[From article]
Once again, the Republican Party establishment -- presidential candidates, major office holders, large contributors, and paid consultants -- was caught flat-footed and out of touch. Who knew, after fifteen years of unabated Islamist terrorism all over the world, that large segments of the American public might question the prudence of continued substantial immigration from the Muslim world?
The political establishment’s condemnation of Trump’s proposal was instantaneous and predictably consisted of single phrase epithets, ad hominem and empty invective: “…prejudiced and divisive…” (Clinton), “… xenophobia and racist (Sanders), “…fascist…” (O’Malley), “… unhinged…” (Bush), “…offensive and outlandish…” (Rubio), “…outrageous divisiveness…” (Kasich), and the list could go on. Noticeably absent from the initial torrent of Republican vitriol was any substantive discussion of Trump’s actual proposal.
[. . .]
Trump’s proposal deserves serious and thorough public debate.
Islam is inarguably unique among the world’s major religions in continuing to produce a steady stream of ideologically motivated mass killers. Islamist acts of violence continue to produce slaughter among its own contending factions and among the adherents of every other major religion (and of no religion), and that violence, far from abating, seems to be increasing in lethality and reach. No sooner is one murderous Jihadist group apparently defeated (e.g., The Taliban, Al Qaeda) than others spring up (e.g., ISIS, Boko Haram). No other religious or ideological group is afflicted with anything remotely comparable to the cult of violence today emanating from Islam on every continent.
[. . .]
Saudi Arabia -- continue to fund the Salafist version of Islam all over the world, including in Europe and America, a theology whose Quranic fundamentalism and intolerance leads directly to Jihadi violence.
[. . .]
That Islam is beyond dispute the preeminent source of ideologically motivated terror in today’s world is beyond dispute.
[. . .]
Polls of Muslims in Western and majority Muslim countries consistently reveal numerically significant support for Islamic terrorism. The percentage of Muslim support for terrorism may be “low” among Western Muslim communities (as is the consistent headline by the Pew Research Center, many of whose reports are cited below); but, given the size of those communities (e.g., at least 5 million in France, about 2.5 million in America), those percentages translate into significant absolute numbers of Muslim sympathizers for terrorism within all Muslim communities.
[. . .]
In 2010 and 2011 the Pew Research Center [. . .] polled American Muslims and found that approximately 13% thought that under at least some circumstances acts of terrorism against civilians are justified. Assuming a U.S. Muslim population of approximately 2.5 million, that figure would translate into somewhat more than 300,000 American Muslims who, under some circumstances, support murderous attacks against civilians.
[. . .]
Pew reports that in 2010 up to 35% of French Muslims, 25% of Spanish Muslims and 24% of British Muslims expressed some level of support for suicide attacks against civilians under some circumstances.
[. . .]
In 2005 the British government leaked a report that concluded, [. . .] approximately 16,000 British Muslims were “willing or eager” to embrace violence in the effort to bring an end to “decadent and immoral” Western society.”
[. . .]
By Pew’s 2013 survey, at least 10,000,000 Turks to one degree or another support terrorism against civilians.
[. . .]
At least two other considerations not dealt with here bear on the wisdom of continued Muslim immigration: First, the degree to which actual terrorists, as opposed to mere sympathizers, are secreting themselves within the minimally vetted masses now moving from the Middle East to the West; and second, the intensity of the desire of large percentages of Muslims already living in the West, and even larger percentages of those who wish to come, to live under Sharia law, a system of Islamic law indisputably at variance with Western values of religious freedom, equality of the sexes, and freedom of expression. Both subjects would require separate articles, and both considerations would provide further support for Trump’s proposal.
[. . .]
Trump’s proposal deserves a thorough and intellectually honest public debate.
[. . .]
Those presidential candidates, Republican or Democrat, who dismiss that proposal with the usual invective drawn from the Left’s phrase book are signaling their lack of either the analytical ability or the courage to lead the West in its current struggle with militant Islam.
Once again, in his brash indifference to the rules imposed by America’s self-appointed betters, Trump has raised an important issue. Once again, whatever one thinks of him, the US electorate owes him a thank you note.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/trump_and_the_hazards_of_muslim_immigration.html
December 18, 2015
Trump and the Hazards of Muslim Immigration
By Jared E. Peterson
No comments:
Post a Comment