What’s the point in the West sending troops to the Middle East if we bring the Middle East to the West? The preceding is a money line, one that should be used by Islam realists from Germany to Georgia.
The Paris terror attack has inspired much debate, from conservatives saying we need to confront ISIS aggressively overseas to liberals wringing their hands over rising anti-Islam sentiment that they claim will exacerbate the jihadist problem. And while I’m more sympathetic to the former sentiment than the latter, nothing should distract us from what must be our number-one priority: stopping the Muslim influx into the West cold.
Many say this is a cold position. And, unfortunately, their prescription for (misguided) compassion is seldom sufficiently refuted.
In an attempt to salvage a failing multicultural model and strategy for importing left-leaning voters, we hear that the Muslim migrants must be “vetted” better. A practical problem with this notion is that Syria’s and other Middle Eastern countries’ databases are woefully inadequate, making accurate information on many migrants impossible to obtain. This confronts us with a simple matter of probability: if 1 million migrants enter a nation over time and just 1/10th of 1 percent are terrorists, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists. Is this acceptable? Note that my estimate may be conservative.
Yet there’s also a fundamental problem with vetting that goes unmentioned: even with complete information, it only tells you about the past.
It cannot tell you about the future.
In other words, even if those one million migrants have “clean records,” how many will become terrorists in the future? Again, 1/10th of 1 percent is 1000.
And what of their children? How many of them will become terrorists? No point repeating best-case-scenario percentages.
One response here is that the children will be more integrated and thus the problem should diminish over time. This is logical, but, unfortunately, also apparently untrue.
Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders. This certainly is counterintuitive, but only because the average Westerner’s cranial database also doesn’t contain accurate information. For example and related to this, moderns take as a given that religion is declining in our “enlightened times.” Yet religious belief is actually increasing worldwide, a phenomenon poised to continue. Islam’s adherents are growing in number, and Catholicism’s are, too, slightly in excess of the increase in world population. Religious belief is only declining in the West — and, most significantly, among Westerners in the West.
Another common argument was expressed by Charles Grant, director of pro-E.U. think-tank Centre for European Reform. He said that ratcheting up the anti-Islamic rhetoric would serve ISIS’ ends and that “Europe’s game must be to resist that and not repeat the mistakes we made after September 11 which played right into al-Qaeda’s hands. We must hold our nerve and embrace our values of tolerance of faith and religions which we share in common and against the Islamic State,” reported the Telegraph. Many leftists echo this, the idea being that we must not further “alienate” Muslim communities. This overlooks that you can only alienate those who aren’t already alien.
Note again that the pattern evident is for younger Muslim generations to become more alienated from the West, not less. Some would blame this on the West itself, saying that — despite indulging multiculturalism, outlawing anti-Muslim rhetoric and offering generous government benefits — we still aren’t opening our arms and hearts to these newcomers. Kill ‘em with kindness, the thinking (feeling?) goes.
Of such people ask a simple question: can you cite one time in history in which large numbers of Muslims have willingly assimilated into a non-Muslim culture?
Just one?
While there may be some exception, I can’t think of any. Note here a recent poll showing that a slim majority of U.S. Muslims prefer living under Sharia law to American civil law (and how many wouldn’t admit such a thing to pollsters?). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the historical record informs that “Muslim assimilation” is a contradiction in terms.
In fact, I don’t know of even one instance in which large numbers of Muslims were ever shaken from Islam other than by the sword, and that wasn’t done very much, if at all. There was an attempt by a group of medieval Christian missionaries to peacefully convert Middle Eastern Muslims, but the effort was found futile and abandoned after a short time.
Then there’s the myth of “assimilation.” The term is thrown around thoughtlessly much as is “diversity,” and seldom mentioned is that assimilation is often never complete. For while large groups who immigrate to a nation often do change, they also are agents of change. Did the large waves of Irish, Italian and German immigrants not alter America somewhat? This might have been a good, bad or neutral thing, but it’s assuredly a real thing.
There are also those who don’t assimilate markedly, if at all. Have the Amish or Hasidic Jews assimilated noticeably into the wider culture? Again, I’m not here making a value judgment on their particular different-drummer walk. The point is merely that assimilation is, foolishly and dangerously, taken as a given when there’s great precedent proving it’s not.
And this also is a numbers game. The rare Muslim who contemplated going to the West many years ago had to be a different kind of Muslim, one who understood he was entering a Christian culture that wouldn’t cater to his desires. He and his co-religionists would be so few and far between there’d be no prospect for “Halal” groceries, Islamic interest-free financing or Muslim schools for his children. So he’d be forced to assimilate by having to work within the established institutions of the host nation. But great numbers of Muslims form their own enclaves and their own institutions; this reality not only makes the journey west more inviting to pious Muslims, but also enables them to reinforce each other’s beliefs.
There’s another problem with assimilation: a prerequisite for it is providing something attractive to assimilate into. The communist political activist Willi Munzenberg once reportedly said, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.” This has been accomplished. Decadence is everywhere, and we no longer even know what marriage is or what boys and girls are. French president Francois Hollande recently canceled a dinner meeting with the Iranian president because he refused to bow to a demand to serve Halal meat and no wine. It’s good he took at least that stand, but one could just imagine his hurling accusations of “intolerance” at Christians who refused to refrain from saying the Lord’s Prayer before a meal with Muslims. It’s an example of how Western Europe has been hollowed out, how it has the superficialities of its culture but not the substance. What are foreigners today supposed to assimilate into in today’s France, Italy, Germany and U.S.? Bread and wine; pasta fagioli; Wiener schnitzel; and baseball, hot dogs and reality TV, all lathered in moral relativism? Are they really going to follow the lead of a dying anomaly in a world of growing religiosity? Heck, I’m a Westerner, and as a believing Christian I refuse to assimilate into my country’s wider culture (although I save my cutting off of heads for broccoli). Thus, with assimilation, even if Muslim migrants were buyin’, they wouldn’t be buyin’ what we’re sellin’.
Of course, none of this means we should toss the post-Christian West from the frying pan into the fire. If you want to destroy liberalism, though — both the suicidal modern ideology and the extant remnants of the classical variety — Islamization is a sure way to do it.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
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