Lifeboat

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Trump’s executive Order on immigration and refugees is causing angst, but not analysis.  We need analysis.

 For years, I’ve used the lifeboat analogy to discuss immigration.  There’s only so much room in the lifeboat, only so many rations.  There are 7,000,000,000 people in the world who want better lives which, for most of them, means coming to the United States.  We can’t take them all: they’ll swamp the boat.  See, for example, Europe today, and that was only a million immigrants.

 Lately, it occurs to me the lifeboat is the wrong analogy.  A lifeboat implies a temporary accommodation until help arrives.  But the rest of the world is worse off than we are.  Help will never arrive.

 The United States is more like a medieval castle when invading armies arrive, everybody heads for the castle and they slam the gates shut. There’s a limited supply of water and food and limited space.  Extra people endanger the survival of everyone already there. They close the gates every night, for that reason.  Yes, the wolves may eat you, if you arrive late and the gates are already shut for the night; but the gates will not be opened for you in the dark when it’s possible for invaders to slip in.

 In the intelligence world, it’s night right now.  Governments collapsed, sources compromised, consulates sacked, refugees and raiders look alike.  We can’t tell friend from foe so nobody gets in until daybreak when we can sort them out.  Daybreak will arrive when the intel for background checks and deep vetting is strong enough to trust, however long that takes.

 Even after our intel improves, we need to choose carefully who we let in because their kids become our new citizenry.  Carlos and Maria might be ecstatic to get jobs as gardeners and hotel maids in America, but their kids will grow up watching MTV and wearing Nikes.  They won’t be thrilled to take menial jobs.  Second generation Somalis are the ones going on jihad, here and abroad.  N-th generation Blacks are the ones insisting their lives matter.  “Grateful” is not an inherited trait.

 Western Civilization, and particularly our constitutional republican form of government as we know it in England and America, is a relatively recent development and a very small part of human history.  If that’s what we’re trying to preserve in the castle until the Dark Age ends, we need to be very choosy indeed.  We need the best, brightest, hardest working immigrants with morals and cultural values most compatible with our own.  Reuniting Carols and Maria’s extended family of unskilled laborers is heartwarming, but more unskilled labor is not what the nation needs to prosper.

 Trump temporarily halted immigration from countries that sponsor terrorism.  I’d go further and impose a temporary moratorium on ALL immigration, ALL refugees, until we sort out our national priorities and institute procedures to ensure new arrivals don’t threaten our national survival.  It’s not just for me – I’ve already lived most of my life in a clean, safe America – it’s for my grandkids.  Do I want them to grow up in Minnesota or Mogadishu?

 Joe Doakes

To many on the left,  the fact that you worked and sacrificed enough to build a place worth fleeing to makes you unworthy of being there.

65 thoughts on “Lifeboat

  1. This is the reason that I laugh at California’s childish refusal to end their sanctuary cities.
    There are constant water shortages, resulting in rationing. Well, for the peasants anyway. How long will it take these morons to realize that “we can’t take them all?”

  2. The president has the authority to halt immigration, but he doesn’t have carte blanche. Congress only gave him the authority if there were extraordinary circumstances that threatened the security of Americans. So Trump has to show that a) vetted immigrants of various types (refugees, work visa holders, etc) from these countries pose a threat to America, and that the change in the threat has happened fast enough that Congress needs time to adjust the law.

    The president certainly has the authority to change vetting procedures. Congress has the authority to halt immigration by passing a law. But the President has to show that the dangers that immigrants pose has grown dramatically in the relatively recent past to justify his negation of the expressed wishes of Congress in the existing law. The difficulty of making that justification is the reason why Obama had such difficulties with his attempts to subvert the existing law. The default answer is to keep doing as Congress instructed until they change the law; the president has to make a convincing case of a near term danger to ignore that law.

    I oppose this executive order for the same reason I opposed Obama’s orders. They usurp the authority of the Congress.

  3. As usual, eTASS is wrong. His interpretation of executive powers on immigration is a nuanced lie. Surely it is a copy and paste from the talking points site he frequents. Also, all of a sudden laws and rules become important. Ever heard of “prosecutorial discretion”? No? Did not think so. How hypocritically ignorant. But then you have demonstrated time and time again we cannot expect much more from you.

  4. Joe, you’re saying something I’ve been saying for a long time. More than just keeping out enemies, immigration has to be crafted to be a net benefit for the US.

    Early immigrants came to this country when manual labor was a needed skill. During WWI and II, Europeans that streamed in had skills like carpentry, bricklaying, tile setting, tool making. If you travel around cities like New York and Chicago, first of all, go armed of course, but look around at the buildings that were constructed during the 20’s and 30’s. Beautiful, decorative brickwork and masonry, rich woodwork; that’s the work of Polish and Slavic craftsmen.

    When these people came, there was no social safety net; no literacy programs, America wasn’t about celebrating cultures that featured the kinds of failure that drives people across deserts and oceans to escape. Our ancestors came for a chance, and that’s what they got; a chance.

    Today, we need people with technical and math skills. What we don’t need are unskilled people that not only don’t speak English, but are illiterate in their native languages. We don’t need people coming from countries that are perpetually fighting clan wars. We don’t need people coming here thinking their better life is handed to them at the border. We damned sure don’t need people that sneak in and parade the flags of their abandoned countries around while demanding America provide them with all the trappings of success NOW.

    No señor, no, no puedes

    I’m happy Americans are waking up. I’m glad we are learning to speak the truth without fear. The job is not only to wake up everyone around us, but to stay woke ourselves.

    I’d like to suggest we start by making the ban on immigration from Somalia permanent. Somalia has just elected a President and Parliament. They need their educated class to stay put and help dig their neighbors out of the smoking rubble. When they get the garbage cleared out of the streets, they will need cab drivers, too. Somalis do not make good Americans, even under the best of circumstances, any way.

  5. We have laws that govern immigration into the US. President, despite the lies eTASS tries to peddle as alternative facts, does have the power to dictate who and how many.

    I got here legally. So did my wife and many of my friends. We went through security vetting processes and workplace sponsorship. Until my wife got a green card, every year we had to drive to Pigeon Falls to cross the border so she could reapply for a work visa so she could practice dentistry.

    Why do we have different rules for people who abide by the law, and turn a blind eye to people who do not? Why do libturds maintain ILlegals should be afforded all the comforts of Constitutional law in the country they are ILlegally in, but treat legal immigrants like shit? Why does a citizen require more proof and paperwork to apply for a driver’s license than an ILlegal? Why do ILlegals have criminal laws applied to them much more leniently than citizens? A country without borders and an immigration policy is not a country! Is it just me or does anyone else see that this is all fucked up?

    ( climbs off the soapbox )

  6. When my great grandfather immigrated from Germany/Denmark, he was required to show that he had the means to support himself for some period of time. He said that the requirement at the time was $40. He had $43. This was shortly before WW 1.

    He was a carpenter, but for a period of time he was crew on a ship (maybe a barge, I was unclear) that brought live cattle from Galveston.TX to NYC. He ended up in Montana as a homesteader (failed at farming), built the hotel in Custer and then built and ran a small store on the then outskirts of Billings, MT.

  7. Both sets of my grandparents came to the U.S. from Germany in 1915 and Italy in the 1920s. They were, as Loren pointed out, asked if they had a place to live, how much money they had and given medical exams. Any number of diseases, especially TB, since it was so rampant at the time, would get them quarantined. They didn’t get, nor did they expect handouts, they learned English and became citizens as quickly as possible, because they were Americans, not Germans or Italians.

  8. I suspect the reason Trump is criticizing our court system (Gorsuch comments) he is foreshadowing an excuse to lay blame on anyone other than himself in the event something bad happens.

  9. Are you SURE Gorsuch said anything he is REPORTED to have said?

    Rock, meet your permanent resident troll. He is about to crawl under.

  10. Slightly O/T: There are comments here that essentially read “Your a liberal picking on Trump.” At some point Trump supporters have to get beyond their persecution complex and start addressing the substantive policies that Trump advocates. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost by supporting and cooperating with Putin, because he has acted and continues to act to de-stabilize just about everything he touches internationally, because it suits the domestic politics that keep him in power. To support Putin is to take a Nihilist view of the world, that the existing social order is so terrible that chaos is preferable. I don’t even think Putin subscribes to that view. His international Nihilism serves his main motive, which is to maintain the teetering Russian political order with him on top by portraying the outside world as dangerous to Russia. Nor do I think Trump is a Nihilist; he doesn’t give enough thought to anything to claim a philosophical basis. The only real Nihilist is Bannon, who I think truly believes the world would be better if we abandoned the current order and endured a period of chaos from which a new order would be constructed. That puts him in the camp of various anarchists, rebels and national socialists of a century ago; it’s not a company we should want the leaders of our country keeping.

  11. “When these people came, there was no social safety net; no literacy programs, “
    No government/taxpayer sponsored programs to be sure, but the churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and bi-lingual news papers all promoted the transition to english speaking participation in the American culture. It also didn’t hurt that the US Govt launched a “Don’t Speak the Enemy’s Language” campaign in WWII.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Americans#/media/File:Don%27t_Speak_the_Enemy%27s_Language,_Speak_American.jpg

  12. Only about 2% of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island were turned away. By the mid-1920s, however, immigrants were being screened at the U.S. embassies in their native countries, before they could ever get to Ellis Island. By this point, Ellis Island was being used as an internment site for repatriating those who were here illegally or otherwise barred from entering.

  13. Trump has done more to alienate the rest of the world from the US in 2 weeks than any president since Bush or LBJ, and it took Bush and LBJ two terms and a war each to achieve that level of global animus. Trump just needs a twitter account. If you don’t think that hurts the US, then I don’t think you’re taking a long view.

  14. Interesting case that probably does hinge a lot on whether the court decides that a ban affecting 15% or so of Muslims is indeed a “Muslim ban”, and also whether the government must prove an imminent threat. I don’t see that in the law, but courts can be squirrelly that way. My take is that a ban can be invoked on reasonable suspicion of risk–that a portion of refugees cannot be adequately vetted and will find our country a soft target.

  15. DOAKES: ” Trump’s executive Order on immigration and refugees is causing angst, but not analysis. We need analysis.”

    SSOLSEmery: “I have sprinkles on my ice cream! You don’t have any sprinkles, do you?”

  16. eTASS DOES live in an alternate universe filled with alternate facts and reality. Note he did not include 0bumbler – the person who singlehandedly managed to throw the world into chaos in a very short period of time. How did that Arab Spring work out, eTASS? But then 0bumbler did promise to calm the rising seas and bring peace to the world. Funny how most of the folks about to take over from eTASS beloved open borders soci@lists around the world are actually looking forward to working with sTrumpet. Alternate facts indeed.

  17. Well, yes, few people know a great deal about geopolitics. That’s why we have a representative democracy. Those representatives can hire staffs who help the representative actually think about things before acting. Unless they don’t, as is the case now. But what Trump is demonstrating is a failure of representative democracy, not a virtue.

  18. I say we should stop letting in refugees and keep people here that are employable, like those Indian and Chinese students that get degrees from our university. If you get a Bachelors you get a green card, a masters gets you the option to bring your family over at no/limited cost and they get green cards. And a PhD gets automatic citizenship. Note: only applies to match, science, engineering and medical majors. CLA and gender studies degrees do not apply

  19. . Do I want them to grow up in Minnesota or Mogadishu?

    I’m parts of Minneapolis there is no difference sadly. People are getting pissed.

  20. There are already laws on the books that make it illegal to enter the country w/o a visa, and illegal to work w/o a social security number or tax ID, and a SS number or tax ID is only issued to citizens or processed and permitted visa holders and permanent residents.

  21. So this happened. My daughter had to pop over to Berlin to renew her Czech visa. Riding the Berlin metro, she was intently, not-looking-away, stared out by a group of young, middle-eastern males. Being red-haired, blue-eyed, peaches & cream, she gets stared at a lot in Central Europe, and it’s always kind of icky, but this was particularly intense, especially as the men were talking among themselves as they stared at her.

    The metro was crowded, and at one stop she disembarked to allow a family with a pram to get past her. The men also got off, and then she got back on for the rest of her ride and the men either lost her or didn’t follow her. Was it racist of her to feel threatened? Would she have felt the same way if the men were white, or drunk? In the latter cases, it would be uncomfortable but not threatening (and something she’s used to). Given the rampages in Germany and Sweden, wisdom would suggest it was definitely at least threat level Orange, if not higher. (Un-ironically, she is volunteering with her church in Prague to help Iraqi Christians that have been allowed into the country).

    Where is the balance point between being reasonably humanitarian in helping those in need, and reasonably concerned with your own security in practice?

  22. In 2013, the Economist wrote a prophetic article about Minneapolis’ future.

    Most Somalis—Britain’s largest refugee population—do not work. They are among the poorest, worst-educated and least-employed in Britain. In a country where other refugees have flourished, why do Somalis do so badly?

    Over 80% of Somali-speaking pupils qualify for free school meals. In Waltham Forest, a borough in east London, home to nearly 4,000 Somalis, 73% live in households on benefits. More than 50% of British Somalis rent from local councils, the highest proportion of any foreign-born population.

    In 2010-11 around 33% of Somali children got five good GCSEs, the exams taken at 16, compared with 59% of Bangladeshi pupils and 78% of Nigerian ones.

    In 2009 they were the least-employed group in Denmark. The Norwegian government is so worried about its Somali community it wants research done on their plight. Even discounting such factors as religion, age and experience, compared with other black Africans in Britain, Somalis face an “ethnic penalty” when job-hunting.
    http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21583710-somalis-fare-much-worse-other-immigrants-what-holds-them-back-road-long

    Somalis face an “ethnic penalty” everywhere they turn up. They are not even welcome in other African countries because they are violent, ignorant, arrogant, entitled, rude and demanding.

    I suspect that the statistics in Minnesota are not much different than Europe, but there is no way to know for sure because the data is not available. Your reprobate DFL would be outraged if a reliable study was done; it is their job to supply you with the narrative, your job is to disseminate it.

  23. …But what Trump is demonstrating is a failure of representative democracy, not a virtue

    Here is a graphical representation of eTASS argument: A = 4, hence D = Z. Epic fail in coherence and logic.

  24. Well, yes, few people know a great deal about geopolitics.
    How many of them predicted the fall of the Soviet Union?

  25. Knowing that there are at least a lot of anecdotal reports that parallel NW’s, I’ve noted to my family that the ability to treat Muslim immigrants well is going to speak to them. And, if we get a bunch more of them, I might learn a few phrases in Arabic/Somali/Farsi myself. Might be very important at some point.

  26. Here is a real problem:
    The Islamic Religion Encourages Violence…
    More than other religions
    Total Reps Dems Inds
    33% 63% 14% 28%
    https://www.scribd.com/document/338306835/CBS-News-poll-on-Trump-travel-ban-record-low-approval-rating-for-Trump#from_embed

    Under Shariah, apostasy is punished by death.
    The majority of Muslims world wide either live under shariah or want to live under shariah. Jihad is on of the seven pillars of Islam. The Islamic religion literally calls its believers to holy war against non Muslims.
    Only 1 in 7 Democrats believes that the Islamic religion encourages violence.

  27. question, whats it called when you hate someone because of their country of origin ? Because I am that when it comes to Somalis. My ex gf called me racist because I commented ‘fucking Somalis’ and I wanted to respond by saying you can’t be racist against someone by their country but decided it wasn’t worth the fight.

  28. Simply tell your ex-girlfriend that Somalis aren’t a race, so by definition impossible to be a racist. And of course neither are Muslims a “race”.

  29. POD, maybe give up the hate. Somalis may have some disadvantages living in developed countries simply because they’re a pastoral people without a long history of universities, good governance, and the like. We may or may not want more refugees depending on how well we can vet them, and whether the will to repatriate bad apples is there, but why bother hating someone because of their nationality?

  30. Because I have yet to have a positive interaction with ANY of them. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt but every fucking time I get spit in the face, metaphorically, and after one particular heated incident almost literally.

  31. MP wrote: “The Islamic Religion Encourages Violence…”

    Your ignorance about Islam is truly appalling.
    Since you are portraying yourself as some sort of an expert on the subject, may I suggest you look up the difference between Sharia (the Path as laid down by God) and fiqh (jurisprudence)? Only the former is immutable; fiqh is (wo?)mans fallible attempt to interpret God’s Will. It can and very often has changed interpretation over time. There arose, about roughly 900 CE, a view among some Sunnis termed insidad bab al-ijtihad–the Gates of Ijtihad are closed. That is, no further interpretation of the Quran/shariah was necessary since all ambiguities were now clarified. For very obvious reasons this was never really accepted by the ulema and reinterpretation continues till this day. That is, extreme stare decisis was to be the norm in Islam; this was a purely political position put forward by the jurists working for the Abbasid Caliphate to forestall political opposition to it coming out of Shia and other Sunni opponents. Like many political expedients, it rapidly assumed a life of its own.

    However, rethinking Sharia/fiqh went on for centuries afterwards; some great recent Islamic modernists–Musa Kazim in Turkey, Iqbal in India, Abduh in Egypt–were acknowledged by all to be Islamic scholars of the highest repute. Kazim was actually Sheikh ul Islam for the Ottoman Empire twice–i.e., the highest ranked cleric in the Empire; he died in 1920. Iqbal in 1938 and Abduh in 1905.

    What you are calling ‘Islam’ is only one interpretation of it. You are referring to the Salafish/Wahhabi take on it and its all pervasive and vile influence into all aspects of Muslim life worldwide. Fiqh can and should be continuously reinterpreted. To put this into perspective, think of what Christianity would be like if the Puritans were to have gotten a stranglehold on it as severe as the Saudis have on Islam. Now, why anyone pays any attention to the Saudis is a triple accident of geography (Mecca), geology (oil) and deliberate US foreign policy (full support to the House of Saud and its devil’s bargain with the Wahhabi clerics).

    Your view of Islam is as accurate and as stupid as if one was to say that Christians worship three gods–The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit–and some of them even worship four–Mary, the Mother. While not absolutely incorrect at an extremely trivial level, it is so wrong as to be laughable in its depiction of Christianity.

  32. jpa wrote: “Are you SURE Gorsuch said anything he is REPORTED to have said?”
    Love the caps: it’s sooo Donald…

    Somebody is lying: Trump, Blumenthal, or Gorsuch’s spokesman. I’m putting my money on Trump as the liar. Call it a wild hunch.

  33. EI,

    You and the rest of the pieces of dung that want unlimited, unchecked immigration, would have a lot more cred if you put your money where your mouths are by a) actually supported some yourself or b) let one or two of them live with you.

    But, like every other libidiot hypocrite, you are all for it as long as everyone else pays for it.

    But

  34. “Somalis may have some disadvantages living in developed countries simply because they’re a pastoral people without a long history of universities”.

    My point exactly, Bubba. What do these people bring to our table? There are millions upon millions of people that want to immigrate here. People that are civilized, educated, people that are anxious to get in here and contribute.

    What argument do you bring to advocate putting Somalis at the front of the line? Before you bring up humanitarian grounds, I’ll remind you that there are plenty of other countries in trouble, who’s people don’t bring the baggage Somalis being (history of lawlessness, violence, barbarity etc)

  35. “Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, on Wednesday described the president’s Twitter attacks on the judiciary as “disheartening and demoralizing,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said.

    Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist hired by the White House to help guide the judge’s nomination through the U.S. Senate, confirmed that Gorsuch used those words when he met Blumenthal.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/08/us/politics/08reuters-usa-trump-immigration-gorsuch.html

  36. Fer chrissakes, this is hearsay, Emery.
    You still haven’t learned to evaluate sources.
    Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History
    “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

    There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html?pagewanted=all

  37. Ok, let’s evaluate speech, Emery.
    You quoted the NY Times, a partisan outfit:
    “Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, on Wednesday described the president’s Twitter attacks on the judiciary as “disheartening and demoralizing’,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said.”
    So you have a statement by Blumenthal, a known liar.
    The next statement by the Times, is “Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist hired by the White House to help guide the judge’s nomination through the U.S. Senate, confirmed that Gorsuch used those words when he met Blumenthal.”
    Used ‘those words’, says the times, but does not claim that they were used in the way that Blumenthal said that they were. The words are ‘disheartening and demoralizing.’ which could have been about Gorsuch not getting his Sunday newspaper in time for for him to read it while enjoying his breakfast of toad-in-the-hole. All we know is that Bonjean said Gorsuch spoke the words “disheartening and demoralizing” when he spoke to Blumenthal.
    You see the sleight of hand?
    Pay attention, now, I’m larnin’ ya’.
    The Times wants you to believe that Bonjean confirmed that Gorsuch was confirming Blumenthal’s partisan commentary. Yet, for some reason, Gorsuch himself would not confirm it himself. Why not?
    Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who has aided Gorsuch’s confirmation process and sat in on senators’ meetings with him, said in a statement Thursday that the judge did call attacks on the independence of judges “disheartening.” But she appeared to say that he referred to any criticism of judges’ ethics, not Trump’s recent comments specifically.

    “Judge Gorsuch has made it very clear in all of his discussions with senators, including Senator Blumenthal, that he could not comment on any specific cases and that judicial ethics prevent him from commenting on political matters,” she said. “He has also emphasized the importance of an independent judiciary, and while he made clear that he was not referring to any specific case, he said that he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”
    http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/09/trumps-supreme-court-pick-did-call-attacks-on-judges-demoralizing-former-senator-says.html

    You been played, boy. The only thing linking Gorsuch’s words, “disheartening and demoralizing,” to anything Trump has done is Blumenthal’s words, and we know Blumenthal is a partisan and a liar.

  38. There will always be fools that really believe it’s a liberal–conservative thing. Poorly written order, follow the law and Trump should be fine.

  39. As an after thought, I’d just add a philosophical aspect to this which is that if Obama was our first black president then Trump is our first postmodern president. In post-modernity all truth is local thus if you deconstruct any attempt at claiming an overarching truth you’ll find a power grab. This particularly applies to Trump’s relation with the media. If the media calls out one of his lies it is seen by him and his supporters as not truth but a competing narrative , or in today’s terms #FakeNews. And so Trump has weaponized language and any attempts at restraining him through shaming, appeals to tradition, and appeals to logic fall flat

  40. How does it feel to be so thoroughly p0wned, eTASS? Once again, you subvert, divert and misdirect from your failings to bolster an argument. You have been thoroughly shredded and all you can offer is a philosophical aspect ? Another epic fail among other epics, like trying to justify that Islam is a ROP. Been to any Muslim rallys lately that condemn violence in the name of Islam? Have you? HAVE YOU? What a maroon…

  41. EI: No, Clinton was our first postmodern president. Honestly, if you can’t see that….followed by Obama, and then, yes, arguably Trump fits, too.

    Swiftee: the main arguments I can see for accepting refugees from developing countries in general are compassion and the possibility that those refugees will learn what makes America great and bring those ideas back to their own country. It’s worth noting that the new President of Somalia is a U.S. citizen–I can’t speak for how well he’s learned these lessons, though.

  42. “I can’t speak for how well he’s learned these lessons, though.”

    Well, they had a “transfer of power” that didn’t involve technicals and famine. That’s something.

  43. Emery, your 6PM reminds me of dialogues I had with a Sufi Muslim at a now defunct blog. He simply insisted that wahhabist Islam was not real Islam.
    You can’t determine whether or not the Islamic religion (or any other religion) promotes violence by looking at the historical development of the religion. You determine whether or not a religion promotes violence by what a religion’s adherents believe.

  44. MP: Not that I actually want to defend Wahhabis or Salafis but there are two distinct strains within each: quietists and activists. The quietist salafis are much more like the orthodox/hasidic Jews whose views on women/LGBTQ/etc are far out of touch with the American ‘mainstream’ but they are certainly not violent. It is the activist strain that are the violent ones who provide many of the jihadi killers.

    The quietist ones may have some strange beliefs but they do not believe in violence or takfir (declaring someone to be a non Muslim)–the favored tactic of jihadi salafists–or violent jihad. Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, d. 1999, originally from Albania (hence the name) was prominent in this strain of Salafism in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. His quietism and rejection of some established hadith, taqlid, takfir, etc. led to his being ostracized by the Wahhabi establishment. For these salafis/wahhabis, the inner or greater jihad is the more important one; the outer or lesser jihad is to be only used as a last recourse and purely for self-defence. They have an inherent dislike of political activity or political activism and their attitude towards politics is complete acquiescence to established authority–whatever that may be. This view is exemplified by the saying ‘better a hundred years of tyranny than a year of strife’ or its several variants. Similarly, they adhere to Koran 4:59 “O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and those of you who are in authority” or, e.g., the hadith (Sahih Bukhari vol 4 book 52 #204, “The Prophet added, “He who obeys me, obeys Allah, and he who disobeys me, disobeys Allah. He who obeys the chief, obeys me, and he who disobeys the chief, disobeys me. The Imam is like a shelter for whose safety the Muslims should fight and where they should seek protection. If the Imam orders people with righteousness and rules justly, then he will be rewarded for that, and if he does the opposite, he will be responsible for that.” And several others that convey the same idea. Nobody wants to support and abet Islamic violence. But huge numbers of Wahabist and Salafist muslims and their families are not violent.

    I suggest you read Robert Pape’s (at Chicago) work on suicide terrorism. It was not started by Muslims but by the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and later picked up by Muslims. As the notorious Muslim apologist (sarcasm here, in case you didn’t get it) Bernard Lewis has repeatedly pointed out, committing suicide is strictly forbidden in classical Islamic fiqh–Sharia to you. The Hadith specifically recounts the story of a Muslim wounded in battle who killed himself to end his agony and, said the Prophet, condemned himself to Hell forever. Suicide terrorism is a perversion of Muslim teaching that has now become widely accepted by some Salafists–see, Islam does change!

  45. Suicide terrorism is a perversion of Muslim teaching that has now become widely accepted by some Salafists–see, Islam does change!

    So you are saying there are no Shia and Sunni suicide bombers? They eschew violence? You are a fuckwit. Absolute, deranged, uninformed, unapologetic, uneducated, blind fuckwit.

  46. I know you are not dumb, but you are extraordinarily obtuse.

    One of the sly tricks of Islamophobes is to create categories of bad Muslims and not-so-bad Muslims. The most common formulation of this bit of bigotry is to declare all Salafist or Wahabist Muslims as “Bad Muslims”.

    Screening people for their likelihood of early assimilation is an idea we should avoidI it seems logical and simple, but it is actually pernicious. We have ultra- orthodox Jews living in American who will not sit next to a woman on an airplane and do not believe in the mixing of men and women. These Jews are Americans. We don’t deport them because they have not assimilated. We will allow their cousins to emigrate from Israel to Brooklyn without a test of their beliefs. Many just-off-the-boat immigrants (Koreans, Chinese, Hmong, and scores of others) are not ready for easy assimilation into American culture when they pass through the immigration gates. Some of them assimilate in five years, some in ten.Many who arrive in late middle age never culturally assimilate. But their children and grandchildren do. It is not easy to find communities of second and third generation immigrants in America who have resisted the basic norms of American life. There are plenty of households where Grandma may be a holdout for Korean-values-uber-alles, but the youngsters in that house will be pretty American when they are playing baseball with their pals at school.

    The Mayor of London is the son of an immigrant Pakistani taxi driver. The majority of voters who elected him are white Englishmen who found him to be culturally clued-in to their world. As mayor, he evinces sympathy and understating for West Indian Londoners and Kenyan Londoners, but he is a part of the greater (predominately) white culture of his country. Most of the Silicon valley giants are founded and led by immigrants or first generation foreigners. They come from cultures very different from our own, but assimilate rapidly. There are Muslim Pakistani entrepreneurs in California who were born in a conservative culture and thrived and prospered in a more liberal culture. The great danger in America comes from Americans who want to discard the tolerance that once defined our culture in favor of a parochial nationalism that looks more like Abu Dhabi than the US.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.