America’s latest illusion about Islam—and itself

The U.S. State Department wants to help Muslim immigrants better integrate into their host society—no, not the U.S., but Europe. The State Department official who told the editors of the Washington Times about this project, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Daniel Fried, says that the growing Muslim presence in Europe is “a fascinating issue and one that the American government is just now trying to get its mind around. It’s a huge problem, we are thinking about it seriously, and we’ve tried to do some intellectual framing-up.”

Alarming words! And what great conclusions did this “serious thinking” lead to? Fried told the Times:

The unrest that existed in poor neighborhoods had nothing to do with jihad and much to do with social conditions. That’s why we have to put the emphasis on improving the social conditions—schools, jobs, better housing—and hopefully all this will trigger better absorption in the social fabric of France of this minority.

Fried is confused about the nature of the problem as only a liberal can be. On one hand, he talks about the severe social stresses created by unassimilated Muslim enclaves where alienation and radicalism are growing. On the other hand, he says, “You have a weird nativist surge in Western Europe, and a kind of odd panic: Aliens are here, they don’t accept our values, they are a threat to our way of life and turn to radicalism.” But why is this “nativist” surge “weird,” and why is this panic “odd” (a favorite liberal word to describe the normal reactions of normal people), given Fried’s own description of Muslims’ lack of assimilation as a “huge problem”? And, by the way, why did no one at the Washington Times, including editorial page editor Tony Blankley, who has actually written a book about the Islam threat in Europe, ask Fried that obvious question? Answer: you cannot see liberal contradictions, let alone have the brass to challenge them, until you are outside the liberal world view and ready to oppose it. And mainstream American conservatives are manifestly not outside the liberal world view, much as they imagine they are.

The person who will head this move to show Muslims how to blend into European society and culture is Farah Pandith, until recently an NSC staffer. The effort will consist of bringing American Muslims across the Atlantic to meet with their European Muslim counterparts and help them “break down stereotypes” and end their “self-isolation.” The underlying assumption at work here is obviously the self-congratulatory neoconservative belief that while Europe has made a complete mess with its Muslim immigrants, America has handled its Muslims just beautifully, thank you. America, warm and welcoming host to the 9/11 hijackers, is going to help Europe assimilate its Muslims!

So let’s see, who should Farah Pandith bring over to Europe to give the Muslims lessons in how to be good Europeans? How about some typical Muslims from America’s most Islamic city, Dearborn, Michigan, where a majority of that community say they would like to live under sharia? Or, if ordinary Muslims from a Muslim neighborhood are not suitable spokesmen, how about the students of the Al Noor academy in Brooklyn, who told the New York Times that their “ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state,” adding that they empathized with “the young Muslims around the world who profess hatred for America and Americans,” and that they would abandon America to “support any leader who they decided was fighting for Islam”? Or, if Muslim high school students are not appropriate representatives of U.S. Muslim opinion, maybe Pandith should bring over to Europe Husham al-Husainy, the pro-Hezbollah imam of a Dearborn, Michigan mosque who gave an anti-Christian and anti-Jewish invocation at the Democratic National Committee meeting this winter calling on God to “help us stop … occupation and oppression,” and who screamed Koranic curses at television host Sean Hannity when Hannity pressed him on whether Hezbollah is a terrorist organization? Or, if merely giving an invocation at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee does not qualify a U.S. Muslim as sufficiently “arrived” in America to teach European Muslims how to integrate into the West, how about sending someone who has real prior experience as a representative of America and has reached the very heights of assimilation, namely the great Abdurahman Alamoudi, former frequent White House guest, speechwriter for Hillary Clinton, and United States good will ambassador to Muslims overseas … who—whoops—is now serving a 23-year prison term for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince? Yeah, America is just full of asssimilated Muslims who can lead the Muslims of Europe on the path to peaceful integration.

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Howard Sutherland writes:

The State Department’s new Fried-enstein Monster is utter insanity. Only minds as unhinged from reality as Bush and Rice could have approved it. I don’t think even Clinton and not-at-Albright came up with something quite as childishly stupid and casually destructive – unless it be bombing the Balkans to make them safe for sharia.

So now the U.S. Government is going tell the Europeans how wonderful for America it is to have so many of the (false) Prophet’s dévotés among us. Don’t ask about those two buildings that used to be in New York – what were they called? Still, it is absolutely par for the course for the Bush administration. What will this president and his coterie not betray?

In deciding to use the State Department as a PR agent for the Moslem invaders of Europe, the Bushites are just carrying on from their illegitimate and intrusive cheerleading for Turkey’s admission to the European Union. This transcends run-of-the-mill neoconservative stupidity. It isn’t just a cavalier neocon-style disregard for the roots of our civilization; there is a malevolence about this that smells of the hard Left and its adamant determination to destroy Western civilization utterly.

I have to admit that I’m scratching my head about how a Jew, Daniel Fried, can so blithely characterize the growing Moslem presence in Europe (and in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand too) as merely “a fascinating issue.” Does Fried know no history; is he totally unaware of the unrelenting animus against Jews that has permeated Islam ever since Mohammed wrote it into the Koran? Fried should not be fascinated, he should be very, very nervous. If he is letting conscious or subconscious resentment of Christianity push him in the direction of agitating for Moslems to repopulate the West, then he is – to put it as politely as I can – short-sighted in the extreme, as well as subversive of his own country and civilization.

And who is Farah Pandith, and in what sense can he (?) be considered representative of America, as anyone acting for the U.S. government abroad should be? If not, as is most likely, an immigrant himself he is probably the child of immigrants. Where do his true loyalties and interests lie? I’m willing to bet not in favor of preserving a strong and united United States that is in fact American, which should be the primary duty of any agent of the U.S. government.

This is a slight digression, but follows from having a Farah Pandith represent the United States to Moslems, when he is almost certainly an alien Moslem himself: Why does the U.S. government always insist not on avoiding ethnic and religious conflicts of loyalty in its agents, but actively encourages them? Why have a Middle Eastern Moslem as U.S. ambassador in Middle Eastern, majority Moslem Iraq? Why is the grandson of four illegal alien Mexicans the U.S. ambassador to Mexico? Why is the U.S. ambassador to Ireland always ethnic Irish; to Israel always Jewish; to African countries black as often as possible? How many more Moslems does the State Department plan to send to “represent” America’s interests in the Dar al-Islam? If these diversity tokens get confused about where their ultimate duties and responsibilities lie, who can be surprised? When they become de facto agents of the foreign powers to which they are accredited, as Tony Garza has in Mexico City, I detest their treason but I’m certainly not surprised. Does it surprise the likes of Bush and Rice, or is it what they want? The only possible pseudo-justification, which is specious, is that by doing this the U.S. government is showing the unenlightened world that America really is the Proposition Nation Of Immigrants, an Everybody-from-Everywhere that rejects the petty ethic confinements of mere conventional nationhood. It’s quite a feat to be pandering, patronizing and insulting all at once.

Similarly, in the case of the Border Patrolmen railroaded to prison for doing their jobs, am I the only one who has noticed that everyone in the U.S. Border Patrol seems to be Mexican, with family entanglements aplenty on the wrong side of the border? In addition apparently to outsourcing the Border Patrol to Mexicans, Commander-in-Chief Bush is enlisting as many alien mercenaries as possible in our armed forces through promises of instant, cheap citizenship – and once they have citizenship, the officer grades open to the mercenaries, and affirmative action will ensure they are preferred over natives in commissioning programs.

Westerners have seen it all before. If our political “leaders” want to protect and defend the United States, they should study Rome. They would learn what happens to a great power that delegates defending itself to those from without who want in. Let them read the relevant chapters in Gibbon or even better, for a contemporary account, Ammianus Marcellinus’ harrowing description of disaster at Adrianople in 378. We wouldn’t even ask them to read it in Latin. The Penguin Classics abridged translation will do just fine, and it’s a cheap paperback. If we could summon his ghost, what would the feckless Emperor Valens – still hot from the fire, lit by the very Goths he invited into his Empire, that burnt him to death at the climax of his legions’ catastrophic defeat at Adrianople – have to say to the witless GW Bush?

Valens paid a high price indeed for hubris and poor judgment, but at least he was not a traitor. What should the price be for our “leaders”’ newest meaning of treason?

LA replies:

Maybe sometime Mr. Sutherland can tell us how he really feels about these issues.

LA continues:

Farah Pandith is a woman, born in Kashmir. It is unlikely that she is Muslim, since, as I’m pretty sure, Pandith is a Hindu name. In fact, Wikepedia’s article on Kashmir refers to the great Hindu departure from Kashmir (which as a result is now overwhelmingly Muslim) as the “exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits.”

So there’s a further absurdity typical of liberalism. Just as Daniel Fried, a Jew, finds the takeover by Europe of Jew-hating Muslims to be “fascinating” and snottily criticizes the Europeans for being alarmed about it, Farah Pandith, having fled the Muslims in Kashmir and come to the United States, becomes the official promoter of “assimiilating” Muslims into America and Europe! It’s one thing for middle-American Protestants to be naive about the dangers of Islam, since they’ve had no historical experience with it; but for a Jew and a Hindu whose ancestors have been the targets of jihad for millennia to be naive about that danger shows the power of liberalism in action.

Also, here’s something Pandith was involved in at the National Security Council: a meeting of the education ministers of Western and Muslim countries to encourage Muslim countries to reform their education. This is exactly the kind of illusory thing that is typical of any American effort to reform Islam. We want them to change, to adopt our ways. But in the very act of getting involved with them, who are unchangeably different from us, we end up approving their ways and—in order then to legitimize that approval—trashing our own ways, as Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly done.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

The person who will head this move to show Muslims how to blend into European society and culture is Farah Pandith, until recently an NSC staffer. The effort will consist of bringing American Muslims across the Atlantic to meet with their European Muslim counterparts and help them “break down stereotypes” and end their “self-isolation.” The underlying assumption at work here is obviously the self-contratulatory neoconservative belief that while Europe has made a complete mess with its Muslim immigrants, America has handled its Muslims just beautifully, thank you. America, warm and welcoming host to the 9/11 hijackers, is going to help Europe assimilate its Muslims!

What will happen is that the Muslim-Americans who are sent to Europe will get radicalized by meeting with their disaffected holier-than-thou European cousins and bring European Muslim attitudes back here.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Thanks for posting my comment. For some reason, this particular idiocy made me see red even more than usual.

LA replies:

This reminds me of conversation I had with John Zmirak in mid ‘90s. We were talking on the phone about some liberal insanity that went beyond the usual (I think it had to do with illegal alien criminals getting wildly expensive and discretionary surgery at U.S. expense), and I said: “How many perversities can be squeezed into a single situation?”

And Zmirak replied: “America is about finding out!”

So, sending supposedly assimilated American Muslims to Europe to teach the supposedly more radical European Muslims how to assimilate comes under the rubric of “How many perversities can be squeezed into a single situation?”

Stephen F. writes:

I can only add my agreement to Mr. Sutherland’s comments, and feelings! It is the kind of news that reminds one how bad things really are—how thoroughly the liberal managerial regime has taken over, and how suicidally (homicidally?) delusional they are. The U.S. has no ethnic or cultural identity, so when we send representatives to other countries, we send someone from THEIR culture/race/religion. This is supposed to bring us respect?

Mr. Sutherland writes:

Thanks for clarifying who FP is. Is she a Hindu, though? Isn’t Farah typically a Moslem woman’s name? Even if FP is not a Moslem, it doesn’t change my point about using aliens with interests other than American to represent the United States. I’m leery enough of it when the aliens are Kissinger and Brzezinski; the farther out from Western Civ they come from, the more nervous I get.

This caught my eye when I followed your Farah Pandith link, about one of her CENSA colleagues:

Troy Perry

Troy Perry is a Major in the United States Army and is currently the course director for American politics at the United States Military Academy at West Point. An armor officer, he has commanded both a tank company and an infantry headquarters company in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. Mr. Perry is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.” (emphasis added)

Here is a good example of how our rulers keep our armed forces PC potty-trained. “Defense fellowship” programs have been set up at Harvard (Kennedy School), Princeton (Wilson School) and probably a few other places as well, although Harvard is the glitziest. It’s a good way for the feds to funnel even more taxpayers’ money to ivy league schools, but especially useful as an indoctrination tool. Promising regular officers, with good promotion prospects and usually but not always academy grads, are often offered these Golden Tickets as a plum. Selection boards are instructed to consider the credential very favorably at promotion time, making the prospect of spending a year in Cambridge or Princeton pretty attractive to an ambitious field-grade officer. And indeed those with the Harvard or Princeton imprimatur are disproportionately represented in the flag and general officer ranks. Of course, what these officers are being fed while in Ivy League-land is a steady diet of academic liberalism and one-world globalism, with heavy emphasis on the indispensability of the UN and EU. Given the prestige of these universities and the general acceptance of authority that characterizes the careerist officer, most of these favored sons (and, no doubt, daughters) leave with the attitude-adjustment they were sent there to get. Many (Major Perry is an example) then go spread the gospel as instructors in the service academies, so indoctrination can begin even before the young officers-to-be are commissioned.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 14, 2007 10:50 PM | Send