Racial profiling at airports

The Mail amongst other news outlets, reports that the government are to consider allowing the security services to use racial profiling in the fight against terrorists getting onto a plane, exploding a device and killing a couple of hundred or more people. Apparently

'Passenger profiling would see selected travellers given tougher security checks before a flight.

Those behaving suspiciously or having an unusual travel pattern could be picked out
Other factors might include racial or religious profiling. This has sparked concern Muslims will be disproportionately targeted.

The profiling could be carried out by airport security staff or through computer analysis.

A passenger could be given extra screening if they ‘tick boxes’ such as arriving from a high-risk country, being alone or not having a return flight or luggage.

Currently, airport staff act on suspicious passenger behaviour or specific intelligence instead of profiling.'

'This has sparked concern Muslims will be disproportionately targeted.' - Disproportionate to what? Disproportionate to the number of Muslims in the UK population? Probably. Disproportionate to the number of Muslims flying out of the UK on any particular day? Probably. Disproportionate to the proportion of terrorists who are members of the 'religion of peace'? Probably not.

Racial profiling is not racist, it simply recognises who are likely to pose the greatest threat to the population in general. Racial profiling does not mean only searching Muslims, it does not mean ignoring the threat posed by such as Richard Read. It does mean concentrating more resources on the six young nervous looking Muslims sitting together with one way tickets to Detroit, Chicago and New York and less on the family of four flying to Alicante for a week's package holiday. Yes it also means not concentrating on searching the two eighty year old nuns flying to Rome but maybe giving the two Imams flying to Washington DC a second look.

Yes this may mean that totally innocent Muslims get searched more often and/or more thoroughly than totally innocent non-Muslims. It may mean that totally innocent Muslims find travelling by air more onerous than do totally innocent non-Muslims. But I am afraid that whilst a sizable proportion of Muslims both within and without this country are fixated on killing as many Westerners, including Muslims, as they can; security needs must be prioritised.

I presume that totally innocent Muslims would rather be subjected to stricter security checks than risk dying in an Islamic terrorist attack.