Adventures in Profiling, Part One

I used to think I knew what Middle Eastern people looked like because:

1. I had read a lot about the Middle East.
2. I had gone to school with Iranian immigrants.
3. I had once worked with a Pakistani.
4. My family is rumored to have had Arabic ancestors.
5. A few of my relatives have Arabic features and one was even nicknamed “Arab Princess” by my late father.

So imagine my surprise last autumn when a friend introduced me to a redheaded guy who was the father of her daughter's baby and then casually admitted later on that the guy was Iraqi.

Given the amount of racial intermarriage in the Middle East, I shouldn't have been that surprised. But let's face it. Red hair is not exactly a physical feature commonly associated with Iraqis. And while I don't know the man's religious affiliation -- he could very well have been Muslim but he could have been Christian as well -- I could not help but wonder what would happen if our enemies abroad chose to recruit people who looked more like that redheaded guy than like a Muslim who had a more conventional type of appearance. After all, it's hardly reasonable to pretend that people fighting the USA pay no attention to the number of conservatives who urge our law enforcement agencies to only focus their terrorist fighting efforts on people who look Muslim. And to pretend they won't make an effort to foil our expectations by recruiting people who don't look like our idea of terrorists assumes that our enemies are stupid.

No doubt some of our foes have proved less than geniuses. But to assume that they all are that way is to assume that our enemies are stupid, and assuming stupidity on the part of the enemy has never been a smart move.