Am I a racist for opposing the quick entry into Canada of 25,000 migrants from Syria?
November 27, 2015
In the U.S., there is considerable opposition, especially on the State level, to high numbers of Syrian and other Middle Eastern migrants entering the country.
But in Canada, with Justin Trudeau and his Liberals having recently defeated Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, it is a different story.
Day after day, most of our Canadian media broadcast a message that anyone opposing the hurried entry into Canada of 25,000 migrants by the end of February from Syria and other dysfunctional Muslim Islamo-totalitarian states is clearly "racist." (Prime Minister Trudeau first promised to get all 25,000 into the country by Christmas, but has now slowed that down to the end of February.)
The U.S. has nine times the population of Canada, so 25,000 immigrants to Canada would be the equivalent of 225,000 to the U.S.
My local newspaper, the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, last Friday carried the view of the Chair of its Editorial Board who made this clear: "Will we welcome [the migrants], as our better natures would suggest? Or will we see the darker nature of some citizens come through?" Yet, I must ask: Is an opposing viewpoint evidence of a "darker nature"? Do I have a "darker nature"?
The editorial asked us to not just "tolerate" the immigrants but do so "in a welcoming way." In talking about their needs once they arrive, the editorialist listed affordable housing, language training, education, learning Canadian "customs" and geography.
But nowhere was mentioned Canada's needs that these immigrants be taught before they arrive that Canada's political culture is based on individual rights and freedoms, including the rights of women, gays, children, ethnic and religious minorities and dissenting political and culture viewpoints, and the right to be free from violence.
Do the migrants have anything to fear from me? Is it "racist" to ask of our government to at least take the necessary months it must take to properly vet these people? Is it racist to query whether these immigrants supported ISIS and other Islamists with their records of war crimes and murder of ethnic and religious minorities, rapes, beheadings, etc.?
I have written elsewhere that countries like Sweden and Norway have seen tragic levels of rapes after Muslim immigration whereas, prior to that, rape numbers were almost negligible. Is that enquiry "racist," or do I, as the father of one daughter and grandfather of two girls, have the right to be concerned if migrants are coming from a culture that absolves them from the responsibility of rape if the victim was immodestly dressed, or is an "infidel"? Do we not have an obligation to our women to make sure we do not create the tragedy that is ongoing in Sweden and Norway, and in fact within the very refugee camps set up in Europe? (Pamela Geller has written about rapes and other anti-female activities going on in the refugee camps in Germany and elsewhere.)
After the Second World War, the Marshall Plan made sure that the German people were completely re-educated so that they could understand, repudiate and apologize for Nazism.
Initially, it was thought that Nazism had been imposed by an evil dictator and a small group of psychopaths. Gradually, it became the understanding of many historians, with the groundbreaking work of Daniel Goldhagen's work, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, that a culture of anti-Semitism had long roots in the general German population, and over time this became "eliminationist" in character, so that nothing less than the elimination of all Jews would suffice.
Obviously, then, in a Syrian culture, and in practically every majority Muslim country, there is history of anti-Semitism, which resulted in the expulsion of all Jews from Syria and all other Arab Muslim countries, and it is mainstream in these countries to call for the "destruction" of the state of Israel and to support terrorist organizations that are "eliminationist" in character. Even in so-called "moderate" non-Arab Muslim countries, Jews and Judaism are ostracized. One lesson of history is that not everyone now fleeing Syria can be presumed to be an innocent party in a country where totalitarian and racist abuses have been endemic. What about the "vetting" process? All I can do is quote FBI Assistant Director Michael Steinbach who has admitted that in a "failed state" like Syria, "all of the data sets -- the police, the intel services -- that normally you would go to seek information don't exist."
How can we be sure the "vetting" of prospective immigrants is successful? Americans have made terrible mistakes: The FBI received multiple warnings from Russia about one of the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but after a single interview with him, they concluded he posed no threat. The American government ignored numerous warnings about the increasing radicalization of Fort Hood shooter, military psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, and then Obama had the nerve to call the obscene attack "workplace violence" rather than terrorism.
So as someone born in Canada to a mother born in Canada and a father who survived Auschwitz concentration camp, but who lost his parents and then 8-year-old sister in the gas chambers, I am more than a little concerned about the culture of the people we are inviting to Canada. In fact, I don't recall anything near the emotional love-in by the press of the Muslims with respect to any other group of immigrants.
Many of our young people believe that all cultures are equal and that any criticism of other cultures is somehow "racist." If we do not stand up for a culture of liberal democracy and a culture that gives fundamental individual rights to women, gays, and ethnic and religious minorities, and water it down with people who not only have participated in war crimes but seek to impose their illiberal culture on us, we shall breach an important obligation to our children and grandchildren to pass along the same rights that were passed on to us.
Instead of prioritizing integration and assimilation into Canadian culture, the migrants will likely spend years in closed school buildings and military bases, which may become ghettos subject to control by radicals, and subject to radicals imposing "Sharia Law." How do we prevent them from becoming "no-go" areas?
The migrants shall probably get their news from Arabic language cable TV and social media, perpetuating their anti-Western culture.
Like the Lebanese immigrants to Canada who fly frequently back and forth to Lebanon, despite the terror created by Iranian-backed Hezbollah, these migrants, once they have money saved up, will spend as much time as they can afford back in the Middle East, allowing their children to be radicalized while visiting there.
Some of the young people, like the duo from London Ontario who attacked the Algerian gas plant, will become "radicalized" in local mosques whose imams did not study in Canadian universities but are emissaries of the Wahabbist Saudi regime. Those that go to university are likely to join the innocent-sounding Muslim Students Association, which is actually an arm of the radical Muslim Brotherhood with funding from Qatar.
What will their attitudes be to Christians and Jews, and how will they differ from the negative attitudes prevailing in Syria to Middle Eastern Christians, Yazedis and Jews in the one small Jewish homeland, Israel? I, myself, giving a lecture about my novel, The Second Catastrophe: A Novel about a Book and its Author, in 2003 at a bookstore in Waterloo, Ontario was attacked by new Muslim immigrants who shouted me down saying I had no right to speak if I supported the existence of Israel and when the audience protested their actions, one yelled that I was only " a f---ing Jew."
Is it racist of me to reject claims that supposed "group rights" to not to be offended supersede liberal freedoms of expression?
Saudi Arabia has facilities to take up to 3 million Muslims in the 100,000 air-conditioned tents used by Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, yet refuses to take even a single refugee. Shouldn't we insist that wealthy Muslim oil countries take their share? What is the reason they don't? Are we allowed to discuss the notion, spearheaded by ISIS, but clearly tolerated by the Saudis, that they are working towards the creation of a world-wide Caliphate? And ISIS is far from the only jihadist radical Islamist group, whether you look to the Palestinians' Hamas, the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah, the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (which was behind the 12 coordinated bombings and shootings in 2008 in Mumbai killing more than 250 people), the Taliban, Boko Haram based in northeastern Nigeria, the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines, and dozens, if not hundreds, of splinter groups all with Islamist aims.
How many of the migrants will be young single men with no records available of whether they participated in war crimes? Any serious student of the Syrian civil war knows that especially when it comes to dealing with Syrian Christians and Yazedis there were many war crimes, but there is also sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. Only the Christians and Yazedis are actually persecuted refugees. The Sunni Muslims can go to Sunni areas of Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon and the Shiite Muslims can go to Iran or Shiite areas of Lebanon. Daniel Greenfield has recently argued convincingly in Frontpage Magazine that the so-called refugees, other than Yazedis and Christians, are actually economic migrants, trying to get into those countries like Germany and Canada that have the most generous welfare systems
Am I racist for writing all this?