A while back, I wondered if we should just merge with Mexico. After all, to suggest that any Hispanic anywhere should not be allowed in is just plain racist. In all seriousness, if there really is a limit on immigration, not in word, but in deed, we're going to have to pick which people are allowed to become American citizens.
Donald Trump, curse him, actually made some sense with his "stop Muslim immigration" comments. Dig this.
I'm thinking, right off the top of my head, I probably don't want immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia or Niger, just to name a few. Sharia's not my thing, man. Life without beer and pork products is unthinkable.
If you click on the link above, you'll see where the locals believe in the death penalty for apostasy. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinian
Note that Iran and Syria aren't on the list. No doubt they were washing their hair when the polling service called and couldn't make it to the phone.
The belief that these immigrants would Americanize once they got here is probably a fantasy. See also: Rotherham, Pakistani rape gangs of.
Islam holds that men are nearly incapable of suppressing their sexual urges. In order to prevent rape, women must dress modestly. If they don't, they are encouraging men to sin. If something comes of that, well, don't say you weren't warned. That goes for Western Infidel Whores, too. (If your neighborhood brings in a couple thousand of these guys, it might be best to start wearing a veil, just to be on the safe side, ladies.)
As for conversion to a local culture in general, I know that if I emigrated to, say, New Zealand, I'd still be a crazy Catholic and all the secularists and protestants in the world wouldn't get me to change. Thinking that Muslims are any less devoted is insulting to the Muslims.
Unfortunately, almost no one out there seems to be aware of Muslim views on Sharia or examples like Rotherham. Certainly no one in the media knows about these things. Instead, they cling to their religion of tolerance, diversity and all-cultures-are-equal. Everything is defined in American terms as if no one else has a different point of view. It's all about racism and bigotry because we can't see that significant differences exist between our culture and anyone else's. Their cultures are not defined by distinct ideas about life, but by superficial things like food and clothes.
On that point, watching the Muslim immigration debate unfold on my Facebook timeline, it's made me think that we've got a new generation of Ugly Americans, ones who dismiss other cultures by projecting their belief systems on them. Islam as "The Religion of Peace" is rubbish, not because Islam is evil, but because Islam has its own ways of defining the world and dealing with life. Some of those are violent, like stoning adulterers and beheading apostates.
No, really, that's what they do and it makes perfect sense to them. All the diversity coordinators in the bureaucracy and multiculturalists in the Ivy League aren't going to change their mind. Islam holds together as a well-constructed philosophy, faith and political system. You may or may not agree with it, but it's not the Des Moines Rotary Club under a different name.
So getting back to the original point, do we let everyone in or do we pick and choose? If we pick and choose, do we want Sharia supporters? That's the debate to have, not the one we're having now which is based upon a let's-pretend view of Islam.
One thing I would like to point out: while your argument is well-thought-out, and reasonable on its face, it should also be pretty familiar to anyone who has looked at US politics of the 1800s. At the time, there was also a strong political movement that was arguing against letting in people from certain countries. And it was because people from those countries were overwhelmingly adherents of a certain religion that a lot of people felt was going to try to take over the country and force everyone to follow their laws. If you can lay hands on a copy of Lyman Beecher's "Plea for the West", his arguments are very much like yours.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, the people that they were trying to keep out were the Catholics.
I think that the Anti-Catholics made one mistaken assumption, though: they assumed that the Catholics were coming to North America with the intention of making the US into a Catholic nation, dominated by a Catholic aristocracy. But, based on my own Catholic ancestors, I think that the majority were actually the exact opposite: they were coming here to get *away* from the Catholic aristocracy. After all, if you want to live in a country where the Church has strong influence over the laws, and you are already living in such a country, then why would you leave? There was never any danger of the Catholics taking over the government and handing the United States over to the Pope on a platter, because very few of the kind of people who might have wanted to do that would ever have come here.
And, I think the same mistaken assumption is now being made about the Muslims. Maybe 99%[1] of the population of, say, Afghanistan think that Sharia should be the law of the land, but I bet that the remaining 1% makes up almost the entirety of the people who are trying to get the hell out of there.
[1] For that matter, the only times I've seen cases where 99% of the population "supports" a particular position, it was because someone had a gun to their head and told them to support it if they knew what was good for them. Without threats, I'm not entirely sure that an honest poll would even get 99% of the population to agree that the sun rises in the East.
Good points. Still, government policy is a blunt instrument. If you're trying to find a needle in a haystack, government policy isn't the tool. Finding that 1% out of a couple thousand Afghani refugees would be a hopeless task for the poor devil in the immigration office. Imagine having the TSA folks at the airport doing this.
ReplyDeleteImmigration is not now*, but should be a scarce resource. That means some get in and some don't. There are hopeful people from southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Central America who want to get in. Bringing in Muslims means these other people aren't going to be allowed in. If the Muslim culture is inherently problematic for structural reasons, why give them preference over, say, an animist from Zimbabwe who is relatively benign?
* - Our borders are completely out of control. For all intents and purposes, anyone who wants in and can make the trip can get in.
Re: Catholic vs. Islamic political influence.
ReplyDeleteApples and oranges. Read the Koran and the Hadiths and then read the Baltimore Catechism. The comparison falls apart immediately. In Islam, there is no boundary at all between politics and religion. Muslims are obligated to institute Sharia as soon as they can in the nation where they live. The Catechism has almost no references to anything political.