"Intelligence still the best defence against terrorism"

Kevin Rafferty, we are told, travels 240,000 miles per year, and so, one assumes, that gives him special insight into how to handle aerial terrorism .  One way is to be politically correct, not to profile passengers he says, for to do so would "...antagonise more than a billion Muslims, whose help is vital to isolate and inform on the relatively few Islamic radical terrorists”.

Hmmmm... wonder where those cooperative Muslims are, informing on their would-be-terrorist brethren?  I confess I haven't seen or read of any, apart from Abdulmutallab's father, and one wonders if such a clear-sighted gent would be turned off because we took steps to profile terrorists, given that he was, in a sense, profiling his own son....

My letter:

Kevin Rafferty decries “controversial racial and religious profiling” in the fight against terrorism ("Intelligence still the best defence against terrorism ", SCMP, 12 Jan 10)

In the next breath he says that “good intelligence is the best way to catch terrorists”.  Surely the most basic intelligence is to recognise that while not all Muslims are terrorists, all aviation-based terrorists in the last decade are Islamic.  Are Italians outraged if we look for Mafia types predominantly amongst Italian communities?  I thought not.  Just why should the “more than a billion Muslims” be antagonised by focus in the Islamic community, if --  as we are often told -- they are against terrorism and there are “relatively few Islamic terrorists”, as Rafferty assures us.

The converse is politically-correct examination of every single passenger, or random in-depth screening, which surely takes efforts away from closer scrutiny of those most at risk: young Muslim males, especially those (like Abdulmutallab) travelling one-way, with no luggage and paying in cash.

This is such basic “intelligence” that the calls in the US for passenger profiling are now bi-partisan.  About time.

Yours, etc