Europe has foolishly provided us with a living social experiment showing the effect of substantial Muslim immigration into western society. The results are not pretty and the United States should reject its customary attitude of exceptionalism regarding immigration to take a long hard look. There is an opinion on both sides of the Atlantic that the U.S. does a better job at assimilating immigrants, and that we Americans therefore can more successfully accommodate millions who do not accept our core values. That idea is a terrible arrogance, and the assimilation ideal is now history anyway. The only difference between the U.S. and Europe is the numbers, and when a critical mass is reached here, we too will experience increased violence against Jews, Christians and others whom the jihadists target.
The acceleration of conflict in Europe is alarming, to say the least. Crime and a level of disorder unimaginable a few years ago are now the norm. The terrorist threat remains a daily possibility, as shown by the horrific Madrid train bombing March 11, 2004, in which around 200 were killed and 1800 were injured. The Amsterdam assassination of film-maker Theo Van Gogh by a Moroccan man in broad daylight demonstrated that murder could result when a European artist created an edgy film (Submission) of which Muslims disapproved. A Rotterdam film festival pulled that short work when Islamic intimidation was forthcoming.
Freedom of expression becomes rapidly curtailed when credible death threats are delivered to artists, along with politicians courageous enough to challenge the Muslim fascists.
France has been fighting a losing battle against the rising demographic tide. It has fought on the symbolic level to preserve its secular identity, insisting that religious clothing, e.g. the hijab, not be worn in schools. Muslim violence against Jews has risen to the point where a growing number are leaving for Israel, where they believe they will be safer. In Marseilles several thousand people marched last November to protest the murder of Ghofrane Haddaoui, a young Tunisian-born French woman who had been stoned to death by several Muslim males for refusing the sexual advances of one. Such horrific crimes are another reason why Europe is turning against multiculturalism. Public figures across the continent are saying that Islam is not compatible with European values of tolerance and women's rights.
People now speak of Eurabia as the continent's future. Long-time Islam scholar Bernard Lewis forecasts that Europe indeed will be Muslim by the end of this century if not sooner, given continuing immigration and Muslims' high birth rate. A popular blog encouraged readers to speculate which European country will be the first to institute sharia law. A waggish online animation of Islamic Paris ends with a veiled Mona Lisa.
In the Netherlands, native Dutch are emigrating in record numbers to escape the multicultural immi-gration experiment, now largely regarded as a failure.
Even the press has started to admit that there is a real problem. Honest reports of Muslim scorn toward their European neighbors are beginning to be heard, like these remarks from an imam "Those Germans, those atheists, they don't shave their armpits. Their sweat spreads evil smells. They stink. They are atheists. What good do they do to us? And since they are unbelievers, in the afterlife, they can only burn in hell." Not surprisingly, the Germans about whom these aspersions were made were displeased to hear them.
A moderate Muslim leader in Germany observed, "Either Islam gets Europeanized or Europe gets Islamized." The Europeans are holding a tiger by the ears, and have begun to realize their predicament. BUT AMERICA IS DIFFERENT. RIGHT?
Why should we Americans think we are in a substantially better position than the Europeans? Our historic grounding in assimilation has disappeared under the advance of balkanizing multiculturalism. Ethnic separatist groups of all sorts like La Raza (The Race) insist that the melting pot is racist and must be dismantled, and diversity pushers like the New York Times obediently fall in line. Immigrant children learn about their parents' home country in school rather than the culture, history and language of the United States. This cowering acceptance of radical ethnocentrism is bad enough when the children are Hispanic they are at least Christian for the most part. Muslims are a different matter entirely. We may have forgotten that Muslims have been historical enemies of western civilization, but they haven't.
The religious liberty watchdog group Freedom House has reported that our purported allies, the Saudis, continue to fund and propagate extremist jihad publications that are distributed through mosques in the United States. The literature promotes a fifth-column agenda, that Muslims residing here should regard this nation as the "abode of the infidel" where Muslims should "hate them [us American infidels] for their religion." The report states that the Wahhabist Islam being disseminated is a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence."
Director Nina Shea remarked, "Americans aren't comfortable attacking or criticizing other people's religion. But this isn't religious dogma as much as it is political doctrine."
Worse, extremist-run mosques are the norm in the U.S., not the exception. Jihad expert Robert Spencer estimates that 80 percent of mosques in this country follow the Wahhabist line. Furthermore, the Saudi publications proclaim that peaceful co-existence between Muslims and others in a multicultural nation is neither achievable nor desirable, and a Muslim who pursues such an enterprise is liable to receive punishment.
Like their revanchist counterparts in Mexico City, Islamic invaders are not shy about making their intentions known. In many cases they openly declare their plan to overturn our system of government and replace it with sharia law. According to the Koran, it is their duty to act in sedition against the United States.
In the forefront of fifth-column Islamists is the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which claims to be a civil rights organization. Its activities have not gone unnoticed. Sen. Charles Schumer has remarked, "We know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism." Yet the organization continues to operate with little criticism, and the mainstream media routinely quotes its questionable complaints about "racism" experienced by Muslims in America.
The chairman of CAIR, Omar M. Ahmad declared in 1998, "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
In a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper noted that he wanted America to turn Muslim "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Certainly not every single Muslim living in America wants to replace the Constitution with sharia law. By the same token, not all Germans were Nazis in WWII either, but that didn't stop the U.S. from bombing German cities into rubble. Preserving our safety and way of life requires un-PC generalizations about certain groups.
There is no right to immigrate, but you would never know that from the way our government behaves. A sizable group of terrorists, all of whom are Arab Muslims, have declared war on the United States, yet Washington acts as if 9/11 requires no change in immigration policy. The spin is that the attacks occurred due to a failure of "intelligence" rather than a predictable consequence of having open borders and a cavalier attitude toward Islamic enemies. (The earlier World Trade Center terrorism, the Africa embassy bombings and the attack on the Cole were severe hints.) Immigration continues as before, including the admittance of newcomers from the nations recognized by the State Department as "terror-supporting." During previous wars, Washington stopped immigration from enemy states, as one would expect. Would it not be properly prudent now to end immigration at least from countries that are the known friends of terror for the duration?
Unlike Europe, America has not imported Islamic enemies to the point of civilizational suicide yet. But if we arrogantly continue to welcome immigration from a culture that despises everything we treasure, we will have a future now being foretold by Europe. We must chill Muslim immigration while there is still time.
A Selection of Islamic Need-to-know Words
adhan - The five-times-daily call to prayers, which is a prayer itself in part.
allahu akbar - 'Allah is the greatest,' an exclamation which has been heard as jihadists behead Western captives or fly hijacked airplanes into buildings.
dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb - Dar al-Islam means the 'house of submission' and refers to those nations where Muslim governments rule.
dar al-Harb means the land of warfare because Islam has not yet become law there.
dawa - the project of converting infidels to Islam. dhimmi - a non-Muslim living in a Muslim nation, who must pay a special infidel tax (jizyah) and who has fewer civil rights than a follower of Islam.
dhimmitude - the psychology of appeasement and fear which often grows up as a result of being in a dhimmi situation, or merely being threatened with it, as in present-day Europe.
fatwa - a religious edict, which may include a recommendation for execution of an offender to Islamic sensibilities, e.g. the still-active death sentence invoked against Muslim Salman Rushdie for authoring The Satanic Verses.
halal - deemed lawful under Islam, including food prepared according to Muslim principles.
hudna - ceasefire for the purpose of rearming and restrengthening on the sly. For example, Hamas has enacted many hudnas, only to return to terrorist activities more deadly than before.
Islam - submission.
kitman - mental reservations or concealment of hostile intent.
kufr, also kafir - a non-Muslim, an unbeliever, an infidel. Traditionally, the word did not refer to 'people of the book' (Jews and Christians) but that old-fashioned sentiment appears to be dwindling.
sharia - Islamic law derived from the Koran and other scripture. Punishments may be severely corporal, including lashing and beheading. Women are regarded essentially as property under sharia e.g., a woman who is raped may be executed because she is damaged goods; a man's court testimony is valued at twice that of a female and women are due half of a man's share in inheritance.
taqiyya - religious deception or outright lying to non-believers, which is permitted by the Koran.
ummah - the community of Islamic believers.
WEBSITES REFERRING TO ISLAM
Daily news and commentary www.JihadWatch.org
Articles, opinion and reference library
www.faithfreedom.org
General topics www.knowislam.info/
ExMuslims explain their decision www.apostatesofislam.com/
Former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat www.shoebat.com/
164 Koran verses about jihad
www.angelfire.com/moon/yoelnatan/koranwarpassages.htm
Committee to Defend Women's Rights in the Middle East
www.middleastwomen.org/
Daniel Pipes, long-time scholar of militant Islam
www.danielpipes.org/
Prophet of Doom - online book includes topical quotations of the Prophet
www.prophetofdoom.net/
Status of non-Muslim minorities under Islamic rule
www.dhimmitude.org/
Writings of Bat Ye'or on oppression by Islam
www.dhimmi.org/
Translations from Middle East media
www.memri.org/
Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR)
www.cair-net.org/
Anti-CAIR works to "Expose CAIR's activities on behalf of Islamist terror in
the U.S."
www.anti-cair-net.org/
Arab News - daily from Saudi Arabia
www.arabnews.com/
Pro-Jihad; includes Fatwa Editing Desk
http://islamonline.net/english/index.shtml