The world has become an extremely dangerous place to live in. The devastating power of plastic explosives, combined with hi-tech, remotely controlled activation means superimposed by a proliferation of suicide bombers becomes a lethal combination beyond any effective counter. The unfortunate reality is that both, the perpetrators of the crime as well as most of the sufferers from it are Muslims. This has inevitably made non-Muslims believe, though wrongfully, that Islam is a religion of intolerance, militancy and terrorism. This thesis is rapidly evolving across the globe: connecting Islam to fundamentalism, fundamentalism to extremism and extremism to terrorism. We can protest, however vigorously, against this labeling, but the reality is that such arguments are not likely to win this formidable battle of minds against us. To compound our apathy further, we are probably the poorest, most uneducated, most powerless and the most disunited in the world. (I wonder why this is the case - couldn't have anything to do with the culture and the ideology, could it???)

So far, he's nailed it. However, after an intelligent and reasoned begining, Musharraf falls into the old standby - Muslims are victims.

First of all we need to understand that the root cause of extremism and militancy lies in political injustice, denial and deprivation (what about all the Christians, Jews, and Hindus that suffer the same existance, for the most part in Muslim lands - they don't resort to terrorism). Political injustice to a nation or a people when combined with stark poverty and illiteracy makes the explosive mix leading towards an acute sense of deprivation, hopelessness and powerlessness. A people suffering from a combination of all these lethal ills are easily available cannon fodder for the propagation of militancy and the perpetration of extremist, terrorist acts. I would be remiss if, in defence of the people of my faith, I did not trace back the genesis of the Muslims getting labeled with the extremist - terrorist tag. Before the anti Soviet, Afghan War started, the Palestine dispute alone was the cause of unrest or concern in the Muslim World which led to a general unification of Muslims in favour of Palestinians AND against Israel (whoops, back to the evil Joozzzzz again - Israel has 10% of the land in the ME, 1 square kilometer to each 750 square kilometers of Arab land, and 1 Israeli for every 60 Arabs and Iranians - not exactly land-glutonous of the Israelis) The Afghan war of 80's, supported and facilitated by the West, as a proxy war against the Soviet Union, saw the emergence and nurturing of pan Islamic militancy. Islam as a religion was used to harness mass, world-wide Muslim support (read "support" as global ambitions of conquest). Subsequently, the atrocities and ethnic cleansing against Muslims in Bosnia, the Chechen uprising, Kashmir freedom struggle and invigorated Palestinian Intifada all erupted in the 90's after the Soviet disintegration. To make matters worse the militancy sparked in Afghanistan which needed to be defused after the end of the Cold War, was allowed to fester for the whole decade of 90's. This festering wound of Afghanistan with fighters from the entire Muslim World existing within the period of upheaval in other Muslim nations turned multidirectional, looking for new conflict zones where Muslims were suffering (aahhhh... the old suffering ummah as victims again - Christians, Jews, Hindus and the like never suffer, are all filthy rich, and are treated like kings in Muslim lands - yeah, right!). This saw the birth of Al-Qaeda. All this happened while the Palestinian Intifada kept gathering momentum, uniting and angering Muslims across the globe. Then came the bombshell of the horror of 9/11 and the angry reaction of US against Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. All subsequent reactions of the US, their domestic responses against Muslims, their attitude towards Palestine and operation in Iraq led to total polarization of the Muslim masses against the US (more of the evil satan as the root of all Muslim terrorism that's been raging since even before 1979). Why this needs to be recapitulated is to prove that it is not Islam as a religion which preaches or infuses militancy and extremism but the political disputes which led to antagonism in the Muslim masses ("prove" that political disputes are responsible for Islamic militancey and extremism? Is terrorism the way that Christians, Jews, Hindus and all civilized people resolve "political disputes"???).

Read all of Musharraf's piece here, and see why the Muslim world is in such turmoil - even the leaders see Muslims as victims whenever non-Muslims and moderate Muslims alike find extremism to be not only unreasonable, uncivilized, and anathma, but also indicative of a sick, perverted, and dangerous ideology and culture.

And we've just had a lesson in why religious and behavioral profiling makes sense. In so far as ethical profiling "only" is concerned, I agree with Chad, but in the context of the ethnic, religious, and behavioral attributes, in this humble south Georgia farmboy's opinion - it makes sense.

Knowing Chad, I know he'll have a few words to offer, most of which I'm sure to agree with. But when it comes to labeling a duck a duck, or an Muslim terrorists - Muslim terrorists, the approach can save a lot of Muslim and non-Muslim lives. When Jews and Christians start blowing up airplanes, we'll label those SOBs for what they are, also. But until then, lets stop fooling ourselves and playing the PC card. Not only will it not fly anymore - it's save a lot of people that do.

Update: Sure enough, Chad provided some more thoughts on the topic (via the forum but copied and pasted below):

Ok, what does a terrorist look like? Further, because I know where you're coming from, what does a Muslim look like? How can you narrow down who is a terrorist and who is not based upon looks? Profiles behaviors, yes, and even religion if possible, but how do you know what religion someone is without asking? And that depends on if they tell the truth.

It's not a PC reason or a wish not to offend any group of people, I don't care who is offended, but rather because how do you profile a religion and a group that has made inroads to recruit non-Arab men?

To which I responded (also at the forum - copied and pasted below):

Good points Chad, but we are at war and statistical probabilities are on the side of profiling racial and ethnic cohorts in juxtapostion with religion and behavioral attributes.

For example, Pakistan is 97% Muslim (http://www.irinnews.org/profiles/pakistan.asp), Afganistan - 99% Muslim (http://www.irinnews.org/profiles/afghanistan.asp), Iran - 99% Muslim (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2001/5691.htm), Saudi Arabia - >99% Muslim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia), Iraq - 95% (http://www.geocities.com/iraqinfo/islam/islam.html), Syria - 90% Muslim, and those people of these ethnicities living in Western nations have these relative percent probabilities of being Muslim and thereby fall into a category one could say are more likely to be potential terrorists than those that are not of these or similar ethnicities from similar countries with sizable Muslim majorities.

Yes, there are some Western converts that are Western-looking and of Western ethnicity mixes, however the statistical probability my guess without calculation would be at p = .01, statistically significant that among this cohort that would be terrorists is relatively miniscule, in comparison to those that are more likely to be both Muslim and be among these and similar ethnicities that have a statistical probability of being a terrorist.

Racial, ethnic, religious, and behavioral profiling alone, don't make sense. However juxtapositionally, damned important. My vote is life trumps PC and hurt feelings. No offense against peace-loving Muslims, but 100% of the terrorist acts in the world and almost 100 percent of the conflicts in the world, involve Muslims. Moderate Muslims and non-Muslims alike benefit from religious and ethnic profiling, so long as behavioral attributes are also considered. I realize your points aren't PC-oriented, but again, it's the PC crowd and privacy moonbats that are and will scream the most, and their reasoning flies in the face in the realities of "most likely" candidates for acts of terrorism. The Israelis have had this down to a science for years - and it's worked well. I remember traveling El-Al as far back as the early 80s, and even way back then went through interviews that included my likely religion, race, country of origin, countries that I'd traveled in, etc.

The very same thing was done back then in Arab countries that I traveled in, again, way back in the 80s. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even get in Arab countries with my passport that had the Ben Gurion stamp (Tel Aviv airport). So it was customary back then for those of us who traveled in and out of both Israel and Arab countries to have 2 passports, the second one did not have a stamp showing that I'd been in Israel. Later, Israel started stamping a piece of paper to slide into our passports so that it wouldn't affect peoples ability to get into Arab countries.

So all of this isn't new, it's only new to the West. The ACLU has it wrong - they are idiots. It's time to have a Muslim checkpoint line at the airport. We can even balance it with an Irish checkpoint line, a Scottish checkpoint line, a Christian checkpoint line, etc. These would move a hell of a lot faster, since based upon the probability of members of any of these cohorts blowing themselves up to kill innocent people is roughly ZERO, as we used to say in my freshman calculus class a million years ago - give or take epsilon.

Debbie at Right Truth posted Profile already! Profile against terror!
Conservative Cowboy has "Anyone for Terrorist Profiling...?"