"You fit the profile exactly of a suicide bomber with a nuke."

That is what a middle aged man told me today on the stairwell at King's. Now I've been the fist guy to discount any suggestion of pervasive racism among the Brits. Anti-Catholic? Sure... But I've generally dismissed any complaints by Chinese or Subcontinenters as oversensitive whining.

In any event, this guy fit the profile of a professor, which I assume he is. Granted I was wearing a scoufia... but it's still cold... and a lonsdale gym bag... but isn't lonsdale supposed to be nationalistic and National Front and all that stuff? I'm even clean shaven. Granted I somehow have gotten dark over the past few weeks, as noted by BP... How I manage that in the UK is beyond me. Unless I'm cloistered in my cell, I'm going to look like Pancho Villa. I may as well accept that that if people aren't going to call me "Taco" and tell me to go back to Mexico, they are going to say I fit the profile of a suicide bomber.

But what exactly IS the profile of a suicide bomber? I mean, if the guy REALLY thought I had a nuke, he should have tackled me and taken my bag. Maybe he was too intimidated if I'm diesel enough to carry a nuclear bomb up the stairs in one hand. But if *I* really thought someone was going to kill thousands of people, I would do something about it.. if I didn't have evidence of that, I would keep my mouth shut.

I came up with lots of witty responses to him after the fact, but at the time the most disconcerting thing I could think to do was smile and wink. To be honest, it didn't REALLY register what he said until he had walked away.

Having given it further thought, I think there are MANY MANY potential suicide bombers around. After all, it is Great Lent, and I see people eating meat everywhere I go. I never see anyone cross themselves before a meal. People eating with their right hands only.... :-O All grave threats to Christendom!

I could take it even deeper. One could blame the British for much of the current wave of Islamic fundamentalism. While, I don't think anyone deserves to get blown up on the tube, the Brits are in a sense reaping what they sowed. Let me explain: To maintain their colonial empire, the British quite often whipped up Islamic religious feeling.

They did this for a variety of reasons. For one thing, while Russians could always claim to be protecting Orthodox Christians, and the French could claim to be protecting Catholics... there were no native Protestant populations in Asia. In another example, the Brits often sided with Muslims against Hindus in India (though in some areas the other way around) in order to keep the Hindus, who tended to be the lower classes, in line. Had the British not looked after the Muslims there, the violence at partition would have been a schoolyard brawl compared to what was coming (so in this case it may have inadvertantly been a good thing). The Brits even often sided with the Turks against the Greeks, Bulgarians, Russians... at least when Disraeli was in power. Perhaps most shocking, they unleashed a guy called Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in eastern Afghanistan who forcibly converted all the pagans there. The district went from being called Kafiristan (land of infidels) to Nuristan (land of light)... This was to keep the Russians out of India.

Geez the British did so much for Islam, I should write a book about the era and call it Queen Victoria: Amir al-Muminin.
Alright, I'm overstating the case for effect, the British were looking out for number one, and they certainly didn't favor Islam on principle, nor did they favor it in all circumstances.

The bottom line is that I'm irritated that some smarmy Brit called me a terrorist because my skin is a little darker and I wore a sock hat.


Though on the upside, an elderly woman (one of the original council flats residents) came to the door today, and though she didn't believe me that the bike chained to the railing outside the door wasn't mine, proceeded to warn me that some "colored blokes, were pinching them last night." So at least I'm white enough not to be a bike thief.