That Feeling Of Being Under Suspicion

[Kire]

That Feeling
Of Being
Under Suspicion
What of "profiling" as an anti-terrorism forensic tool?

BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Friday, July 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

After the terrorist bombings in London, and the revelations that many of the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, I find that I am--for the first time in my life--part of a "group" that is under broad but emphatic visual suspicion. In other words, I fit a visual "profile," and the fit is most disconcerting.

The fact that I am neither Muslim nor Pakistani is irrelevant: Who except the most absurdly expert physiognomist or anthropologist could tell from my face that I am not an Ali, or a Mohammed, or a Hassan; that my ancestors are all from deepest South India; and that my line has worshipped not Allah but Lord Shiva--mightiest deity of the Hindu pantheon--for 2,000 years? I will be mistaken for Muslim at some point--just as earlier this week in Manhattan five young men were pulled off a sightseeing bus and handcuffed by police on suspicion that they might have been Islamist terrorists. Their names, published in the papers, revealed that they were in fact all Sikhs and Hindus--something few could have established by simply looking at them. (The Sikhs here were short-haired and unturbanned.)

What we had in this incident--what we must get used to--is a not irrational sequence: alarm, provoked by a belief that someone in the vicinity could do everyone around him great harm, followed instinctively by actions in which the niceties of social intercourse, the judgmental taboos that have been drilled into us, are set aside in the interest of self-preservation.

Terrorism has had many effects on society, and the foremost among them are philosophical, or spiritual. We are now called upon to adjust the way we live and think, and to do so we must also adjust the bandwidth of our tolerance. By this I don't mean that we must be less tolerant of others but that some among us must learn to tolerate--or put up with--hardships, inconvenience or a new set of presumptions, given the all-consuming nature of the threat we face, in which "the profiled" and "the profilers" alike are targets.

In evaluating the moral fitness of "profiling," I should stress that we are identifying people for scrutiny, not punishment. Recall the fate of Cinna the poet, in the Bard's "Julius Caesar," who is killed by a mob that believes him, because of his name, to be Cinna the conspirator. When scrutiny becomes stigma, and stigma leads to victimization, a clear jump to evil has occurred. This has not happened in America, and must not.

More: http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007032

[lvx35]

1. Poor Sikh's!

That must be the 199th time muslim's were confused with sikh's since 9/11. Aren't Sikh's non-violent? Regardless, its sad that people think "cloth on head" == terrorist.

[Kire]

4. I've heard stories that Sikh's carry swords in India.

...and when they decide to trample through town, jump out of the way. Maybe that's Punjabs...my friend's not around anymore for me to ask.

[lvx35]

5. Yeah, very well could be Sikhs.

Checked with Wikipedia out of curiosity, nothing about non-violence, so maybe they do. Who knows..

[wli]

2. we are all under suspicion

The Homeland Offense Gestapo and the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" are targeting everyone who dares not to toe the line.

[teryang]

3. Detaining people is a Fourth Amendment violation period

If you don't have a reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed, about to be committed, or has been committed, it is illegal for the state to detain someone.

If you want to scrutinize me, get a warrant from a judge.