. It should be seen as basically a draft. The actual speech was different and longer, as I departed from the printed text and expanded extemporaneously on various points. The meeting was organized as follows: I gave my talk and answered questions, which took up a total of 40 minutes, then we took a break for refreshments, then Supna Zaida gave her talk and answered questions, then we took another short break, then the two of us engaged in a dialog. Altogether, the gathering lasted from 2 p.m. until after 6.
Talk on Islam
Lawrence Auster
ACT for America meeting
New York City
April 19, 2009
There’s no reason to discuss the Islam threat at great length. Since the 9/11 attack, we all know what it is. At the most obvious level, of course, it is terrorism. But then we began to realize that calling the enemy “terror,” as in “war on terror,” was mistaken, since terrorism is just a means, a weapon, and you don’t have a war against a weapon. The real problem, we realized, is jihad, the eternal command on Muslims, in the words of the Koran:
Fight against those among the People of the Book who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not consider the true religion as their religion, until they pay the Jizya tax with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (9:29).
And this command will continue until the last day, when, as stated in numerous passages in the Koran and the hadiths:
The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, so that Jews will hide behind stones and trees and the stone and the tree will say, O Muslim, O servant of Allah! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.
1,300 years before Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, Muhammad declared that the perfection of the world would not be reached until that day when all Jews were exterminated, when even the forces of nature, when even the stones and the trees, would work together to rid the universe of the cursed Jews. Hitler never had anything to compare to this.
In any case, we realized that the real problem wasn’t terror, the main problem was jihad.
But then we Islam critics went to the next stage of understanding. We realized that just as terrorism is only a tactic or a means to an objective, so is jihad only a tactic or a means to an objective. But what is the objective itself? It is the rule of sharia, the imposition of the Islamic law over each society and ultimately over the whole earth. Sharia is the true end of Islam, sharia is practically identical with Islam, because in whatever society in which Muslims are in power, sharia rules and is the all-encompassing law. Sharia includes the institutionalized inferiority of women, inferiority of non-Muslims, the death sentence for anyone who converts out of Islam, and the prohibition on criticizing Islam.
But now we come to the issue that I want to address today. Lots of people know these things. There is an entire movement of Islam criticism in which eloquent and passionate writers and speakers have made a tremendous contribution in awakening at least the conservative readership to the threat we face. In article after article, speech after speech, book after book, conference after conference, they have pointed out that Islam is a mortal threat to our society, our freedom, our way of being. But there’s a problem with this picture. As you read their books and articles, you realize that despite their constant warnings about how terrible Islam is, they never say what we should DO about this great threat, that will actually save us from it.
And most remarkably, the Islam critics never talk about how Islam got into the West in the first place, which was through Muslim immigration. And they never talk about how to stop more Muslims and more Islam and more sharia from coming into the West, which is by stopping or greatly reducing Muslim immigration.
Again, the critics have made a great contribution in teaching the public about the nature and doctrines of Islam. But what is happening, that people write endlessly about a horrible problem, but never talk about how it came into being and how to stop its growth.
Think about how various problems in society are dealt with. If there’s harmful discrimination, you outlaw or discourage discrimination. If there’s excessive air pollution, you reduce the pollution. When there’s a foreign enemy, you fight or deter him.
With every kind of problem or danger that faces society, the people who diagnose the problem, also suggest a solution to it. Except when it comes to Islam.
Now why is this? Why this weird and unnatural silence?
People say that the critics are afraid of Political correctness, afraid for their jobs, afraid for their lives. But that’s not believable. With all the hot issues today, simply saying that given the problems that Islam presents, Muslim immigration should be reduced would not be such a big deal.
In my view, it’s not because the Islam critics are afraid of what would happen to them if they offered a solution, such as stopping or reducing immigration. It’s because they themselves do not believe in that solution.
And why don’t they?
And here we come to one of the most important facts about modern society. The guiding principle of modern liberal is that discrimination is the most terrible evil that must be eliminated and avoided at all costs. It’s the belief that anyone who discriminates is morally wicked.
Non-discrimination is highest moral principle of our society, the principle to which all other principles ultimately yield. And yet it’s never discussed; it’s never criticized—because it’s the highest principle.
Where did this idea come from? Discuss reaction to Nazi holocaust. Civil Rights movement.]
Here’s an example of how powerful the principle of non-discrimination is. After 9/11, even though we had seen Muslims all over the world cheering the attack on America, many people would have expected that America would become more suspicious and critical of Islam. But the exact opposite happened. President Bush began to call Islam a religion of peace, radical Muslim clerics and activists were invited into the highest levels of our national life, PBS ran an endless series of glowing documentaries on Islam, treating it as the most wonderful thing in the world.
The lesson: the rule of non-discrimination requires that the more dangerous and hostile a minority or non-Western group becomes, the more we must praise it. It’s the exact opposite of normal logic. In normal logic, the more problematic a person of group is, the more critical of it we naturally become. But under modern liberalism with its principle of non-discrimination, the more problematic a group is, the more lies we must tell ourselves about it to make it look better than it really is, so as to avoid discriminating against it.
Now, what I’ve just said is not entirely true of the Islam critics. They say negative things about Islam, But they always deflect the problem from Islam itself onto some side issue. Pres. Bush said the problem was “terrorists,” “enemies of peace.” He never said the threat was Islamic terrorists. Mainstream conservatives say that the problem is “Islamo-fascism,” they never say that the problem is Islam. Daniel Pipes says that the problem is modern, radical, political Islam, and that supposedly moderate, traditional Islam is the solution.
No one wants to state the simple truth, that Islam is itself the problem, because that would mean that we must exclude it, which means discriminating against it, which is the most evil thing that anyone can do.
Here’s another illustration of how powerful the belief in non-discrimination is. Prior to World War II, would any Western country have considered admitting significant numbers of Muslim immigrants? Of course not; it would have been out of the question. Islam was the historic enemy of the West, and alien in all kinds of ways. But today, the very notion of stopping Muslim immigration is out of the question, it can’t even be thought about.
What would have been inconceivable 70 or 80 years ago is unquestionable today. A society that 70 years ago wouldn’t have dreamed of admitting large numbers of Muslims, today doesn’t dream of reducing, let alone stopping, the immigration of Muslims.
If there is any group or belief system against which discrimination ought to be permitted, it is Islam, the religion commanded by its God to conquer and subdue the world. But in our society, the rule of non-discrimination is higher than common sense, higher than the will to live and survive.
As long as that remains the case, we will remain helpless, and Islam and sharia will continue to grow in our midst—more numbers, more power, more accommodation, more Muslims welcomed in the White House, more acceptance of sharia courts, sharia foot washing, sharia food, sharia marriage laws, sharia prohibition of criticism of Islam, and we will find ourselves living in an unfree, Islamized country—something that would have been inconceivable 70 years ago, before modern liberalism came into being.
What does Miss Zaidi propose that we do? Does she support our present immigration policies leading to the continually increasing number of Muslims in America and the West? Then she supports the ever increasing power of sharia in the West.
So what should we do?
The things I’m about to suggest may seem impossible, so out of step with contemporary liberal ways of thinking that it may seem insane. My answer is that contemporary liberal ways of thinking are themselves insane, and are leading the West to destruction at the hands of Islam. Therefore something radically different is needed. We must think anew, and we must act anew.
My approach consists of a series of steps, starting with the most obvious and necessary, with the option of moving on to more serious steps if the earlier steps don’t have the desired effect.
- At a very minimum, Muslim immigration must be significantly reduced or stopped altogether. In the last year, Robert Spencer has called for the end of all Muslim immigration. Other Islam critics have not followed his lead.
- Muslim illegal aliens must be removed. What happened with Pakistanis.
- When it comes to legal immigrants, we need to expel the most objectionable and most excludable of them. Non-citizen resident aliens who vocally espouse jihad and sharia, or participate in any pro-jihad activities, should lose their residency and be deported.
- No resident alien who adheres to the doctrines of jihad and sharia should be naturalized as a U.S. citizen. To be naturalized, immigrants should be required to state under oath that they totally reject and have no association with jihad and sharia. If they are found later to be in violation of that oath, their naturalization shall be revoked.
- All mosques, Islamic centers and schools that promote jihad or sharia in any form should be closed.
- Finally, we have to acknowledge that some of these measures would be considered in violation of the First amendment, which says that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. There is only one way around that. A federal statute, or, better, a constitutional amendment, stating that Islam is not a religion under the First Amendment, Islam is a political ideology aimed at achieving tyrannical political power over non-Muslims. Once such a law or amendment is passed, then it will be possible to have pass and maintain against challenges the needed other measures.
The minimal, and perhaps the sufficient, goal of the policy is to make sharia-believing Muslims feel unwelcome here, leading many of them to depart voluntarily The goal is not zero Muslims in America, the goal is to reverse our present course, so that the numbers and power of sharia believers, rather than steadily increasing, as is now the case, is steadily decreasing. The ultimate goal is a much small Muslim population, consisting of people who don’t believe in sharia or jihad, don’t believe in political Islam, but see Islam as a private faith.
Now if Miss Zaidi thinks my ideas are totally unacceptable and horrible, what does she propose to stop and reverse the growth of sharia in America?