The Islamic Threat Within

Should the U.S. deny visas and immigration to applicants from Muslim nations? The Islamic terrorist threat is obvious to all but a village idiot. Not so obvious is the threat from slow infiltration of Islam’s true believers into Western democracies through immigration and population explosion. The video below is a news story on the growing Muslim influence in the European nation of Belgium.

In it, a native Belgian scholar, who argues that Islam is a fascist ideology, explains that Belgium's major cities are so Muslim-dominated that Belgium is forecast to be a majority-Muslim nation in only 18 years. In it, too, a Muslim cleric tells the reporter, with a calm air of inevitability, “democracy is the opposite of Islam and Sharia,” and “the West needs to prepare itself for a wave of Islam and Sharia Law.”



Sharia Law and Western-style democracy rooted in individual freedom are wholly incompatible, as  Mark Steyn, Nonie Darwish, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali articulately argue.

Moreover, it isn't only 'radical' Muslims who find Western-style freedom of speech and religion repulsive, as Hirsi Ali explains in the most recent issue of Newsweek:

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.

Rachel Lu at ricochet.com, who has lived in the Islamic world, echoes that assessment in What If Muslims Just Don't Like Democracy?

[M]y experiences in the Islamic world eventually led me to believe that, on the whole, Muslims do not want democracy. When asked, they normally say that they do. Further discussion reveals, however, that what they really want is peace and prosperity. If you talk to them about civil liberties, you’ll find that most of them are pretty adamantly opposed to free speech and [tolerance of another] religion. They don’t think proselytizing should be legal, and most are suspicious of legal protections for Muslims who want to convert to another faith. They are scandalized by the suggestion that blasphemy, for example, would qualify as protected speech.

Lu explores the question of whether the Islamic world can find a different form of government “that was more hierarchical and authoritarian than ours … and that restricted civil liberties more than we would allow.” It’s an interesting thought experiment, but not one that solves the problem of how to deal with Muslim rage against all things Western today.

“The Premodern Middle East and the Postmodern West don’t mix,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, adding "each time we castigate a Rushdie, a Danish cartoonist, a U.S. soldier, or a nut like Terry Jones, we simply play into the hands of the Islamists."

[W]e must examine the ubiquitous Westernized Middle Easterner who appears as pundit, talking head, and the authentic voice of the Arab Street. Quite dangerous are the Mohamed Morsis of the world — men like a Sayyid Qutb or Mohammed Atta, who had spent time in the West, fled here for its protection, enjoyed its affluence, indulged in its sins, and blossomed amid its hot-house universities. These men can often be quite dangerous.

Most are intelligent and understand the self-loathing that is endemic among their postmodern Western hosts. For the Westernized anti-Americanist, being educated, working, and living in California or New York reminds him of the contrast with his own Egypt or the West Bank. That disconnect evokes all sorts of contradictory emotions: why am I so blessed in the land of the infidels and so wretched at home? Or how much penance must I undertake for satisfying over here what would be seen as illicit appetites at home? Or how can these affluent atheists have so much more than my pious brothers in the Middle East?

As Belgians are realizing, these represent as great a threat to the longer-term security of Western nations as the bomb-strapped terrorist. Until we are better at screening Muslim visitors and immigrants who harbor deeply-held anti-Western bigotry and ill-will, perhaps it would be wise to suspend all visas and legal immigration from predominately Muslim nations.