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Profile Me, Says Lebanese Lawmaker from Waterbury

By Trip Jennings
Waterbury Republican- American
Posted on Thursday August 4, 2005

Security officials stopped Selim Noujaim twice during recent travels—once in the Netherlands and once in Pennsylvania.

A Lebanese Catholic cognizant of the realities in a post-9/11 world, Noujaim admitted that he felt inconvenienced. But nothing else.

Now, the third-term Connecticut state lawmaker from Waterbury said he may propose legislation next year to subject Middle Easterners like himself to racial profiling by police.

In a world terrified of the next terrorist attack, he said, Middle Easterners like himself must give up a few civil liberties in return for greater security for all.

“If you are an honest person, it is an inconvenience, but if you have nothing to hide you just answer questions,” he said.

Noujaim, who came to the U.S. nearly 30 years ago from Lebanon, said he is prepared for the tradeoff after seeing his native Lebanon plunge into a violent, decades-long civil war that often centered on religion, ethnicity and political allegiance.

“We, in the United States, have lived a very peaceful, relaxing life, compared to the rest of the world,” Noujaim said.

But not everyone in Connecticut is ready to concede the U.S. is ready for stricter vigilance if it means surrendering certain rights.

“If we are doing what Taliban is doing, isn’t there something wrong there,” Saud Anwar, the president of the Connecticut chapter of the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee, said of Noujaim’s idea. “Where does it stop? Does that mean that every Italian is a Mafia agent? Every African American is a Black Panther? It’s important for lawmakers to do their homework instead of having these knee jerk reflexes.”

Politicians and law enforcement authorities in the U.S. and other western countries have found themselves in a similar debate as they attempt to strike the proper balance between security and freedom in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the train bombings in Madrid last year and last month’s bombings in London.

They are not always successful.

Some Muslims in England already worry that officers are using racial profiling in their search for terror suspects, and some law enforcement authorities may be fueling those suspicions. “We should not waste time searching old white ladies,” Ian Johnston, chief constable of the British Transport Police, was quoted as saying in an English newspaper earlier this week.

It isn’t hard in this country to find a lively, freewheeling debate on whether the government should recalibrate the balance between security and freedom.

To demonstrate what he says are the inherent complexities in distinguishing a Middle Easterner from other individuals, Anwar wondered if authorities could tell a Syrian and Afghani apart, for example, or a Yemeni and a Pakistani, for that matter. Syrians and Yemenis are Middle Easterners; Afghanis and Pakistanis are not.

Data from the 2000 U.S. Census show more than 14,000 people of Middle Eastern ancestry living in Connecticut, including individuals tracing their heritage to pre-dominantly Arab countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Syria. More than 26,000 Pakistanis, Asian Indians and Bangladeshi, and fewer than 100 Afghanis, also live in Connecticut, but they come from different ethnic groups.

Even some Hispanics might be mistaken for Middle Easterners based on their looks, Anwar added.

“Once you think you have that right profile, there are always profile busters,” said Roger Vann, executive director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, which objects to racial or ethnic profiling.

Noujaim conceded the point, saying differentiating between a Middle Easterner and southern Italian might pose a problem, too.

But Noujaim said his idea has “much more credibility coming from a person like me” because he is from the Middle East and has seen the type of war America may be in for.

“I was in New York City a year ago in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and there were soldiers carrying machine guns,” Noujaim said. “A person with me said isn’t that terrible. And I said you better learn to live like this, because the rest of the world lives like this.”

Yes, there is a new world, Vann said, but Connecticut already has settled the question of whether or not to racially profile and should not reopen the topic.

“We have fought this battle before,” he said. Six years ago, Vann watched as Connecticut passed legislation prohibiting law enforcement authorities from pulling over or searching a person based solely on racial or ethnic identity. ”(Racial profiling) is no more practical now than it was then.”

Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, and a co-chairman of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, predicted there would be little legislative support for Noujaim’s idea if it authorized police to stop someone “solely on the basis that they are from Lebanon.”

But Lawlor, who teaches criminal justice as an associate professor at the University of New Haven, added that state statutes already allow police some latitude to make value judgments in their everyday duties. Officers can make note of an individual’s behavior, the way they dress and—as one factor among many—a person’s race or ethnicity.