While no superpower threatens America today like the Soviet Union did in the past, a new enemy does threaten us – Islamic Jihad. Consequently an American foreign policy must be shaped to respond. How should America confront this new enemy? There are two basic responses on the political right:
- Neoconservatives see Islam as a powerful force intending to rule the world via terrorism, immigration, and religious proselytization. Because of its aversion to individual freedom and its anti-reason theology, Islam is a formidable threat to America that requires the militarization of our society, centralized bureaucratism, and the establishment of American hegemony in the Mideast to tame its countries’ hostility.
- Libertarian-conservatives agree that the intent of Islam is to eventually take over the world via terrorism, immigration, and religious proselytization. But we don’t agree with the neoconservative strategy of militarization of America and aggressive confrontation with Islamic nations in the Mideast. This violates a cardinal rule of war: Don’t get bogged down in guerrilla wars in the guerrilla’s home territory unless you are prepared to become a permanent occupation force that is willing to govern such a territory as a colony.
We must understand the real danger of Islamic Jihad. It is built on 1) the horrific use of terrorism against the West, and 2) the migration of Muslims to the West to peacefully infiltrate its cultures and convert them via rapid breeding and metaphysical proselytization. Modern day Jihad is extremely long-term in its view.
But Islamic Jihad represents no conventional military threat to us (armies, tanks, etc.). Thus we should not be trying to confront it militarily by invading Islamic lands. We need to take a lesson, however, from Europe’s present problem with Islam. European countries allow millions of Muslim immigrants yearly and are not maintaining their own populations at replacement levels. In face of Islam’s exploding population, this portends badly for Europe’s future because of the religious mandates imposed upon Muslims by the Koran and Muhammed regarding migration to the West. These mandates have been interpreted by today’s Islamic scholars as a need to establish Trojan horse communities in Western countries established on Sharia law rather than the host country’s legal structure, and then the expansion of such communities by proselytization and rapid breeding.
Most Crucial of Perimeters
Thus to effectively confront the danger of Islamic Jihad we need to start defending that most crucial of perimeters – our national borders. If this means shutting large numbers of Muslims out as immigrants, so be it. Return to the pre-1965 Immigration Accords as Peter Brimelow and Alien Nation call for. Then set an example to the world by building a free country here at home.
Islam’s evil is that it rejects reason and condones violence against unbelievers, but like all religions, it is not monolithic. It is comprised of various sects – Wahhabists, Sunnis, Shias, Sufis, Quranists, etc., and only a small minority of radical Islamic intellectuals advocate violent means to advance Islam, i.e., terrorism. The majority of Islamic intellectuals do not condone violence against unbelievers. But all Islamic intellectuals do advocate Hijra, the “Doctrine of Immigration,” or the peaceful means of advancing the Islamic political state structured on religious doctrines and subverting Western societies.
Hijra is something that Europe has not paid adequate attention to over the past several decades, and as a result is now encountering a growing contagion of Islamic communities based upon Sharia law. It is hard to believe that Western nations would capitulate to foreign communities living within their borders and allow them to structure their own courts and laws; but it is happening in Europe and England.
“So one can see,” said Dutch politician Geert Wilders, “that the threat from Islam doesn’t just come in the form of Islamic terrorism by suicide bombers trying to wreak havoc in our cities…. it [also] comes in the form of a gradual and incremental transformation of our societies and legal systems, or what is termed ‘Islamisation’ of our democratic societies by the vast growing numbers of Muslim immigrants who are importing Islam into our Western way of life.” [Speech at Columbia University, October 21, 2009.]
The religion of Islam is based upon absolute obedience to the Koran and to the example of Allah’s prophet, Muhammed. One of the most important examples of Muhammed that Muslims are to emulate is his migration from Mecca to Medina, which is according to Muslim scholars the historical beginning of Islam as an organized religion in 622 A.D. This is the way Islam is to convert the world – by establishing partisan communities in host countries that never assimilate culturally or politically, that then rapidly breed and proselytize for Islamisation of the host country by demanding the right to their own special laws, i.e., Sharia. This is being done presently in Europe by creating “no-go zones.”
John Dietrich writes that, “The French government admits to 751 ‘Sensitive Urban Zones.’ Daniel Pipes claims it would be more appropriate to describe them as ‘Dar al-Islam’ – the House of Islam, or a place where Islam rules. In Britain there are as many as eighty-five Sharia courts in operation. The Dutch government has released a list of forty ‘no-go’ zones in the Netherlands.” [American Thinker, Jan 28, 2015.]
Is Hijra then a danger to Western countries? Could Muslims actually construct enough Sharia communities in Europe and America to one day be able to undermine Western law and culture. No, at least not in America. But the real danger of Hijra lies not in its peaceful conquest. It lies in its ability to be deceptively used as a cover by terrorists to sneak into host countries. Here lies a lethal threat, and we need to confront it.
Toward a Rational Immigration Policy
Islam is a religion that is, unfortunately, based upon a rebellion against reason and the mandating of primitive social customs for their cultures (e.g., their treatment of women). In addition, Islamic political systems are theocracies; there is no separation of state and church. Thus the question is, how are we to contend with such political-theological primitivism immigration-wise? The answer is to return to America’s original immigration policy of “National Origins,” which was in effect prior to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that Ted Kennedy pushed into law. This would allow our authorities to choose among the nations of the world just who would be able to come into America. We could simply abstain from taking immigration applicants from Muslim countries, and we could also rigorously screen any Muslims that are migrating from non-Muslim countries.
Does “National Origins” violate the Constitutional mandate against discrimination on the part of government as liberals maintain? No, not at all. The Constitutional animus against legal discrimination applies only domestically to American citizens. It certainly does not apply to our laws regarding foreign policies, or foreign countries, or foreign citizens. Until an immigrant has become a full citizen of America, he is not due equal protection under our laws.
Here then is how to confront Islamic Jihad. Return to a National Origins immigration policy. Abandon the neocon lunacy of Mideast hegemony, i.e., withdraw our military and our bureaucracies from their lands. Leave Islamic nations alone to stagnate in their own cultural backwardness. And let Islamic intellectual leaders (such as Latif Lakhdar, Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and other top scholars) continue to reform their religion and its stultifying anti-reason metaphysics so as to bring Islamic countries into the modern world. Other Muslim scholars will follow them in the upcoming century.
As Patrick Buchanan tells us:
“Time is on our side in this struggle, for Islamic radicals cannot build great nations nor solve the problems of modernity. The only problem of Islamic peoples these extremists can help them solve is the problem of America’s massive presence. Remove that root cause of this war, and Arab and Islamic peoples will see no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face, who their true enemies are.” [Where the Right Went Wrong, 2004, p. 240]
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic www.afr.org. A graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin, his articles have appeared in such publications as The American Conservative, Insight, Liberty, The Freeman, The Social Critic, The Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Express-News, as well as on numerous Internet sites.
He is the author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values
Email: NelsonHultberg (at) afr.org
