ISLAM AND TERRORISM
August 9, 2005

by Joe Sobran

     Terrorism has again raised the disputed issue of 
racial profiling. Specifically, should we be especially 
wary of young men who appear to be Muslim?

     First, at risk of sounding "nice," I have the strong 
impression that Muslim countries normally have low rates 
of violent crime. So do most homogeneous populations with 
strong moral and civic traditions: Japan, Finland, North 
Dakota.

     Even when most terrorist acts are committed by 
Muslims within Western counties, these violent ones are 
still a tiny fraction of the total number. Just enough to 
be unnerving. Naturally the majority of Muslims among us 
don't like, and often resent, being treated with 
suspicion.

     Here I won't worry about sounding nice. That's just 
tough. I speak from experience.

     In the late Sixties, a series of really horrible 
murders occurred in my hometown, Ypsilanti, Michigan. The 
victims were young white coeds at my college, Eastern 
Michigan University, several of whom were last seen 
hitchhiking. There were few other clues. The police 
suspected that the killer was a young white man. Like me.

     Over two years, about a half dozen girls were 
tortured and killed. The entire county lived in 
indescribable terror, which grew even more intense every 
time another mutilated body was found. All of us young 
white men were watched nervously. We even watched each 
other nervously. The actual killer, whoever he was, had 
made us all suspects.

     I keenly felt the gaze of suspicious eyes. I felt 
almost guilty because strangers I encountered might think 
I was guilty. A strange feeling, and not a pleasant one; 
but I couldn't complain. After all, they were only 
wondering the same thing about me that I was wondering 
about other white males of my age.

     Finally, in August 1969, the police arrested the 
culprit, John Norman Collins, who had carelessly left 
incriminating evidence by the body of his last victim, 
just a few blocks from my own apartment. He'd killed her 
in the basement of his own uncle's home. The uncle was a 
policeman who'd left him the keys while he went on 
vacation.

     Needless to say, perhaps, Collins was a young white 
male. A friend of mine knew him well. He described him as 
a handsome, athletic guy, but nasty and truly creepy. 
Collins also had a sinister sidekick, who vanished after 
Collins was nabbed. My friend was all but certain the 
sidekick had been an accomplice in the murders, but that 
was never proved. Collins took the rap alone and was 
sentenced to life in prison.

     The arrest made national news, briefly, and lifted a 
great burden of fear from Ypsilanti. Life went back to 
normal and it was okay to be a young white man again. A 
woman I worked with told me she thought it was me when 
she saw Collins's picture in the papers; she'd been 
relieved when she saw me in person the next day. For the 
first time in many months I felt really innocent.

     Collins might have gotten longer national attention, 
but he was upstaged by an even more sensational killer 
that same week: Charles Manson.

     If just one criminal can bring suspicion on so many 
others, Muslims in the West had better be careful. Not 
because Muslims are disposed to violence in ordinary 
circumstances, but because too many of them are so 
disposed at the moment. What makes this painful, and 
ironic, is that our own government's foreign policy has 
provoked hatreds that didn't use to exist but which now 
make it rational for Westerners to regard Muslims with 
anxiety.

     This is prudence, not racial discrimination. Its 
purpose is defensive, not punitive. If anyone should be 
punished besides the terrorists, it's the U.S. officials 
who give the terrorists a cause. But of course these are 
generally the same politicians who vociferate most 
furiously against terrorism. Though I don't blame 
ordinary Westerners who fear Muslims, I don't blame the 
Muslims who are seething at this. But that's life.

     John Norman Collins wasn't proof that all young 
white men were dangerous in 1969. But his profile was all 
we had to go on, and maybe some women are still alive 
today because they followed their suspicions then. It's 
silly to consider terrorism a permanent feature of Islam. 
But as long as a few Muslims in our part of the world are 
terrorists, a similar caution is in order.

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