Why aren't 'we', the US, profiling imams and giving them the full procto exam? When a rotten egg is found, shouldn't the doors be shut down and the entire congregation criminally investigated/arrested? Islam is no more a cult than Christianity or Judaism? Individual humans, known as imams, can have the ideology of the taliban and be completely 'right' if they hold power? If not many cults, what are you describing, community organizations?
Seems like the more you claim the bad apple is to blame, the more you demonstrate that the whole, at the minimum locally, is to blame. Maybe, it's the answer to prayers. All shooting and hunting clubs should set up a mosque on site, then we'd always be right.
Well Craig . . . not all of Christianity is hierarchical either (like the Catholic Church and many other denominations are). There are exceptions, as Wonko pointed out. You familiar with the crazy Phelpsies that demonstrate at military funerals? Should we be "profiling" them? Branch Davidians? Given terrorism laws, if an imam is actively advocating terrorism, he'd likely be in trouble.
Re "profiling" in general: Law enforcement can't do it. You can "stop and frisk", but if you stop and frisk a very high percentage of one ethnic group, you're going to be in trouble. Intelligence, however, CAN profile. If a case of Chinese espionage is suspected, counterintelligence would be looking very hard at Chinese Americans. Why? They're the people Chinese intelligence targets. If it's Russians we're worried about, CI would be looking at sudden, unexplained wealth. They buy their traitors. If you know how the enemy operates, that's how you target. But that's intel, not law enforcement. And intel isn't concerned with making legal cases. If it comes to that point, intel will turn over their information to LE, and they take it from there. Somewhat complex, but that's the difference between the two. Prior to 9/11, the FBI's counterterrorism agents couldn't even exchange information with their criminal agents. That's changed since, but they still have to be careful if they want a successful prosecution.
Re a much later comment about college debt: Old guys like King (if he'd gone to college) and me (and I did--BA and MA) didn't have a huge concern. I graduated debt free, with no scholarships. But then my first semester (spring 1964), tuition was only $126. I could pay that with the money I made pumping gas, doing work-study on campus, and serving in the National Guard.
