On racial profiling

Top solicitor Stephen Grosz presents the case against 'racial profiling' as a weapon in the fight against terrorism. Norm is impressed. Grumpy less so.

Scenario One: a woman has been raped and murdered in my neighbourhood. With no leads to go on, the police knock on my door, wanting to eliminate me from their enquiries. Would it be reasonable for me to refuse to cooperate unless they spend an equal amount of time eliminating my wife?

Scenario Two: a spate of terrorist attacks have in common the fact that they were all committed by Zimbabwean Jewish emeritus professors. Would it be a gross violation of Norm's human rights if the police were to take a certain amount of interest in him?

My point: equality of suspicion is a bogus human right, because it requires the police to treat a falsehood as truth and, carried to its logical conclusion, would make their job virtually impossible. It's a copper's job to suspect all of us (which is of course why socializing with them is not a universally popular pastime), but to suspect some more than others.

There's been an interesting moving of goalposts here. The original campaign against stop and search was based on the premise that young black men were being targetted for no better reason than the average copper's penchant for a spot of racial harassment. How far this was true and how far the perception was systematically promoted by people with a political agenda to discredit the police is a question which I leave open. The point is that to the extent that it was true it was wholly unacceptable.

In the fight against terrorism, on the other hand, it is absolutely clear that this is not the case. The 'profile' has not been invented by the police, it has been created by the criminals themselves.

For al-Qaida, I regret to say, is not an equal opportunities employer. It does not delay an operation until it can fill the post of Bomber with a Chinese lesbian. Allowing the police to act on this knowledge in the interests of preventing mass murder does not mean giving them a licence for harassment. But Grosz is not interested in drawing the distinction. The victims (with or without quotes) of profiling are equally entitled in both cases to cry 'racism' and find themselves a good human rights lawyer.

Of course racial profiling is an admission of failure - that it is better to proceed on the basis of evidence against specific individuals falls squarely under the heading of the Bleeding Obvious. The question is, what are the police to do when no such evidence is available? Stopping young Muslim men at random is a highly inefficient use of police time. Stopping random members of the population as a whole is about a hundred times more inefficient.

And how far are we take the 'no profiling' argument? Is it legitimate for the police to interest themselves in particular Islamist organizations or particular mosques, even if it is clear that the majority of members/worshippers are not terrorists? There are evidently plenty of Muslims for whom this is already a step too far.

Remember we are talking about a matter of life and death (for young Muslim men just as for everybody else), and remember we are talking about the usage of limited resources. Wasting police time is an offence. We should not be forcing the police to commit it.

Of course there is another argument against profiling. '[T]argeting causes resentment and disaffection' says Grosz, delicately declining to spell out an implication that sits distinctly uncomfortably with the rest of his argument: if resentment and disaffection are caused within a group from which terrorists are already disproportionately drawn, who knows what forms of expression they may find? Once we go down this route we leave the discourse of human rights far behind.

We would do well to remember also that resentment and disaffection are not necessarily the sole preserve of minorities. If political correctness (which, pace Grosz, is what his argument amounts to) is perceived to be overriding the protection of life and limb, the explosive mixture of resentment and disaffection with mistrust and fear is likely to lead to more, not fewer, incidents of the flight 613 variety.

Thanks for Deliverance

I know that not everything is what it seems at first sight, and that the police make mistakes (my goodness, there's not much chance of our being allowed to forget, is there?). But it's surely not too soon to respond to today's police operation in England with congratulations and thanks - remembering that others are not so fortunate.

11/7

So, today it's Mumbai's turn (again). I don't think there are any Indian troops in Iraq, so presumably Kashmir is the excuse. Will the legitimate-grievancers at last understand that there'll always something to be angry about, and what makes the difference is what your belief system tells you you can do with your anger?

Department of the Bleeding Obvious

Even more sensiblism from the Observer. You might think it too obvious to need saying that ordinary Iraqis are not in mourning for a man who dedicated himself to butchering them. But of course there are those for whom it is anything but obvious. So due credit to Jason Burke for saying so (via), and pointing out:

'Unless we lapse into ugly prejudices about Muslims being inherently fanatic, this should not surprise us.'

Reality check

'Two years ago, Spanish police tried to storm an apartment in which they believed terrorist suspects were hiding. Preferring death to custody, the fugitives blew themselves up, killing a policeman in the process.'

- the Observer, whose leader column is, on a good day, an oasis of sanity in the Grauniad empire, putting the Forest Gate cock-up into context. If you're suffering from moonbattery withdrawal symptoms, just scroll down to the comments.

Number crunching

“I don’t believe that I have to justify everything I write, line by line and word by word.

“It may offend people sometimes but I will speak from the heart and speak the truth. And if speaking the truth is upsetting community relations, then I hold my hands up to that."

The fighting words of Sayeeda Warsi, in response to the charge that she has been upsetting community relations by feeding her fellow Muslims with inflammatory, er, lies about the detention of terror subjects.

Who she? Someone whom Dave Cameron is very keen to get into Parliament.

'She had believed that her detention statistics were correct at the time she wrote the Awaaz article, she said'.

And let's face it, getting 'nine hundred' confused with 'zero' is the kind of mistake anyone can make. This lady has a glittering political career ahead of her.

(hat tip: Stephen Pollard)

Tough love from Madeleine

Who'd'a' thought it? Madeleine Bunting lecturing young Muslims on 'tough love' under the headline 'Why Muslims must guard against the satisfactions of complaint'.

But don't worry, our Madeleine of the Sorrows (Norman Geras, not me) hasn't moved too far out of character. This is a gem:-

'As alcohol consumption has soared in the past two decades, Muslims have been left to negotiate its centrality in British social life - at work, school or university, or as neighbours - with great difficulty. Alcohol is probably now one of the most effective and unquestioned forms of exclusion practised in the UK, affecting every kind of social network.'

Speaking personally, I find a little pub culture goes a long way, so I do have a degree of sympathy. But it has never before occurred to me to complain of exclusion. And I have no idea what the best guess for Alcoholics Anonymous's UK membership is, but they certainly make up a substantial constituency of the 'socially excluded'.

It really isn't a problem to go to the pub and not drink, is it? But maybe it gets more difficult if your beliefs confer moral superiority over the drinkers. And could it be that part of the real problem with pub culture lies elsewhere - in the unregulated mixing of the sexes, say?

Then there's this:-

'And then there are the thinly concealed intentions; for example, the government's current proposals to regulate "places of worship" aimed at mosques is an unprecedented intrusion of the state into the affairs of a religious institution that could take Muslim alienation to a whole new level. '

Well, I think you'll find that state interference in religion has plenty of precedent in British history - the terms 'Dissenter' and 'Nonconformist' reflect some pretty hefty levels of social and political exclusion, after all. But I grant that the phenomenon of place of worship as terrorist recruitment office doesn't have too many recent precedents as an argument for interference.

SteeleWatch: that al-Qaida letter

As a pendant to his rubbishing of the Iraqi referendum, al-Grauniad's Jonathan Steele turns to the letter supposedly sent by al-Qaida's 'moderate' second-in-command to the boys in Iraq.

Says Jonathan: 'Whether the letter is fake or not, the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.'

Let's have that once again: 'the targeting issue certainly resonates in Iraq.' There's a phrase for you to savour over the weekend.

Al-Grauniad latest

Today's haul is a mixture of the predictable and the bizarre.

There is naturally deep concern over whether poor Saddam will get a fair trial. People who should know better have been going around calling him a murderer.

And if found guilty he faces a death penalty. Well, I'm an abolitionist myself. Did you know that China executes around 2,000 people every year? Just thought I'd mention it.

Now for the bizarre. Reading Craig Murray's piece, I conclude that the long march through the institutions has not spared the diplomatic service. But are we not rather scraping the barrel here, Seumas? The government thinks it's banning a dangerous terrorist organization, Craig and Seumas think it's banning an organization that doesn't exist. So everybody's happy, right? Or is the point that if the Islamic Jihad Union did exist, we would want to make sure it was legal so we could commission an occasional column from it?

"Study examines hate crime effect"

Great news for those bereaved, maimed or traumatized by the hate criminals of 7 July. £100,000 is going to be spent on finding out exactly how bad you feel! So long as you belong to an ethnic minority.

And you never know, a couple of quid may be left over to study the effects of verbal abuse and minor assaults.

Or am I missing something here?

al-Grauniad latest

Lost my breakfast again today. This time thanks to one Naima Bouteldja, who tells me Yusuf al-Qaradawi is 'widely regarded as a moderate and one of the most respected scholars in the Muslim world' - after all he only supports suicide bombings when they kill Jews, I mean Israelis.

Stand by for bleating about a 'shoot to kill policy'. I mean come on, if you've cornered a would-be suicide bomber on a crowded train, all you need to do is talk nicely to him and tell him you feel his pain...

Ken: We Asked For It

Can the newt change his spots? It's back to mayoral business as usual in Londonistan, and smooth operator Ken is not going to throw away all those years spent cultivating the Muslim vote in order to tell them some home truths.

Common Sense

Having for once got out of bed the right side this morning, Mr G commends the measured and sensible words of four Muslim MPs.

Iraq, Osama, etc., etc.

So, 24 kids blown up in Baghdad. That'll teach them to accept sweets from strangers, eh? Let's see how the moral equivalence brigade in the Guardian and Indie process this one.

I particularly appreciated the way yesterday's Independent enabled Daw'ud Abdullah Mannion of Sheffield to present Al-Qa'ida's surrender terms to its readers:-

Osama bin Laden is very clear in his demands: remove western support for these evil tyrants in the Muslim world, withdraw the occupying troops and the attacks on the west will stop. It really is that simple. Muslims around the world are rightfully angry with the west, including Britain, and whilst our unjust foreign
policy continues, some of that anger will boil over into evil acts such as those seen in London on Thursday.

Is there still a crime of treason on the statute book, or did it get abolished as inappropriate to a multi-cultural society? I'm against capital punishment, but, as somebody recently remarked to me, they hanged Lord Haw-Haw.

Numbers game

Reading through today's Observer, I've already been informed twice in three articles that the Muslim Council of Great Britain has received 30,000 hate mails since Thursday. This may sound like the pot calling the kettle black coming from a blogger, but excuse me: 50-plus people dead, and these guys are spending their time reading and classifying 30,000 e-mails??

Frontlash

As part of its drive to assimilate yesterday’s events into its readers’ worldview, the Guardian is already fretting about a backlash against the British Muslim community, and quoting various Muslim spokespersons who seem determined to get their victimhood in first. Of course nobody ought to face abuse, let alone violence, because of their religion following the attacks, and I can understand Muslims fearing that the next few days are not going to be easy for them. But let’s just put things into perspective.

Obviously there are no figures yet, but it is virtually inevitable that significant numbers of Muslims are among the dead and injured. I don’t see the slightest grounds for fearing that British Muslims will suffer anything in the coming days and weeks remotely comparable with what they suffered yesterday.

Let’s also remember the true story of the 9/11 backlash. Muslims killed in the WTC: hundreds. Murders in America suspected of being motivated by hostility towards Muslims: three (one of the victims was a Sikh). Murders in Britain: nil. Mosque burnings in New York: nil. Mosque burnings in America: nil (here are some American Muslims whining regardless instead of celebrating American tolerance). Mosque burnings anywhere: nil.

Then the Americans went into Afghanistan to remove the regime that had played open house to al-Qaeda. That’s when the real backlash began. In a series of attacks on churches in 2002 more than 40 mostly poor and marginalized Pakistanis paid the ultimate price for sharing George Bush’s religion. And then there was Bali…

I don’t believe more than a tiny minority of British Muslims are potential terrorists. But I do know that 15,801 East Enders made it possible for George Galloway to re-enter Parliament on a platform of open support for the people who are orchestrating bomb attacks in Iraq on a daily basis. I think they need to be asked whether yesterday made them more or less sure that they did the right thing. And let’s not have fainting fits over the news that people have been rattling the railings of Finsbury Park Mosque. True, the mosque has been under new management since February and should be given a chance to make a fresh start, but before then it was al-Qaeda’s London chaplaincy, where bombers made contacts and Abu Hamza al-Masri preached the sermons which led to his appearance in court on Tuesday facing 10 criminal charges. The Guardian may feel it is holy ground, but personally I think I can understand people feeling just a little peeved.

OK, I've said my piece. For more, read Norman Geras.