Newsweek on Islam in America

Ken Hechtman writes:

I’d meant to send you this piece when it first came out. It’s incredibly long-winded, but there are a few nuggets in it worth digging for. To cut to the chase, it says assimilation isn’t working. Whether in the abstract it can or can’t work is a separate question. Empirically, it isn’t working. Look, if you or Robert Spencer or David Horowitz say we have a problem with Muslim immigrants, then I figure you’re just doing your jobs. But if Pew and Newsweek say we have a problem, then we have a problem.

LA replies:

If Mr. Hechtman accepts the word of Newsweek that Muslims are not assimilating, how does that affect his stand on Muslim immigration? Also, since when is he concerned about whether Muslims assimilate or not? He said at VFR just a couple of months ago that he supports Muslims’ importation of polygamy into Canada, as a furtherance of freedom and liberalism.

KH replies:

It makes a big difference. Our whole open-borders stance is based on the assumption that the first generation immigrants can be any kind of third-world tribal benighted superstitious whatever-and-whatever they want. It doesn’t matter. Their grandchildren will belong to us. If that assumption fails, we have a problem.

Bill Carpenter writes:

For the benefit of those who don’t have time to read the Newsweek article, it provides anecdotal evidence—which the author of the article glosses over with little comment—that a high proportion of American Muslims don’t believe that Arabs executed the 9/11 attacks, that American Muslims are indifferent to the 9/11 attacks, that they are fanatically anti-Israel, that they are subject to extremist, foreign-supported indoctrination, and that they do not identify with the United States as a nation. In addition, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) celebrates the notion that American nationality consists solely in subscribing to certain ideas—which means we are all replaceable by appropriately programmed computers.

Given that foreign citizens have no right to immigrate to the United States, and that therefore there is no moral or legal cost to freezing further Muslim immigration, elementary prudence counsels that we do so, at least until these assimilation issues are sorted out to the satisfaction of the American people. We would be fools not to, given the favorable cost-benefit ratio.

I should add that the article is sickening in the credence it gives to CAIR and Rep. Ellison, but that is par for the course for the MSM.

Paul K. writes:

I wonder if that Newsweek article was interesting? I’ll never know as I can’t get past a line like the subhead, “Muslim Americans are one of this country’s greatest strengths.” That’s the sort of mindless pap that has made magazines like Newsweek completely irrelevant to any serious debate.

LA replies (before Bill Carpenter’s e-mail came in):

I confess to a similar reaction when I looked at that same article—and, for that matter, when I’ve looked at virtually any article in Newsweek or Time for the last 15 or more years. I said to myself that I would get back to it and read it later, but somehow…

I posted it for the benefit of anyone who has the fortitude to read it. And I’ll try again to read it myself. I really will.

LA continues:

If, as Mr. Carpenter says, the article is showing very strong evidence that Muslims are not assimilating, and if the same article is casting bouqets (sp?) at the likes of CAIR and Ellison, then it sounds to me as though this is Newsweek’s message: Muslims are not assimilating, but that’s fine, because America is not a nation or a culture, but a process of being open and welcoming to everyone. In other words, Newsweek’s philosophy is the same as Britain’s.

Charles T. writes:

Mr. Hechtman wrote: “It makes a big difference. Our whole open-borders stance is based on the assumption that the first generation immigrants can be any kind of third-world tribal benighted superstitious whatever-and-whatever they want. It doesn’t matter. Their grandchildren will belong to us. If that assumption fails, we have a problem.”

Mr. Hechtman there is ample evidence that your assumption is wrong. Why then does your country continue to import cultures that hate your culture? I think I have a good idea of why the U.S. government is making such a stupid mistake. However, I would like to hear from you on this, from a Canadian perspective.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 30, 2007 02:48 PM | Send