WarSclerotic

There is no viable American alternative to the Muslim reform movement, Dan Miller’s Blog, April 17, 2017

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

I have read many articles on the Muslim reform movement, both positive and negative; for example, this is negative, this is positive and this is negative. Here is a link to a response to the negative articles. However, I have found no article suggesting any viable alternative way for America to begin to ameliorate its Islamist problem, and I have been unable to think of any.

The Anti-Muslim Reform Movement

The essential claims of critics of the Muslim Reform Movement are that its proponents are not “real Muslims” and that it has had only minimal success thus far. The word “real” is not used, but that’s the clear thrust. “Real Muslims” are those like the leaders of Saudi Arabia, savages like those of the Islamic State and Muslims who won’t “rat” on other Muslims whom they think are about to commit acts of terror. (The video below repeats itself beginning at about 5:46.)

Unlike “fake” Muslims (the word “fake” is not used, but that’s the thrust), “real” Muslims rape and butcher little girls, often little Yazidi girls who aren’t “real” Muslims.

America’s “real Muslims” also want Islamic (Sharia) law to displace foul “Man-Made” laws, including the U.S. Constitution. That has not worked out well in Europe, and even in our mother country, Britain. There, for one small example, a Sharia Council

is indirectly responsible for what essentially has become a rape pandemic, since it does nothing to stop or refute halala [a ritual enabling a divorced Muslim woman to remarry her husband by first wedding someone else, consummating the union, and then being divorced by him]. In fact, it declares that the practice is completely legal under sharia law. The only caveat, the council states, is that the imams presiding over it are not following the proper guidelines, according to which the second marriage and divorce should not be premeditated, but rather happen naturally.

If one asks how all of this jibes with British law, the answer is that it does not. But young Muslims in the UK are discouraged by their communities from marrying through the British system, and are told to have imams perform their weddings and sharia councils register their marriages. Couples who comply end up being at the mercy of Islamic authorities in family matters, including divorce.

America’s “fake Muslims”  reject Sharia law and even have the temerity to support “Man-made” laws such the Constitution and laws enacted pursuant to it.

Genital mutilation? For “real Muslims,” it’s cool. The Trump administration is apparently the first to try to stop it in America.

(Reuters) – U.S. authorities have charged a Detroit doctor with performing genital mutilation on 7-year-old girls in what is believed to be the first case brought under a law prohibiting the procedure.

Jumana Nagarwala, an emergency room physician at a Detroit hospital who performed the procedures at an unnamed medical clinic in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, was scheduled to appear in federal court on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Female genital mutilation constitutes a particularly brutal form of violence against women and girls,” acting U.S. Attorney in Detroit Daniel Lemisch said in a statement. “The practice has no place in modern society and those who perform FGM on minors will be held accountable under federal law.” [Emphasis added.]

Female genital mutilation, or FGM, typically involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris and is barred by numerous international treaties. The practice is common in several African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Egypt, where it is often a cultural or religious tradition.

The practice was outlawed in the United States in 1996, though the Justice Department said the Michigan case appeared to be the first criminal prosecution of its kind. [Emphasis added.]

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist and therefore a “fake Muslim,” recently commented on the first genital mutilation prosecution in America.

“Healthcare professionals, especially physicians, should be the safest people our children encounter outside of their families. What we at the front lines of reform against radical Islamism know is that one of the ideology’s symptoms is the regular violation and abuse of women and girls, especially through efforts to control or destroy their bodies and sexuality. As a physician, Muslim, father, and husband – I am appalled – but not surprised – to learn of this doctor’s mutilation of girls. I urge authorities to conduct a full and vigorous investigation. Since girls were brought to Nagarwala from out of state, it appears that she may be just a piece of a network of individuals facilitating the mutilation of girls and women in the United States.

As a physician, Ms Nagarwala – I will not call her ‘doctor’ – knows full well the position of the American Medical Association on this issue. As an expert on medical ethics and a person of conscience, I must urge that her license(s) be revoked, that she remain jailed, and that all who acted with her be brought to justice. Further, any girls and women she harmed must receive intensive counseling, and their families investigated. I also encourage investigations of their schools, universities, and other places where they may have complained of physical pain, or been absent for periods of time during which the mutilation took place and immediately after.”

Obviously, the Muslim Reform Movement must not be allowed to succeed and therefore must be stopped before it has a fighting chance to do so.

Seriously though, and rejecting the essential anti-reformation argument — that American reformers are not “real” Muslims — what can and should America’s Federal Government do about violent jihadists and proponents of Sharia law? 

The “fake Muslim” argument has substantial validity insofar as Islamist countries are concerned. However, in America we have freedom of religion; no state actor has authority to dictate what is a “fake” or “real” Christian, Jew, Muslim or adherent to any other religion. Individuals are entitled to accept or reject whatever tenets of their respective religions they wish to. Should acting in accordance with those tenets be criminal in nature — as acting in accordance with many tenets of “real” Islam would be — such acts can and should be punished in accordance with our laws; not Sharia law.

To the greatest extent possible, America needs to get rid of the “real Muslims” who are already present and to keep more from coming. However, our options are quite limited. Here’s why:

America will not impose a total Muslim ban to keep out all Muslims, unknown numbers of whom are potentially violent jihadists and/or “merely” want to win the civilization war by imposing Sharia law. A total Muslim ban would very likely be deemed violative of the First Amendment.

The results of a partial ban based on “extreme vetting,” intended to exclude only those Muslims who flunk the vetting process, would depend on the success of the vetting — an area in which we have had little if any real experience. Muslim reformers might be able to offer useful insights. Perhaps the appropriate officials will ask them.

Even if it were possible to prevent all future arrivals of Muslims from foreign countries, America would still have substantial numbers of Muslims, first, second or later generation, as well as converts to Islam, some of whom are anxious to engage in violent jihad and/or to attempt to secure the imposition of Sharia law. Anti-Islamophobia laws, as recently enacted in Trudeau’s Canada, are a first step toward Sharia law. We won’t shoot all or even many of them, or send them to internment camps as we did to many Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the mainland U.S., who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. However, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were also interned.^[9] The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans.^[10][11] Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese^[12] and orphaned infants with “one drop of Japanese blood” were placed in internment camps.^[13]

Unfortunately, the Obama administration ignored Sharia law, its precursors and consequences.

Even without anti-Islamophobia laws, statements offensive to Islamists (proponents of political Islam such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)) are characterized as “Islamophobic” to silence them. Too often, the tactic has been successful.

America should reject Sharia law as well as its precursor, anti-Islamophobia laws. Much of Europe has embraced both, to its extreme detriment.

The Islamisation of formerly-Great Britain and Europe has been unpleasant to watch from afar, and I assume that it has been substantially more unpleasant to experience close-up. The Gatestone Institute frequently publishes articles on the worsening situation resulting from an Islamic invasion and the resulting Islamisation. Here are a link to a recent Gatestone article titled A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: March 2017 and a short excerpt:

March 18. The BBC apologized after a tweet from the BBC Asian Network account asked, “What is the right punishment for blasphemy?” The tweet provoked criticism that the BBC appeared to be endorsing harsh restrictions on speech. In an apology posted on Twitter, the network said it had intended to debate concerns about blasphemy on social media in Pakistan. “We never intended to imply that blasphemy should be punished,” it said. [Emphasis added.]

Does “what is the right punishment for blasphemy” suggest that punishment of some sort is appropriate? Yes. Does it suggest that the Islamisation of England is proceeding apace? Yes.

Even were England and Europe to prohibit all future Muslim immigration, the substantial numbers of Muslims already there, and their fertility rate which substantially exceeds that of native Brits and Europeans, suggest that their Islamisation will continue.

Conclusions

Here is a May 2015 interview with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) about the then current state of Islam.

I do not know whether there will be widespread Muslim reformation in America or if there will be, how long it will take. It is proceeding very slowly and may well take many years, as did the Christian reformation, to produce tangible results.

Unable to think of any viable alternative, I believe that we should help the Muslim reformation to enhance the ability of American Muslims to accept the parts of Islam they want and to reject the parts they don’t want. Here are some ways:

• We should stop considering violent Islamic jihad and Sharia law as “real Islam” and Muslim reformers as “fake Muslims.” In America both are real, even though there now seem to be substantially fewer of the latter than of the former. Drawing such a distinction legitimizes the former and delegitimizes the latter — essentially labeling them as apostates and therefore endangering them physically and putting more obstacles than would otherwise exist in the path of a Muslim reformation. How many Muslims want to be considered “fake Muslims?” How many Christians would like to be considered “fake Christians?” How many Jews would like to be considered “fake Jews?”
• Providing support for Sharia law — unchallenged under Obama — should be a principal factor in our efforts to combat Islamist activities, violent or otherwise.
• Department of Education efforts to promote Islam in our schools should never have begun and should cease promptly, as I suggested in a recent article titled The U.S. Department of Education has been promoting Islam for years. America is not, and should not be, a theocracy. The Constitution forbids it. The Federal Government should not be in the business of promoting Islam or any other religion.

• America should terminate all support for, and consultation with, CAIR, et al., which have labeled the Muslim Reform Movement “Islamophobic” and have done their utmost to make it fail. Supporting CAIR, et al, helps them to impose their vision of “real” Islam on Americans, Muslims and non-Muslims.
• The true nature of CAIR, et al, should be publicized.
• America should provide at least as much support – financial and otherwise – to Muslim reformist groups as it previously gave to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as CAIR.
• The Trump administration should consult with Islamic reform groups at least to the extent that it previously consulted with CAIR, et al.
• America should also render CAIR and its affiliates as impotent as can be done constitutionally; to the extent that new laws need to be enacted, they should be.
• America should publicize the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• America should designate the Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamist gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, and prohibit both foreign and domestic funding of CAIR and other Islamist organizations. Please see also, Muslim Activist to Trump: Brotherhood Should be Banned.

I hope that others will suggest additional ways to give the reform movement at least a fighting chance of success. What other viable options do we have?

Update, April 19, 2017

Please see also, Kurdistan Independence Referendum and Why It Matters so Much in the Fight Against Radical Islam.

Most Kurds are Muslim, but reject religious rule in favor of secular governance so that all religious people and ethnic minorities can have fair and equal representation. The Kurds have adopted secular lifestyles seen just by visiting the capitol city of Erbil where you’ll hear American music, see a booming economy, or have conversations about new business enterprises.  If you’re lucky, you may run into the Erbil Men’s Club. Kurds don’t identify as “Sunni” or “Shia” at the outset. While they will openly say what religion they practice, they refuse to allow their identity to be encompassed in the sectarian strife they’ve witnessed throughout the Middle East. They want no form of oppressive sharia law in their governance to promote the rights of women and minorities. In fact, Kurdish government mandates that 30% of Parliament members be women. I witnessed that firsthand and it looks a lot like the United States: churches, mosques, and synagogues side-by-side with equal numbers and mutual respect between all religious leaders.