Actually Sammy boy, if you would set aside your hysteria a few facts might intervene.
(a) Profiling: In fact profiling in the classic sense was being used in the sniper case, it proved a stunning misdirection. The same profiles that you find so efficient are the ones that said most (playing the odds, Sam, playing the odds - but that’s what fucking profiling is about so think through your inevitable self-contradictory objection) shooters in this style are angry late 20s to 30s white males.
(b) Leads: as you recall in your hysterical nattering in the sniper thread, it was that ubiquitious vehicle, the white delivery van/mini van that was being stopped, not every car. Certainly not older model blue Chevy cars as the one actually used. The only “stops” of Mr Muhammed were outside the area, and for nothing more than him sleeping in his car. Given the area in Baltimore he was stopped in, that hardly was a suspicion raising issue.
© Islamic connection: despite your hysteria over this, and hysteria it is, there’s hardly anything to it. NYT and WP coverage have our “Muslim extremist” doing nothing much more than the highly unorthodox name change (Orthodox Islamic practice would not have you keep John Allen, and use Muhhamed as a last name. There are Hadith on this sort of thing, things that the real Islamist take seriously.) while continuing to frequent bars and the like, drinking and leading the lifestyle of … well an angry Vet drifter. (no aspersions on Vets in general) Claiming to be CIA or FBI at times, the classic profile of a nutbar. His changing name to John Allen Muhammed seems to have been nothing more than a symbolic rejection of society - indeed his Indian origin friend Mr Singh who was interviewed interpreted it as such. Thin gruel for an “Islamic” connexion unless one is incredibly gullible or desperately searching for one. Further to this, given the population of Nation of Islam adherents and former adherents, having Xian first names mixed in with “Islamic” names in black urban areas is not terribly rare. Tells you NOTHING about an actual radical connexion.
So, something resembling a fact based analysis - rather than hysterical ooo my ooo my the Muslims are coming, oh my oh me omy maundering - tells us that (a) profiling failed here (b) profiling Muslims in conjuction with the white van issue would have netted huge amounts of bogus leads too © profiling Muslims proper - what stop every car that looks like a “Muslim” is driving it? Well, I guess we have to throw in Blacks into the mix too, and Italians, and other Med origin folks.
It rather quickly looks pretty fucking nonesensical if one actually attaches this to facts. Never mind of course if our dear Jamacian boy was the driver. Oh well then, ooops. (May I add that the extent of the Islamic connexion among the 3 seems to be our dear John Allen changing his last name).
Bloody nonesense. Your motherfucking ‘politically correct’ state of denial is no such thing, although there is a politically driven, let us call it right wing politically correct, fact free hysteria driven flailing about here.
Thus, I return to my opinion that the profiling you and others keep pimping as a rational response to limited resources is anything but, it is rather a hysterical and ungrounded response.
Now, as for the issue of Xianity and Islam being “equally” peaceful, I don’t see any rational basis to reach a conclusion on this. Major figures? How does Sam Stone know what major figures are in Islam? And what is a major figure? If hyper conservative RC leaders in Columbia call for the execution of Leftists, what is that in re Xanity? Protestant on RC, and vice versa, what is that? See Sammy, you should know enough to know what you do not know. Truly major figures, but not sexy enough to be covered in the Western press like Qardaouie condemn and condemned the violent salafistes, but one doesn’t get coverage of these things.
I don’t know that Islam is a ‘peaceful religion’ - certainly theologically it does not contain the pacifist preaching of Jesus but then I see precious little application of any of that in Xianity - application. No need to look to the motherfucking Crusades for that, historical incidences right through to the modern era rather amply illustrate that, and to the extent one wants to cast a wide net on violence, esp. the late Colonial era with its semi-secularized rhetoric in re the greatness of Xian Euro culture and its use in the violent intrusions into other lands, with little regard for humane treatment of the wogs and the nigs. What I do know of Islamic teachings accords not badly with our modern ideas on proper conduct and treatment of combattants and non-combattants, not exactely turning the other cheek, but there you have it.
Existential arguments, then, on Xianity and Islam’s essential peacefulness, esp by those with little to no idea about at least one of them, strike me a wastes of energy.
As to the last question posed, that would be interesting. I personally see a complex process. Further, Sam did do us a favor of -if we can forget december’s bigotry-mongering and dezinformatsia campaign- id’ing a kernal of an actual issue:
How to differntiate between local versus pan-Islamic radicalisms and identify appropriate responses. Perhaps I should open such a thread, rather than let this idiocy continue.
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. If you self-identify as a Muslim, follow or attempt to all the normally expected mechanistic “regulations” that define being a Muslim, and worship as a Muslim, I think it is perfectly appropriate to apply the label of “Muslim.” Now, you may be a poor Muslim, just as Fred Phelps is a pretty lousy Christian in my estimation, but you would still be a Muslim. And Fred Phelps is a Christian.