Where Do We Go From Here?

by Rebecca Bynum (May 2007)

 

“Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to waken a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn? But if a few awake, you can’t say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.” — Selected Short Stories of Lu Xun (taken from John Derbyshire’s article, The Iron House)

 

This is the situation we find ourselves in today. We attempt to awaken those still sleeping, or in a hypnotic state, about the dangers of Islam. But once they have awakened, then what? What are we to tell them? What guidance can we offer, what practical prescription, once they have fully understood the nature of the menace, the tenets of Islam and the likely acting upon those tenets, as both history and theory suggest?

Two of the most knowledgeable people in America today about the Islamic texts, and the doctrines derived from those texts, are Robert Spencer and Bill Warner. Both are very effective in disseminating an awareness of those texts. Yet neither one has formulated a political program of practical steps to combat it. To be fair, I believe they see themselves as “Cassandras at the gate,” warning the sleeping city, and that task alone is a gigantic one. They are not going to take on as well prescriptions for the ways and means of its defense. Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch is mainly pedagogical, and Spencer is always at his best when he answers those who make statements about Islam as apologists, showing how far from the texts they deviate. But the policy prescriptions come for the most part from his colleague (and NER Sr. Editor) Hugh Fitzgerald, in what is a useful and entirely satisfactory division of labor.

Last month, at his invitation, I attended Bill Warner’s one-day workshop with a group of American Hindus. Entitled “Building a Politics of Victory,” the most useful part was the morning devoted to analyzing the essence of Islam, reducing it to a few key ideas: a dual ethical system, which does not admit of the Golden Rule, and the principle of submission, submission of Believers to Allah, and of non-Muslims to Believers.  While Warner made many very good points about Islam, and spoke about the need to develop what he calls “the mind of war,” he did not offer practical political steps to take, beyond that of educating more people, but threw open to the audience the possibility of their making suggestions as to strategy and tactics. In the afternoon, as Warner was discussing the mental state of a dhimmi (a non-Muslim under Islam) and the mental state even of those non-Muslims who, in their own countries, voluntarily assume the dutiful and subservient attitude toward Islam and Muslims that has rightly been called dhimmitude. As Warner compared this mental state to the psychology of an abused child, a frustrated attendee exclaimed, “Enough about this! What do we do?!”  Warner’s answer was that more workshops needed to be held in order to awaken still more people.

While I agree the more people who are aware of the dangers of Islam, the better, there comes a time when practical political steps must be formulated and implemented.  Sue Myrick, a Representative from North Carolina, has already formed a bi-partisan Anti-Jihad Caucus which will undoubtedly begin to propose legislation to combat jihad in all its forms including propaganda, influence buying and demographics as well as terrorism. The time has come, then, for those already properly informed, and therefore alarmed, to begin the work of thinking through the drafting of legislation. We have talked about the problem for a long time. Many citizens are aroused. Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades alone spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, which means it sold tens of thousands of copies. Conservative talk show hosts such as Glenn Beck at CNN and even some liberal ones, such as  Joey Reynolds at WOR  in New York have been doing their part to awaken their wide audiences. Now is the time for practical steps – steps to lessen the menace, not to end it (for it will last as long as Islam lasts) to be put forward.

Robert Spencer recommends, for example, the close screening of Muslims who are allowed into America, including those allowed into the military, or who are allowed to preach in our mosques and prisons, for jihadist sympathies. And now the United States is now doing just that. The Washington Times reports that while we will allow 25,000 Iraqi immigrants to come to America this year (18,000 more than first reported),

 

 In order to prevent any terrorists and other dangerous Iraqis from coming to the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is conducting detailed interviews in several countries in the region, U.S. officials said.
    They declined to discuss specific questions and techniques being used in the process, but said they are taking all necessary measures to screen applicants sufficiently.

 

Feel better now? Read Hugh Fitzgerald’s devastating “Ten Things To Think About When Thinking of Muslim Moderates” and see how long that feeling lasts.

Warner also advocates unity among non-Muslims in order to build resistance to Islamization, but without commonly agreed upon political goals, it is hard to see how such unity can either be created or maintained. How can we work together without something to work toward?

So, what should these goals be? Lawrence Auster has come up with a useful word in this context: separationism. And I think that by this point, most serious scholars on Islam agree (as I argued two years ago) that Islam must be contained and constrained – contained within the dar al-Islam and constrained as to the amount of damage the Islamic world is able inflict upon the non-Islamic world. And furthermore, that we must disengage from the Islamic world as much as possible; withdraw from Iraq and allow the natural fissures of Islam to widen, refrain from sending foreign aid (a form of jizyah) to Muslim countries, reduce the purchase of oil from OPEC, stop providing military equipment and other kinds of western technology to Muslim countries, and begin to limit Muslim access to the West,  including access to our scientific training, and even to the kind of training, in our languages and cultures, that would enable a propagandist (see Tariq Ramadan) be merely more effective at his work. If as well members of the ruling classes in the Muslim states are permitted to take advantage of Western medicine rarely, and only if they collaborate in our efforts or yield to our demands (for example, the Al-Saud need to stop funding campaigns of Da’wa and building mosques and madrasas everywhere; a price they could be made to pay is having Western medicine cut off from their free access). It is important not to prop up Muslim peoples and states but force them to ask what it is about their countries that encourages despotism, economic backwardness, and mental paralysis. Only in this way, as Hugh Fitzgerald has pointed out many times, will Muslims begin to associate their numerous intellectual, social and political failures with Islam. Then, only then, will Muslims begin to comprehend the truth about their belligerent and benighted belief system, and seek their own solutions.

Non-Muslims cannot change or reform Islam – we can only deal with it in such a way as to protect our civilizations, the art, music, literature and way of life bequeathed to us by our forbearers. As we look to the east we observe a succession of civilizations that, in the lands conquered by Islam, succumbed to Islam: Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Jain. Civilizations whose music, art, literature and even, here and there, languages, were all damaged severely, or even extinguished, by Islam so that few traces of them remain and even those last remaining traces are being destroyed. The Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan were the last remaining evidence of a once noble civilization. Thousands upon thousands of Hindu temples, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and other places of worship have been destroyed, along with the Buddhist statues and stupas and libraries, wherever the Dar al-Islam has spread. The incontestable historical fact is, as Bill Warner points out, that Islam is 100% effective in killing and replacing older and more advanced civilizations unless it is resisted and pushed back with sufficient force.

The cult or fashion of multiculturalism is the ideology of civilizational surrender.

We can begin by convincing Congress to implement the following minimal acts of self-defense:

 

1. Define Islam as the political ideology it is, so that it is no longer protected by “freedom of religion” and our laws against sedition come into effect.
2. Stop all Muslim immigration into America. This should be made a task separate from, and not to be confused with, other immigration initiatives.
3. Limit Muslim influence buying in Washington and academia.
4. Remove Muslim chaplains from our prisons and military.
5. Deport those Muslims, and their families, who are convicted of criminal activity, including but not limited to polygamy, activity that is prompted by or connected specifically to beliefs that are part of their mental makeup and cannot be shed as long as they are loyal to Islam and to the umma al-Islamiyya, and not to the laws of the Infidel nation-state.

Will the opposition be fierce? Of course it will. But we cannot move forward without some plan for political action.

Of the five proposals listed, the first is obviously most important because Islam must be recognized as the subversive belief system it is. The latest poll data show overwhelming (over 65%) mainstream Muslim support for the reestablishment of a single, Muslim Caliphate or Islamic super-state, as Andrew Bostom has detailed here.

It is reasonable for us to define Islam as it defines itself – as a Total System, which includes a well-defined politics; a political system that locates the source of its legitimacy in Islamic doctrine which is believed to be the will of God. Political legitimacy is not found in the will of the people, for those who obey man rather than God are not true Muslims but idolaters. Therefore Islam is openly subversive toward any non-Islamic political system and especially toward democracy which is inherently vulnerable, but can certainly be made less so.

Specifically, the Smith Act of 1940 makes it illegal to:

 

“knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.”

 

I believe Islam falls within the Smith Act and should be identified as seditious. But even if there is opposition, the mere discussion of such measures forces those opposed to talk openly about the belief-system of Islam, and what it teaches. That discussion itself is useful, and one which Muslims wish to avoid or evade or suppress. At the very least, particular Imams could be jailed and their sermons banned under existing legislation. Perhaps this would serve to drive Islam underground and more laws may be needed. But this would be a critical start.

A moratorium on Muslim immigration into America would require new legislation (at present, there are no records kept concerning the religion of immigrants). This will have to change. Religious liberty cannot extend so far as to countenance subversion.

Limiting influence buying would require specific laws to deal with it. Hugh Fitzgerald estimates the Saudis have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion dollars over the last 30 years around the world, in their Jihad to spread Islam throughout the non-Muslim lands, endowing academic chairs and entire academic centers  at our universities, lobbying our governments, erecting mosques and madrasas and establishing funds for their permanent maintenance, making sure our libraries are well stocked with Islamic propaganda, and buying up armies of apologists, Western hirelings, whose recruits come from the ranks of former diplomats, intelligence agents, journalists, businessmen – all of the very influential and plausible sort. Their names must be made public, the moneys they receive put on the public record, their lectures and Op/Ed articles and conniving for their Saudi masters must be made known to the broad public, so that at least others, coming along, will be put on notice that if they become agents of influence for the Saudi or other Arab and Muslim governments, everyone will know, no one will be fooled.

Removing Muslim chaplains from the military and prisons would be a natural extension of existing laws prohibiting sedition once Islam is correctly classified.

The simple enforcement of America’s existing laws against polygamy would require a greatly strengthened political will to accomplish. We must push for a final rejection of the unequal status of women and crush the practice of polygamy once and for all. Feminists can no longer look the other way. Polygamy is spreading and so is the effort to make it acceptable by Muslim propagandists and even some unreconstructed Mormon polygamists, not to mention creators of television shows like “Big Love” and various columnists who don’t see anything wrong with giving people the freedom to choose a polygamous lifestyle.

This must be countered at every step. Losing monogamous marriage would set women’s rights back – not just to the bad old 1950’s – but back thousands of years. Women cannot let this happen. Polygamy must be stopped all over the Western world. After all, it began in Islam as a measure that made sense in 7^th century Arabia. The warring Arabs were killing non-Muslims right and left, and seizing their women. A superfluity of women, thus, allowed for the possibility of polygamy. But now, if Arabs and other Muslims insist on polygamy, they will either be depriving other, no doubt poorer Arabs and Muslims, of their own chances for one wife, but also seeking constant recruits from the women who, in their eyes, are “taken from the Infidels.”

After 9/11, many wondered if Americans would “have the stomach” to prosecute this war and at the time the thinking turned upon numbers of casualties and summoning the will to fight with appropriate ruthlessness on the battlefield. As it turns out, the battlefield is on our own soil, and everywhere in the Bilad al-kufr, and must be fought not so much with bombs and tanks and planes (though sometimes those can be useful in disrupting weapons projects and terrorist training centers), but rather by using the tools provided by domestic laws and social attitudes. And surely in the end, especially in Western Europe, there will have to be all kinds of restrictions on immigration, and on the possibilities for obtaining citizenship, that do not any longer disguise the need to limit the size of the Muslim population in non-Muslim countries if those indigenous non-Muslims are to retain control of their own countries, and not see them, at a faster and faster rate, subject to Muslim pressures and Muslim demands and Muslim aggression that, as we see all about us, is ceaseless and will not, cannot stop – but can only be contained. We need to acquire the understanding that many things which in theory might dismay us are not in fact morally abhorrent – see the Benes Decree of 1946, as Hugh Fitzgerald keeps suggesting — but are the minimum required to fulfill the duty we have, not only to our posterity, but to the civilizational legacy we inherited and must protect from those who do not respect, and would not wish to preserve, it. We owe Shakespeare and Dante, Spinoza and Hume, Leonardo and Balthus, Kepler and Einstein a bit more than mere lip-service. We owe it to them to preserve a world where they, and others like them, may be produced – for not one of the great cultural figures of the West could have been produced in, or for one minute survived in, the Lands of Islam. Understand that, and you begin to understand everything.

So, do we have the stomach for it?  Can we construct a politics of victory?

 

 

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Rebecca Bynum contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all her contributions, on which comments are welcome.