wonders the moderate muslim
IS ISLAMIC REFORM POSSIBLE
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear, O Israel! (Mantua Books). His
editorials appear regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012. His debut
album, Blood
Guitar, is now available, as is his latest
book, Reflections
on Music, Poetry and Politics.
In
“Reform Islam or Live the ‘New Normal’ Forever,”
Roger Simon argues that Donald Trump’s often frustrated
travel ban on problematic countries, though not illegal, is
insufficient. “It's only a meager beginning in dealing
with a situation that has not changed in any real sense since
9/11, as the events in New York Tuesday testify. If we do not
move even more seriously to prevent them, they will indeed become
the ‘new normal.’ ” The violence, he continues,
“will never be squelched until the ideology is defeated
and reformed . . . We must all now be obnoxious, politically
incorrect busybodies and get in Islam's face, demanding reform
in every way possible, economically, socially, theologically
and, yes, militarily.”
This
is a bravely unpopular stance to adopt vis à vis Islam
that will surely be opposed and condemned by progressivists
and offended Muslims. In fact, however, it does not go nearly
far enough. Islam is a notoriously resistant and tentacular
faith. I have long argued in book and article that Islam cannot
be reformed. For starters, it features no single “pontifical”
authority that could institute real change. Moreover, the canonical
network is too intricate and too vast to admit of effective
modification. Expurgating the Koran, were it even possible,
is only the tip of the sand dune. The hundreds of thousands
of Hadith would need to be reviewed and amended, as would the
Sunnah and Sirah, the five schools of jurisprudence, Twelver
Shia, centuries of ulemic literature, and the underlying cultural
predispositions, beliefs, ideals, and orthodox practices that
form the bedrock of 57 Muslim nations and the West’s Muslim
populations.
Tightening
immigration protocols, as Trump is valiantly trying to do, may
be a welcome step in the right direction, but it cannot meaningfully
address the problem of jihadist violence or creeping Islamization.
Ilana Mercer reminds us that “Religion is The Risk Factor,
not chaotic countries-of-origin . . . The data show that young,
second-generation Muslims are well-represented among terrorists
acting out almost weekly across the West.”
Trump’s
initiative, then, would not have prevented truck-ramming Sayfullo
Saipov, a legal Uzbek immigrant, from killing eight Americans;
nor would it have prevented American Muslims, immigrant or native-born,
such as the Fort Hood shooter, the San Bernardino couple, and
the Orlando gay nightclub killer, from wreaking carnage and
mayhem. The “new normal” will persist for the soldiers
of Islam are already among us. Their agenda has been materially
facilitated by a treasonable left-wing constituency and pandering
political class in Europe and America, by the sentimental tolerance
of current liberalism, and by the general ignorance of the tenets,
doctrines and usages of Islam.
What
is to be done? To begin with, we should stop all Muslim immigration
to our shores for the foreseeable future, not just a selective
minority from terror-sponsoring countries. Additionally, every
mosque must be scrupulously investigated and many permanently
closed, for it is among these putative houses of worship, as
David Yurashalmi and Mordechai Kedar have shown in a Middle
East Quarterly essay “Shari’a and Violence
in American Mosques,” that terror breeds unabated. Of
course, there are peaceable and “moderate” Muslims
who wish only to get on with their lives. But as Bruce Bawer
has cogently argued in an article treating of the Tariq Ramadan
rape case, the “codes of Islam” are endemic and
those who continue “to identify as a Muslim” while
rejecting fundamental aspects of Islam are engaging in “sheer
delusion.”
Bawer,
like the much maligned Geert Wilders, who distinguishes between
the private individual and an ideological machine, is right.
It is not a question of individual Muslims, who may be decent
people and law-abiding citizens, but of the faith they profess
or nominally acknowledge, a faith whose “codes,”
teachings and dogmas are conquest-oriented and which is materially
sustained by its adherents, whether they know it or not. A militant
and supremacist theology is thus reinforced by its communicants,
no matter how innocent of malice they may be. Such is the Dar
al-Islam, a theo-imperialist establishment which is sustained
by its “moderates” no less than by its “radicals.”
As Mercer points out, “The fact that there are moderate
Muslims doesn’t mean there is a moderate Islam”
Those
who contend, like Clifford Smith, Director of the Middle East
Forum Washington Project, that a more discerning vetting process,
a “holistic approach regarding applicants’ ideology,”
can resolve the problem of distinguishing between “bona
fide Muslim migrants” and those “placing violent
ideologies over American law,” reveal a profound misunderstanding
of the ancestral resilience of Islam. This approach merely fudges
the issue and does not account for home-grown jihadists, as
well as being vulnerable to the Islamic principal of taqqiyah,
officially approved lying. Canonical Islam would still remain
intact and continue to pose a threat to a pluralistic democracy
with which it is incompatible. As former Israeli Consul General
to the U.S. Yoram Ettinger writes, acts of terror are “not
an aberration, but an integral episode of . . . 14 centuries
of Quran-sanctioned terrorism against the abode of the ‘infidel’.”
Jihad is “a fundamental pillar of Islam . . . which commands
Muslims to emulate previous struggles against the enemies of
Islam, within the context of an eternal battle.”
As
for those proponents of the “new normal” who frivolously
claim, for example, that more people are killed, say, by lightning
than by jihad, the rebuttal is obvious. Simon points out that
TheReligionofPeace website documents “34 jihadist attacks
in 13 countries over just six days this past week (Oct. 21-27),
resulting in 444 killed and 114 injured. That doesn't include
the horrific suicide bombing in Somalia on October 28 that took
over two dozen lives -- including three children and a beheaded
woman.” On the other hand, how many were killed by lightning
in the last six days?
Let’s
be realistic. The “New Normal” is indeed here to
stay -- the invasion has become too expansive to be reversed
-- but its ravages and incidence can be reduced if we repudiate
the cultural sedatives of the day and proceed, as Ettinger urges,
to “pre-empt, rather than react,” that is, to act
decisively on several related fronts: a recognition that reform
cannot succeed, a strict moratorium on immigration, a relentless
surveillance of terror-fostering mosques, and a refusal to succumb
to the Kumbaya rhetoric of the politically correct.
Again,
to be realistic, a sea-change of this nature is highly unlikely
-- since we appear to be as unamenable to reform as is Islam.
Nevertheless, unless we come to our senses, realize that we
are in the midst of a 1400-year civilizational war, and take
appropriate measures, the sequel is a foregone conclusion. As
the Gullah song goes, “Someone’s laughing, Lord,
kumbaya” -- but it won’t be us.
