Pipes fails to see the radicalism of my proposals

Submitted by Lawrence Auster (United States), May 23, 2005 at 20:27

Mr. Pipes summarizes my five point plan on how to initiate a net out-migration of Muslims from the West, then adds:

"Auster keeps presenting himself as someone who will tell truths I dare not speak, but here as in an earlier critique of me by him, he in fact says roughly what I say. He claims to see no distinction between Islam and radical Islam, Muslims and Islamists, but he does."

Mr. Pipes seems to think that I only want to exclude jihadists, not "regular" Muslims, and so (he says) does he, and therefore our positions are really the same, and therefore I'm being a bit unfair to him.

His objections shows why I chose not to summarize my plan but to refer people to the original article at FrontPage Magazine, "How to Defeat Jihad in America," since Mr. Pipes's concerns are all answered in there, and I would have had to quote a large part of it to explain my points adequately here. But since it's become necessary, I will restate the argument.

First, the whole thrust of my plan is that it is graduated. You can't look at the steps separately, but as a cumulative totality. And they wouldn't necessarily have to be done all at the same time. Thus my most controversial step, the only one Mr. Pipes says he opposes, of removing native born Mideast-descended jihad-supporting Muslims from the U.S., wouldn't have to be done right away or perhaps at all. We could see what happens as a result of the earlier steps, and then go on to harsher measures if it is called for.

Stopping the mass immigration of Moslems is certainly a radical step; after I describe what I have in mind, let's see if Mr. Pipes still supports it. Under the 1965 Immigration Act every country on earth has an annual quota of about 20,000 per year (that's why it's called _mass_ immigration), plus unlimited non-quota immigration for family members and other special categories (another reason what it's called _mass_ immigration). Ending the mass immigration of Muslims means either throwing out the entire 1965 immigration law with its national quotas, or removing Muslims countries from the general law so that they no longer get the quota, the family immigration, and all the rest.

And it means something more than that. As I explained in my article, it's not enough to stop mass immigration from Muslim countries. We must stop the mass immigration of Muslims from whatever country they come from, including France, Britain, Germany, and so on. In other words, our immigration law, at least as far as Muslims are concerned, needs to become ethno-religious specific. At present, it is only national-specific.

This measure is obviously not just aimed at Islamists but at Muslims generally. The aim is to stop the immigration of Muslims into the United States, except for select individuals who have some particular reason to be here, such as businessmen, diplomats, and spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens (not adult children, as at present).

My second step, to find and deport all Muslim illegal aliens, is also aimed at Muslims as such, not just jihadists and terror supporters. As I explained in my article, it would not be necessary for authorities literally to round and up and deport all these persons. If we began deporting some of them, if we began examining the credentials of Muslim persons living in the U.S., many of them would leave on their own, as happened in two years ago when the government asked certain categories of Pakistani men living in the U.S. to come in for an interview, and hundreds fled the country, many to Canada, many back to Pakistan. The underlying idea is that Muslims including vast numbers of illegals have come here and feel entitled here because we have made them feel welcome to do so. If we give them a different message, they will change their behavior and leave.

My third proposed step is to remove from the U.S. all resident alien Muslims who have ties to jihadism. Since there is a vast number of Muslim resident aliens, and since 80 percent of the mosques in the U.S. are run by Wahhabi clerics, this means removing a very large number of persons from the U.S.. I was not aware that Mr. Pipes had actually proposed doing anything like this.

My fourth step, to remove the citizenship of and deport all naturalized and even native-born citizens who are jihad supporters, is my most radical proposal, and I discuss at length in the article why I think it is morally and politically right. As for the naturalized ones, if they are jihadists, they lied when they swore allegiance to the United States, and their citizenship can be stripped on that basis. Many Muslims in England and America are naturalized citizens or were born in the West, and many of them openly call for the destruction of America, or at least--as in an old cartoon about Muslim "moderates"--for serious harm to America. There is no moral basis for allowing such people to continue to live here. In my article, I compared their situation to the famous short story, "The Man Without a Country," about a man who had supported an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government and had cursed the U.S., and was condemned to spend the rest of his live on a navy ship, never to set foot in his native land again. I am not proposing any such exquisite punishment for native-born U.S. jihadists. I am simply proposing that we send them back to the dar al-Islam where they will feel at home, rather than letting them continuing to live here in the realm of infidels, in a land that they openly hate and against which they are waging hidden or open war.

My final proposal is that America renounce the liberal/multicultural idea that we must be open and inclusive to all cultures and peoples.

Putting all these actions together, the cessation of mass immigration, the deportation of illegals, the deportation of jihadist resident aliens, and the total change of attitude that I am envisioning, we can see that new Moslem immigration into the U.S. would virtually come to a halt, and a substantial number of U.S. Muslims would be steadily leaving, including, most importantly, voluntary departures of both openly jihadist and "moderate" Muslims in response to the radically changed attitude. That is a net out-migration of Muslims that would continue for years, steadily lessening the U.S. Muslim population, instead of, as now, steadily increasing it and swelling its political power. Muslims will be discouraged and demoralized by these measures; the rest of us will be encouraged and re-moralized. That is what is needed. The Muslims that would remain when this process is over would be a fraction of their former numbers, and with all extremists removed. The U.S. Muslim community would have ceased to be a growing and increasingly hostile power among us. It would have become a mere vestige of its former self, small, weak, and harmless.

I'm not aware of Mr. Pipes's having suggested anything like the totality of steps I am proposing, involving a sweeping change in our posture toward Muslims, a change that, moreover, means the abandonment of Mr. Pipes's signature call for a "moderate" Islam that will be the solution to "radical" Islam. I am not, pace Pipes, urging that we seek out and cultivate moderate Muslims. I am urging that we act in our own defense against Muslims, as the West did successfully for a thousand years, until modern liberalism insanely led us to open our doors to them, imagining that they are "just like us"--civilized, "moderate" people. But, as I said in the e-mail that started this exchange, Mr. Pipes is welcome to join the growing group of civilizational realists.

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