By Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Is there one, really? Quite a few think so. I wonder how many of them know what Muslims believe. I wonder how many of those know what they believe themselves, and why. Anyway, let's take a look--and if there is one, let's think how such a menace would be handled in a free society. To those kindly concerned that I might be targeted by terrorists for my trouble, I'll add that I went to the same college as Salman Rushdie, and it taught about fortitude in the face of danger, so I'll risk it.
The worry du jour is that Muslims mean to take over the West, particularly America, by stealth or any other means, so ending our history as Great Christian Nations. They point to the long beards (so obviously Muslim and not, say, Hassidic Jewish or Amish) and to the ladies' veils worn openly in American public places (styled quite differently from those of Roman Catholic nuns) and to the mosques--and especially to that mosque planned for the site a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. They point to verses in the Q'ran that say Islam must dominate the world. They point to the unsocial way Muslim immigrants form enclaves (like Little Italy?), not even bothering to learn the local language, while boosting crime rates--particularly aggravating some European countries. Is there no end to the brash hostility of these dangerous foreigners? On top of all that, of course, is that all those who executed the 9/11 attacks were Muslims, and it's Muslims who have killed half as many Americans again after our government invaded two Muslim countries, and Muslims who hold us in our SUVs to ransom with their outrageous oil prices, etc.
I suspect quite a lot of this stuff is plain xenophobia. Americans are, alas, notorious for it: We all descend from immigrants, but having arrived safely with our families, we tended all too soon to call for a raising of the drawbridge. No Irish need apply. In their turn Jews, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Chinese (the Yellow Peril [9]), Japanese--the lot--were despised and mistreated and their fellow-countrymen were hindered from following by ever stricter immigration laws. It's a great shame, a betrayal of the instinct for freedom that brought them here in the first place. Currently it's the turn of Mexicans who want to offer their low-cost labor so as to enhance the standard of their lives and ours, without a proper piece of government plastic, and next in line appear to be Muslims, which does have unusual twist: bigotry based on religion rather than national or ethnic origin. The last time that happened (to attempt the exclusion of Roman Catholics), it helped produce government schools.
Muslim belief begins with the fable that between 610 and 632 AD, the Angel Gabriel told Muhammad there was only one God and that Muhammad was His messenger. Gabriel didn't really need to stir from his heavenly repose, for that warrior could have found out the first bit from at least two other local sources at the time, and the second bit might be thought suspiciously convenient for someone bidding to extend political power. Any conflict with those earlier alleged revelations was put down to textual corruption, while the new one--the Q'ran--was infallible to the letter, as freshly dictated by the angel (was that the origin of shorthand? - it does look a bit like Arabic script), though even in the absence of electronic dictation equipment, it's odd that author and scribe should take 22 years to complete a relatively short book. Perhaps there was a great deal of proofreading and typo correction, between Medina or Mecca and Angel Center. The verbal infallibility however is quite handy, since all discrepancies between it and the Old and New Testaments can be disposed of quickly: Those others are wrong, period.
I've been unable to learn anything about the alleged Muslim God that is at all appealing: He is said to be merciful (though not to those who see no reason to need it.) He is said to be exclusive (again, all rivals are wrong), though there's nothing unique there, and there is no theory of redemption (though as elsewhere, there will be pie in the sky when you die)--just a demand for worship and total allegiance, with prayers said in an undignified posture five times a day. Money must be provided for the poor, and fasting practiced on a prescribed schedule. As a sales proposition, it is lousy; no wonder they had to promulgate it by force. To top it off, when Muslims control a country, no rival religions are allowed to be preached, which nicely inoculates the faithful against any corrupting influence; this is a problem Christian missionaries have met the world over, and a recent result was the murder of ten of them in Afghanistan on August 7th; the killers claimed they had broken Afghan law by trying to convert Muslims, even though they had been there several years, knew very well of the prohibition, and were exclusively medical in their activities.
So what might earnest Christians think about the alleged Muslim invasion of the USA? Welcome it, I would have thought, with open arms! This is a fabulous, first-time-ever opportunity to preach their gospel to victims of this closed-shop religion, with no risk at all of any severance of head or hand, nor of stoning or whipping. Yet that's not what I hear. The din of protest over the problem appears to come from Christian sources. This suggests to me that those sources [10] are not Christian at all. Hence the question in my fourth sentence above.
But our own interest is in the rational, non-religious aspect of this alleged problem. Muslim immigrants are said to be camels' noses under our tent, posing a threat to our way of life. They may mean to take us over, and that means politics. They want to replace our government.
They'll have a tough job. The Rs and Ds have it pretty well buttoned up, and a plethora of lobbyists, including Jews and Evangelicals, have a lock on influence. Muslims may come loaded with oil-derived campaign contributions, but I'll be surprised to see them make much headway. The levers of power are well guarded.
In any case, that's not our problem. We are not interested in replacing the hands on those levers, we mean to remove the levers altogether, to turn them to dust. Muslims, as a group, are to us merely one more in a long list of interest groups that want a bigger share of the loot or of the power to run our lives; and we intend that neither shall be available to anyone. I know of only one way to accomplish that (so to re-educate the whole population that those employed by government quit their jobs in disgust), and when it is done, K Street will be up for sale and any theocrats still around will have to flagellate, or whatever they do for kicks.
The task therefore is not to waste time excluding Muslims, but to spend it removing support from government.
Once we've done so, any who can't abide the resulting free society will always be free to leave. Any who aggress in some form anyway--Muslims or other thugs--will be handled by a free-market justice industry [11] and have the choice of mending their ways (by restituting those harmed) or earning such a poor reputation that nobody will give them a job or otherwise trade with them; hence, they will starve, emigrate, or live very lonely lives.
The opportunities that free society will afford to all--Muslims and others--to earn a fabulous living without restrictions that so characterize narrow religious systems will raise living standards here so high that I anticipate the boot changing feet. That is, instead of Americans cowering in fear at an alleged Muslim invasion, foreign Muslim (and all other) states will be trembling in fear that their own populations will dissolve those governments like Americans did ours; news of liberty and wealth travels fast these days, and censors have only 24 hours in the day. The brainwashing in Muslim societies has been so intense that I don't see them among the first to liberate themselves, they have a huge baggage of myths to throw off and it will take a while. But it will happen, and with a bit of luck (for them) it may happen before the world's demand for oil evaporates (other fuels having replaced it) or before their oil supplies run out. If so, they will join the rapid escalation of living standards without missing a beat.
One of the many neat bumper stickers I saw at the recent Porcfest [12] was a long one, which said something like "I can't remember all the things I'm supposed to be afraid of." Except for those without a vision of liberty, the Muslim Menace is just one more irrelevant bogeyman.
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