For Pipes, more grouping and less nuance...

Submitted by Amjad M. Khan (United States), Jan 24, 2003 at 11:14

Mr. Pipes:

You lump all American Muslims together into a single cohesive group and then claim that *religious* profiling of them is justifiable. That's a very dangerous proposition. I think many people these days equate *religious* and *racial* profiling, particularly as it relates to Muslims. Arguments for religious profiling are of a far different bent than arguments for racial profiling.

Muslims are not a race of people! Muslims are Arabs, Iranians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangalis, Egyptians, Turks, Americans, and so on. If one is going to argue that *racial* profiling is justified, then one must address the issue of whether profiling Arab-Americans, for instance, is justified. Certainly, most of the 9/11 hijackers were of Arab or Middle Eastern background. You could make a case, although in my view still a tenuous one, that exigent circumstances justify profiling Arab-Americans. But you cannot use the same argument to justify profiling American Muslims as a group. The fact remains that the majority of Muslims in America are *not* Arab--they're South Asians or African-Americans. Moreover, the majority of Arab-Americans are *Christian*, not Muslim.

These distinctions are missing from your analysis.

-Amjad M. Khan
Cambridge, Mass.

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