses resources effectively.
This is 21st century and Internet Information age. No one believe your TAQUIA of deception. We all know that Islam is a religion of Peace & if we don't agree we all know what happen. Try it with muslim appeasing media and politicians.
If I came through a UK airport in 1940 with the name Hermann Goering I would expect to be stopped. It certainly isn't pleasant or fair, but in an airport or other transport hub, a name a beard or a scarf are nowadays the equivalent of a Nazi armband then. When ultra-devout Muslims stop placing their religious imperatives ahead of our lives and safety, the practice will, thankfully, stop.
I am an Israeli Jew. Under certain circumtances, which I will not detail for obvious reasons, I can expect to be searched and questioned before boarding an El Al flight to or from Israel, or any other flight bound for Israel. On entering any commercial building or business in Israel I will voluntarily open my bag for inspection. This is so automatic, by now, that I feel uncomfortable not to be checked when I am abroad. I am especially nervous when entering underground mass-transport systems in Europe with absolutely no security checks. Ms. Shazia Yamin can complain all she likes.
People always say they understand Israel's need for security then proceed to get angry at the things Israel has to do to maintain that security. These people do not mean what they say, they just don't want to sound as if they don't care. They generally say that rather dismissively before going to articulate what they're really angry about which is that Israel exists.
It's not so much profiling as it is determining which passengers pose little threat. There is no need to put Joe Shmo under the microscope, so let him through with minimal screening. Unfortunately, when Jihad Shahid comes through the line, he's going to get scrutinized, because statistically, he's more of a potential threat. Hey, if my daughter brings home a guy covered in tattoos and driving a motorcycle, I'm going to check him out more closely, and if he doesn't like it, he doesn't have to hang around with her.
I read this and Shazia's pieces with interest. I visited Jerusalem on work in late June and was impressed, but a little surprised at the diversity of security practices. Just to add; I try to look at both sides of this tangled debate. Interestingly on the way 'in' there was not as much questionning as I thought there would be, but on the way 'out' the queue I was in and the degree of security checks meant something that would take an hour in UK took over three hours there. This I did not mind. I also have a very english sounding name and look as pasty as the next englishman. However, the Israeli authorities do have a right to be strict at their airport - my advice is NEVER try and take a laptop through as you will be detained for a looooooooong time! On the other hand, while in Israel there is an over-abundance of unfair security measures meted out on the Palestinian population. Certainly when we visited Bethlehem there were significant and unnecessary security checks on us and our vehicle (this is based on the fact that the organisation I was with exists in Jerusalem and is very well known, therefore making the checks unnecessary). As for racial profiling, I think it just makes sense. Much to the chargrin of my leftie friends it seems ridiculous to target less likely sections of the population for potential perpetrators. So if there's an EDL or BNP rally going on near me and I get stopped as part of a typical racial type for that then I'm ok with it. However, I don't want the sense spoken here in this article to undermine the need to recognise how badly the Palestinian population is treated in Israel by the auhtorities. Something perhaps Shazia was trying to elucidate, but did a woeful job in doing so.
Just a frtehur couple of thoughts that perpetuate and encourage the false Muslim Islamic claim:The number one lie is the modern subversive teaching of Replacement theology with the false idea that the Jews and Israel have no place in Biblical eschatology and that Israel has been replaced by the church.Number two lie is the new ecumenism called Chrislam with Christians and Muslim Islamists worshiping and praying together.These two ideas are spreading like wildfire and only inflame the Muslim push to overrun Israel.In Jesus Christ eternally, Jack
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The sub-heading says it all. I lived in Kilburn in London, a full-on Irish area, in the 70s. During this time when the IRA were running riot, the police had a heavy presecence there profiling Irishmen, and in other Irish areas of Britain - they weren't looking at Pakistanis. I myself was stopped at Heathrow in '91 with an Irish name and Irish passport upon my return from Jordan - a perfectly understandable reason to stop an Irishman at the time. I was carted off for 30 minutes of detailed questioning by special branch. So what? I didn't care. Muslims need to stop whining and get on with it.