New warnings that Al Qaeda is recruiting women of "non-Arab" appearance to attack targets in the U.S. and the U.K. are reportedly unnerving law enforcement agencies. The key fear: These female terrorists, said to be trained in Yemen by the same Al Qaeda cells who backed Nigerian "Christmas bomber" Umar Abdulmutallab, could travel using Western passports. While female suicide bombers have struck in Israel and Iraq, they've never attacked the West. How does this revelation change the rules in the War on Terror? (Watch an ABC report about female suicide bombers)
This proves how foolish racial profiling is: The initiative to screen "people who look like terrorists” has created loopholes Al Qaeda can exploit, says Jed Lewison at Daily Kos, and it only succeeded in telling "terrorists exactly who we are looking for." It's no surprise that Al Qaeda would focus on training female would-be bombers who could “slip through the cracks of our security system."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
