Sunday, August 27, 2006

Grass roots profiling

The always fascinating Theodore Dalrymple comments in The City Journal on an incident which occurred recently on an airplane:

British passengers on a flight from Malaga to Manchester did a little impromptu terrorist profiling recently. Some already on the aircraft got off, while those waiting to get on refused to do so, until the flight crew removed from the plane two apparently South Asian young men who seemed to be talking Arabic.

The press has widely condemned the action of the skittish passengers. After all, the two young men had gone through searches like everybody else. Besides, there are many Muslims and very few suicide bombers. . .

. . . By their action, they drew attention to two concerns. The first is the cowardly failure of the British government to oppose implacably the spread of Islamic extremism within Britain. The second is the unwillingness of Britain’s Muslims to recognize without equivocation that something evil is at work among them—something that has a relationship to their religion. . .

. . . The Islamists will use the episode to dramatize not the consequences of what they themselves preach but rather the West’s insuperable prejudice against Muslims. The extremists want a polarized world with a fight to the finish, which they assume they will win, having, as they suppose, God on their side.

This was a small twist in the downward spiral toward such a possible apocalypse, for which the pusillanimity of the government and Muslim tolerance of extremism will be as responsible as the extremists themselves.

First of all good for the passengers!

They have shown the rest of us the way. If our governments are too politically correct to protect us we have the option of protecting ourselves. There is no reason that we have to put up with Arab/Muslims who board planes and then deliberately act in a way which is designed to arouse suspicions.

The "Asians" were wearing heavy winter coats despite the fact that they were boarding a plane in the part of Spain known as the "Sun Coast" in August. They chattered to each other in Arabic while casting furtive glances at the other passengers. Source

What reason - other than an utterly craven capitulation to a blindly suicidal conception of multicultural orthodoxy - could have compelled passengers, many with their children, to have remained in their seats, docile as sheep, while the plane lifted off?

None, so they refused to fly with people who gave them good reason to feel afraid. And these people are from a nation where it is a punishable crime to lift a hand up in self defense against a murderer or rapist.

Again, way to go Brits! Now elect some people with as much sense as you have, repeal the gun control laws and close your borders and I'll stop saying that it is too late for you.