Exclusive

Exclusive: Muslim Immigration: A Winning or Losing Proposition for America?
Glen Reinsford

Author: Glen Reinsford
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: June 18, 2007

Are you aware that CAIR insists that any and all Muslims from around the world are automatically “entitled” to immigrate to America? FSM Contributing Editor Glen Reinsford makes compelling arguments on this issue. Is an ever growing Muslim population an asset or a liability for us?

Pardon the crude analogy, but what if someone handed you a revolver with one bullet and five empty chambers and asked you to put it to your temple and squeeze the trigger? Would you indulge them?

If you are a sane person, then you would naturally decline the offer, regardless of the number of empty chambers. Even a one in a hundred chance of doing harm is hardly a reason, in and of itself, for taking an unnecessary risk.

First, let’s concede that the majority of Muslim immigrants mean Americans no harm. They have their reasons for not wanting to live in Muslim countries and these aren’t hard to guess. Of the fifty-three Islamic nations on the planet, there is hardly a single one that isn’t characterized by some combination of debilitating corruption, economic blight, third-world standard of living, political repression, or an appalling human rights condition.

Unfortunately, however, more Muslims in America will inevitably result in a more Muslim America, which ultimately means having to deal with the problems that plague Muslim society. If there are tangible benefits that offset the added strain of trying to accommodate a religion that is very much at odds with Western liberal values (including freedom of conscience, social tolerance, democracy, and the equality of women), then they are not immediately apparent.

Even the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the most vocal advocates of unfettered Islamic immigration into America rarely bothers to try and make the case that non-Muslim citizens will benefit from an influx of those believing that Islam is meant to be the dominant political, religious and social system that Muhammad required it to be. Instead, CAIR merely implies that Muslims are entitled to America by virtue of the fact that the U.S. accepts other immigrants.

Beyond flirting with cultural catastrophe, there is also the loss of American lives resulting from the domestic terror attacks that will certainly escalate as the U.S. inexplicably imports a fifth column in a time of war.

A Pew Research poll released in May shows that one out of every four Muslims in America either supports al-Qaeda outright or is ambivalent about the terrorists that slaughtered 3,000 fellow citizens in the name of Allah just six short years ago. About the same percentage of younger Muslims also believe that suicide bombings can be justified in “defense of Islam.”

Support for terrorism isn’t just theoretical. The release of the study was sandwiched between news of a shooting rampage plot by Muslims against Fort Dix residents and a separate Fedayeen plot literally to blow up JFK airport in New York. It also follows the murder of five Americans at a Utah shopping mall by a Muslim teenager in February.

This is also true of Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who murdered two people waiting in line at an LAX airline counter in 2002, Mohammed Taheri-azar, who intentionally ran down nine students with an SUV in North Carolina in 2006, and Osama Ahmed Ibrahim, a Muslim doctor in Chicago who allegedly allowed a Jewish patient to die under his care in 2003. Naveed Haq, who shot six women at a Seattle Jewish center last year, was the son of immigrants.

The Qur’an, Islam’s holiest text, contains dozens of verses that directly encourage religious violence, and there are literally hundreds more that speak of Hell or hatred toward nonbelievers. Muslim apologists usually insist that the bloodiest directives are reserved for times of war (even if this stipulation is not always evident from the context of the passage).

Many Americans naively assume that they are safe from Islamic terror because they mean Muslims no harm. Indeed, the Pew Research study showed that the majority of American Muslims are “well-assimilated” and have a “positive view” of American society, something that simply would not be the case if there truly was a “war on Islam.” Even CAIR (an organization that normally tries to convince the world of just how miserable life is for Muslims in the U.S.) hastily touted this part of the study, as it tried to assuage the concerns of Americans over the news that their Muslim neighbors may not be who they appear.

But whether or not there actually is a war on Islam matters far less than what Muslims choose to believe. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of Muslims overseas and an alarming number of Muslims in the U.S. are convinced that there is a war against their religion. In fact, high-profile organizations like CAIR and MPAC routinely feed this misconception with negative propaganda, while very few Muslim leaders are active in countering it.

Suddenly the issue of whether or not those Qur’anic mandates to “slay the infidels wherever ye find them” are limited to times of war becomes somewhat academic. A Muslim who actually believes the rhetoric of war (as most Muslims now do) has, at his fingertips, a manual of instruction telling him to strike off heads and fingertips in the cause of Allah. What sense does it make for the U.S. to draw its future citizens from a pool of potential terrorists?

As if this weren’t bad enough, the Pew Research study also finds that the younger generation of Muslims is more accommodating of terrorism than their parents – a trend that is supported by surveys of Muslims elsewhere in the West, with alarming implications. While moderates are capable of breeding radicals, radicals rarely breed moderates. Islamic extremism will expand with each new generation, even if the overall number of Muslims stays the same.

Progressive radicalization is a persistent theme in Islam, not just in the West, but in other parts of the world as well, where fundamentalism usually has a way of winning out over pragmatism.

In Gaza, for example, Palestinians recently used their new-found “independence” to elect the bloody Islamist terror group, Hamas, to power, even though it meant an immediate and drastic reduction in foreign aid.

It is also highly unlikely that the Pakistan of today (where Islamists are forcing the implementation of Sharia and the persecution of surviving religious minorities) is what the father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had in mind when he engineered an independent Muslim nation just 60 years ago. Jinnah was a secularist who believed in the separation of church and state.

Lebanon, a vibrant and predominantly Christian nation before 1975, is perhaps the most vivid example of Muslim immigration pushing a nation past the tipping point in the modern age. Native Lebanese expert, Brigitte Gabriel, traces the downfall of her country to the absorption of Palestinian refugees, which gave radical Islam the foothold that it needed to trigger the civil war.

The subsequent occupation by Syria forced out huge numbers of Christians and devastated the social fabric of what had been the Arab world’s best example of economic success, civil liberty and tolerance. The free reign of Hezbollah and other radical groups has virtually ensured Muslim hegemony and Lebanon’s grinding descent into the abyss of dysfunction that defines those nations under Islamic rule.

Every country that is Muslim today was once non-Muslim. Every culture that found itself under the heel of Islam died a pitiful death as the concentration of Muslims within the population gradually exceeded critical mass. This is because Islam is an end unto itself. Like a virus, once it is introduced, it uses the host’s machinery to make copies and eventually strangle native religions into tiny, persecuted minorities.

In the past, Islam achieved its imperial goals by the sword. Today – notwithstanding the occasional terror attack – Jihad against the West is waged via the tactics of unilateral immigration and one-sided proselytizing.

This is not to say that all Muslims are a threat to America’s future, of course. Indeed, there is a handful in the United States that does stand against extremism, trying their best to convince the rest of the Islamic world that America is not a legitimate target for terror. Unlike, say, the first-generation immigrants who mostly make up the executive leadership of the Hamas-linked CAIR, these Muslims aren’t takers. They are makers – giving back to America, rather than existing merely to foment grievance and group identity for personal indulgence.

Presumably, there are potential Muslim immigrants who would also become patriotic and productive citizens. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing who they are or predicting who their children might become. Like putting a partially-loaded gun to one’s head, there is absolutely no compelling reason to gamble with American life and civil liberty. What reward have Americans gained so far that can possibly offset the loss of those already killed by Muslims on American soil?

For potential immigrants who believe that Islam is the true religion, America’s message should be one of challenge rather than appeasement. Over the course of fourteen centuries now, Islam has demonstrated a proven ability to take prosperous countries and turn them into disaster zones. Now it is time for Muslims to show that their “one, true religion” is capable of building societies in which Muslims themselves actually want to live rather than escape.

After all, what service to the Muslim world does the United States do by absorbing the most reform-minded individuals from where they are needed most?

It should go without saying that citizens of America who happen to be Muslim should not be viewed with suspicion or treated any differently than anyone else merely on the basis of their religion. But neither should Americans be afraid of confronting organizations like CAIR, which cynically exploit Western tolerance for the purpose of ultimately destroying that tolerance and advancing a theocratic system that is fundamentally opposed to the very principles that made America successful and attractive.

Again, the message should be clear: If you want to live in a Muslim country, then go live in one. On the other hand, if you don’t want to live in a Muslim country, then stop trying to turn America into one.

The problems are not uniquely American, of course. But Americans are best positioned to avoid them if they can muster the courage. Others in the West are not as fortunate. Some have developed a pathetic resignation to their fate.

On a recent visit to the United States, Queen Elizabeth talked positively of the “challenges” posed by “diversity.” This was a thinly-veiled reference to the consequences of British immigration policy over the last fifty years, which now include a disaffected Muslim underclass that is just beginning to flex its muscle. In the Queen’s mind, it would appear that diversity is the tautological justification for very social “challenges” that diversity creates.

But “diversity” is merely a description, not a self-evident moral axiom that confers any sort of legitimacy in its own right. The same social engineers who champion the cause of diversity are often known to sing a different tune when it comes to poverty, the uneven distribution of wealth and the many other elements of economic diversity.

Challenge and risk often have their place at the personal level. There is usually nothing wrong with the challenge to exercise, eat right or become more productive, for example. Likewise, there are rewards in life, such as a lucrative career or meaningful friendships that are often accomplished only through taking a measure of personal risk.

The challenges posed by Muslim immigration are not personal, however, and neither do the esoteric rewards (whatever they may be) offset the all-too-tangible consequences for the broader society, particularly since it will affect those members who never wanted to incur these risks in the first place.

Muslim immigration adds nothing that is truly necessary to the lives of Americans, but its degenerative effects are already starting to threaten the American way of life through demoralization, litigation and the other subtle tactics of cultural Jihad.

In this sense, Americans are following in Europe’s footsteps when they would do better to avoid the example being set. Although the Brits may brag about the problems that they have created for themselves, a more sensible France is quietly trying to pay some of its five million Muslims to leave the country. Other Western nations are also trying to accommodate the social strain that is rising from a petulant and increasingly unruly Islamic minority.

The Muslim world does not accept non-Muslim immigrants. In fact, it is becoming more homogenous as Islamic regimes drive out religious minorities or whittle them down through other means of attrition. Even Muslims who feel entitled to life in the West often decry the presence of foreigners in Muslim lands.

But if Muslim lands are for Muslims, then it is all the more reason for insisting that this is where they stay, particularly since the legacy of Islamic immigration into the West is becoming a series of unilateral concessions to appease Muslims that not only go unreciprocated, but are then the new foothold for even bolder demands.

Muslim immigration is a losing proposition for America. At best, it is an unnecessary risk that offers no comparable benefit. At worst, it is suicidal.