Excerpt:
American Muslim leaders are criticizing new airport security guidelines they say unfairly profile Muslims. More importantly, they say, the new rules are ineffective.
Muslims leaders say the measures, introduced by the Travel Security Administration on Sunday (Jan. 3) after a Nigerian Muslim man nearly blew up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, wrongly scrutinize Muslims. Instead, officials should be looking at security personnel who had ample information to catch the would-be bomber, but failed to act on it.
"The government failed in its execution, and now it's introducing these measures to cover up its mistakes," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.
The TSA denied claims of profiling. "TSA does not profile," said TSA spokeswoman Lauren Gaches. "TSA security measures are based on threat, not ethnic or religious background."