The Coming Islamization of America

Phyllis Chesler, The Family Security Matters:

As Americans, we have a long and legendary history of welcoming and assimilating immigrants. This includes granting political asylum to those in flight from political persecution. But, as Americans we must also ensure that what has gone wrong in Europe/Eurabia does not happen here. Thus, at this moment in history, we cannot allow a large influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants who have no intention of assimilating into a western, modern, and democratic American way of life. Please note that I am saying a "large" influx of immigrants who do not wish to "assimilate." I am not talking about Arabs and Muslims who not only want to assimilate but who are actively in flight from repressive Islamist regimes. How we might do this is the subject of another piece.

Here, I want to focus on those things that specifically endanger America in the absence of a massive influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants bent on jihad. I am talking about the ways in which a small but organized number of Muslim-Americans and Muslim immigrants, aided by their many Christian- and Jewish-American supporters, are currently seeking to begin the Islamization of America. READ MORE

According to the scholar Bat Ye'or and the journalist Oriana Fallaci, Europe became "Eurabia" due to a massive influx of hostile Muslim immigrants with a high birth rate whose passage to Europe was aggressively funded both by Arab oil money and by European doctrines of "multi-cultural tolerance."

A similar, and similarly dangerous, multi-cultural tolerance also exists in America - but so far, mainly among only our intellectual elite and our liberal and progressive media. Thankfully, respect for barbarism (equal rights for cannibals), does not yet exist among most American civilians. However, our concept of "religious tolerance," academic freedom, and free speech are now being used to promote and protect hate speech against America and Israel and against the Judeo-Christian tradition. Let me give some recent examples.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is fighting to overthrow the American state department decision not to admit Tariq Ramadan. Please note: Ramadan's grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood and his father joined the family business. (The Brotherhood is a staunch advocate of jihad against the west and lethal Jew-haters). Ramadan is ALSO a suave apologist for Islamic religious and gender apartheid and is, arguably, pro-jihad. He is, no doubt, a "moderate" compared to al-Qaeda's Bin Laden and Iran's Amadinejad. But, Ramadan may outdistance such terrorist counterparts in terms of his far more sophisticated disinformation capability. Nevertheless, the ACLU sees his right to teach and preach as a First Amendment issue. Perhaps they have a point. My questions: Are we obligated to extend First Amendment rights to our enemies when we are at war? Even if doing so endangers us?

And further: Why did PEN - a distinguished Association of Writers of which I am a proud member - feel obliged to honor or to "invite" Ramadan to their festive annual conference which will take place at the end of April of 2006? Would they extend a similar honor to Hitler? Would they do so simply because the American administration had banned the sale of his book or refused to allow Hitler to preach here? According to Iranian dissident, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, PEN was going to honor both Ramadan and Magdi Allam, the Egyptian-born non-practicing Muslim deputy editor of Italy's premier newspaper, Corriere della Sera, but Allam refused to appear together with Ramadan. When I called the PEN office they confirmed that Ramadan was still "invited" but was no longer being given an award. Why does an American organization dedicated to both free and artful speech feel that "even-handedness" obliges them to honor a Muslim anti-Islamist and a Muslim Islamist apologist at the same event? Whose favor do they curry, whose censure do they fear? That of western politically correct intellectuals or that of Islamists? Is there an operative difference when it comes to pro-Islamist free speech?

More recently, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Norman Seigel, followed by the Mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, defended the right of the New York City's top Muslim prison imam to rage against America, against Jews, and against Zionists. At a conference of Muslim students, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil claimed that Muslims were being "tortured" in city jails; that "the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House;" and that we should not allow "the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us." The imam was suspended with pay for two weeks but not fired. Perhaps he DOES have the right to say anything he pleases as a citizen; perhaps his loss of this right might also endanger us all. My question: But what if he is indoctrinating a large population of NYC criminals? Conversion to Islam, especially among African-American men in jail is growing, both here and among North- and Carribean-African men in Europe. Can we consider them truly "rehabilitated" if they hold such views when they are released?

Further, what does it mean that in 2005 Duke University and in 2006 Georgetown University defended the right of the Palestine Solidarity Movement to hold their annual conference at their universities? Both institutions claimed that even if the hate speech against Jews, Israel, and America was false and inflammatory that it was still protected by the First Amendment and by academic freedom. Let's assume they are right. My question: At what point can we understand that such hateful teaching and preaching has the power to inflame someone like the Iranian student, Mohammed Reza Taheriazar who just drove his rented SUV into a crowd of fellow students at the university of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, injuring nine people? According to Daniel Pipes, this quiet and seemingly assimilated terrorist said that he wanted to "punish the American government for their actions around the world" and that he "wanted to avenge the death of Muslims around the world."

Such ideas are rampant in the Islamic media worldwide. Just as the 2000 intifada against Israel has gone global, so too has the hate speech against America, Israel, and the West gone global and become technologically magnified. The anti-American and anti-Zionist mosque sermons which have historically taken place locally every Friday have now also gone global and are available, via satellite, throughout the world, including in Europe.

Not to worry. The Qatar-based network, al-Jazeera, (yes, the very same network to which bin Laden and al-Zaraquawi send the videos of their beheadings), wants to open an office in Washington, D.C. to "spin" the news in English for us. Luckily, like the Dubai Port deal, it has encountered some American resistance. There is no guarantee that such resistance will ultimately prevail.

But here's what really worries me. The same First Amendment, free speech, and academic rights that seem to work so well for Islamists, do not seem to protect our right to criticize Islamic terrorism or Islamic religious and gender apartheid. Thus, by and large, the First Amendment absolutists of the American media did not choose to reprint the Danish cartoons in solidarity with the Danish cartoonists. In fact, only one brave young editor, Harry Seigel, of the New York Press walked off the job when his boss refused to allow him to do so.

And, the bookshop so well known for stocking books by dissidents, (I am talking about San Francisco's City Lights Bookshop), absolutely refuses to stock or sell Oriana Fallaci's work. This is quite shameful.

And, those of us who describe Islam/Islamism accurately are often slandered as "racists" and as "Islamophobic" and silenced by lawsuit and by fear of lawsuit. Members of Cincinnati's Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) managed to shut down a production of a play by Glyn O'Malley about the first female suicide bomber. A group of Muslim students at De Paul University managed to get Professor Thomas Ciesielka fired or permanently "suspended" because, off-duty, (just like the NYC prison imam above), he tried to tell the truth about the Israel-Palestinian matter. Muslim students, perhaps shocked that anyone would dare disagree with their anti-Israel views, reported him as a "racist." Ciesielka's pro-American and pro-Israel free speech is, apparently, not as protected as is that of another De Paul University professor, Norman Finkelstein, who is a well known Holocaust denier and Israel-demonizer. Finkelstein has certainly not been suspended for his false and inflammatory views; in fact, he is up for tenure. Finkelstein has also attacked Allan Dershowitz in an obsessive-compulsive way - not only in print, but in person, to cheering university crowds all across the country.

In Europe, lawsuits have been launched against those who tell the truth about Islam. A series of such lawsuits has kept Fallaci in exile from her native land, Italy, and has made it dangerous for her to visit Switzerland. For similar reasons, Israeli-American author, Rachel Ehrenfeld, cannot visit England where a Saudi billionaire has won a default judgment against her. Ehrenfeld's alleged crime? She told the truth about this particular Saudi's funding of terror - and she has counter-sued him here, under her First Amendment right to do so. Interestingly, while many major newspapers and booksellers, including Amazon, have written amicus briefs on her behalf, no one but Ehrenfeld is funding the actual lawsuit in defense of our collective right to tell the truth about the Islamic funding of terrorism against us.

Finally, the same western intellectuals who insist on our right to mock both Judaism and Christianity are often the first to charge "Islamophobia" and "racism" when Islam is presented accurately and criticized, not to mention presented in a series of rather innocuous cartoons. (Please realize that the three offensive cartoons were slipped in by Muslims and that the riots against the cartoons were carefully orchestrated months later.)

Some conclusions.

We have to re-evaluate the meaning of free speech both in terms of hate speech and in terms of war-time realities. This is hard, not easy to do but it must be done - and quickly - by the best lawyers and legislators in our land.

We must begin to insist that Muslims allow the same free speech and religious practices to religious minorities in their countries that they wish us to extend to them in the West. This means that if Muslims want religious freedoms in the West, they have to extend such freedoms to Jews, Christians, and to other religious minorities in Muslim countries. Although it is rather late in the day to do so. The Middle East is already entirely judenrein, free of Jews, except in Israel. I doubt whether any of the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab Muslim countries, or their descendants, will want to return. But Christians have long been--and still are--persecuted, often severely, under Muslim rule. Thus, America might begin to peg every trade or peace treaty with a Muslim country or business to an agreement about religious tolerance and freedom.

We should not allow a falsely positive or superficial picture of Islam to be taught in public schools (and inserted into textbooks) nor should we teach a balanced view of Islam as long as Islamic schools, both here and abroad, refuse to teach anything true about Judeo-Christian culture.

We must find some legally and politically sound ways to slow down or to eliminate entirely the growth industry of Islamic-jihadic hate speech in America. Islamists do not hesitate to both falsify, exaggerate, and censor our culture e.g. the Danish cartoon incident. We cannot allow our traditions of freedom and tolerance to be taken over by intolerant forces in the service of repression or terrorism.

Finally, we endanger countless Muslim women and girls and freedom-loving Muslim men as well, when we extend religious freedom to Muslims who believe it is their religious right to subjugate, torment, mutilate, and even murder women and dissidents.

Islamists have been using our strengths against us, ju-jitsu style. We insist that we are proud to tolerate the intolerant. We can no longer afford to do so. We must stand up to intolerance and hate speech, just as we must stand up to jihad. With all our hearts, and with all our might.

FSM Contributing Editor Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She has just published The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1974). She is currently on the Board of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and lives in New York City. Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com.