Courage in Profiles

Hooray for Canadian law enforcement!

Hooray for profiling!

As the story unfolds of the arrest of 17 suspected Islamic terrorists and the seizure of a huge cache of explosive materials, Canadians, Americans, and free men everywhere can be thankful that the Canadian police and intelligence services had the courage to profile.

We don't know a lot of details yet, and frankly, I hope we don't learn too much about the method and manner of this investigation (we've told the enemy far too much already in this war), but it seems clear that Canadian security services were looking very closely at certain types of men. Gosh, it seems they were all "Middle Eastern types" and, as the Washington Post reported, they "all had Arabic names."

H-m-m-m.

As we have pointed out before here despite all the pretended piety over profiling, it continues to be one of the most important tools of preventive law enforcement.

Even when those rare exceptions that prove the rule are taken into account, profiling is efficient and effective.

Yes, it's problematic, too. A recent article by Neil MacFarquhar, of the New York Times, was headlined in my local paper "Muslims find travel in U.S. tough on psyche."

The story notes that while getting through airports and across borders has been tougher for everyone since 9/11, "Muslim Americans say they are having a harder time than most, sometimes facing an intimidating maze of barriers, if not outright discrimination."

Well the fact is law enforcement must discriminate as never before. It must make clear distinctions. It must differentiate. It must perceive the distinguishing features of terrorists and would-be terrorists. Unfortunately, thanks to the Islamofascists and the indelible and undeniable fingerprints they have left in New York, Washington, London, Madrid and elsewhere around the globe, square one in this exercise is usually at some mosque, where Muslims, usually of Arabic descent, gather.

In this particular case, a "store front" mosque in Mississauga, Ontario, the Al Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, has been reported as the regular meeting place of 6 of the 17 persons arrested in the alleged terrorist plot to blow up various important sites in and around Toronto.

Canadian authorities are well aware that a number of investigations of possible Muslim plots in the past have come apart after initial arrests were made. They are taking this case very seriously, and it seems they would not have risked clandestine assets and made it public unless a clear and present danger existed.

But their initial reluctance to release much information has of course aroused anger and suspicion among Canadian Muslims and inevitable speculation in both the American and Canadian press about the validity of the plot.

The imam of a suburban Toronto mosque told the New York Times "we are being targeted not because of what we've done, but because of who we are and what we believe in."

Well... no. And... yes. Canadian Muslims are not being "targeted." Certain Muslims in Canada are being singled out because they appear to have been targeting the Canadian people and their institutions. They are being singled out because they believe in the cold-blooded murder of anyone who does not share their beliefs. They are being singled out because of their quaint belief that a solidly packed container of ammonium nitrate with a detonator attached is somehow a petition for redress of imagined grievances. They are the profile within the profile.

Just as many innocent Muslims must put up with the unfair onus of guilt by association and the blind anger of a small corner of the public (mosques vandalized etc.), so Canadian law enforcement must put up with the unfair and ignorant accusations that they are somehow, preying on Muslims as a whole. In the fetid atmosphere of political correctness that seems to have settled over much of Canada, that takes real courage.

The point is, even if this whole Canadian investigation somehow were to unravel, the grim, quiet, veiled and sometimes untidy life-and-death struggle that the security services have been waging -- a struggle that involves profiling and skillful discrimination -- is right, vital and necessary and must continue.

Ralph Kinney Bennett is a TCS contributing editor.