The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) issued a statement last Thursday about the Department of Justice's aim to update the Attorney General Guidelines. MPAC reported that besides for its own organization, other groups, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Arab American Institute (AAI), are concerned by developments in the drafting of the new DoJ guidelines, which hope to transform the FBI into an intelligence gathering center for the U.S. in the War on Terror. According to the article, "Terror Profiling without Evidence Considered in US," in USA Today, "The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims." MPAC quoted the President of AAI, who is worried that millions of Americans would be the targets of "arbitary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling." This might lead, therefore, to further alienation of certain religious communities, particularly Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans. The main dilemma for creating the terrorist profile is the process itself , that is, which people (and with what foundational biases) could possibly develop an effective list of traits that describe a “suspicious” person, whom the government should rightly subject to further investigation and interrogation. Excellent material and research on the topic of profiling can be found on the website of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the NYU School of Law. Two reports are particularly interesting: The first is titled, “Americans on Hold: Profiling, Citizenship, and the War on Terror” and the second, from 2006, is “Irreversible Consequences: Racial Profiling and Lethal Force in the War on Terror.”
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A growing number of Muslims around the world believe that America's attitude toward them has changed dramatically since 9/11. Daniel Byman (2003) notes that even in Egypt, which receives the second largest annual amount of US aid, a mere six percent of the people viewed America favorably in 2003. Furthermore, Byman argues that the Bush administration's support of Karimov in Uzbekistan, and Putin against the Chechens, among other tyrannical regimes, is giving credibility to the conviction that Bush uses these regimes to oppress Muslims in their own countries. Some 13 percent of U.S. Muslims believe that suicide bombings can be justified. Too high, for sure, but it compares with 35 percent for French Muslims, 57 percent for Jordanians and 69 percent for Nigerians. This distinct American advantage- which testifies to our ability to assimilate new immigrants- is increasingly in jeopardy. If leaders begin insinuating that the entire Muslim population be viewed with suspicion, that will change the community's relationship to the United States. Wiretapping America's mosques and threatening to bomb Mecca are certainly a big step down this ugly road (Zakaria, 2007:26).
A "distinct American advantage" indeed; But many fear that we are not acting wisely as a nation. We are rapidly squandering the political good will we once enjoyed, especially among countries in the Middle East. How long will it be before the Bush administration squanders what good will it still enjoys at home? Many Muslims were treated terribly after 9/11. "In the months following the September 11 attacks, U.S. authorities detained approximately twelve hundred foreign nationals…Some were held for days, weeks and even months without being charged with a crime" (Cornett & Gibney, 2005:425). Zakaria's concern is not that far-fetched. America's foreign policy toward Islamic states abroad, combined with a growing intolerance here at home, very well could eventually turn the tide of American Muslim opinion and thereby possibly culminate in an increase in domestic terrorist attacks.
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