Racial profiling: Should we CAIR?

The Council on American-Islamic relations is protesting how a Muslim family was taken off a flight from Washington, DC to Orlando on New Year's Day.

I can appreciate, in principle, how CAIR is attempting to create an effective civil-liberties organization like the Anti-Defamation League. And I've defended them from critics who allege that CAIR is in cahoots with extremists.

But I wish that CAIR would, for the sake if its own Muslim constituents as well as their American homeland, spend a little less energy complaining about mistreatment and a little more energy fighting extremism within its religion. My brother and I once penned a piece in which we called for CAIR to consider spending some money assisting the victims of jihadist extremists.

I've argued since 9/11 that South Asians and Middle-Easterners should steel themselves for certain forms of "benign" racial profiling, as a necessary compromise in the greater effort to have a secure place in American society. Let's face it, if there's another 9/11, there will be widespread support for far more draconian measures than staring down Pakistanis in airports.

In the Name of God, the gripping 2007 Pakistani movie about the war between moderates and fundamentalists in Islam, depicted a pro-Western Pakistani immigrant who had been tortured unfairly; it resonated with Pakistani-Americans, many of whom have heard such stories second or third-hand. Those are the sorts of civil-liberties issues that CAIR should concern itself with. They don't need to sweat the smaller stuff.

I also don't feel that a religious person acts in good faith when he acts completely divorced from the extremists in his camp and expects not to be questioned in light of his extremists' actions.

All major religions are dominated by people who love to brag about how their one true faith is a wonderful brotherhood of believers who are the salt and light of the world. But when they come under criticism for some aspect of religious zealotry, they immediately throw their brothers under the bus, saying, "Oh, that's just a small minority that does that -- they don't represent our faith."

But you can't have it both ways. If you believe you're a brotherhood, you have to accept some responsibility for your wayward brothers' actions; you have to work to improve the situation (which includes locking up your brothers if they're a true menace) and have to accept that their bad behavior will make your life more complicated. That's real brotherhood, the kind that's not mere religious posturing. That's what the Muslim family traveling to Orlando, and CAIR, and various other people of various faiths need to remember.