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ABSTRACT
Since September 11, 2001 new anti-terrorism laws like the U.S. Patriot Act have been instituted for national security purposes. These new laws have made many Muslim Americas very vulnerable to racial profiling and discrimination. The data use for this analysis was the Pew Research Forum Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream 2007. Robert Agnew's General Strain theory was used to examine whether racial profiling and discrimination enacted by these laws generate support for terrorism. Results indicate that there is very little support for associating Muslim racial profiling to support for terrorism. However, African Americans are more likely to support terrorism when they experience racial profiling and discrimination.
INTRODUCTION
Racial profiling has been an on-going problem in the United States. Prior to September 11, 2001 Japanese immigrants were often denied citizenship during WWII because they were profiled as not being loyal to the United States especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Müller 2003). African Americans have been the main targets of many racial profiles, like the "Driving While Black" tactics used by law enforcement (Müller 2003) and Hispanics and Asians questions in "routine" investigations pertaining to drug crimes (Gross & Livingston 2002; Ramierez 2003). The practices of racial profiling have been blurred. While questioning people of similar racial background as a perpetrator of a specific crime is often viewed as acceptable, discriminating an entire racial group as having those same characteristics is racial profiling (Gross & Livingston 2002; Ramierez 2003). Then on September 11, 2001 nineteen Muslim male extremists hijacked four commercials airplanes crashing two of them into the World Trade Center Twin Towers, one into The Pentagon, and one crashed hear Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Approximately 3,000 people died including the hijackers. Immediately following these events the United States responded with the beginning of the "War on Terror", an invasion into Afghanistan to bring terrorist like AI-Qaeda and the Taliban to justice.
Since September 11, 200 Ian association between Islam and terrorism became an overwhelming concern for many Americans. New laws pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism were executed and have challenged our ideals about constitutional laws protecting against racial profiling and discrimination. Most predominately the U.S. Patriot Act incorporates many of these new anti-terrorism policies. The U.S. Patriot Act stands for Uniting and...