OPINION:IT HAS no particular religion nor creed, nor style of dress, nor gender nor geographic home. Evil is an equal opportunity employer.
One hopes we learn at least that much from the adventures of “Jihad Jane”. That, according to federal prosecutors, is the name Colleen LaRose used when she went online to say how “desperate” she was to do something to help Muslims. That desperation allegedly led her deep into the shadowy world of fundamentalist extremism. LaRose, prosecutors say, used the internet to recruit would-be terrorists. She allegedly sought to kill a Swedish artist who had angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Mohammed with a dog’s body. LaRose is also said to have agreed to marry one of her conspirators. According to the indictment, she wrote it would be “an honour and great pleasure to die or kill” for her intended.
Seven alleged supporters of the would-be terror cell have been questioned in Ireland. That’s in addition to LaRose, who was arrested in Philadelphia in October. She was indicted last week. Which ought to serve as a rebuke to the guy standing in the airport security line grumbling at how the TSA agent is running his wand over some dewy-eyed grandmother who obviously isn’t a threat.
Even more, it should rebuke pundits like Cal Thomas, Ann Coulter and Kathleen Parker, who, in the wake of September 11th, argued for ethnic profiling in airport security. Pat down swarthy, bearded young men with Middle Eastern accents and exotic headgear, they said, and leave the rest of us alone.
Jihad Jane is the reason that’s a dumb idea. She is, according to published reports and photos, 4ft 11 inches tall, 105 pounds and 46 years of age, with pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes. She is, literally, a citizen of Main Street, USA, having made her home on that thoroughfare in the Philadelphia suburb of Pennsburg, where she was a caretaker for her boyfriend’s father.
There are several good arguments against profiling. It’s morally wrong. It’s an abridgement of civil liberties. But Jihad Jane embodies the most compelling of them.
Pragmatism will tell you that to concentrate solely on swarthy Middle Eastern men is to turn a blind eye to everyone else. But, as demonstrated by LaRose, by convicted terrorists Richard Reid, Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh, and any number of others here and abroad, terror comes in both genders and all cultures and shades.
And here, it might be fruitful to recall a point Kathleen Parker made in her 2002 column on profiling. She noted her own profile (“a smallish, middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon, 14th-generation American” woman) and asked pointedly, “when was the last time a US citizen fitting my description hijacked an airplane?”
The question becomes darkly comic in the wake of this arrest. LaRose, after all, fits the same profile, at least in the broad parameters, and if she didn’t hijack an airplane, we can assume it wasn’t for lack of ambition.
The moral of the story: to depend for our safety on profiling is to open a gap in our already gap-ridden security. It creates a blind spot. One can envision TSA giving some Middle Eastern businessman the third degree while a tiny blonde saunters by with a bomb in her purse.
So we should be thankful for the federal authorities that nabbed Jihad Jane. They remind us: evil is not a colour, a religion, a gender or a style of dress. That shouldn’t need saying. But somehow, it always does. – (Tribune Media Services)