Reform

The Ninth Federal Circuit surprised no one by allowing the injunction against the administration's travel moratorium to remain in place. The progressive judges on the court asked government lawyers whether they could point to a terrorist attack by a first generation Muslim immigrant, while Congressional Democrats asked the same question of the new DHS secretary. It's the wrong question.

Progressives also contend that any travel moratorium that would preclude travel by mostly Muslim immigrants is religious discrimination. It's the wrong contention, and here's why.

There is no question that Islam has a significant religious component, but when practiced by a significant percentage of Muslims (not a majority, but polling indicates between 15 and 25 percent), Islam also has a significant political component that is virulently anti-Western and intolerant of other religions or systems of belief. It's called Sharia and it is—flat out—antithetical to American values. It is intolerant of free speech, homophobic, religiously intolerant, misogynist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, violent and cruel—not to mention wholly totalitarian.

When we conduct "extreme vetting" of immigrants from Muslim countries, the key question should focus not on support of Islamic terror, but on whether the immigrant supports Sharia law. If he or she does, then that Muslim's world view is antithetic to our own and entry should be denied. Not on religious grounds, but on the grounds that Sharia, a totalitarian political ideology that is virulently resistant to any attempts at assimilation, represents a clear and present threat to our many freedoms. Proponents on Sharia have no right whatsoever to immigrate, and the privilege of entry should be denied.*

Andrew McCarthy comments:

Islam must reform so that this totalitarian political ideology, sharia supremacism (or, if you prefer, “radical Islam”), is expressly severable from Islam’s truly religious tenets. To fashion an immigration policy that serves our vital national-security interests without violating our commitment to religious liberty, we must be able to exclude sharia supremacists while admitting Muslims who reject sharia supremacism and would be loyal to the Constitution.

Second, sharia supremacists are acting on a “voluntary apartheid” strategy of gradual conquest. You needn’t take my word for it. Influential sharia supremacists encourage Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa to integrate into Western societies without assimilating Western culture. The renowned Muslim Brotherhood jurist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who vows that “Islam will conquer Europe, conquer America,” urges Muslim migrants to demand the right to live in accordance with sharia. Turkey’s sharia-supremacist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, admonishes that pressuring Muslims to assimilate is “a crime against humanity.” The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim governments that purports to speak as a quasi-caliphate, promulgated its “Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” in 1990 — precisely because what the United Nations in 1948 presumptuously called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is neither “universal” nor suitable to a sharia culture.

Voluntary apartheid does not require insinuating terrorists into migrant populations. It requires insinuating assimilation-resistant migrant populations into Western countries.

When Democrats try to demonize the Trump administration for correctly recognizing the threat of Sharia (although Trump has not enunciated that threat well), their question about Islamic terrorism perpetrated by immigrants should be flipped with a question to them. As McCarthy puts it:

The government must vet aliens for sharia-supremacist ideology. ‘Do you think Islam needs reform?” Wouldn’t it be interesting, wouldn’t it get us to the crux of the immigration debate, if our best news anchors — I’m looking at you, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier — would put that question to every major politician in Washington?

It would be interesting to hear the response of a Chuck Schumer, or an Elizabeth Warren or even the past president. If they answer in the negative, that will tell us more about their concern for our "values" that any other thing they profess to believe.

Footnote:
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* Before those social justice warriors who might read this column get the vapors, a quick thought experiment: A virulent adherent to right-wing neo-Nazi ideology from, say, England wants to immigrate to the United States. When asked about his views at the American Embassy, it quickly becomes apparent that he is intolerant of free speech, homophobic, religiously intolerant, misogynist, anti-Semitic, violent and cruel. He also denies that the Holocaust happened. He also suggests that Mein Kampf should replace the Constitution as our guiding document. Should the neo-Nazi be granted a visa?