Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald exposes the silly fallacies of a recent Wall Street Journal piece that proclaimed that “America’s Muslims tend to be role models both as Americans and as Muslims.”
This WSJ article is, from first to last, ridiculous.
Let’s start with the first. What exactly is a “role model”? Someone who doesn’t litter and pays taxes? Is one more of a role model if one earns more than $75,000 a year than a citizen who earns $35,000 a year? Why?
Apparently earning power, and possession of an undergraduate degree, makes for a model American. Now that degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have been reduced to indications of nothing at all, what does possession of a degree mean? In what subjects? How obtained? There isn’t a Saudi student in this country who cannot buy his term-papers, and the number of Saudis who have bought-and-paid for doctoral dissertations is almost equal to the number of Saudis who have received doctorates. Let’s not be naive.
Can someone earn money, pay his taxes, not litter, and be the most un-model of citizens? You bet. That person can indeed be an un-model citizen if formed by, informed by, guided by, a belief-system that again and again instructs him that he may not take “Jews and Christians for friends” (as the Qur’an so clearly does — see 5:51, 3:28, etc.), and that he must “smite the Unbeliever” wherever he finds him (9:5). Many dozens of passages in the Qur’an, hundreds of Hadith, and many of the most important events in Muhammad’s life (the Sira) all instruct the Believer to see the universe as being divided in two — between Believers and Infidels, with every Believer owing his loyalty, his sole loyalty, to fellow Believers, no matter what they do (as long as they remain part of the umma al-islamiyya) and no loyalty at all to Infidels, but enmity.
And the same goes for the Infidel nation-state. It is not possible for a Believer, a Muslim, to swear allegiance to the American Constitution and to mean it. He can say it, once or ten thousand times, but if he remains a Believer, to the very extent that he accepts the tenets of Islam, he cannot conceivably accept a political and legal system that elevates mere men, and mere Infidel men at that, above the rule of Allah. It cannot be.
How can any Believer, any Muslim, conceivable accept the legal equality of non-Muslim and Muslim? Oh, I don’t mean he can’t accept it for now, merely as a tactic, until such time as Muslims become more powerful and numerous — but really, how is it possible to accept that which contradicts the very basis of Islam? And how, for example, can a Believer accept the full legal equality of men and women? And how can a Believer possibly accept the idea of freedom of conscience, including the freedom of those who are Muslims to leave Islam altogether? This cannot be. This is impermissible. It may have to be endured, for now, but that is very different from saying that it must be endured forever.
An Iranian Sufi scholar, Sultanhussein Tabandeh, has written a book which offers a detailed analysis of the absolute incompatibility of Islam, that is to say the Shari’a or Holy Law of Islam, with the freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in similar documents, such as the American Bill of Rights.
It is silly to write about incomes, as if they were guarantees of anything, or any of the other silly criteria that these two authors, who appear not to have understood that the main criterion for being a “good citizen” (spare us that “role model” stuff, which is so stuffy, silly, and insufferable) is to believe that the enterprise of America, the American Constitution, the work of the Framers, the work of those who followed upon the Framers, deserves our support, our loyalty, our admiration.
In fact, even on the terms these authors present, the numbers of Muslims who have been found to be involved in louche activities, from cigarette-smuggling to cheating various welfare offices, to document (passports, social security cards, drivers’ licenses) fraud, to a thousand other scams, has been quite remarkable.
One would like to ask the authors of this jejune piece what relevance they believe an inculcated hatred for the American system, for men as the final authority, and for the freedom to jettison one’s beliefs including Islam has to their thesis. And what about an inculcated hatred for one’s Infidel neighbors? See the record of Muslim soldiers, for example, including Sgt. Hasan Akbar, who killed two officers and wounded many others out of his solidarity with Islam, and Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who deserted not once but twice and is now apparently living back in Lebanon, and a host of other examples — this does not exactly bring to mind the display of loyalty and bravery of the Japanese-American soldiers of the 442nd regiment, does it?
No, these authors are jejune in their criteria for what constitutes a model citizen. They miss the point about the belief-system of Islam. Why? Because they have not studied Islam. Give me a Buddhist earning $20,000 a year any day over Intel’s Mike Hawash or his ilk. What counts is the possibility of accepting, and supporting, not in feigned but in heartfelt fashion, what makes America America. No Believer can possibly offer that, for American laws, and customs, and understandings, are antipathetic to Islam, incompatible with Islam. This is not said idly. This is said by all those who have studied Islam thoroughly, and who are not part of the bought-and-paid-for army of apologists.
Stephens and Rago were not thinking clearly when they invoked this phrase “role models.” They certainly show that they have not bothered to learn about Islam, before making these grand pronouncements that only make them, the earnest pronouncers, look foolish.
You can have egg on your face only so many times. In the end, people will turn away — they don’t relish the spectacle. In its understanding of Islam, the WSJ has had egg on its face just a bit too often. Time to either educate the relevant staff, or hire other staff, or shut up about the matter.