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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us May 20, 2005 Commentary Xenophobia? Xenophilia? Let’s try xenorealism Rob Asghar My younger brother Imran ponders his job choices in light of the possibility he could become a scapegoat if and when more terrorism visits American shores. Things are not as bad as he fears, but I sense that many American citizens such as him will need to offer some trade-offs to prevent worst-case-scenarios. Imran’s prospects are dazzling: He is a skilled surgeon who is wrapping up formal education and training at some of America’s premier medical institutions. He has a glamorous wife and a brilliant young daughter who charms onlookers with ease. Yet he frets that, if and when more terrorism arrives, his young Pakistani family will no longer be welcome here, and would be especially unwelcome in less cosmopolitan parts of the country. He is not being silly or paranoid. He’s listened to many pundits pontificate on how people from his part of the world are the paramount threat to Western civilization. He’s already seen his utterly harmless sisters-in-law fail to gain visas to this nation. I attempt to cheer him up and help him keep perspective: Almost without exception, Americans have been a big-hearted people in the wake of that black 2001 morning. Yet, what if another such morning were to happen? Would Americans finally begin to act like an animal backed into a corner? I want to believe that they won’t. But a curious issue arises: If Al Qaeda is truly “at war” with America and its civilian population, why haven’t there been more garden-variety attacks on civilian targets, such as in Israel, which are less spectacular but which can do even more to hinder a populace’s daily life? Asked why hasn’t Al Qaeda hit back on U.S. soil since 9/11, terrorism expert Richard Dekmejian tells me he disagrees with experts who claim Al Qaeda is at war with American civilians. “They do not appear to have an ongoing interest in harming American civilians,” says Dekmejian, a political science professor at the University of Southern California who has authored Islam in Revolution and who is writing a book on the various forms of intrastate, state-sponsored and transnational terrorist groups. “I suspect they primarily wanted to send a message to Western governments in the most dramatic fashion, and to have a symbol to help recruit and mobilize,” Dekmejian says. The civilian deaths of Americans and other nationals on 9/11 had no significance to Al Qaeda, he says, “except to tell their enemy, ‘We can hit you at will.’” Dekmejian also believes Al Qaeda has been too busy running from American guns to fight well. But he also believes that Bush administration oversteps in the Middle East have increased Al Qaeda’s pool of recruits. So the threat remains real, for Americans of every nationality and for those of us who could become scapegoats. Will America be safe for Imran and his young family? It could be, but I would offer up a peculiar prescription for how to ensure its being safe: let’s all accept some limited ethnic profiling as an inoculation against later overreactions. This is the American challenge: to be sensible about the threat without being xenophobic. Xenophobia wants to expel or intern all profileable minorities and immigrants; xenophilia demands that they never have their feelings ruffled; but a reasonable xenorealism would allow for as sane a balance as possible. If it helps the government discern the difference between greater and lesser threats, let them question me in my home. If it helps reduce paranoia in public places, let me be profiled thoroughly in airports. Heck, if I need to be spied upon a little by the government in order for them to be sure that a pundit such as myself means no harm, may I not react in an oversensitive fashion. This is less than ideal, but let us be sober-minded. Dekmejian, the USC professor, speculates that the next major terrorist strike could happen in Europe, and that rightist political groups may then gain the influence they seek to drive immigrants out. For the sake of Imran’s family and my own sake, I’m willing to do some tradeoffs so that we never get to that point in America. 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