1. End all mass immigration of Moslems into the United States, whether from Moslem countries or elsewhere. Moslems would only be admitted on a selective, individual basis, not on the basis of being part of a national quota, and not on the basis of having extended family members already in the U.S., as is now the case. Rather than admitting mass numbers of Moslems every year for no reason except their wish to come here, we would only admit individuals who had some particular and legitimate connection to America, such as business people, diplomats, spouses of Americans, and so on.
2. Deport all Moslem illegal aliens. Serious enforcement of existing laws, strengthened by a newly developed high-tech system that will enable authorities to know if visitors to the U.S. have overstayed their visas, will make it possible for the government to apprehend and deport a very substantial number of Moslem illegals. But perhaps even more important than the direct apprehension of illegals would be the changed atmosphere created by such an effort. Consider what illegal aliens from Pakistan did in February 2003 when the federal authorities engaged in even a small amount of proper law enforcement. As summarized by the New York Times,
"Land crossings from the U.S. into Canada have been jammed for two weeks because of unusual and chaotic exodus of illegal Pakistani immigrants seeking asylum in Canada out of fear of being arrested in US and deported to Pakistan; reluctant flight is prompted by rumors of dragnets and by new federal deadlines that require male foreign visitors, principally those from Muslim and Arab countries, to register with the government."
This, as far as I can remember, was the first time that illegals have fled from the U.S. instead of flooding into it. A further bit of poetic justice was that many of them now considered Canada a more welcoming place for them than the U.S. At least for a moment, America had lost its reputation as the ultimate harbor of Third-World immigrants.
There is a great lesson to be learned here. Immigrants tend to go to countries where they are welcomed, or at least to countries where the natives and the government do not actively tell them that they don't want them. For forty years, we've said, "Come on in," and they've come. But when, as with the Moslem registration program, we became even a little less accepting of illegal aliens, they began to leave on their own initiative. This voluntary mini-exodus was a hopeful glimpse of an America that might be—an America that defends its laws and its national integrity instead of turning itself into the doormat of the world. Just imagine how less toxic the illegal alien situation would be in California today if the state authorities in 1994 had enforced Proposition 187 (which prohibited illegals from receiving state benefits) instead of killing it. Enforcement would have signalled a new and frankly harder attitude toward illegal aliens that would have encouraged many of them to leave, and discouraged many others from coming here in the first place.
3. Deport all legal resident aliens with ties or loyalties to radical Islam. There would be no legal or moral problem in our doing this. Resident aliens are not citizens, and if it is necessary for our safety and security to terminate their resident status, we have the right to do so. Let us remember also that any serious Moslem is obligated by his religion to help spread Islam and Islamic law, Shariah; therefore no serious Moslem, even if he pays taxes and obeys the law, can be a truly loyal citizen of the United States. There is no reason for us to allow Islamic fundamentalists to remain in this country and become citizens. If we lack the will even to deport non-citizen Wahhabis and jihadis, then we might as well lie down and surrender to the global jihad right now.
4. Remove the citizenship of and deport all naturalized and native-born citizens who are supporters of jihad. This is the most radical step of all, but it is justified by the same considerations discussed above. Islam obligates its adherents to live under Shariah, wherever they are and to wage holy war against non-Moslems, particularly Christians and Jews. Any serious Moslem must obey that law. True, the requirements are put in abeyance when circumstances dictate, as when a Moslem population in a non-Moslem society is small and weak and must avoid antagonizing the majority population. But as soon as the Moslems gain enough numbers to exert political influence, the command to live under Shariah—and ultimately to impose Shariah on the whole society through jihad—kicks in. The growth of Islam in America is thus an existential threat to us and our entire way of life. We have no obligation to harbor within our country people who are religiously committed to the destruction of our country.
As an example of the hideous problems we and other Westerners now face as a result of our thoughtless immigration policies over the last 40 years, consider this report from the New York Times about Moslem radicals in Britain:
"LUTON, England, April 24—In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II, have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
"They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the 'Magnificent 19' and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
"On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce—provided that all foreign troops be withdrawn from Iraq in three months—Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.
"'All Muslims of the West will be obliged,' he said, to 'become his sword' in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, 'It is foolish to fight people who want death—that is what they are looking for.'"
As we read this story (which is stunningly frank and non-PC for the Times), a question arises that we cannot afford to ignore. Under any sane understanding of law and politics, does a country have an obligation to keep within its borders an alien population—even if they were born in the country—that openly sides with the country's enemies, cheers for the mass murder of the country's citizens, and eagerly calls for the country's defeat and destruction at the hands of those enemies? I think not. As Justice Robert Jackson famously remarked, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Neither is a nation a suicide pact. As we are learning again from our troubles in reconstructing Iraq, the first necessity of a political society, preceding laws and constitutions, and making laws and constitutions possible, is the preservation of its own existence from external and internal enemies.
In asking myself whether the removal from America of both naturalized and American-born jihadis is too extreme a measure for us to contemplate, I'm reminded of Edward Everett Hale's famous short story, "The Man without a Country," in which the protaganist, Philip Nolan, after being convicted of joining in Aaron Burr's conspiracy against the United States, is sentenced to spend the rest of his life on a navy ship, never to set foot in the United States again. Yet Nolan's disloyal actions and hateful words against America, which earned him life-long exile from his native land, were child's play compared to what the jihadis would do to us. So it's important to keep things in perspective: I'm not saying that we should execute or punish or even imprison these domestic enemies who pray for and applaud our destruction. I'm saying we should send them back to the Moslem countries that they and their parents came from—where in fact they will probably be happier and more at peace than they are here, living among us infidels. The relocation of Western jihadis out of the Dar al-Harb, the Realm of War (where Islamic law tells them they have the total right to wage war against us), to the Dar al-Islam, the Realm of Islam, would be just and mild treatment of them, and would make us immeasurably safer.
What I've said about the jihadists and terror-supporters goes for the terrorists as well. The terrorists can only threaten us because they are here, and not only here in the U.S., but in the West as a whole, and freely travelling around from country to country—it's all part of one problem. If the U.S. and other non-Moslem countries forced or encouraged all radical and questionable Moslems to leave and didn't allow any to enter, the population that supplies and provides cover for the terrorists would be gone. It's elementary, my dear reader: we defeat jihad in America by removing the jihadists from America. Frankly, this seems a lot more doable and within our power than trying to turn every Moslem country on earth into a functioning democracy.
5. Publicly renounce and abjure multiculturalism as a societal philosophy. We must tell the world that we no longer consider ourselves equally open to all peoples and cultures in the world, that we are a Western society with a British-based, Protestant culture and a Judeo-Christian morality, and that we intend to remain so. Therefore no one should think of immigrating to or remaining in the United States unless he is prepared to make that culture his own.
A future of hope
The five-step plan I have outlined, while not removing all Moslems from America and not solving all problems connected with their presence here, would nevertheless accomplish something of inestimable value to us: it would reverse the current course of things. Instead of the present, continuing increase in the numbers and élan and power of Moslems in this country, there would be a steady net decrease in their numbers and élan and power. Instead of finding ourselves in the ever-deepening despair of seeing the power of Moslems with their Sharia and their mosques and their electronically amplified public calls to prayer and their hatred of Christianity and of Jews and their support for terrorism getting greater and greater among us, and seeing our own control over own society—and even our freedom to speak about what is happening to us—getting less and less, we would live once again in the hope that there is a future for ourselves and our country.
We got ourselves into this mess through our belief in universal non-discrimination, the utopian liberal ideology which told us to open our nation's borders on an equal basis to every people and culture in the world. Therefore the only way we can get ourselves out of this mess is by abandoning the belief in universal non-discrimination. Obviously, we should discriminate against those who are hostile to our society and our very existence.
There is nothing evil, immoral, reactionary, fascist, or racist in what I am proposing here. I'm saying things that once would have been the common-sense understanding of all Western people, prior to the suicidal "we-must-end-all-discrimination-against-everyone-in-the-world" brand of liberalism that became ascendant in the West after World War II, and that was made U.S. national policy under the 1965 Immigration Act.
My proposals so far have only dealt with fundamentalist Moslems. What about the non-fundamentalists, the so-called moderates? For all the reasons I've given, I believe it is not a good idea to allow entire populations of Mideastern Moslems to settle and live in a Western country. In practice, however, it would not be necessary to remove all Moslems from America. As a result of the large scale relocations and voluntary departures of Islamic fundamentalists that would occur under the steps I've set forth, the situation of the more assimilated and loyal Moslems who remained in America would also be transformed. The U.S. Moslem community would not only have ceased to swell due to immigration (because mass immigration would have been stopped—see Point 1 above), but it would have been absolutely reduced in size (because of ongoing forced and voluntary departures—see Points 2, 3, and 4 above). The radical and violent elements of the Moslem community, with their famous ability to intimidate and silence the moderates, would be gone. With the U.S. Moslem population reduced from what it is today to a much smaller number of non-fundamentalist Moslems, they would no longer be a significant or threatening element in our body politic, and could be tolerated as such. Only at that point would "assimilation" become a realistic and practicable goal, rather than, as at present, a euphemistic escape from a reality we are afraid to face.
Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He runs the weblog View from the Right.
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It will probably take another 9/11 to make this happen.
If you don't believe in anything, you'll believe anything. As a culture, we lose our way when we abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage and foundation.
Never forget:
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/