How to Fight Them

Pajamas Media ^ | September 5, 2010 | Michael Ledeen

[Kaslin]

We have to fight them, because their radical imams, mosques, and schools threaten us; they constitute an assembly line for the next generation of home-grown American jihadi killers. But we can’t ask the courts to silence them, because we want to maintain our 1st Amendment rights.

How, then, do we fight? There are three basic lines of attack. The first is to openly contest their odious doctrines and practices. As Manda Ervin said here yesterday, speaking in the name of Muslim women:

We want America to treat Islam like it treats Christianity and Judaism, and to stop exempting Muslims from requirements imposed on others. We want Islam to be challenged by the same questioning, criticism, and control that is applied to other religions. Please stop pampering Islam to appease the terrorists and dictators.

Amazingly, a lot of people act as if it is somehow improper for members of one religion to challenge basic doctrines of other religions, but not only is it proper, it is not nearly as rare as you might imagine. And a lot of what we want to challenge isn’t doctrine, but practice.

Take this fascinating story for example. It turns out that the Mormons have the somewhat unusual practice of retroactively baptizing dead people. I don’t find this objectionable, any more than the Baptists’ zeal for converting live Jews, but there are many Jews who are upset by the practice, especially in the case of Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps. They denounced the “proxy baptism,” and went to the Mormons to make their case. Longish story, but the Mormons have twice reacted with sympathy and promised not to do it. There are lots of such cases, involving various religious groups. As Manda says, it’s un-American to have special, kid-gloves standards for any American religious community, including Muslims.

Indeed, many of their practices have no Koranic justification, above all the way they treat their women. So far as I know, the Koran doesn’t require women to be covered up, and there are certainly Islamic communities in the Middle East and Asia where women dress “normally.” We have every reason to challenge this, instead of granting special exemptions to Muslims. And we do just that, to our shame. Take a look at the State Department’s instructions for submitting a passport application. In numbered paragraph #4 you will discover that while most folks have to submit photographs with their head uncovered, this does not apply to those who cover themselves for religious reasons. This is nonsense. This means that some man can show up at the airport in a burqa, and the security people can’t routinely match him with the (woman’s) passport he’s carrying. Indeed, we should emulate the French and forbid women to cover themselves in public.

And of course we should relentlessly condemn their misogyny, especially the several “honor killings” which, if we are bound and determined to prosecute evil acts as “hate crimes,” should be at the top of the list.

Then there are all those Koranic proclamations, and the hadiths, about killing infidels, which are enthusiastically promulgated in the radical mosques and the radical schools by the radical imams. That stuff is unacceptable, and we need to identify the imams who say it, and the textbooks that print it, and raise our voices against it. Even if all the courts in America said that they have every right to say those things, we are entitled to attack — verbally — those who preach them.

Second, we should prevent such people from entering America. By the end of the Cold War, there was very little prosecution of Communists, but there was a “watch list” to identify foreign Communists, and they weren’t permitted to enter. Visa applications had a question about membership in organizations that sought to overthrow the American government, and so forth. We are entitled to deny entry to radical Muslims who want to subvert the Constitution and create a caliphate under sharia law.

Third, there is the “Al Capone strategy.” The Feds could never convict Capone for murder, but they locked him away for income tax evasion. The radical mosques don’t have to pay income tax, provided they strictly observe the regulations. Sometimes they don’t, as it seems the Imam Rauf may have not. So the IRS should put its best green-eyeshade investigators on such cases.

And there is the possibility of taking away their tax-exempt status if a judge decided that they were dangerous. That status can be canceled if “the organization’s purposes and activities may … violate fundamental public policy.”

Does calling for the destruction of the “infidels” conflict with fundamental American public policy? Maybe. We ought to make enough noise to find out, don’t you think?

Faster, please.

[WriteOn]

There are at least three major problems with Islamic theology. The first sin a changeable god, the second is a a contradictory Koran and the third is the advocation of violence by god. All three of these theological principles fail in the face of reason. This is why Muslim countries are always routing the leaven of Christianity from their territories. Their positions can only be held in silent vehemence against reason.

[screaminsunshine]

Deport the anti-american Muslims.

[LetMarch]

Like someone has well said: “There are no American Muslims; only Muslims in America.”

[screaminsunshine]

Throw them out. I am tired of it. We just want to get to work rebuilding this damn country and they and the Democrats are in the way.

[unseen1]

you fight them by making them live within the law of the US. but then we would have to return to a time of law and order.