The use of racial profiling as a counterterrorism tool has been fatally undermined after a second white American woman was arrested over an alleged Islamist murder plot, critics of the policy said this week.
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez (31), a nursing student from Colorado, was detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged conspiracy to kill a Danish cartoonist. Days earlier Colleen LaRose (46), from Philadelphia, was named in a federal indictment for her alleged role in the plot against Lars Vilks, who offended many Muslims by portraying the Prophet Muhammad as a dog.
Paulin-Ramirez, described by her mother as a lonely woman who had “got sucked in” by extremism, was released this weekend without charge. LaRose has been in custody in the US since October.
The two women join a young Nigerian, a fair-haired North Carolina man and his sons and others accused in the past year of perpetrating or plotting Islamist violence. Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: “It shows racial profiling is ineffective, as we’ve always said.”
Since the 9/11 attacks, US conservatives have encouraged racial profiling as a counterterrorism tool. Republican senator James Inhofe said in January: “If you’re looking at people getting on a plane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you need to get at targets, not my wife.”
The racial profile of the senator’s wife, Kay Inhofe, exactly matches those of Paulin-Ramirez and LaRose, who converted to Islam and allegedly posted comments on the web under the alias “Jihad Jane”. Paulin-Ramirez, dubbed “Jihad Jamie” by the US media, converted to Islam last year and became estranged from her family.
This week liberal chatshow host Rachel Maddow poked fun at racial profiling. “We’re now looking for anyone who is a man, a woman, an American, an African, a Middle Easterner, an Eastern European, a Western European, a blond, a brunette or between the ages of 20 and 49, which by my calculation leaves only one being on planet Earth above reproach and that is Alf” — a reference to a TV show alien. —