The irrational fear of immigration restriction

VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/walker/100604_muslim_immigration.htm June 04, 2010 Why Won’t Anti-Sharia Campaigners Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Frank Gaffney Oppose Muslim Immigration? By Brenda Walker Even otherwise brave and sensible people can be afflicted with the irrational fear of immigration restriction—as I just observed with regret first-hand. I had the opportunity to ask The Question of two well-known figures who fight against the worsening incursion of Islam and totalitarian sharia law in the West. Both flunked. It is a no-brainer to exclude potential enemies from the immigrant multitudes when there are plenty of people from cultures friendly to our values. Europe has learned the hard way that more Muslim immigration means jihadist mass murder and social balkanization. But both Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a former member of the Dutch parliament by way of Somalia) and Frank Gaffney (founder of the Center for Security Policy) rejected the idea of stopping Muslim immigration. First, here's Ayaan Hirsi Ali on National Public Radio, with audio available at the link, responding to an email from me: "NEIL CONAN: Here's an email from Brenda in Berkeley: "Don't you think that persons from traditional Muslim societies are not a good cultural fit for the West, particularly America, and should not be admitted as immigrants? Not all diversity is desirable." And she gives us examples of FGM, which by—I assume she means female genital mutilation, and polygamy. Ms. ALI: You know, I don't—I really don't think that we—by excluding people or by kicking people out of the country, that that is where we should look for solutions. The United States is a highly moral country.Most Americans go out of their way to help people who are underprivileged, whether it's in the United States or outside of the U.S. And I know there's a lot of criticism on American foreign policy, but I just see this great moral activity, and the only—my message is to share, first and foremost, the values that have made Americans successful and resilient with the newcomers. And I think it's justified for those people who truly understand what the American Constitution is about and what democracy and liberalism are about and who reject it and who want Sharia to say it's common sense to tell them take illegal U-turn. Go back to where these Sharia. I think that's justified. But for a lot of people who don't know of these ideas and who are here, I think the first step would be to educate them on these, you know, on freedom and the institutions and Constitution of freedom. 'Nomad' Ayaan Hirsi Ali On Reclaiming Islam, NPR, May 18, 2010 What a bizarre statement from a woman who needs round-the-clock bodyguards against Muslims trying to kill her because she renounced Islam and pledged her allegiance instead to Enlightenment values! Ali had to leave the Netherlands (Muslim population 6 percent) for the relative safety of the United States. But she still wants more of them here! Does she really believe that America should perform missionary work to teach Muslims the wisdom of the Constitution? There's no reason Muslims cannot self-educate on that subject at a distance. Ali may be looking for "solutions" to the cultural clash of more than a millennium—good luck with that!—but my concern is U.S. national security. Frank Gaffney was not a lot better. I asked a similar question at his April 28 talk, "Sharia Law—A Threat to America?", at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, which was the first one chosen during Q&A. You can listen to an audio file here. Following is my transcription: “The first question asks, "Should America end Muslim immigration for the duration of Islam's war against the West?" "GAFFNEY: Well, interesting you ask, isn't it given that this city has just decided to boycott Arizona for trying to implement federal immigration law. Federal immigration law! “There are those who believe that Muslims should be collectively punished for the sorts of things I've just described. I hope you've taken what I said at the outset and repeated at the end as my personal view which is that I think we should not be encouraging the admission to this country of people who adhere to and are therefore obliged to promote sharia. I think most of you Muslims who have come to this country, at least until the State Department started bringing in large numbers of sharia-adherent Muslims as refugees, most Muslims came to this country trying to get away from sharia. We have different numbers been given, perhaps 2 million, maybe more, most of whom are professionals, most of whom practice their faith, if they do at all, practice it in a peaceable tolerant way that is consistent with, and I think, intended to be fully compatible withour Constitution. I personally have no objection to having them in this country at all and think they are part of the solution. “I would like to see them more visible; I would like to see them more vocal. There's one I know of who's both visible and vocal, a marvelous man by the name of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who hails from that state you all are boycotting at the moment, Arizona. He is one of the few who has had unbelievable courage to stand up and say pretty much what I've just said. He's been ostracized for it. He has his life threatened, because after all that is apostasy, according to the sharia adherents, but I personally think you don't want to leave those people out of the solution. “But I think there's a lot to be said for saying, as we did at the time, we don't want communists immigrating to this country. We don't want sharia-adherent totalitarians here either." Huh? So which is it? Gaffney had just spoken for 30 minutes warning that hostile Islam is a major threat to the survival of all we hold dear in the West—yet he can't simply say “Yes! Stop immigration!” He has to wiggle and apologize. How does he think sharia is getting here? Plus he could name only one admirable Muslim—and that man is "ostracized" for speaking about Islam's retro nature. How should we sort out the "good" Muslims from the sharia-adherent ones, assuming that's what Gaffney has in mind? Lying to promote Islam (aka taqiyya) is believed by sharia adherents to be moral behavior. So it's not like a State Department official could question a prospective newbie and expect an honest response. And what is this "punishment" Gaffney mentions? Immigration to America—or any country—is a privilege, not a right. Can I, a Presbyterian-American woman immigrate to Pakistan, or China? Certainly not—yet they expect to be admitted here in the millions. But we cultural realists are castigated for drawing a line against insane diversity. To top it off, Gaffney praised Geert Wilders only a month previous in his column for recognizing the demographic danger to the Netherlands:  Geert Wilders Deserves Praise for Attacking Sharia, Newsmax, March 15, 2010 “Wilders also seeks an end to mass immigration from Islamic countries, expulsion of criminal immigrants and a halt to further construction of mosques. Clearly, in some quarters, these are seen as controversial proposals. But they reflect a harsh demographic reality: Failure to take such steps inevitably will condemn free societies such as the Netherlands to submission at the hands of swelling numbers of Sharia-adherent Muslims.” As if the same rules don't apply to the United States! Yes, yes, we know that not every Muslim immigrant is an active enemy of America. But some are. And public safety should be more important than any possible slight to the sensitive Sons of Mohammed. Any imagined advantage of a "universal nation" as preached by diversity-enthralled globalist Ben Wattenberg is certainly obliterated by the national security threat. What vague cultural improvement of diversity can compensate for a major terror attack like 9/11? On May 29, the Washington Post floated a story [Options studied for a possible Pakistan strike, By Greg Miller, May 29, 2010] suggesting that if Pakistan-based jihadists executed "catastrophic attack" on America, then a military reprisal might be launched by the U.S.. Here's an idea that apparently hasn’t occurred to anyone in the nation’s capital: end immigration from Pakistan—the home of the immigrant Faisal Shahad who tried to blow up Times Square. The plain facts, ducked by Ali and Gaffney, are these: Today's caliphate revolutionaries have put away the Islamic swords of the last 1400 years and taken up numerical invasion by immigration and having lots of babies. This immigration is war. Any lack of pushback is taken as weakness. Indeed, the silly Muslim outreach effort pursued by President Obama may have contributed to the increased terror attacks against this country, which a recent DHS report described as having reached an all-time high. The jihadist internet reaches around the world, and appeals to young Muslim men in the West focus on Islamic identity. Their parents may have immigrated simply for a better life and opportunities available via modernity, but the younger generation may not feel entirely a part of western society. So the Islamists, both on the internet and at the mosque, tailor their message to feelings of alienation, which many young adults experience to some degree anyway. The ideology is easily available and effective. Young Muslim fellows from abroad may appear well adjusted to American ways—but then respond to the call of jihad like an internal alarm clock has gone off. One example: Shirwa Ahmed, the Somali refugee in Minneapolis who returned home and killed 28 and injured dozens of others in Mogadishu in a suicide bombing: The making of a Minnesota suicide bomber, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 3, 2009 Nobody knows for sure why Ahmed left Minnesota in late 2007, or how he wound up obliterated in a bomb crater in Somalia a year later. Did the once passive teenager who came of age at Roosevelt High School shooting hoops, wearing hip-hop fashions and hanging out at the Mall of America volunteer for Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of Al-Qaida? Did his self-described transformation into a "God man" lead him to return to fight in his homeland's civil war, or become a recruit for jihad? Most frightening, was he or any other Somali ever a candidate to return home and strike within the United States? Some two dozen other Somalis left Minnesota to pursue jihad in their homeland. In 2007, Pew polled Muslims residing in the United States and found that, among younger Muslims, 26 percent thought that suicide bombings against civilians in order to protect Islam were acceptable: that's a pool of 100,000 jihad-friendly residents available to be urged to the next level. A recent Wall Street Journal a article about an undercover officer in New York City noted how quickly Muslim residents can flip, particularly when excited by psy-ops such as videos of American soldiers being killed: "…a young Bangladeshi immigrant working undercover found himself among a dozen men at an Islamic bookstore in Brooklyn one day in 2004 to watch videos of U.S. soldiers being slain. “‘That made these guys pumped up and happy," the officer said. ‘It's like a party at a club. They were hitting the walls with excitement. One guy even broke a chair… ‘The officer said he fit the profile of the young men he sought to meet: middle-class, first- or second-generation Americans in their late teens or early 20s. He said he watched the radicalization process of dozens. ‘At times, it was so rapid that a year or two could separate clubbing in Miami from prayer five times a day. "Infiltrating Jihadis' World, By Joel Stonington, WSJ, May 6, 2010 Diversity enthusiasts have long claimed that America does immigrant assimilation better than the European nations. And maybe it does, in terms of economic inclusion. But the cultural divide is another thing entirely, as shown by honor killings, slavery, polygamy and FGM—all deeply objectionable practices imported by Muslims who have immigrated here. Not all critics of Islam are PC squishes like Ali and Gaffney. Robert Spencer, the author of many books and director of the essential website JihadWatch.org, is a stand-up scholar and more recently became a leader of the activist group Stop the Islamification of America. His 2008 book Stealth Jihad. And when Geert Wilders, the embattled member of the Dutch parliament, finally showed his documentary Fitna to the House of Lords, his remarks contained a reasonable to-do list to preserve our liberty. "First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. In Europe and certainly in the Netherlands, we need something like the American First Amendment. “Second, we will have to end and get rid of cultural relativism. To the cultural relativists, the sharia socialists, I proudly say: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Don't be afraid to say it. You are not a racist when you say that our own culture is better. “Third, we will have to stop mass immigration from Islamic countries. Because more Islam means less freedom. “Fourth, we will have to expel criminal immigrants and, following denaturalization, we will have to expel criminals with a dual nationality. And there are many of them in my country. “Fifth, we will have to forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe. Especially since Christians in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia are mistreated, there should be a mosque building-stop in the West. " See how easy that was to say? It's common sense about cultural survival—for the U.S. as well as Europe. Brenda Walker (email her) lives in Northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org (recently remodeled and bloggified!) and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. As a long-time environmentalist, she believes the appropriate number of immigrants from anywhere to America, now home to 309 million people, is ZERO.