Terror Alerts

This morning I read a thought provoking article entitled "Face up to your problems, Muslims told", by London's former Police Chief.

The article basically suggests that British Muslims must face up to the fact that the terrorists in Great Britian are Muslim. And the Muslim community must make a greater effort to weed out the extremists in it's own midst or they will face an even greater backlash from security forces.

It makes some other points including the need for racial profiling for terrorism, which is a problematic area and is discriminatory in itself. This comment above all others is of greatest concern.

Any minority group has extremists in it's midst, and the statement will obviously concern decent peace loving Muslims, but will this have the affect of making the Muslim community open up and identify the extremists in their midst?

Racial profiling in the United States is used continually to harass and intimidate non caucasian citizens becasue they fit a racial "stereotype". We must be concerned as gay community of stereotyped profiling as we are subjected to this in many cases too.

However when faced with simple hard cold facts that suggest the greatest threat of terrorism today are a specific racial group then a closer scrutiny of people fitting this bill is warranted.

BUT - and here is the but, not all of the terrorists arrested fit the racial profile. Some of those arrested were white males who ahd converted to Islam. So would they have been picked up if racial profile was the only factor being used?

This current state of hysteria relating to the newest terror threat in the skies is justified for the time being. Although liquid explosives are nothing new, in 1995 a terrorist tried to use liquid explosives to blow up a plane, we can understand right now that there is an issue to be addressed.

This will just make air travel even more painful than it already is. I don't travel internationally more than twice a year on average, but the boy travels internationally at least once a month if not more. So the changes for what you can and can't take on board are going to affect him enormously! I can't think of much worse than having to sit there for 15 hours to LA / SF with no books to read and no computer to work on.

I worry where the world is headed!

9:33:00 AM