My question to Daniel Pipes: Therefore, what?

Daniel Pipes has an article at FrontPage Magazine about the Islamic school in Illinois that was written up in Time magazine and that I wrote about last week. I sent him an e-mail about his article which I also posted at FrontPage. I hope Mr. Pipes doesn’t feel I’m trying to beat up on him with my continuing criticisms, since that’s not at all my intention. What I’m doing is advancing positions that I believe in and that I think are vitally important for the well-being of our country, just as he or any other political writer does.

Dear Mr. Pipes:

At the end of your piece on the Islamic school in Bridgeview, Illinois you say:

I finished Marguerite Michaels’s article doubly dismayed. First, that a veteran Time journalist cannot see an American madrassah before her very eyes, replete with the alienation, resentment, supremacism, and isolation that feed the Islamist temperament. Secondly, that this “model school” quietly and openly churns out graduates hoping they will create an Islamic States of America.

First, as a side point, I don’t see a quote in your article showing that they want to create an Islamic States of America, though we know of course, based on reports about similar schools, that the statement is undoubtedly true.

Second, based on the fact that these people do want to create an Islamic States of America, the question which faces us, but which you don’t ask, is: What do we do about this? Most of your articles are about the “Islamist” organizations such as CAIR. But those Islamist organizations are just the tip of the problem. The problem is the whole Muslim community in this country. Furthermore, that community is not here because of Islamic radicalism, it is here because of our own mainstream American belief system, as I explained in my blog entry on the Islamic School on June 12:

The hop, skip, and jump from liberal America to Muslim America

Good old Time magazine, serving its usual function of normalizing and celebrating whatever trend is leading to America’s ruin, has a photo essay about an Islamic K-12 school in Illinois. In the below photo the Muslim girls, dressed in full-body black coverings, play the all-American game of basketball. Isn’t it wonderful, this rich, post-assimilationist mix of Islamic and American customs? Doesn’t it warm your heart? Well, if your heart’s fondest desire is to divide, diminish, and pull down America, and change it out of recognition from anything it’s ever been, the answer is yes. But please let us not blame the left-liberals at Time for this. Anyone who signs onto the modern liberal and mainstream conservative idea that non-discrimination is America’s core concept and highest calling, must say yes to this sight, for it is the direct product of his own beliefs.

In response to my e-mail to Pipes, a friend wrote to me:

One cannot propose that all American Muslims be airlifted out of this country. However, if they want the protection of American law, they must adhere to that law. Teaching seditious materials in any school is against the law, which must be applied fairly.

I can think of no one that has done more to expose this growing cancer in America than Daniel Pipes.

I replied:

As you know, I do not propose that all American Muslims be airlifted out of the country. I propose a set of measures that will result in a steady net out-migration of Muslims, both forced and voluntary. To speak of a total, sudden deportation of Muslims seems so outrageous and impossible that it has the tendency to kill any discussion about what to do about Muslims in the West. But if we speak of the gradual process that I advocate, that becomes thinkable and doable.

You write:

“However, if they want the protection of American law, they must adhere to that law. Teaching seditious materials in any school is against the law, which must be applied fairly.”

But why should we expect that they will adhere to that law? How can we base ANYTHING on the hope and expectation that they will adhere to that law? Your reasoning here is similar to that of the Oslo peace process. You’re setting up a quid pro quo which, by the very nature of the case, given the nature and beliefs of Muslims, is impossible. As a result, we will end up giving the quid (letting them stay in this country), while they don’t give the quo (adhering to laws against sedition).

Furthermore, can you imagine U.S. authorities examining every Muslim school in America to verify that they are not inciting to jihad? How successful has Israel been in getting the Palestinians to stop inciting murder and hate in their schools? And in that instance, the Palestinians have signed a treaty obligating to do exactly that. Yet they haven’t done it.

To expect that Muslims will reform themselves is exactly the fallacy that I’ve been arguing against in my articles. We must act for our own preservation, not depend on anything that Muslims (who DON’T CARE about our preservation) may do.

I readily agree that Mr. Pipes has done as much as anyone to expose this deadly disease in our midst. But to keep talking about a deadly disease, while not identifying the cause of the disease (namely, our belief in non-discrimination toward all peoples and cultures, as incarnated in our federal immigration law, which has allowed all these Muslims to come here), and not proposing the only possible cure for the disease (namely to renounce our belief in universal non-discrimination, cease all mass Muslim immigration, and start removing Muslims from America), is to leave the American people demoralized and in despair. Alternatively, yet also leading to passivity and inaction, to warn people of the dangers of Islam, while also failing to propose any real solutions, may give people the comforting feeling that the problem is being handled when in fact it is not, and so they will neglect to face the problem themselves.

Of course, Pipes advocates deporting radical Muslims, but (1) he doesn’t emphasize it nearly enough, and (2) he only talks about keeping out and deporting a few “Islamists,” rather than aiming at an overall continuing reduction of the U.S. Muslim population, which in my view is the only way we can permanently reduce the threat of expansive Islam in this country. As I’ve said before, we could spend the rest of our lives writing exposés of the awful facts about Islam, and imagine that in doing so we are engaged in a great conservative project, even as the Islamic presence in America keeps getting stronger and stronger, and our own national identity, culture, and system of laws keep getting weaker and weaker.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 20, 2005 05:56 PM | Send