"Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile"
…terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly common in Western Europe. With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians — groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.
The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant.
So reports the Washington Post, in “Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile.” Of course, this is unsurprising to anyone who’s read “Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why.”
Those who haven’t will simply demand more and more information, in the vain hopes that something useful will come out if you pour enough garbage in.
Photo: “Due,” by Fotoharing, with no implications: it’s simply a cool photo of a profile.
[Update: added a word, in italics, to that last sentence.]
Funny how they use the word “atypical” to mean “not conforming to our preconceived notion”. I hear white-skinned Christian women are pretty common in Europe, after all.
And what is this “baptized as Christians” business? Do any other religions baptize their followers? Do all Christian sects even recognize the sacrament of baptism? Maybe they *really* mean “current or former Christians”.
I expect better from the WaPo editors.