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Should We Religiously Profile?
Townhall.com ^ | December 9, 2015 | Ben Shapiro

Posted on 12/09/2015 1:42:36 PM PST by Kaslin

Months ago, a concerned American at a school in Texas spotted a 14-year-old Muslim boy toting around a contraption that looked very much like a bomb. That Texan called the police, who came and detained the boy; after learning that the boy's device was actually a disassembled clock, they released him.

Weeks ago, a concerned American in San Bernardino spotted a "half-dozen Middle Eastern men" in the area of an apartment housing Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. He didn't know what they were doing there, but they seemed suspicious. He didn't call the cops.

In San Bernardino, of course, that political correctness ended in the death of 14 Americans and the wounding of 21 more. In Texas, that failure to bow to political correctness ended in the attorney general of the United States vowing to track down and investigate the local police department.

Welcome to politically correct America, where you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Political correctness costs lives. It doesn't merely require us to abide by the strictures of an arbitrary linguistic code. It isn't just an irritation. It means that we're all supposed to frontally lobotomize ourselves to basic realities. We're supposed to pretend that there's nothing more suspicious about a half-dozen Middle Eastern males coming and going at odd hours from an apartment with a small child than there would be if a half-dozen white males did the same thing. We're supposed to cave to the fantasy that a religious Muslim reaching out to terrorists over the internet poses no more threat than a Christian visiting a pro-life website. We're supposed to blind ourselves in order to avoid the obvious.

That costs lives.

Now, this doesn't mean that we ought to discriminate against individual Muslims, of course. But it does mean that law enforcement ought to look at indicators of possible terrorist connections, and that one preliminary indicator is religious practice of Islam. That indicator isn't sufficient to determine connection to terrorism -- far from it. No single indicator generally is. But behavioral profiling involves investigating a variety of factors. As Daniel Wagner, CEO of Risk Solutions, writes about Israel's profiling techniques, "Departing passengers [at Ben Gurion Airport] are questioned by highly trained security agents before they reach the check-in counter. These interviews could last as little as one minute or as long as an hour, based on such factors as age, race, religion and destination."

Ignoring any of these factors represents incompetence.

But the president wants to use the force of law to enshrine incompetence. He suggests that to assess risk differently based on religious observance is somehow a violation of basic American principles, rather than a time-tested technique of all human relations. We obviously must remain on guard for baseless bias and persecution without evidence. But we can't ignore the realities of risk assessment in the name of cultural sensitivity, either.

That's how we end up with the utter stupidity of an MSNBC host suggesting that media stop showing pictures of the San Bernardino female shooter so as not to link her hijab-clad visage with Islam. That's how we end up with Obama suggesting that our own Islamophobia causes terrorism, rather than radical Islam. Most importantly, that's how we end up with more dead Americans.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: elections; immigration; muslims; pc; pckills; religion; terrorism; terrorists; trump; trumpwasright
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1 posted on 12/09/2015 1:42:36 PM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Yes, we should profile and not just by religion, also by whether you are a commie or not.


2 posted on 12/09/2015 1:44:26 PM PST by BuffaloJack (ISLAM is the ENEMY.)
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To: Kaslin

Israel profiles. That is why their airlines are the safest in the world.


3 posted on 12/09/2015 1:44:36 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Islam is the military wing of the Communist party.)
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To: Kaslin

Yes, and we already are. How many Christian refugee immigrants has the Islamic theocrat in our White House allowed into the country?


4 posted on 12/09/2015 1:46:26 PM PST by ManHunter (You can run, but you'll only die tired... Army snipers: Reach out and touch someone)
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To: Kaslin

Religiously Profile?

Whoa. Shapiro is way off the mark here. Islam has NOTHING to do with religion.

Islam is a political law based on hatred and violence. It might masquerade as a religion, but that’s only to fool the idiots.


5 posted on 12/09/2015 1:47:35 PM PST by Responsibility2nd (With Great Freedom comes Great Responsibility)
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To: Kaslin

If the killers are coming from a particular religious sect, damned right we should profile!


6 posted on 12/09/2015 1:49:13 PM PST by ThePatriotsFlag ( Anything FREELY-GIVEN by the government was TAKEN from someone else)
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To: Kaslin
Should We Religiously Profile?

NO, We just shouldn't allow cults like Islam/Nazism/Communism to exist anywhere in world. You know, the ones who kill anyone who doesn't go along with their fascist beliefs. It's NOT rocket science.

7 posted on 12/09/2015 1:49:15 PM PST by amorphous
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To: Kaslin

How about we profile those who will not swear allegiance to our Constitution and Country?


8 posted on 12/09/2015 1:52:08 PM PST by goodnesswins (hey..Wussie Americans....ISIS is coming. Are you ready?)
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To: Kaslin

Yes, except that Islam is not a religion.


9 posted on 12/09/2015 1:53:36 PM PST by SgtHooper (Anyone who remembers the 60's, wasn't there!)
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To: Kaslin

Gee. I seem to recall that in order for the Utah Territory to achieve statehood, they had to relinquish a certain tenet of their religion - polygamy.

So, it has been done before. We can do it again.


10 posted on 12/09/2015 2:07:45 PM PST by Paisan
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To: Kaslin

If you see something, bury your head up your a$$.


11 posted on 12/09/2015 2:09:25 PM PST by Uncle Miltie (0bama "more interested in promoting homosexuality in the military than he is in defeating our enemy")
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To: Kaslin

When a religion, ANY religion calls for wiping people off the face of the earth- and preaches that it’s a duty to kill ‘infidels’, then perhaps it’s time to profile


12 posted on 12/09/2015 2:10:38 PM PST by Bob434
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To: Kaslin

Hell no. But we definitely should keep out those who are sworn enemies of Judeo-Christian society and whose spiritual leaders wish to dominate the earth and kill all non-believers.


13 posted on 12/09/2015 2:11:32 PM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to to God!)
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To: Kaslin

Islam is a world system, not a religion.


14 posted on 12/09/2015 2:12:05 PM PST by stars & stripes forever (Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lor)
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To: Kaslin

We should definitely filter on political views mohamheadism is a political ideology. muslimes hold a violent political view called islam. Keep ‘em out for the same reason you keep out nazis and anarchists.


15 posted on 12/09/2015 2:12:54 PM PST by Sirius Lee (Cruz or Lose 2016)
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To: Kaslin

I will use the term “islamophobia” for this comment even though I disagree with the term. It is not irrational to be on guard against an ideology that wants to kill you.

The question is: Which came first islamophobia or islamic terrorism?


16 posted on 12/09/2015 2:16:47 PM PST by joshua c (Please dont feed the liberals)
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To: Kaslin

Actually political correctness grew out of the civil rights movement and is a primarily used to protect black criminals from arrest and prosecution

The very word black is a politically correct homoginizer


17 posted on 12/09/2015 2:19:13 PM PST by Thibodeaux (this time really is different)
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To: Kaslin

YES

It used to be routine language in the application process for U.S. visas “ Are you , or were you ever a member of the Nazi Party ? “ Later on that changed to “ Are you , or were you ever a member of the Communist Party “

These were intelligent questions to ask .

These days we should profile for muslims in the same way as they have become proven deadly enemies , to the levels of the Nazis and the Commies .


18 posted on 12/09/2015 2:21:03 PM PST by LeoWindhorse
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To: Kaslin

“should we religiously profile?”

We should profile religiously.


19 posted on 12/09/2015 2:24:02 PM PST by KrisKrinkle (Blessed be those who know the depth and breadth of their ignorance. Cursed be those who don't.)
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To: Kaslin
Progressives profile Christians, why the hell not muzzies! You don`t see Christians flying jets into buildings or strapping on suicide belt bombs.
20 posted on 12/09/2015 2:25:09 PM PST by nomad
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