By John R. Houk
© March 29, 2018
…
Murphey was born
in Tucson, Arizona, on June 14, 1934. He lived in Miami, Florida,
before the three years in Mexico, and then lived
in Denver, Colorado, for the rest of his childhood. He took his
pre-law in political science at the University of Colorado between 1951 and
1954, served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve for two years
between 1954 and 1956, then was a special student under Ludwig von Mises in the
Graduate School of Business at New York University during the 1956-7 school
year before attending the University of Denver College of Law. After he graduated
from law school in 1959, he practiced with a large firm in Denver for
six years and then went to work for a small firm in Colorado
Springs for two years to run for District Judge. He lost the 1966
race for the judgeship in Colorado Springs and joined the faculty
at Wichita State University in 1967, teaching business
law. He retired from the faculty after 36 years at the end of June,
2003. By the turn of the century, he had written classical liberal (or,
as he prefers, "neo-classical liberal") philosophy and historical
analysis for more than fifty years. That work predominates in what is
reproduced here.
The quarterly J
ournal of Social,
Political and Economic Studies, which has been published regularly since
1976, is a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to scholarly papers which
present in depth information on contemporary issues of primarily international
interest. The emphasis is on factual information rather than purely theoretical
or historical papers, although it welcomes an historical approach to
contemporary situations where this serves to clarify the causal background to
present day problems.
The
Journal is published by the Council for Social and
Economic Studies, P.O. Box 34143, Washington DC 20043, USA, and is financed
primarily by paid subscriptions from university and other libraries. Each
Volume corresponds to the Calendar Year, and contains upwards of 500
pages.
The General Editor, Professor Roger Pearson, and the Associate Editor,
Professor Dwight D. Murphey, are assisted by
… READ THE REST
The point of all this pedigree information leading up to the
book review of three books illuminating readers about Islam, is that the review
is an academic and legitimate source as opposed to – me – a disseminator of opinion
based on what I have personally read.
Here is the brief Sutliff email alerting me to the book
review:
And below is the well thought out book review from Dwight D.
Murphey.
JRH 3/29/18
*********************
Jihadism and Muslim Immigration: Three Recent Books
Book Review Article by Dwight D. Murphey
Wichita State University, Retired
Summer 2017; pp. 251-272
The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies
There is little in today’s world that
is more contentious than the debate over the nature of Islam and the role of
Muslim immigration into the United States and Europe. Major figures
take the position that Islam is a religion of peace and that Muslim immigration
is to be welcomed. An opposing view points to much in
Islamic teaching that is not peaceful, to the widespread jihadist presence that
is bringing violence both to Islamic societies and those of the West, and to
the inability effectually to know what is going on inside Muslim communities
and to “vet” newcomers. Still another perspective, thus far latent
because it is presently outside what is “politically correct,” is that it is
mostly irrelevant how peaceful Islam is, because in any event it is
existentially unwise for the West to invite an influx of a major new population
element whose religion and culture diverges so greatly from Western
society’s. Those who grapple with these issues find that the subject
is vast in its extent and complexity. The article here reviews three
books. The first is by an author we presume to be Muslim, and tells
much about the jihadist hatreds that produce not just attacks upon the West but
a great deal of internecine violence among the world’s many Muslim factions.
The others are by American authors, each a Christian, pointing to the dangers
and social costs of large-scale Muslim immigration. These reviews
are put forward not as a final word, but for the benefit of the information
they contain and as an invitation to further study.
Key Words: Islam,
Muslim immigration, jihadism, sharia, Islamic rivalries, Islamic divisions,
Islamic terminology, Muslim Brotherhood, “civilization jihad,” U.S. immigration
system, political correctness
The West’s ideological divisions have in recent years
taken on a new face. There was a time when the nature of Islam and
its role in the modern world was of interest almost exclusively to academic
specialists, and when mass immigration of Muslims into the West was on no one’s
radar. By now, however, questions about Islam and Muslim immigration
are critically important. The questions and their answers tell as
much about the fault lines, ideological and otherwise, within the West as they
do about the Muslims themselves and their religion.
Speaking before Congress in late 2001 shortly after the 9/11
attacks attributed to Islamic terrorists, U.S. President George W. Bush laid
down the premise that has actuated American policy until, at least, early
2017. He distinguished between Islam and the “radical network of
terrorists and every government that supports them.” The terrorists,
he said, are “traitors to their own faith,” seeking “to hijack Islam itself.”
He spoke of “our many Muslim friends” and “our many Arab friends,” and saw
nothing inherent in their ways of life or belief systems that would make the
terrorists representative of them. Thirteen years later, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry said much the same thing when speaking about the
beheading of an American by the Islamic State. “The face of Islam is
not the butchers who killed Steven Sotloff.” Those who did the
beheading were “mass cowards whose actions are an ugly insult to the peaceful
religion that they violate… The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion,
based on the dignity of all human beings.”
[1]
The defense of Islam and the Muslim population at large has
been fundamental to the policies that have welcomed and facilitated the
immigration of many hundreds of thousands of Muslims into the United States and
Europe. It is the conceptual complement to the other factors that
have caused the influx. The others include, but are hardly limited
to: American interventions that have destabilized much of the Middle East,
tearing up existing structures and exacerbating the social chaos that the many
contending factions of Islamic society lend themselves to; the seemingly
ever-present economic demand for cheap labor;
[2] the
Western ideology of “multiculturalism” that by seeking profound demographic
change reflects the Left’s centuries-old alienation against the mainstream of
American life, the population of which has been of European stock; and the
generous desire to do good that dates back through American religious history,
such as to the Social Gospel.
The welcoming perception and open-door policies based on it
are strongly opposed by others who, although acknowledging that there “are
millions of peaceful Muslims throughout the world,”
[3] stress
that much Islamic doctrine, going back to the Quran and found in the writings
of many Islamic scholars over the centuries, is far from peaceful.
To them, the metastasized jihadist movements represent a major aspect of Islam,
one that places the many thousands of Muslim immigrants under a
cloud. They see it as impracticable – as, in effect, a
self-deceiving fiction – to “vet” the immigrants sufficiently to remove the
danger of terrorist violence. And they are conscious of the
inability of non-Muslims to know what is taking place or being taught within
the Islamic communities and their mosques.
[4] The
three books reviewed here voice this opposition.
In these introductory comments, it is worth noting a third
position, which must be taken seriously despite lying beneath the surface of
today’s discussion. Even in Donald Trump’s campaign for the American
presidency, he did not suggest the need for a long-term ban on mass immigration
of Muslims into the United States (and Europe). The most he felt it
possible to propose was a short-term ban “until we can figure out what is going
on.” After becoming president, he caught intense criticism for, and
even judicial opposition to, a temporary ban on immigrants from seven (later
six) countries that the Obama administration had designated as sources of terrorism. The
end result was that although Trump often repudiated “political correctness,”
his position was severely circumscribed by it. He was no doubt
correct in sensing that the climate of opinion laid down by the mainstream
media and America’s “opinion elite” made it taboo to suggest that a major
Islamic presence in American life should be avoided.
The result is that a question of existential importance – of
whether the West is to continue to exist as such – is
repressed. If mass immigration into the United States and
Europe, and the non-replacement birthrates of the historic European population,
continue, the erstwhile populations will be supplanted. The physical
locations will remain, but the people will be different. They will
represent cultures and belief systems to which many will most likely be
tenaciously loyal, so there is reason to expect that the culture and
institutions of the present will no longer continue. The
implications are examined in a number of books that have warned of “the death
of the West.”
[5]
This third option would call for a deliberate policy of the
West’s staying the West, while leaving the Muslim populations within the Islamic
swath. It would mean the end of mass migration of Muslims to the
West, and a concomitant part of it would be for the United States to defer from
intervention into the Islamic countries, forsaking the post-Cold War aspiration
of making each of the societies over in the American image. (We
recall that Osama bin Laden’s primary complaint was that Americans were present
within “the land of Islam.”)
The books reviewed in this article were selected out of our
desire to know more about jihadism and sharia. The authors give much
information and make important points, some vital. But they do not
represent all of the existing viewpoints, and we hope readers will join us in
thinking there is potentially much more to learn.
Jihadism, Terror and Rivalries in the Middle East:
Isis, Hezbollahis and Taliban
Hoshang Noraiee
Hoshang Noraiee, 2016
What is often overlooked by those of us who are so rightly
preoccupied with jihadi violence in the West is that the many branches within
radical Islam mostly hate (and are anxious to kill) each other. Within
the broad Islamic swath, there are moderates, and – just as in the traditional
population in Europe and the United States – there is, according to Noraiee,
presumably a “silent majority” that is hardly heard over the articulate voices
of the radicals, but within the precincts of the radicals themselves there is a
chaos of blood-thirsty sectarian animosity. As one reads this short
book by Hoshang Noraiee, the impression of a mound of fire ants is
reinforced by a great many details about sects, rivalries and personalities.
It would help if Noraiee told us more about
himself. He is described as an independent researcher who has taught
at the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan
University. Presumably, by inference from his name and subject, he
is himself a Muslim, but we don’t know that, or where he is from. It
is to the book itself that we look for an appreciation of his credentials and
the extent of his knowledge. While it makes no pretension of being
“the definitive book” on radical Islam, readers will find it quite a good introduction.
One reason the book isn’t “definitive” is that Noraiee has
limited its scope to the Middle East. He has nothing to say about
the Islamic penetration of Europe and its many ramifications, which include a
challenge to the continued existence of Europe as Europe. Nor does
he delve more than slightly into the vastly important subject of who the
“moderates” are, what they believe, and to what extent their influence may (or
may not) eventually bring Islam into the modern age and dampen the fires, so
reminiscent of the internecine conflicts within medieval Christianity, that now
burn so fiercely. Rather, the book’s value lies in the extensive
information it gives about the radical jihadist movements where they are most
centered, which is the Middle East. Nevertheless, a caution: the
subject is vastly more variegated than we are able to convey. Almost
certainly Noraiee himself, in this 235 page book, hasn’t covered all
aspects, even though readers will find considerably more information than we
are able to mention here.
As we have said, what strikes us most about his account is
the extent to which the Middle East is a cauldron of boiling hatreds, partly
toward the West but most especially of its many factions toward one
another. Before we can review their rivalries, however, it is
necessary to see who the factions are, and what Noraiee tells us
about them.
The Many Faces of Islam
The primary division: Sunni and Shia. Although
there are differences between Sunni and Shia (and within each itself) on many
levels, the two branches of Islam disagree most fundamentally about who the
legitimate successors to the Prophet Mohammad have been. Sunnis look
to four caliphs (Abubakr, Omar, Osman, and Ali), who were the Prophet’s senior
deputies. The Shia accept only the last of these,
Ali. They hold that he “and his 11 descendants were the only
legitimate Imams.” A 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi, who disappeared,
will come back as a messiah “to rule and bring real justice.”
The Sunni
Although all Sunnis agree that the four caliphs are
Mohammad’s legitimate successors, they are divided into four types of
“jurisprudence,” each with its own branches, such as Wahhabism and Deobandism. (“Jurisprudence”
pertains to the interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith. Noraiee explains
that “Hadith” is the body of traditions coming from Mohammad’s words and
actions.)
Salafism. In a way similar to
Protestants within Christianity, Salafists call upon Muslims to consult the
Quran and Hadith directly in their search for Islamic purity rather than to
rely on intermediaries. They look only to Islam’s first three
generations, and consider the four traditional Sunni schools of jurisprudence
polluted by non-Islamic rituals. The Salafists have a large
network of Madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan, second only to the
Deobandi. They are themselves divided into three
branches. Not all Salafists accept the teachings of Sayyid Qutb,
but he is a source of inspiration for many. Noraiee describes Qutb as
“a radical Muslim Brotherhood ideologue” who called for “eternal jihad”
(struggle). Through the ideological leadership of Abu Bakar Naji,
who wrote The Management of Savagery, ISIS is Salafist.
Wahhabism. The followers of
Mohammad ibn al-Wahhab (who lived in the 18th century) are
dominant in Saudi Arabia, which accordingly is considered Sunni-Wahhabist. Noraiee says
their views are similar to the Salafists, including being hard-line and
adamantly anti-Shia. He says they have been “successful in spreading
their radical ideas among many other Muslims all over the world,” doing so with
generous financial support from Saudi Arabia.
Deobandism. We are told that this
started in India in the 1860s, seeking through education to purify Islam,
moving away from Hanafism’s mysticism and
Hinduism. [“Purify” is a recurrent theme in much Islamic thinking.
[6]] It
was restrictive toward music, singing and dancing, and toward “women’s
visibility in public and women’s dress code.” There are Deobandi
jihadist factions, but Noraiee says many of the Deobandi religious
leaders are “traditional or quietist.” Radicalism has increased
as Deobandis supported the Taliban. For almost the past
two centuries, the Deobandis have run a “vast network” of madrassas
(religious schools), especially in India and Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda. As the reputed
perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks on the United States,
[7] al-Qaeda
is often thought of as the more aggressive of the Sunni jihadist groups, but
that reputation has been eclipsed by internal rivalries and by ISIS, a movement
that grew out of “al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Nevertheless, al-Qaeda
continues to have networks throughout the world, several identified by
area, such as “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” Its present
commander is the Egyptian Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, the
successor to Osama bin Laden. It is interesting that although
al-Zawahiri is a forceful promoter of violence toward the West, he differs from
Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, the founder of “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” in taking a
milder approach to Shias and other Sunnis. Noraiee says of
al-Zawahiri that “while he rejected Shias, he considered them ignorant and thus
in need of further guidance.” Al-Zarqawi (1966-2006), on the other
hand, “killed ordinary Shiites” (i.e., Shias) and “promoted harsh engagement”
even with Sunnis of a somewhat different persuasion.
ISIS. A Salafist jihadist movement,
ISIS
[8] inherited
“the most hard-line of al-Qaeda traditions.” Noraiee spells
out in detail the guiding ideas of Abu Bakar Naji, which call for a jihad
that passes through successive stages of extreme violence in a “total war to
destroy others’ identities and existence.” The goal, according
to Naji, is a caliphate involving both “societal purification and
territorial expansion.” The leaders of ISIS are mainly Salafist-educated
Arabs who have little connection with madrassas, and include many Muslims who
have received their education in the West. Consistently with that,
many of its combatants are “foreign fighters” who come to it from outside Syria
or Iraq. A spokesman has invited Muslims to join “if you disbelieve
in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and
ideas from the West.” ISIS claims that its caliphate is the only
legitimate one, and combines this exclusionary attitude with a desire for world
expansion. To that end, it makes abundant use of social media, and
has an English-language magazine.
Taliban. Once led by Mullah Omar,
the Taliban became divided over his successor after his death in
2013. The Taliban name is derived from “school boys,” coming from
the word “talibs,” the students who attended Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan.
The Taliban have their roots in the Pashtun tribe, although not all Pashtuns
are Taliban. The movement originated in a struggle against the mujahidin
warlords who took over in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union was defeated
there. Noraiee says the Taliban haven’t formulated a literature
crystalizing their ideology. Rather, they are locally rooted, mixing
their Islamic religious views with local customs. The movement
spread to Pakistan, but otherwise seems to have no expansionist or
international aspirations. This is not to say that the Taliban are
not brutal or militant: “It was mainly given publicity for its strict
policies against women’s education [and] demolition of historical heritage
sites.” They provided al-Qaeda shelter early on, but are not
affiliated with it.
Boko Haram. This Wahhabist/Salafist
group is infamous for its brutality, which arguably exceeds that of any of the
others. It is centered in northeast Nigeria, but extends also to
Cameroon, Chad and Niger. In early 2015, it declared its allegiance
to ISIS.
“Awakening Movement” (Iraq). During
the U.S. involvement in Iraq, one hundred thousand Sunni tribesmen from Anbar
Province were mobilized to fight al-Qaeda. A key development
(marking for the opponents of ISIS a disastrous loss of a major U.S. ally)
occurred later when many of the tribal militias joined ISIS, feeling deeply
alienated from the Maliki government in Baghdad.
Al-Nosrah Front (also called
the Nusra Front). This is one of the radical jihadist
groups seeking to overthrow President Assad in Syria. In common with
ISIS, it grew out of “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” and it remains affiliated with
al-Qaeda. Although sometimes working with ISIS, it has also clashed violently with
ISIS over territorial control. Its relationship with ISIS is said to
have deteriorated after ISIS tried to absorb it in 2013.
The Shia
Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Noraiee discusses
at length the thinking of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the overthrow of the
Shah of Iran in 1979. Khomeini, in common with so many others,
sought a “purification” of Islam, “brutally suppressing… his opponents’
interpretation of Islam” and advancing “a specific Shia
interpretation.” Noraiee points out that this did not prevent
Khomeini from using much the same rhetoric and ideas as the radical Salafists
such as Sayyid Qutb (despite Qutb’s advocating killing
Shia). The IRI actively supports the Assad government in
Syria, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon
Noraiee doesn’t give much attention to other Shia factions,
but mentions Hezbollah in Lebanon as being associated
with “hard-line elements in Iran” and backing Assad in
Syria. He also writes briefly of the Shia militias in
Iraq, which are “organized and supported by Iran” and are, in the opinion of
Kurdish leader Masrour Barzani, “even worse than ISIS in Iraq.”
We submitted this article to a friend from Bangladesh raised
as a Muslim, and he commented that it would be well “to include smaller Shi’ite
groups like the Alawites of Syria, the Druze of Lebanon and Israel, and the
dispersed but cosmopolitan Ismailis who, despite their small numbers,
play an outsized role in the evolution of political Islam’s internal conflicts
and external impact.”
Others
Sufism. Noraiee mentions
Sufism several times without telling much about it. It is not
considered a sect, but rather a “dimension” of Islam that for over a millennium
has sought a mystical inner experience of Islamic Truth. All
Muslims, including Shias, can be Sufists, although Sunnis predominate in
the leadership. There are a number of Sufi orders, and a
variety of devotional practices. Adherents meet in congregations
under the leadership of Sufi masters.
The moderates. In several
places, Noraiee speaks of “ordinary, moderate Muslims,”
distinguishing them from radical jihadists. His references include:
“more moderate Wahhabis and Salafists” … “conservative and even quietist Sunni authorities”
… “moderate Islamists, particularly Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as…”
and “large sections of Deobandis are still traditional, quietist, and
conservative.” He tells how “in a 2015 fatwa, over 1,000 Indian
Islamic scholars – including muftis and imams – have called ISIS’s actions
‘absolutely inhuman,’” and in an Appendix he spells out the Executive Summary
of an Open Letter that 175 Islamic scholars sent to the head of
ISIS. The letter asserted the right of Muslims to differ on anything
other than fundamentals of the Islamic faith, and declared that Islam forbids
killing innocents, diplomats, journalists, and aid workers. It said
Islam forbids mistreating Christians or any “People of the Scripture”; the
reintroduction of slavery; the forcing of people to convert; the denial of
“their rights” to women [although this causes us to ask what the signers’ views
are about the rights women have]; the use of torture; and the declaration of a
caliphate “without consensus from all Muslims.” Noraiee’s readers
will find it worthwhile the read the entire Executive Summary, which covers
still more. As with anything of its sort, it suggests many
questions, both about what it says (such who the signers count among the
“innocents”) and what it doesn’t say. In its allusions to
moderation, Noraiee’s book leaves much unexplored about an aspect of
Islam that is of especial importance to those, in the West and among Muslims
themselves, who are looking for allies against radical jihadism. It
whets our appetite to know more. It would be well, for example, to
be informed about Saudi Arabia’s seeming contradictions. We know the
country is Wahhabist/Salafist, but Noreiee tells us its top
official clerics have condemned ISIS and have said that “terrorism has nothing
to do with Islam.” The Saudi grand mufti has said “that under sharia law,
terrorists merit the punishment of execution….”
The Rivalries
The larger picture of blood-thirsty animus among the
jihadists themselves is commented upon by Noraiee when he refers to
“conflicts we now find erupting between radical jihadists, not only in Syria
and Iraq but also in all other parts of the world.” Our reference to
this as “rivalry” is perhaps too limited, since that word suggests primarily a
struggle for position. Most assuredly the conflicts reflect such a
struggle, but they also go to deep-seated differences among people who see
things in black and white, regard each difference as an existential chasm, and
have little if any regard for the lives of the “others.” A shorthand
way of saying this is that the conflicts are among fanatics. It is a
fanaticism that wears various faces, along a spectrum from hooded beheaders to
soft-spoken, clean-cut young Iranian business administration professors in a
mid-western American university who comment casually that it is all right to
kill a Baha’i on the street.
The mutual hatreds run together into a tangled web,
complicating any effort to do more than point to a few of them specifically. Noraiee mentions
the effort by Arab countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to “weaken
Iran.” Turkey is, in addition, active against ISIS and “has
continued to attack Kurdish forces.” Al-Qaeda and ISIS are both
“threats against Saudi Arabia,” and we recall that in 1987 “about 400 pilgrims,
mostly from Iran, were killed” by Saudi police in Mecca as the “pilgrims”
marched in a political demonstration. In Iraq, even years after the
withdrawal of American troops, explosions occur so often that the world virtually
takes for granted an amount of mutual slaughter that would seem inconceivable
elsewhere. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are seen as “unbelievers” by
“radical Salafists,” have long conducted their warfare against the mujahidin
warlords and the established government of the country, have fought against the
Iranian Shia on Iran’s eastern border, and have clashed among themselves over
the succession after the death of Mullah Omar.
ISIS, of course, fights both “the far and the near enemies,”
and these include almost everybody. ISIS claims exclusive dominion
over the Islamic world and, beyond that, wants the eventual “global rule of
‘real’ Muslims.” Noraiee cites al-Zarqawi’s “ideological
blueprint” as calling for opposition to “Shias and the Iranian
regime.” Accordingly, “ISIS has attacked Shia mosques in Kuwait,
Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and even Bangladesh,” and has sought to have the
Sunni population in Iran revolt there. The violence, however, has
not just been against Shias; an Islamic scholar reports that “ISIS has not
hesitated to kill many Sunni clerics who oppose them in different
countries.” As ISIS has expanded into Afghanistan, it has had
“many bloody clashes” with the Taliban. In June 2015 “ISIS supporters…
beheaded 10 members of the Taliban.” In Syria, ISIS has executed
“some senior members of al-Nosrah Front.” Jaish-al Islam is a
coalition of fifty rebel factions fighting the Assad government in Syria, and
the brutality of its clash with ISIS is illustrated by ISIS’s having beheaded
eleven of its members, prompting a revenge beheading of eighteen ISIS
members. Each group has taken a macabre pleasure in videoing the
beheadings.
[9]
Although its treatment seems out of proportion to that given
his other topics, Noraiee has devoted an entire section to a jihadist
and ethnic nationalist movement among Sunnis in southeastern
Iran. At its origin this movement was known as
Jondollah –
the Army of God. As with other Sunni/Salafist groups, it sought to
“purify” Islam and hated Shias as well as moderate Sunnis, starting its armed
struggle in 2004 with beheadings, suicide bombings, and “deliberately
indiscriminate massacre of civilians in Shia places of worship.” It
has not, however, had international objectives (i.e., sought to fight “the far
enemy”). One of its leaders has called for the killing of all
Israelis as collaborators with the Israeli government. Jondollah split
into several small factions, by no means homogeneous, after Iran executed its
first leader in 2010. Its main successor organization,
Jaish-e Adl (JAD),
has moved away from Islamic jihadism and toward Baluch
[10] nationalism,
becoming more accepting of both Shia and moderate Sunnis. As an
indication that radical jihadists are often a loud and violent minority, Noraiee says Jondollah has
not enjoyed general public support within the Sunni population of perhaps 1.5
to 2 million people in the Baluchistan area.
So we see from this partial summary that Noraiee’s readable
short book, though by no means exhaustive or definitive, is an excellent introduction.
Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and
Resettlement Jihad
Leo Hohmann
WND Books, 2017
Leo Hohmann is a long-time journalist who is news
editor for World Net Daily, a major conservative internet news
outlet. Stealth Invasion is a rich source of information
about Muslim immigration, with primary emphasis upon the United
States. He is conservative, deeply critical of the increasing Muslim
presence, and orients his discussion, especially near the end of the book, to
Christian readers. Whether these qualities decrease – or rather
increase – the weight to be given to his judgments is for each of our
readers to decide. What we are doing with these reviews is to lay
out three contributions that we consider significant to the subject, and which
provide information most of us lack.
Hohmann cites a report by the Pew Research Center in
January 2016 that estimates that at that time three and a third million Muslims
lived in the United States, vested either with citizenship or permanent legal
status. An additional 240,000 come in each year, he says, in various
capacities: as refugees, green-card holders, students, or workers on temporary
work visas. After the civil war began in Syria in March 2011, more
than 13,000 refugees from that country were resettled in American communities
by October 1, 2016.
The mechanism for this influx is elaborate. Nine
nonprofit agencies bring in refugees under contract with the U. S. government,
and engage more than 350 subcontractors. The VOLAGs (volunteer
agencies) include the International Rescue Committee, the U.S. Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants, the Ethiopian Community Development Council, the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and five major Christian denominations or
councils. An annual “abstract” is submitted by each resettlement
contractor for each of the communities receiving refugees. These
abstracts contain information about the number of refugees, their origins, and
the services they will receive. The public is in the main not
informed about all this, given the silence that prevails among the local media.
Hohmann describes in detail how much of the
resettlement is done in secret, is imposed on local communities without their
consent, gives rise to local resistance, and divides communities. Of
the 132,000 Somali refugees brought in since 1983, he says “they have been
secretly planted in dozens of communities.” He adds that “the people
in these communities are never told that the changes being foisted upon them
are being centrally planned by bureaucrats in Washington and the resettlement
agencies….” Secretary of State John Kerry overrode the request by
over two dozen state governors not to resettle Syrian refugees in their states because
of concerns that vetting is inadequate to screen out
terrorists. As residents find their communities changing for
the worse, resistance movements spring up, but Hohmann says they
wither as people find the local governments and media
unresponsive. He devotes a chapter to the impact on Amarillo, Texas,
a city of 240,000, where seventy-five different languages and dialects are
spoken within its school system and “small ghettos” have fragmented the city.
The initial resettlements are only part of the story. Of
the 240,000 mentioned above, approximately half are issued “green
cards.” This puts them on “a fast track toward full U.S.
citizenship, including voting rights.” There is a multiplier: those
with green cards are “given the opportunity to bring their families into the
United States.” There are H1-B and H2-B visas for skilled and
unskilled workers, respectively; and an “entrepreneur visa” to do such things
as “run hotels and convenience stores.” In addition, a yearly “Diversity
Visa Lottery” is held to admit about 50,000 people from countries that don’t
“otherwise send many immigrants to the United States.”
As mentioned above, the United States has resettled 132,000
Sunni Muslims from Somalia in American communities since 1983, and Hohmann says
an immigration lawyer told him that most Somali asylum-seekers “never show up
for their asylum hearings,” but are not deported. We are told that
“refugees are different from asylum seekers, who show up uninvited at the
border,” whereas refugees come in through the provisions of the Refugee Act of
1980. (Illegal immigrants, euphemistically known as “undocumented,”
who have come in by the millions are another category
altogether.) Those arriving as refugees, Hohmann says,
“immediately qualify for a full slate of government goodies that aren’t offered
to most other immigrants.” These include “everything from subsidized
housing to food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, cash stipends,
and Medicaid.” They can apply for citizenship after they’ve been in the country
five years.
Except for the illegal immigration, all of this is done
under the color of law. As chairman of the U.S. Senate Immigration
Subcommittee, Senator Edward Kennedy shepherded the Immigration and
Naturalization Act of 1965 through Congress. Family reunification,
not the earlier per-country quota system, became the guiding
principle. It has become commonplace to quote Kennedy as having
assured the Senate that “the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.” This
assurance has certainly not proved true. During
the intervening years, Hohmann says, “Congress, whether controlled by
Democrats or Republicans, has done nothing to stem the tide.” As
with so much else in American social thinking, the philosophy has morphed from
a bare beginning to something quite expansive. In a commencement
address at Boston’s Northeastern University in May 2016, then-Secretary of
State John Kerry “told students to prepare for a ‘borderless world.’”
Hohmann discusses the nature of the Muslim population
in the United States. Although he acknowledges that “there are many
good Muslims,” he is one of those who see reason for concern. The
fact that “only certain Muslims take the principles of jihad seriously enough
to attack us” doesn’t fully reassure him. Hohmann says that
“due to the nature of Islam, it’s very difficult, often impossible, to sniff
out a radicalized Muslim before he strikes.” Moreover, the situation
is not static: “Terrorism experts tell us the process of radicalization can
happen within a matter of weeks.”
He notes the refugees’ “poor record of assimilation.”
[11] “Muslim
women sue their employers to be able to wear the hijab. Schools,
hospitals, and prisons must provide halal meat… Muslims push for separate
sharia tribunals to settle their family disputes.” Some two
dozen Somalis in Minnesota have sued their employer for “having been denied a
place to pray at the manufacturing plant.” It is possible, of course, that
none of this is representative of the Muslim population in general (although we
don’t know that), but “a 2015 study commissioned by the Center for Security
Policy found that 51 percent of American Muslims preferred to live under sharia
law.” For those under thirty, it was 60 percent. The same
poll showed that “nearly a quarter believe the use of violent jihad is
justified in establishing sharia.” Hohmann points out how “more
than forty” Somalis have either tried to join terrorist groups overseas or been
“tried and convicted of providing material support to overseas terrorist
organizations.”
The Muslim Brotherhood , founded in 1928 and with Sayyid Qutd
[sic] as a “doctrinal godfather,” is present in eighty countries, but as
“an extreme Islamist organization
[12] whose
overarching goal is to create a global caliphate governed by sharia,” it has a
long history of conflict within the Islamic swath. This has led to
bans in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Hohmann gives
considerable attention to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, where,
according to “former FBI counterterrorism specialist John Guandolo… almost
all the major U.S. Muslim organizations are dominated” by it. “Front
groups” of the Muslim Brotherhood are said to include the Islamic Society of
North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim-American
Society (MAS), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT),
which “holds the deed to roughly 25 percent of the mosques in North America.”
We are admonished to pay more attention to what Islamists
say to each other than they do to the American public. Hohmann tells
of a speech given at the annual convention of the Muslim-American Society in
late 2015 “openly calling for an Islamic-inspired revolution in
America.” He refers to a “notoriously radical mosque” in Boston, and
another in Phoenix. Part of the evidence at the Holy Land Foundation
trial in Dallas in 2007 was “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General
Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” written in 1991 and “seized in
2004 by FBI agents during a raid on a Muslim Brotherhood safe house in northern
Virginia.” The Memorandum urged the adoption of an “absorption
mentality,” spoke of a “civilization jihad process,” and explained that “the
brothers must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in
eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from
within.” The result, Hohmann says, is that “unlike the
violent jihad we see in daily acts of terror around the world, civilization
jihad is stealthy and less obvious. It uses migration, high
birthrates, and lack of assimilation to build a parallel society.” The
2004 FBI raid also discovered, according to Guandolo, a recording of a
speech by a Muslim Brotherhood leader about Muslim training camps and firearms
training in America.
It is part of the mindset of many Americans to reject all of
this as fabrication and paranoia. There are a good many indicia,
however, that make it less than reasonable to dismiss it out of
hand. A simple dismissal turns a blind eye to the many
manifestations of Islamic radicalism across the world. The indicia
are enough to make the existence of a threat (both of physical violence and of
attempted cultural displacement) an open question. It is arguable
that the question need not be resolved. Readers will recall an
option we mentioned earlier: that a threat, if there is one, need not
exist. A threat from Islam is important to the United States (and Europe)
only because large-scale Muslim immigration has been welcomed. If
Islam stays within its historic swath (together, perhaps, with the United
States’ staying out of their affairs), it is not an existential issue for the
West.
The demographic transformation of Europe receives rather
little attention from Hohmann, but is an essential part of the bigger
picture. The world teems with people eager to come into the
West. Patrick Buchanan writes that “Africa has a billion people, a
number that will double by 2050, and double again to 4 billion by
2100.” He asks, “Are those billions of Africans going to endure
lives of poverty under ruthless, incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical regimes,
if Europe’s door remains wide open?” We have the impression that the
horrors in Syria have been the reason for the flood into Europe, but Hohmann points
out that “while the media mostly blamed the influx on the Syrian civil
war, only 20 percent of the 381,412 refugees and migrants who
arrived in Europe by sea in the first eight months of 2015 were from Syria [our
emphasis]. The rest were from all over the Middle East, central
Asia, and North Africa.” The Schengen Agreement, signed by five
European countries in 1985 but now grown to encompass 26 countries, did away
with internal border checks within the “Schengen Area,” with the result that
once the migrants have gotten inside Europe they have been able to move freely
from one place to another. A recent exception: the “European migrant
crisis” in 2016 caused Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland and
Sweden to enact temporary border controls.
Although Stealth Invasion deals with only
with the specific issue of Muslim immigration, it is worthwhile to consider its
many revelations about the governmental, academic and media enthusiasm for that
immigration as, in effect, a case study of the mechanisms of governance by
America’s (and Europe’s) dominant opinion elite. Hohmann gives
many examples of how the “establishment media,” national and local, hammers
home what can only be characterized as pro-immigration
propaganda. Flowery feature stories and compassionate anecdotes are
combined with a failure to cover unfavorable information, amounting to a vast
blackout. Violent crimes aren’t reported; and, when they are, the
perpetrators often aren’t identified as Muslim immigrants (just as the public
usually is not told that a crime was committed by an illegal Hispanic
immigrant). Those who dissent are denounced as “bigots” and “Islamophobes.” Little
is more taboo in American life than a violation of “political
correctness.” The book is replete with many specifics.
The media are just a part of it. The web of
institutions that occupy most of the spaces in American life play an active
role. These range from schools whose students are taken on field
trips to mosques, to universities that bring in “thousands of young people from
the Middle Eastern countries,” to the American Civil Liberties Union and the
Southern Poverty Law Center, to church groups acting out of a sense of caring
but that also profit from serving as resettlement agencies, to the “sanctuary
cities” that refuse to enforce immigration laws, to the non-governmental
agencies involved in humanitarian enterprises – and to many more,
besides. (Such a list is inadequate even to suggest how ubiquitous
the institutional presence is, but readers are told a lot about it in Stealth
Invasion.)
Civilization Jihad and the Myth of Moderate Islam
Paul Sutliff
Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC, 2016
Paul Sutliff, like Leo Hohmann, sounds the alarm
against the Muslim penetration of the West, centering on the “civilization
jihad” that he sees occurring in society, government, on college campuses and
in the public schools. In an Afterword that concludes his book, he
says “the most important action that has to be accomplished is to declare the
Muslim Brotherhood an enemy of the United States.”
His credentials are not nearly as extensive as Hohmann’s,
nor his knowledge of Islam as intimate as Noraiee’s, but his message is
much the same as Hohmann’s and is to be taken
seriously. His education includes a bachelor’s degree in Religion
and Philosophy, and a Master’s in Education, each from a Christian
college. He is a teacher of social studies at the high school
level. Placed in the context of the other books we are examining
here, Sutliff’s contribution is largely to supply information that
adds to the very considerable detail we have already seen.
We have commented on the inability of non-Muslims to know
fully and accurately “what is going on” in Muslim thinking and activity in
America and Europe. There is a profound epistemological problem in
understanding what doctrines are extant, what their children are taught, how
much “radical jihadism” there is and what influences (such as the Internet)
provoke it, what they are saying to each other in their social media, to what
extent their way of life corresponds with or stands in conflict to that of a
Western society – and so much more. The American public, for
example, would be hard pressed to say whether female genital mutilation is
occurring among them, whether fatwas are entered against those who convert to
Christianity or otherwise leave the Islamic faith, whether honor killing (as
occurs elsewhere, say) is condemned or looked upon favorably, and whether the
Muslim population in general or in families will report any pending terrorist
activity or will cooperate with authorities after one is carried out.
A mask is placed over Muslim reality if the Islamic
immigrants adhere to a tactic discussed by Sutliff. “My
extensive research into Islam revealed that it is part of their belief
structure to lie about what they believe to protect their
faith. This is called taqiyyah. There are
five additional terms under Islam that speak of lying to non-Muslims…. Yes,
this does mean I do not trust Muslims to tell me the truth about their
religion.” Whether such a mask is worn by American and European
Muslims is yet another thing most of us can’t know. For his part,
however, Sutliff cites a number of reasons for thinking it is.
Among the reasons, he says, is that American students are
taught about only five of what are really six “pillars of
Islam.” The five pillars are shahada (creed),
the salat (five daily prayers), sawm (fasting), hajj (pilgrimage),
and zakat (almsgiving). “But,” Sutliff tells us,
“there is a sixth pillar.” It “was revealed by Al-Sarakhsi – an
eleventh-century Hanafi iman, mujtahid, and judge – who outlined the eight
rights of Allah… Within [the] first right are encompassed the six pillars… The
sixth is jihad (holy war).”
The mask is compounded, according to Sutliff, when
disinformation about Islam is passed along to American students in their
textbooks. As he dissects a popular textbook’s treatment of Islam,
to which it devotes 44 pages in contrast to 14 for Christianity and 22 for
Judaism, he points to much that is superficial gloss, passing over unattractive
realities.
When our friend from Bangladesh, in whom we have great
confidence for an honest and informed opinion, commented on the concern
about taqiyyah as a doctrine of deception among American Muslims, he
downplayed it, not sensing “some conspiracy” among them to hide their true
feelings. He said the small Shi’ite groups like the Alawites, the
Druze and the Ismailis do indeed “make the discretion of taqiyyah central
to their theology as persecuted minorities among their more orthodox Muslim
neighbors,” but this is to protect themselves from persecution by other
Muslims. An article to which he referred us explained that Muslims
on various occasions historically have had to dissimulate about their beliefs
in situations where they would otherwise be killed. It observed that
this is not unlike those who have professed other faiths. Thus, the
friend’s comments to us have highlighted what we have said here: that there is
much that is indeterminate about the subject, requiring an open mind and
further study.
As with the Noraiee and Hohmann books, Sutliff’s contains
much more than we have been able to mention here. All three are
worth reading, for their own sakes or as part of the larger study we just mentioned,
as each of us seeks to penetrate further into a subject that is of vital
importance to the West.
ENDNOTES
1. The quotes from President Bush and Secretary
of State John Kerry are given in the Paul Sutliff book (at pages 41
and 42) that will be reviewed here.
2. The demand for cheap labor is not a recent
development, though globalization has given it new shape. “Guest
workers” from Turkey have for several decades been invited into Germany in
large numbers. In the United States, less-paid immigration, both
legal and illegal, has been welcomed by major businesses and agricultural
groups. Historically, most (perhaps all) societies incorporated
slavery, peonage or serfdom into their basic economies. Although “involuntary
servitude” in those forms has in the main been done away with, “cheap labor” is
still available through immigration and/or out-sourcing.
3. This is the view expressed by Leo Hohmann on
page 236 of one of the books we will be reviewing.
4. It is little commented upon, but the
combination of a large Muslim presence and an inability to know what is
transpiring among them has serious implications for “civil
liberties.” This is so because if jihadist violence grows as a
threat and is to be prevented, the society may come to feel it imperative to
resort to a broad and long-continuing surveillance, even though that is
incompatible with the liberties fundamental to a free society. It
would necessarily be surveillance without the prior showing of “probable cause”
as to each individual surveilled, would destroy personal autonomy and privacy,
and would entail secretive and extensive police powers at odds with “limited
government” and “the rule of law.” The prospect of an otherwise
unacceptable surveillance – with possible long-term consequences changing the
historic nature of American society – is one of the things that should be at
the forefront of any consideration of mass Islamic
immigration. (Those who call themselves “libertarians” are inclined
to support open borders. They would do well to think about whether,
as a de facto matter, that is consistent with their support
for limited government.)
If such a “police state” comes into being, the Left,
articulating its view from its many outlets, will predictably blame it on the
main society. That will be misplaced blame, since the cause will
more reasonably be found in the creation of the threatening conditions in the
first place. Such a misplacing of blame can for many decades warp
the understanding of our historical epoch.
5. See especially Patrick J. Buchanan’s
The
Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our
Country and Civilization (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), which
we reviewed in this Journal in our Spring 2002 issue, pp.
126-130. The review can be accessed free of charge at
www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info as Book
Review 68 (i.e., BR68).
6. The desire for “purity” that seems ubiquitous
among the Islamic groups is reflected in there being two different forms of
“jihad” (struggle). Noreiee explains that “jihad asghar”
(small struggle) has to do with physical combat, whereas “jihad akbar”
(great struggle) “relates to the comparatively greater challenge of
self-improvement and spiritual warfare.”
7. The author of this article is one of those who
finds many reasons to doubt the conventional account of the 9/11
atrocities. It that account is false, the implications are, of course,
endless so far as our understanding of the contemporary world is concerned,
including our understanding of such that is discussed in this article.
8. Noreiee explains that although he uses
the name ISIS (Islamic State in Syria), because it is the most commonly used
designation, the group is also called Islamic State (IS) and Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in addition to “Daesh,” a pejorative name that ISIS
detests.
9. We may wonder why beheading plays so prominent
a role. It may have something to do with the verse in the Quran that
says “when you face those who are blasphemous, behead them to shed their
blood.”
10. Baluch is also spelled Baloch, and refers to
a people spread across southeastern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even the Arabian
Peninsula.
11. “Assimilation” was in general the American
ideal under the “melting pot” aspiration, but pronouncedly separate identity
has been a way of life for, say, the Amish in Kansas, orthodox Jews on the
lower east side of Manhattan, and the Chinese in various Chinatowns. Even
when it remains the aspiration, assimilation is difficult, sometimes taking
generations. Now, though, within America’s dominant opinion culture,
“multiculturalism” has replaced the hope for a “melting pot.” What
is now the norm is an accommodation of differences by many who are even eager
to subordinate the mainstream to Muslim practices.
12. By contrast, it is worthwhile to
remember Noreiee’s mention of “moderate Islamists, particularly
Muslim Brotherhood organizations such
as….”
_________________________
Intro to Book Review of
3-Authors by Murphey
By John R. Houk
© March 29, 2018
_______________________
Jihadism and Muslim
Immigration: Three Recent Books
Murphey info in the Intro
