Profiling Terror Attacks

In the U.S., after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which massively rocked the nation, brought about tremendous changes and enforcements on the fight against terrorism. The then-President George W. Bush together with his administration responded intensively by putting up measures to counter and prevent another attack on the U.S. territory. The Department of Justice moved swiftly to seemingly the largest mass confinement of people of national origin, religion, and even race. Therefore, I agree to this proclamation which states that there has been an extreme reliance on race, religion, or even national origin in the system of identifying people who might pose a terrorist threat in the country (Racial Profiling, 2005).

Issues Involved

Racial profiling is the phenomenon whereby law enforcement officers rely much on person’s race, national origin, religion or even ethnicity while carrying out arrests or searches rather than considering the information or behavior when identifying a person as the one who is involved in unlawful activities. This occurrence can bring out the outcomes when an individual is being abused, arrested, harassed, detained or even followed by the law enforcers due to her/his religious affiliation, national origin, ethnicity and/ race (Racial Profiling, 2005).

My Reasons

The move by the U.S. Government to embark on the massive detention of people of Arab and Muslim affiliations emanated from the observation that those individuals who had instigated the 9/11 attack were Muslim Arabs from the Middle East. However, constitutionally and logically this was not supposed to form the basis for the nationwide arrests of people with similar characteristics as those of the terrorists. One of the major reasons behind my agreement to the presence of excessiveness in the application of race, religion, national origin or even ethnicity in the fight against terrorism majorly emanates from the fact that not every Muslim, Arab or another individual who originates from the Middle East is a terrorist. It’s very illogical for the government to assume that all Middle East population is full of terrorists. In fact, I have personally worked and schooled with these people and sincerely believe they are presumably the coolest people to interact with.

Support for My Position

After the 9/11 terrorist activity, the Bush administration directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch an extensive detention of people with Arabic origin, predominantly those from the Middle East. It was because the Government argued out that the people who had the ultimate preference of carrying out terrorist attacks were Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East. Clearly over 700 foreigners were detained after being branded as people of interest by the attorney General. The basic principle underlying the detention of these foreigners was their Muslim and Arab origin. Such approach towards terrorism had massive flaws where those engaged in terror activities aren’t from a single ethnic background. Richard Reid who was commonly referred to as the shoe bomber didn’t fit the U.S. profile as his father was recorded being Jamaican whereas his mother was British. The same happened to the American John Walker Lindh who was convicted by the Government of being an al Qaeda sympathizer (Johnson, 2011).

Moreover, the assumptions that many terrorists are Muslims, how is it possible to pinpoint a terror suspect in the U.S. where over one million Muslims live. Are all the young Muslim men suspects? This brings out lots of stereotypes. For instance, it is assumed that 90% of a specific form of crime is carried out by a certain religious or racial group. Bearing in mind that there are over a million people in that group, how is it logical to argue out that the whole group is suspected of committing crimes when only 1000 of them are the ones responsible for terror activities?

Conclusion

The government together with the relevant law enforcement agencies should come up with other comprehensive methods to identify terror-related individuals. The system used by the government to carry out racial profiling is terribly ineffective. It is because of the fact that presumably out of over a thousand people detained immediately after the 9/11 only one individual has been charged with terrorist activities. Therefore, racial profiling should be curbed as it’s a big problem that affects the racial minorities in the entire United States.