Look Like A Terrorist

I know it's human nature to fear the unknown, it's an innate fear that's probably the single biggest reason our caveman ancestors lived long enough to have the kids who had the kids who had the kids who eventually became you and me. It's self-preservation turned to 11.
   But I hear people talking about other people who look like terrorists, and I ain't buying it. Timothy McVeigh, the single worst terrorist in America until 9/11, looked like a guy who used to play on my middle school football team. And if you think middle-school football teams harbor terrorists... well, you'd be right. But they're the kind of terrorists who light paper bags of dog poop on fire on your front doorstep, not the kind who use fertilizer bombs to kill daycare toddlers like Mr. McVeigh.
   What people mean when they say someone 'looks like a terrorist' is that 'someone looks foreign,' or more specifically 'someone is wearing a turban and a robe and a they have olive skin and a long beard.' Because, really, people from Ghana wear turbans and robes, but no one calls them terrorists. And the Amish sport beards that are eerily similar to the ones Muslim mullahs wear, but you wouldn't call anyone Amish a terrorist. They wear suspenders and straw hats, for God's sake.
   I'm in no way an apologist for Muslim extremists - they are dangerous and they are responsible for much of the violence in the world right now - but someone is not a terrorist because of the way they look, they're a terrorist because they're sullen, resentful cowards. It's what's inside that counts.
   Think about it. What if I was visiting, say, Fiji, and the people there had decided that pale white guys wearing uninspired office worker clothes were terrorists? I'd be stopped and frisked on every corner (they have corners in Fiji, right?), my picture would be on the 'no-canoe list,' and they'd have satirical t-shirts of pale white guys in office attire. How fair is that?
   While the Ku Kux Klan is vile and reprehensible, at least they're honest in their extreme bigotry. They don't like anyone who's not a white American Protestant and if you're anything but they'll tell you straight up that's the reason why they hate you. They don't hide behind 'looks like a terrorist.' So, when you think about it, the 'looks like a terrorist' crowd are bigger cowards and losers than the KKK.