In King's name, profile the profilers

Martin Luther King Jr. is turning in his grave.

His own son – Martin Luther King III – Arabs and Al Sharpton are using his name in vain.

While many celebrated the civil rights leader's memory yesterday, Sharpton, King III and Arab leaders desecrated it – repeatedly using King's name to denounce "profiling" of Arabs and Muslims.

But, in the heart of Arab and Muslim America – the Detroit area – it's Arabs who are doing the profiling. Blacks aren't just being profiled by them, they're being senselessly murdered, kidnapped and assaulted.

Just ask Kalvin Porter of Detroit. If only he could answer. He was beaten to death in May 1999 by Adel Altam and Fadhel Mazeb, Muslim Arabs from Yemen, in front of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Crystal. Porter's "crime" was buying items at the Arab-owned Sunoco station where they worked – and defending his stepdaughter's honor. The Arab Muslim clerks made lewd comments about the young girl. When Porter responded, "Why did you call my daughter [a lewd name]?" they beat Porter – a father of five – to death with a tire-iron, escaping justice at an O.J.-style trial.

It wasn't the only incident of Detroit-area Arab-on-black violence. In July, a sexagenarian grandmother was assaulted at another Arab-owned Detroit gas station. Also in July, Adeeb J. Haddad, 58, was charged with assaulting a 13-year-old black boy at a gas station in Southfield, a Detroit suburb. A black customer was intentionally locked in a Ferndale gas station after arguing with an Arab attendant. Black customers were told by Arab owners of a South Lyon station that the bathrooms were out of order, which was false. Prosecution resulted.

Clearly, Arabs – who own over 80 percent of all gas stations in Metro-Detroit, according to figures provided by the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce to the Detroit News – are the ones guilty of profiling here – without hijackings or national security at stake. But when terrorism is involved and the shoe is on the other foot, the American Arab community is suddenly into civil rights instead of our safety.

Dr. King dreamed of the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Clearly, one of his progeny – King III – has never entered an Arab-owned gas station in Detroit, where the term often used for blacks is "abad" – slave. Arab activist Terry Ahwal told the Detroit Free Press, "Arabs believe blacks as people will steal from them or even kill them."

That's why Heaster Wheeler, NAACP Detroit's executive director, when asked to denounce Arab-profiling, wrote, "There is no question as to where we stand on profiling. ... The question is where do so many of the others stand? ... American children of families patronize [Arabs'] stores ... and few of these merchants ... even provide safe passage in and out of their businesses." NAACP President Rev. Wendell Anthony told the Free Press, "We cannot spend all of our energy concerned with our Arab-American brothers when at the same time they do not express the same concerns about us."

Because of these incidents, Sharpton and his Michigan-based associate, Rev. Horace L. Sheffield III, were boycotting Detroit's Arab-owned gas stations. Their "B-Gas Strategic Buying Campaign" – complete with late-night TV commercials urging gas purchase at black-owned stations – has suddenly disappeared now that Sharpton has hypocritically determined that a renewed alliance with Arabs is more advantageous to his power-grabbing enterprise.

Equally hypocritical, the same Arab leaders who expressed little remorse over Arabs' poor treatment of black customers are now waving the Martin Luther King Jr. flag, just as easily as they waved the American flag after Sept. 11. In August, Imad Hamad, Michigan regional director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was attacking the black boycott, threatening that it would "escalate tensions." But in October, in a Detroit News article decrying Arab profiling, Hamad was photographed holding documents "for a Martin Luther King scholarship program." Ironically, the INS opposed U.S. citizenship for Hamad, a Muslim Arab, because he's a suspected Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist – exactly the type of person we should be profiling.

Sharpton, who just months ago protested Arab profiling of blacks, is now joining hands with his profilers in the "civil rights" industry's latest juggernaut, blaspheming all King stood for.

King demanded freedom for "our brothers in Africa ... to live in peace under our own sovereignty," not just in the United States. But Islamic and Arabic leaders with whom Sharpton is allying himself are supporters of Arab Muslim enslavement, gang rape, torture and murder of blacks in Sudan.

Arab leaders now allied with King III and Sharpton opposed the rescue of Ethiopian black Jews to freedom and opportunity in Israel. They oppose Zionism and the existence of a Jewish State in Israel.

But Dr. King was definitive on Arab Anti-Semites like Hamad and their civil-rights fakery. In his "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," he wrote, "Anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so. ... It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations."

King recognized that those who "feel as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice and discrimination ... have been misled ... into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share."

Dr. King wasn't fooled by these racist profilers and their newfound commitment to civil rights. Shame on them for hijacking his good name.