Someone had to say it.
But it had to be someone who’s not a Central Casting, American infidel. Someone not in the traditional mold of a politically incorrect, Western bigot. Someone not on the ACLU’s hit list.
Someone whose shoes most of us can never walk in.That someone is Sam Rashid. Yes, THAT Sam Rashid, the conservative political rainmaker from suburban Hillsborough County.
In a recent Tampa Tribune column, the Pakistani native addressed head-on the controversial issue of profiling in the post-9/11 world. As in, “Profile me.”
There was an epiphany, and it came after Rashid saw a young blond woman in a business suit pulled out of a flight-boarding line and subjected to a thorough security check. She had been randomly selected, and he had not.
“I would have felt a lot safer had I been pulled out of line,” wrote Rashid. “After all, I came a lot closer to looking like the face of Islamic fundamentalism than a young blond business woman.
“It would be safer if everyone who looked even remotely like me were profiled,” continued Rashid. “This doesn’t mean we stop the security checks on others; it simply means that we take a closer look at certain individuals.”
Rashid knows that we profile, in effect, for all kinds of things – from car insurance to Hooters’ employment. Why not when we’re at war with crazed jihadis that don’t tend to come in all colors, creeds, genders and ages? When lives – obviously including Rashid’s – could well be at stake?
Granted, Sam Rashid, a U.S. citizen whose children are being raised Catholic, doesn’t speak for all those 17-40 males born in Middle Eastern countries. Would that he did.