Recently, Al-Arabiya television broadcast a segment showing a white Australian who had joined Al-Qaeda. The Australian government followed up by admitting that a “small number” of Australians were members. But the tape showed more than just this one blonde man in a balaclava:
The executive editor of Al Arabiya, Nabil Khatib, … was surprised by the ethnic diversity of the jihadists in the video – from Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, as well as Europeans, Pakistanis and Saudis. [cite]
We’ve always known that A-Q is diverse in its membership, especially if you include allied groups. There are East Asians (mainly South East Asians, like the Bali Bomber), Africans, various Brown people, and yes … light skinned people as well. Still, people kept ignoring the part about white people in the group, even though they were previously documented. Maybe these photos will help change some minds. Then again, it’s not clear that the African London bombers have made Brits any less fixated on South Asians.
Australians will probably respond to this news by trying to profile Muslims more thoroughly, rather than trying to screen for suspicious actions. Remember, there are still plenty of non-Islamist groups that still pose a threat. Consider, for example, the ironically named “Brown Army Faction” who were busted two years ago:
The threat to Germany from neo-Nazis has risen to a new level, Interior Minister Otto Schily has warned. The discovery of a suspected plot to bomb a Munich Jewish centre during a visit by the German president has “dramatically confirmed” the danger to society, he said on Monday. At least 10 suspects were held and up to 14kg (31lb) of explosives seized in police raids last week. The suspected attack would have coincided with the anniversary of the Nazis’ 1938 Kristallnacht attacks, when thousands of Jewish targets were attacked and dozens murdered. A “hit list” detailing other possible targets, including mosques, a Greek school and an Italian target, had been recovered, said Bavarian Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein. [BBC]
These guys weren’t big time when they were busted, but as London showed even 30 lbs of explosive used in the right way can be very dangerous. More importantly, neo-Nazis have ties to arms dealers and soldiers in a number of different countries, so it wouldn’t be too hard to get more. Heck, plenty of the loonies busted in the US post 9/11 have had far more than that in their stashes. Maybe Americans need to remember that plenty of people in the world hate the US, and some of the armed loony haters are white.
Oy vey.
two points
1) americans, white people in general, have a tendency to ‘brownify’ white middle easterners. by this, if you took a syrian guy like bashar assad, he’s obviously not white. you see, his name is bashar assad. if it was basil asonikos, he would be white, because greeks are white. if it was borguz azgol, well, he’s not white, because turks are not white. most people who know me know that i’m not one who thinks ‘race is a social construction’ to the first aproximation, but population differences are clinal. where people draw lines is socially constructed. even though many middle easterners look more white than they do brown, they are brown because they are “Other,” and other can not be white.
basically, i’m saying there are some cognitive processes and biases that are extremely deep that will automatically slot swarthy whites with say, people from tamil nadu, even though phenotypically and genetically these swarthy ‘whites’ are closer to a frenchmen than a tamil. this is obvious when you note that many swarthy whites whose italian or greek heritage isn’t immediately clear until their identities are asked for have also complained about being targeted.
2) this isn’t a binary issue. that is, either all terrorists are brown, or terrorists can be any race, etc. etc. a small percentage of islamic radicals are white by any definition. nevertheless, even in western nations where there are a large number of white converts in absolute terms many of these networks are being created by non-whites. when blonde swedish converts become involved in something like 7-7 i suspect you will have a spate of stories about how terrorism knows no color, there might even be a cover of TIME with a blue eyed man with blonde eye brows in arab dress and a scowl. but until that happens, people still note that an enormous disproportion of these terrorists are from traditionally muslim backgrounds. you don’t have to ignore the possibility of whites or blacks to note that the salafist islamic networks are characterized by particular ethnic clusters.
3) stupid people think in terms of platonic ideals and non-quantitatively nuanced syllogisms. let’s not make that mistake. that is, all terrorists are brown, so let’s round up all brown people OR all terrorists aren’t brown, so there is no need to target or focus on particular communities. i know the last assertion is going to be explosive to some on on this weblog, and i’m not advocating any particular prescription. but we don’t need to pretend like the salafist networks are randomly distributed throughout the population to to also adhere to the notion that some of the stereotypes of the public and policy responses of the government are not beneficial.
and yes, i ended up tacking a third point on. sue me.
More relevant if we were talking about mass behavior. If we’re talking about actions taken by small groups of 4-10 then the broader distribution is less important. For example, I’m sure Africans were a minority in A-Q but all it took was four. If the cops are just looking for brown people, they’re leaving the door wide open. It’s called arbitrage.
As I said in my other post, recognizing the Muslim terrorism problem is a first step, and one that has been taken by pretty much with half a brain years ago. But the point is to get beyond that step and promote 1. safety and 2. fairness to minorities at the same time.
Pure utilitarianism dictates that as a society on the lookout for terrorists, you DONT just look out for swarthy individuals, cognitive processes and biases notwithstanding. Why? Cuz AQ isn’t stupid, and they’ll make the next bomber a white australian, just like they made some of the london bombers and the purported shoe bomber British black/carribean.
Fairness and the spirit of constitutional protection mandates that swarthy people’s rights not be violated solely on the basis of their swarthyness. The law in the US (and most countries actually) goes to admirable steps, not just in the constitution but in the rules of evidence which derive from hundreds of years of common law, to weed out these cognitive biases. Why? Simply because they obscure the path to the truth, and they are manifestly unfair to the innocent.
Ay there’s the rub.
If the cops are just looking for brown people, they’re leaving the door wide open.
1) no one with a brain believes that cops should just be on the look out for browns. since all here have brains, why not pretend like that isn’t an option for discussion?
2) the argument that al qaeda will ‘switch tactics’ was more persuasive to met after 9-11, but madrid was done mostly by browns, while 7-7 was mostly brown. the east africans were a twist, but, note they were not all jamaican converts. if al qaeda could mobilize legions of white terrorists, i suspect they already would have. they can’t, for two reasons a) they aren’t a top down organization. they aren’t going to ‘react’ from on-high. these networks seem bottom-up. b) though there are whites who are muslim converts, there don’t seem to be (in my reading) specifically white radical groups (there are specifically white convert groups of more moderate or sufi inclinations that i have read about).
so again, it isn’t an either-or. i don’t think, at this juncture, purely equitable law enforcement vigilance is warranted by the previous pattern. neither do i think that a singular focus is warranted. there are many steps in between.
my overall point is this: there are stupid people (ie; most people) who do overbias their stereotypes to the point of malfunction. the media and to some extent the gov. needs to cater to these people. sometimes policy prescriptions even get twisted in their direction. but that does not mean that background variables are totally irrelevant. we live in a world of scarce resources. 9-11, madrid, 7-7 and 7-21. each one has been less catastrophic in death toll. and yes, the ‘stereotype’ of swarthy middle eastern men has become less relevant progressively. nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that we are in a world where anyone could be a terrorist.
also, don’t have time today, so last post on this topic, let me be clear that i’m not just thinking about pulling people out of the line at the airport terminal (if that at all). my overall point is that the short-term way to get at ‘root causes’ is to break up the relationships between the networks. and these networks are partially piggy-backing on civil society that has a strong ethnic coloring. for example, a group of pakistani youth who are attracted to a deobandi mosque, find it too moderate, and form their own clique and join some radical islamic sect-organization. these facts and trends need to be taken into account.
i doubt anyone here would argue against this sort of thing in principle. but, playing up the possibility of white terrorists makes it sound like we can’t judge any conditional probabilities at all, that islamic terrorism can emerge like athena from the head of zeus out of a simple cocktail of resentment and technical know-how.
A lot of Muslims are “white.” A large part of the population in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Morroco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Iran could easily pass as white. All Muslims in Albania and Chechyna are white.
If you watch the news, you might’ve noticed that many of Iraq’s major leaders look “white.” Iraqi politican Ahmed Chalabi looks more Greek or Italian than he does Iraqi.
The swarthy Muslims are mainly South Asians, who tend to be much darker and more non-caucasoid in appearance than Middle Easterners (not that South Asians would want to admit it).
I wouldn’t deny that a disproportionate share of the terrorists are “brown,” but there’s no doubt that there are millions of Muslims that could pass as European. It’s not inconcievable that Al-Quaeda would start recruiting these people.
It’s not inconcievable that Al-Quaeda would start recruiting these people.
well, duh. here is an old john derbyshire article:
My reaction on seeing the photograph of the first to be identified, Mohamed Atta, was that he looked exactly like my own mental conception of an Arab terrorist. On the other hand, one of his companions on AA Flight 11, Wail al-Shehri, is the spitting image of a boy I went to school with — a boy of entirely English origins….
several of those guys on 9-11 could have “passed” if they had shaved. nevertheless, the important point to note is that they were embedded with national networks of egyptians and saudis.
but we don’t need to pretend like the salafist networks are randomly distributed throughout the population to to also adhere to the notion that some of the stereotypes of the public and policy responses of the government are not beneficial
The white converts in the US are more likely to be Salafist than Sufi.
I personally know over a dozen white converts to Islam and a majority of them are Salafists.
but until that happens, people still note that an enormous disproportion of these terrorists are from traditionally muslim backgrounds. you don’t have to ignore the possibility of whites or blacks to note that the salafist islamic networks are characterized by particular ethnic clusters
I think the more important point is that all the 7-14 would be bombers and one of the 7-7 bombers were Black (from East Africa). So does it mean that the Blacks are now a suspect class ? So lets look at the attacks in the West by Islamic radicals.
9-11 15 Saudis
3-11 North Africans
7-7 Pakistanis and one Black
7-14 All Black
Also if we look at other bombings/attempts by Al Qaeda types outside the Middle East the break up would be :
Bali : All Indonesians
Shoe Bomber : Black/White
Tanzania and Kenyan American Embassy bombing : All Blacks
I am not sure why for bombings outside the Middle East, the Arabs and South Asians are a suspect class while Blacks are not.
Because more Americans have personal experience with blacks than with desis. We are the Other.
No doubt that some people will be unfairly targetted, but it goes a long way if we at least make an attempt to give the benefit of the doubt and to laugh at life’s curveballs. If nothing else, for your own peace of mind.
Now this attitude i like..
http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/about/best/wdc/88497684.html
“americans, white people in general, have a tendency to ‘brownify’ white middle easterners. by this, if you took a syrian guy like bashar assad, he’s obviously not white. you see, his name is bashar assad. if it was basil asonikos, he would be white, because greeks are white. if it was borguz azgol, well, he’s not white, because turks are not white. most people who know me know that i’m not one who thinks ‘race is a social construction’ to the first aproximation, but population differences are clinal. where people draw lines is socially constructed. even though many middle easterners look more white than they do brown, they are brown because they are “Other,” and other can not be white”
Speaking fromn personal experience, my childhood gym teacher, barber, and owner of the local deli and pizzeria all assumed I was Italian by my appearance. The Indian convenience store owner thought I was Puerto Rican. In college, a Jordanian orderly who worked in the hospital on campus assumed I was an Arab, as did an Iraqi med student.
Certainly, we all have preconceived notions of what people are supposed to look like. The challenge in combatting terorism is that since we are not at war with a nation-state, but an ideology which has roots in faith. The Soviet Union was a menace, but it was a menace that followed the rules. AQ values choas above all else. Attacking a military base may make tactical sense, but will not play out on TV the same way blwong up a train or nightclub does.
Most of the terrorists who have succesfully carried out their missions, or were captured do not look “swarthy”. After all, swarthy stand out, and draws scrutiny.
Think back a couple of years ago to the Beltway Sniper. Before the two shooters was caught, you had all these egghead experts saying how it was most likely a disgruntled white male loner. That it turned out to be two black men stunned everybody. Indeed, they could have been caught sooner, when their car was spotted, but because the cops were told to be on the lookout for white men, they were let go.
Ethnic profiling may have some value. But to believe that it is the answer to our security concerns is nonsense. I’ll take an alert border guard, like the one who caught the Algerian back in 1999 with carload of explosives, over a professional terrorism expert anyday.
man I was so close to agreeing with you, possibly for the first time, until this last sentence. Plus I think it contradicts the general tenor of your post. If anyone cannot be a terrorist, then you are still stuck in the mire of purely race-based security measures, which I think we all agree are problematic. Unless you meant something else..
haha! not a bad idea! Whats the most they will do, look in your bag? But then again, the NYPD is prone to shooting people over 40 times and sticking plungers up painful places for no good reason, so on second thought maybe its not such a good idea, in new york anyway.
I think it’s more plausible that Black people get profiled through other processes (like the War on Drugs or aggressive policing and other noncounterterrorism policing and not getting picked up by cab drivers). African-Americans/Black people are and have been the quintessential racial Other in this society (even though there is increased targeting of “Muslim-looking” people.
Razib’s point about how people draw lines around race and what they’re afraid of them for is relevant (although I’d note that Arabs are classified as “Caucasian” on the census–but I’d guess that’s probably a throwback to the “White” Helen Thomas and Ralph Nader and John Sununu and James Zogbys of the world more than a reflection of current popular understanding of terrorism).
Also, even in the context of counterterrorism investigative tactics, Black immigrants have been included. So the list of “special interest” countries always includes places like Eritraea, Sudan, Somalia, etc. It’s just a popular myth (that our comunity perpetuates) that only brown people have been targeted by profiling in coutnerterrorism investigations. Indonesians, Filipinos, Koreans, Somalis, Mexicans, etc. have all been affected, even though the popular stereotype (which well preceded 2001) is of the turbaned Arab-looking person.
although I’d note that Arabs are classified as “Caucasian” on the census–but I’d guess that’s probably a throwback to the “White” Helen Thomas and Ralph Nader and John Sununu and James Zogbys of the world more than a reflection of current popular understanding of terrorism
remember that browns were thrown into the ‘white’ category until 1980 (we were listed as ‘hindu’ or ‘asian indian’ too i think, but in 1970 they just slotted us as white cuz there were so few of us). remember that the census categories are the results of political machinations. ‘asian american’ is a construct that leverages a group with a geographical and exclusionary identity (ie; not white, not black, not native, not latino, must be asian + pacific islander!). there have been all sorts of disputes with multiracials, from the ‘octoroon’ controversies to the 2000 brouhaha over the ‘multiracial’ category.
for what it’s worth, my best friend in high school was 1/4, with ligh brown hair, green eyes and fair skin. his sister was middle easternish looking (her hair was dark, nose a little bigger). they might have been white on the census, but the white trash still called them niggers every chance they got.
Anyone can be a terrorist (if we’re going to use that word), but if you’re focusing on global salafist terrorism, then it’s a different story. (you can make an argument that there’s too much of a focus on that, but that’s a different question). In any case, I think we can acknowledge in conversation among intelligent people that there are demographics there.
That doesn’t mean that that understanding becomes a rational justification for profiling–adding precision can only help in figuring out what to do. For example, Marc Sageman argues that the U.S. should enlist nonviolent Salafists in the effort to combat violent Salafists.
Acknowledging demographics also does nothing to refute the idea that targeting on the basis of membership in a racial, ethnic, or other group is wrong, ineffective, and highly counterproductive, and that law enforcement should do these investigations from the bottom up–focus on the individuals and go out from there to find their networks.
The only major problem with it (and it is a major problem) is that in the wrong hands (which are most) it will serve to reinforce stereotypes. Anyone who wants to go from a demographic analysis to a defense of stupid police tactics is, for lack of a better word, a f@#$head.
Yes, I remember 🙂 But did you know that Helen Thomas was an Arab until last week? I didn’t. I can’t think of a similar example with brown people (although I’d guess they were probably confused for Black or Latino). But then, we all read race differently.
Similarly, New Mexico’s long-established Latino community is reportedly very different in sensibilities than recent Mexican entrants and their kids.
No issue with your broader point though–the census s@#ks from a race perspective–perhaps by design, but that’s a longer argument.
Oh, and “white trash” is imo a racial slur. Please try not to use it.
“not getting picked up by cab drivers”
Those cab drivers that don’t pick up blacks in NYC are mostly South Asians from the Punjab, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
and they drive like shit, I might add.
Don’t be dissin my friends now 🙂
Anyway, you can’t blame them for functioning effectively in the Hobbesian world of NY traffic. I’ve long believed that the key to civilian driving in Manhattan is to try to move like a taxi with the addition of signaling lane changes–works wonders.
haha that was lingering road rage talking.
by the way, who is the world’s worst driver?
i knew about helen thomas. and marlo thomas. and geoff george. last names like thomas and george tend to be arab christian (in the brown context, they are often syrian christian).
by the way, who is the world’s worst driver?
I’m not really sure–perhaps a friend of mine. Perhaps the guy that stuck the rocket engine on his car to see how fast he could go. I hope it’s him, because my friend is going to quickly outpace me as she gathers some confidence. And then I will be left at the bottom of the heap like the Colorado Rockies.
Well, you’re special. I think most people would probably think of them as White until it was pointed out to them that they are not (most likely by a rabid supporter of the Bush Admin who wants to prove the disloyalty of Arabs :). I don’t think similar conflation is possible with South Asians–at least those that are not mixed race. I can see, though, along the lines of what you’ve said in the past about assimilation over time, that the social markers of “white privilege” might accrue to them–at least professionals and upper class desis. And perhaps the social markers of Blackness or Latino identity would accrue to the working class desis–I already see it in some of the folks I know who grew up here and with whom I don’t share the same economic background.
Addendum: which I guess brings it back to a more nuanced undersatnding of class 🙂
Razib, Your explanation about the “whiteness” of Arabs is preety good. I think since in appearance a lot of real arabs can pass as “white”, for the average security person at the airport, the “other-ness” load is primarily taken by Desis. This was apparent after 9/11, that more Desis were not let on plane, than actual “arab”s (Not that I would want any arab to be profiled like the way we get profiled all the time)
Thats where I think Razib makes a good point that after knowing about a persons name (muslim sounding .. or Arab sounding post 9/11) immediately the “other-ness” of the person kicks in to average American. But if that person has to judge only by appearance, that person will pick out a Desi to be the “other”.
I just wanted to let u all know that brown people are south asians only, mainly those from india, pakistan, bangladesh, and sri lanka. Brown people are the people who are descendants of indian civilization, who follow indian culture, whose women are familiar with saris, and who speak an indian language, and who are familiar with a wide variety of indian curries. Arabs are NOT brown and they never will be and neither are latinos, because neither of these people have anything to do with india. Just because youre a muslim does not mean u are arab, and any person who is arab will never be brown. So STOP calling terrorists brown, very few terrorists are actually brown and many terrorists come from a wide range of cultures, including white and black. Its about time u all figured that terrorism knows no color and that only south asians can be brown.