Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Trump's Proposal

Donald Trump has provoked a spasm of media pants-wetting over his statement that we should temporarily halt all Muslim immigration, but why is this a bad idea? A lot of people are saying it's unconstitutional, but our immigration laws already allow us to refuse admission to certain classes of immigrants and, in fact, President Carter refused to allow Iranians into this country in the 1970s. The relevant law reads as follows:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. (Sec.10, f)
Some people are rightly concerned that terrorists will infiltrate the immigrant refugees President Obama is bringing to the states, but while this is a serious problem, it's perhaps a secondary concern. The primary concern should be the ease with which second and third generation Muslims, the children of immigrants, can be turned into killers. The calamity that Trump's proposal is intended to forestall is one that will be faced by the next generation of Americans as potentially large numbers of children of Muslim refugees gravitate toward those who preach violence, terror, and jihad. This is what's happening, in fact, in Europe and it's precipitating a cultural crisis there.

Parenthetically, although there's been much moral preening by those who want to be seen as standing up for immigrants, there's almost no concern raised over the fact that we're actually deporting Iraqi Christians who are already here. Nor is the President allowing Syrian Christians into the country. Only Muslims.

But an influx of terrorists is not the only problem that permitting large numbers of Muslims to immigrate presents. Majorities of Muslims, even among those already here, devoutly wish to replace the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights with sharia law. Sharia calls for women to be treated like property, for criminals to be mutilated, for gays and lesbians to be executed, for any criticism of Islam or Mohammad to be a capital offense, for Christians and Jews to be treated as second class citizens, for atheists to be killed.

It's not just that Muslims hold to a different religion than that of many Americans. It's not like we're just adding one more denomination to the religious stew, as though Muslims were like Baptists moving into a Catholic neighborhood. Muslims have a deep antipathy toward non-Muslim culture. A Muslim imam once admitted to me that if they had the political power they would impose sharia. Even those who seem moderate and friendly if pressed would say that their allegiance is to sharia, not to the Constitution of the United States. Bringing them into the country in large numbers without taking time to allow for assimilation makes no more sense today than bringing large numbers of communists into the country would have made sense in the 1950s.

Our media seems shocked every time there's a Muslim act of terror in this country. They ask why these Muslims who have lived the American dream and benefited from the freedoms and opportunities our country offers hate us so much. There's no mystery to this. They hate us for three simple reasons:
  1. We are essentially Israel's protector
  2. We are not Muslims
  3. The Qu'ran, to which they are deeply devoted, instructs them that Allah despises the infidel and that unbelievers deserve whatever treatment they get from the hand of the believer.
Most Muslims do not, and probably would not, commit acts of violence, but the more devout a Muslim is, the more literally he interprets the Koran, the more closely he emulates the example of Mohammad, the more likely he is to sympathize with those who do.

Compassion demands that we help these people, prudence dictates that we do so in a manner that doesn't entail cultural suicide. Just as we can help the homeless without bringing them into our homes, so there are things we can do to help refugees without bringing into our national home hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who think like Syed Farooq and Tashfeen Malik.