Suicide Bomber in Oklahoma

Here's an excerpt and link to an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune today (Nov. 28, 2005). Well done, Ms. Dawn Turner Trice! Some interesting news that I did not know before, and interesting how most Americans share this problem.

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Racial profiling goes beyond nonsensical. It's downright dangerous. And not just for Muslim men, but for us all.

Consider this: In October, a University of Oklahoma engineering student attached explosives to his body and blew himself up near a campus football stadium holding 84,000 people. Oklahoma police cordoned off the area before allowing students to leave the football game. Officials called the bombing an individual suicide and said Homeland Security would investigate. The student was described as a white male who was troubled. Had he been a brown young man, equally troubled, with a Muslim name, I don't think it's a stretch to say he might have been considered a suicide bomber. And Homeland Security's terror-alert system might have even been ratcheted up a few colors.

A few weeks before that incident, airport security found a pipe bomb in the bag of another University of Oklahoma student, a 24-year-old white man. After being arrested and released on $10,000 bail, his explanation was that he had built the bomb for fun and forgotten that he'd left it in his bag. A former Oklahoma City mayor who came to the man's defense offered the following explanation: "He had a little explosive device, and boys like to see things go bang." Could you imagine just how deep inside a prison camp this young man would be right now if he had been a young Muslim who "liked to see things go bang?"

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