Fear, paranoia, and dangerous stereotypes

La Shaw Barber has a disturbing story on her blog which talks about the fact that for some people having "Muslim" passengers on a plane is as disturbing if not more disturbing that having snakes on a plane. I find this story unnerving for two reasons. The first reason is that people are making the fooling and dangerous assumption that Muslim means Arab and that Arab means terrorist or Islamic fascists as President Bush would say. The second reason is that the people who are refusing to fly on a plane with Muslim passengers are in fact trying to implement what the government so far has refused to do (because it is illegal and in my unconstitutional) that is ethnic profiling when in fact, it isn't an effective way to ensure that airplanes are attacked by terrorists.