Easy fix for this.
Just put a wildcard “*” after the
name Mohammad on the national no-fly-list.

In absolute terms or relative to Britian’s population, 6,347 Mohammeds born in one year does not seem a lot to me at all, especially when you consider the Brits once ruled an empire that spanned half the globe. Also, I would imagine that “Mohammed” is a lot more common name among Muslims than “Jack” is among Christians--and even so, “Jack” still is the leading name of choice for 6,772 Britons. I have to ask why in your posts do you always try to divide people based upon their religion? Shouldn’t the focus be on where people agree, and where we can work together to improve the moral and spiritual climate of America? Exactly, how long is your list regarding the “bad” religions? Apparently, we have Mormonism and Islam on it. Who else?

Terrible the name Jack is going down, and the only Moe I like is Moe Howard.

And so what if it does “happen here”?  300 years ago the most popular name in this country was probably something along the lines of “Sitting Bull.” Demographics change.  So what?

I happen to like Middle East cuisine, so maybe I’m a bit biased.

<<It can’t happen here.  Right?>>

No.

The future president, most likely named Juan Guadalupe Rameriz, will not allow Mohammedans to immigrate to America.

How many of those Mohammedans do you think are immigrating to Mexico?  The future of America is the future of Mexico, so we need to be more concerned with immigration from Guatamala and the rest of Central America.

But, in all seriousness: Mohammedans in America - who cares?  They won’t be much different than the Yankee-influenced Puritans that infest this place.  The only real difference I can see is barbecue and alcohol will go underground, but, then again, they both might have to anyway, seeing as alcohol was made illegal by the Yankees before, and smoking marijuana has been illegal for years and smoking tobacco is becoming illegal.

If you’re worried about potential future President Mohammad al Fahr Rad increasing taxes, what’s the difference?  If you’re worried about potential future President Mohammad al Fahr Rad being a brutal police-state sponsering anti-Christian, well, YOU HAVE THAT NOW!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a keen hatred of the Mohammedan heresy!  But I don’t sit around and think about how much worse the USofA is going to be under the return of the caliphate, as opposed to what it is like under Yankee Protestants like Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, and GW Bush.

Israel’s Arab citizens face exclusion
Government policies have deepened gulf between Arab and Jewish citizens
By Scott Wilson
The Washington Post
Dec. 20, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22335973/

KARMIEL, Israel - Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes.

But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town’s admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of “social incompatibility.”

They petitioned Israel’s high court to end such screening, claiming discrimination, a charge town officials are challenging.

“We can’t just be good citizens,” said Fatina, 27, who is expecting the couple’s first child. “If they won’t develop our villages, then we will choose where we want to live. The problem lies not with us, but with Jewish society that does not accept the other.”

The Zubeidats are players in a wider ethnic clash unfolding in the Galilee, a northern region where Arabs, those who remained in Israel after its creation in 1948 and their descendants, outnumber Jews. Israel’s policies have deepened the gulf between Arab and Jewish citizens in recent years, through concrete walls, laws that favor Jews, and political proposals that place the Arab minority outside national life.
This process of separation within Israel’s original boundaries mirrors in many ways the broader one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories.

With most of Israel’s land controlled by a government agency, Israeli Arabs have long had more trouble acquiring property than Jews, who outnumber them five to one in a population of about 6.5 million people. In response, Arab lawmakers joined a Jewish parliamentary majority this year in endorsing the construction of a new Arab city in the Galilee, where demographic rivalry and ethnic separation are most pronounced. Arabs say it will be the first city built on their behalf since the state’s founding.

But some Jewish political leaders have suggested that Israel’s Arabs, who commonly refer to themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, should eventually live in a future Palestinian state, the subject of peace negotiations inaugurated last month in Annapolis, Md. Israel’s foreign minister and lead negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said before the meeting that such a state would “be the national answer to the Palestinians” in the territories and those “who live in different refugee camps or in Israel.”

Arabs and Jews study in separate schools in Israel—the Arab system receives fewer resources—and learn Israeli history in different ways. Israel’s Jewish education minister, Yuli Tamir, ordered this year that Arab third-grade textbooks note that Arab citizens call Israel’s 1948 War of Independence “the catastrophe.” Many Jewish lawmakers reacted with scorn.

Except for a relatively small Druze population, Arabs are excluded also from military service mandatory for all but ultra-Orthodox Jews, an essential shared experience of Israeli life and a traditional training ground for future political leaders. Arab lawmakers have lined up now against a new proposal for Arabs to perform “national service” in lieu of time in the army, an institution they hold responsible for enforcing the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

AndrewCapp:seeing as alcohol was made illegal by the Yankees before

The vast majority of “dry” counties in the US today are in Mick Huckabee’s bible-thumping south and the Scots-Irish areas of places like West Virginia.

Scott Richert:What a difference 40 years has made.  But we don’t have to worry: It can’t happen here.  Right?

Of course. The neocon press has already informed us from Manhattan and D.C.  that America is strong, God-fearing, and virile, unlike those flaccid secular Euroweenies who are getting ready for dhimmitude. Of course, when some Europeans, such as the Flemish of Belgium and the Serbs show signs of fighting back it is the same neocons who scream “fascism” and claim Europeans (ie. crypto-Nazis) will never change.

“They won’t be much different than the
Yankee-influenced Puritans that infest this place.”

Right on, Bar-B-Q buddy!

I’m from Texas myself and I’d take the
Branch Davidians over the Bush’s any of the week.

<<The vast majority of “dry” counties in the US today are in Mick Huckabee’s bible-thumping south and the Scots-Irish areas of places like West Virginia.>>

I’m glad you brought that up.

Those places were never “dry”, until the Yankee came in and them so.  Don’t believe that the modern culture of the South, even in West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia, was the culture 140+ years ago.

The Reconstruction turned the South into a place of Yankee domination, all while the former New England was being over-run by immigrants from Ireland and Italy.  The temperance movement was started and was the strongest in the North, until there were enough immigrants to finally break some of the stranglehold.  Dixie, however, was not so lucky.  Yankee influence, by example the temperance movement, remained strong, but has weakened over the years, and will continue to weaken as more and more immigrants from Mexico change the demographics.  Every day I am glad to see a scalawag Baptist, most of whom support Rev Huckleberry, replaced by a Mexican.  Now, the challenge is to keep the Mexican from being indoctrinated into support for the racial identity politics of the Democrats.

“Every day I am glad to see a scalawag Baptist,
most of whom support Rev Huckleberry, replaced
by a Mexican.”

Shucks. And I thought we were gonna be
friends, Andrew.
The reason we HAVE dry counties (in Texas)
is because of the drinking habits of “immigrants.”
(that’s a code word for despondant non-whites that
scare the be-jeevers out of us.)

<<The reason we HAVE dry counties (in Texas) is because of the drinking habits of “immigrants.”>>

No, the reason you have dry counties in Texas is because the South, by way of General Lee, surrendered to the North in 1865.  After that, the South was occupied by the North.  The North brought in their institutions, which included, among other things, prohibition and public schools.

Yes, all that too (public ed. being the worst.)
Dry counties however are created by popular vote,
none of which exist that I know of.
We do still have dry towns, but this also is by
popular vote.

I think the alternative can be
seen on display in NewOrl’ns. Not very attractive
to say the most.

It is not illegal in Texas to be drunk. But we do
have laws against open containers in public and
public intoxication. PI is really just an excuse to
lock anyone up the cops want to, so the drunks tend
to scatter when they see the police show up. Only
the hard cases (that need a good night’s sleep)
will confront the cops.

Mr. Richert. Another great post.

Too bad the reactions are so reflexively dismissive. They do illustrate the truth of the Holy Father’s point about the Dictatorship of relativism though.

If the respondents read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_Eastern_Christianity:_From_Jihad_to_Dhimmitude

then maybe....

Nah. So what if virtually all the early Christian Churches/Communities in now western Turkey were wiped-out by this abomination?

That cannot happen here. We will defang them and make them love porn and rap and shopping and football and IPODS. Yeah, that’s the ticket…

No problem.

There are still 46 “dry” counties in Texas, most in the north and east.  Almost every single county in the south and west are “wet”.  The Yankee influence was less in the south and west of Texas, and there is a noticable difference in the culture there.  Yankee and Southern/Scots-Irish culture USED to be as different from one another as the Yankee and traditional Mexican/Tejano cultures are different from one another today.

For example, the oldest churche in Knoxville, TN is 1st Presbyterian, organized in 1792.  The first Baptist church was organized in 1843 by, you guessed it, Yankees.  Two brothers from New Hampshire organized the church, and it has been terrorizing Southerners ever since.

A Southern businessman was traveling through Panama,
and saw a sign reading “YANKEE GO HOME!” The tour guide was a bit embarrased, and apologized for hiscountrymen’s manners for writing such a thing...The Southerner then told him “don’t worry, where I come from we don’t like the bastards either!”

ANYWAY, the point being: even if America were to be over-run and taken-over by Mohammedans, how much worse could they be, compared to the Yankee zealots that run the place now?

@I am not Spartacus:

Thanks.  I think a lot of the dismissive reaction (as I’ve discussed in other posts) is not even because people delude themselves about the likelihood of “assimilation” (which historically has not been the norm), but because they are so singlemindedly focused on our other enemies--the neocons in government, the degenerates who control our culture, etc.  (You can see some of that in the comments above.)

The trouble is that, for these people, the entire world is always divided into two.  They can’t conceive of the possibility that someone might have two enemies who are not friends of each other.  Therefore, if neocons dislike Muslims, than Muslims must be our friends, because we dislike neocons; or if Muslims decry the same degenerate culture that we decry, then we must be on the same side.

This is the logic of the playground.  It’s not the way that adults think.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of Americans today who are chronologically adult, but intellectually and morally remain on the playground.

@Andrew Capp:

“ANYWAY, the point being: even if America were to be over-run and taken-over by Mohammedans, how much worse could they be, compared to the Yankee zealots that run the place now?”

Gee, I don’t know.  Perhaps one of the 90 percent of Chaldeans who have been run out of Iraq by the Muslims that we empowered might be able to tell us whether they’d feel worse off in Baghdad, Tikrit, or Knoxville or even Concord.

As bad as things are, they can always get worse.  And don’t discount the possibility that Chesterton, in The Flying Inn, was right: It’s precisely the Puritan types who will embrace Islam and impose it on the rest of us.

@Mr.Spartacus

Why has the Catholic Church suddenly decided to
post a Janus Key-turner here in Texas?
To serve the exploding Anglo Catholic phenomena?

Who has the most to gain here in the Southwest
from the Catholic million man migrant march north?

Forget writing your congressman. How ‘bout writing
your boss with the fishy hat?

<<Muslims that we empowered>>

BINGO!

The Mohammedans, without the backing of the Yankee, or some other outside force, have no power.

Best way to keep the Mohammedans out of America?

DON’T LET THEM IN!

I’m all for that!  I don’t want the Mohammedans here!  No one in their right mind would!  But I’m not going to pretend they are really any worse than the secular-humanist-Protestant-Yankees that govern America today.  If only there were a way to kick THEM out of America as well...I take an equal stance as you, Mr Richert.  I oppose both the Mohammedans AND the secular-humanisit-Protestant-Yankees that govern America today.  I take neither of their sides, support neither of them and I genuinely wish them ill in their endeavors to destroy the Faith in Iraq and elsewhere.  However, when it comes to killing one another, I wish them luck!

Andy Capp,
“how much worse the USofA is going to be under the return of the caliphate, as opposed to what it is like under Yankee Protestants” There is historical evidence which is relevant to your statement, and which you thus may want to consider:  in its strictest form, Protestantism spread to four areas: Calvinist Switzerland, Calvinist Netherlands, Puritan England and the Puritan American colonies. 

All these four areas share a group of historical experiences that are very rare elsewhere: First there was a period of religious fanaticism that in England and in the Netherlands led to revolutions and a civil war.  This was followed by several centuries of individual rights and freedoms, toleration, representative political systems, astonishing scientific and technological progress, stunning rise in the standard of living, impressive political success and domestic peace—the US civil war is the exception to this last rule.

The correlation is so strong as to suggest the existence of a causality.  At the very least, there is no doubt that for some reason the historical effects of the “Protestant Caliphates” have been very different from those of the real thing.

Never mind the CATHOLIC lemmings coming
from the south now that we have a
Texas Bishop.
Right?

How ‘bout writing your boss with the fishy hat?

I remember Wood Allen writing about how, as a child, during the summertime, he wore underwear made from thin slices of the finest Nova Scotia salmon.

It kept him cool.

Ha!
NOW it’s time for the comedic relief.

Mr. Richert;

If you seriously believe that a flood of Muslim immigrants is going to swamp the United States, and that in short order they shall close the churches, mandate chadors, and institute a child tax, then whatever it is that you’ve been drinking sir - order me a case.

*Could* it happen here? Sure! Anything could happen here. The Hare Krishnas could sweep to power in a sudden coup d’etat, China could give a nuclear weapon to the Ku Klux Klan, Iowa could secede, or we could face invasion from Proxima Centauri. The question is not what is possible, but what is likely. America will indeed be - is being - overrun by non-assimilating immigrants, but the followers of the Prophet are a statistically insignificant number of them, and there is no reason to believe that this will change dramatically any time, well - ever.

This is not 1453. Mehmet the Conqueror is not at the gates. Have a Coke and a smile and feel better.

who cares what the most popular name in england is?  what’s the most popular soda?

At least George has not increased in popularity for boy’s names over the last 7 years, not so sure about Georgina however for the girls.
Appears that Jacob and Emily hold the top positions according to the SSA.

Mr. Richert.

Another excellent post.  And it is frightening indeed. 

I’m afraid that many cannot see the large grey area between the policies of neocons (democratizing the Middle East) and radical leftists/libertarians (it is our duty to let them all immigrate here). 

Everyone,

The growth of Islam among Hispanics is an interesting subject, something which has not been thoroughly researched.  Christian Science Monitor did a couple articles a while back, which mentioned that in the past few years over 200,000 Hispanics in the U.S. have converted to Islam, many of which were AFTER 9/11.  There are also sharp increases in conversions in Brazil, Guyana (which is already 11% Muslim), and elsewhere.

“Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood."” - J Enoch Powell

@Bede:

“The growth of Islam among Hispanics is an interesting subject, something which has not been thoroughly researched.”

Absolutely.  I’ve written about it here and elsewhere, but again, as Nergol’s comment above shows, people have trouble understanding these issues until it’s too late.

Chronicles columnist Roger McGrath says that, as late as the 1980’s, he would discuss immigration with conservative friends outside of California, and they’d laugh.  You see, the massive waves of Hispanics were just a problem for Californians, not the rest of the country.

They’re not laughing now.  But some, like Nergol, now only see Hispanic immigration.  The fact that the fastest-growing group of Muslim converts are recent Hispanic immigrants, and that groups such as CAIR have set up divisions to target Hispanics for conversion, doesn’t phase them.

It should.  CAIR and other Muslim groups are doing their best to make the myth of Andalusia and the myth of Aztlan converge.

@Nergol:

“The question is not what is possible, but what is likely. America will indeed be - is being - overrun by non-assimilating immigrants, but the followers of the Prophet are a statistically insignificant number of them, and there is no reason to believe that this will change dramatically any time, well - ever.”

Did you bother to read the entire post?  Set aside the point that Bede made about Islam gaining adherents among Hispanic immigrants, and simply look at what I wrote.  There’s a reason I mention Powell’s speech and pointed out that the rate of Islamic immigration to Britain at that time was comparable to the rate of Islamic immigration to America today.

People could--and did--say that Powell was wrong; it couldn’t happen there.  Forty years later, it has.

Where will we be 40 years from now?

@Bede:

“There are also sharp increases in conversions in Brazil, Guyana (which is already 11% Muslim), and elsewhere.”

By the way, my column in the February issue of Chronicles continues the story of the eighth-generation German-American who converted to Islam.  (The first two installments were in June and August.)

To give you a sneak peek: One thing that’s revealed is that the local “mainstream” mosque, founded and headed by Nergol’s “statistically insignificant” immigrants, was raising money in the late 90’s and early 00’s to fund Pakistani jihadists in Indian Kashmir, and successfully recruited at least two Caucasian converts to train in Afghanistan to go fight with the KLA.

The imam at the time, who now is at a much larger and more influential mosque in the Chicago suburbs, came from Guyana.

Uh, Guyana isn’t Hispanic.

To make a connection between Hispanics/Mexicans and Guyana proves either a) ignorance; or b) deceit.

Unbelievable.

Also, even if 200,000 Hispanics are Mohammedans (which they aren’t, but we’ll use these made up numbers anyway), that is something like 0.5% of the Hispanic population.

That means 99.5% of Hispanics are NOT Mohammedans.

Compare this to the Blacks.

Something like 30% of Mohammedans in America are Black, meaning there are almost 1 million Negro Mohammedans that aren’t even immigrants!  Talk about SCARY!

Oh, and reality is that there are really only maybe 18,000 Hispanic Mohammedans.  Do the research, you’ll find the proof.  Don’t believe just any hype statistic someone throws out there for propaganda purposes.

Oh, and something no one has mentioned is that England is part of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Do you think THAT might have something to do with Pakistani Mohammedan immigration to England?!

Mr. Richert. The idea Muslim extremists could ever threaten the Americas is an absurdity. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that there is a lawless city in Paraguay with minarets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_del_Este

BTW, Ted Bell’s novel, “Spy,” made mention of this fact (and The Friendship Bridge) but he gave the city another name.

Still. Nothing to worry about. We operate on the multicultural idea of reciprocity. We let Muslims move here in large numbers and build Mosques while not objecting we can’t move into their countries and build Churches.

We are dhimmwits.

Scott,

Yea, McGrath has done some great work on immigration.  And your articles have well documented many trends on Muslim workings in America.

Six months ago I was doing some research on Muslim conversions in Central and South America, and was unable to find very little hard data.  If you come across anything, I’d like to see it.

I know that some whites have converted to Muslim.  But other than a few eccentric whites in entertainment and academia, it doesn’t seem to be a widespread trend.  In fact, I think there are underlying racial issues why whites do not convert.

The AP wrote back in May of this year:  “Al-Zawahri encouraged minorities around the world to join the holy war, or jihad. “Al-Qaida is not merely for the benefit of Muslims,” he said. “That’s why I want blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world.”

http://www.besttoworst.com/v/?id=114621

Richert wrote:  “CAIR and other Muslim groups are doing their best to make the myth of Andalusia and the myth of Aztlan converge.”

I’d like to read more about this.

Andrew Capp,

I know that Guyana isn’t Hispanic.  It’s mostly East Indian.  But it is a common entry point for Muslims, and many have left Guyana to go elsewhere (Brazil, Suriname, Venezuela, Mexico, etc) to convert people. 

The fact that 200,000 Hispanics in the US have recently converted to Islam is nothing to laugh at.  And Islam is growing in Mexico.  Just look at the mosque in Torreón. 

CNN wrote in 2001:

“CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay (CNN)—Deep in the heart of South America, the region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet has some of the most porous borders—and busiest black markets—in the world.
But more than just bootlegging is going on there, according to international intelligence sources.
Sources told CNN they believe the tri-border area is being used as a haven and source of funding for terrorists linked to Iran’s Party of God and to organizations that work closely with Osama bin Laden.
In Ciudad del Este, on the Paraguayan side of the Parana River, the commercial district is a mosaic of businesses owned mostly by Arab merchants. International and regional intelligence sources said those businesses and a mosque in the city serve as a revolving door for Islamic extremists.
Across the river in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, two more mosques are suspected of involvement in terrorist activity.
Argentine intelligence documents obtained by CNN map out what the intelligence sources said are links between the mosques and a laundry list of terror groups.
They include Egypt’s Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya and Lebanese Hezbollah, both identified by the U.S. State Department as terrorist organizations linked to Osama bin Laden, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, linked to Iran’s Imad Mughniyah, who is on the U.S. list of most wanted terrorists.”
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/11/07/inv.terror.south/

Typo.  I meant:  “I know that some whites have converted to Islam.”

@Andrew Capp:

“To make a connection between Hispanics/Mexicans and Guyana proves either a) ignorance; or b) deceit.”

To claim that someone did so, when the text in the comments above clearly indicates otherwise, proves either a) ignorance; or b) deceit. (Bede introduced Guyana in a comment that began with a discussion of Hispanic conversions to Islam, but the sentence in which Guyana is mentioned begins “There are also . . . “ Some of us understand English grammar.)

@Andrew Capp:

“Also, even if 200,000 Hispanics are Mohammedans (which they aren’t, but we’ll use these made up numbers anyway), that is something like 0.5% of the Hispanic population.

That means 99.5% of Hispanics are NOT Mohammedans.”

Brilliant.  You’ve just proved what the situation is today, which I’ve acknowledged in my article.  Now, how about explaining why a) Muslim immigration, which in 2006 was at the highest rate in American history, won’t continue to increase; b) Hispanics, who currently make up the fastest-growing segment of Muslim converts, won’t continue to convert, and at a faster rate than the rest of the population.

Again--there is a reason I mentioned Powell’s speech.  THINK.  If current trends simply continue, in 40 years, my predictions will be closer to reality than yours.  In all likelihood, however, current trends will accelerate--as both rates of Muslim immigration and rates of Hispanic conversion to Islam have since September 11.

@Andrew Capp:

“Something like 30% of Mohammedans in America are Black, meaning there are almost 1 million Negro Mohammedans that aren’t even immigrants!  Talk about SCARY!”

And most of the black converts to Islam today are no longer converting to the Nation of Islam, but to mainstream Islam.  They’re people like Derrick Shareef, who pled guilty a couple weeks ago to plotting to lob grenades in the largest local shopping mall in the Rockford area at the height of the Christmas shopping season last year; or Hassan Abujihaad, Shareef’s former roommate in Phoenix, Arizona, who is accused of passing classified information about the movements of his U.S. Navy battlegroup in the Persian Gulf to a jihadist website in the months leading up to September 11, and will go on trial in New Haven, Connecticut, in March.

Shareef worshiped at the local “mainstream” mosque in Rockford, by the way.  Funny that, in your defense of Islamic immigration and conversion (a strange thing for a Catholic to defend), you’ve remained silent about those things I’ve brought up about the local mosque.

But I guess that it’s easier to ignore evidence that doesn’t fit your worldview.

So, lay it on the line, Andrew: Which camp do you fall into?  Those who think that Islam isn’t a threat because we’ll assimilate them all; those universalists who think that all “conservative” religions are the same; or those who look forward to using Islam to wipe out American decadence?

Based on your earlier comment, Andrew:

“I oppose both the Mohammedans AND the secular-humanisit-Protestant-Yankees that govern America today.  I take neither of their sides, support neither of them and I genuinely wish them ill in their endeavors to destroy the Faith in Iraq and elsewhere.  However, when it comes to killing one another, I wish them luck!”

I’d put you in the third camp: those who look forward to using Islam to wipe out American decadence.  But I’ll give you a chance to categorize yourself.

@Bede:

“Richert wrote:  “CAIR and other Muslim groups are doing their best to make the myth of Andalusia and the myth of Aztlan converge.”

I’d like to read more about this.”

Ask and ye shall receive.  Here’s a short piece that I wrote for the Chicago Daily Observer:http://cdobs.com/our-columns/the-padilla-factor-from-andalusia-to-aztlan/

I was confined to 500 words, so I couldn’t go into a lot of detail, but there’s enough in there to direct you to more extensive sources.

@Bede:

“I know that some whites have converted to Muslim.  But other than a few eccentric whites in entertainment and academia, it doesn’t seem to be a widespread trend.  In fact, I think there are underlying racial issues why whites do not convert.”

That’s certainly true.  And as the story of the German-American convert to Islam that I’ve been telling has unfolded, you can see some of those racial issues coming to the fore.  Muslims are often quite willing to convert Caucasians, but the latter are treated as second-class citizens in their mosques.

They are useful, however, to recruit to fight in Kosovo and Chechnya.

<<Those who think that Islam isn’t a threat because we’ll assimilate them all; those universalists who think that all “conservative” religions are the same; or those who look forward to using Islam to wipe out American decadence?>>

I WISH the Mohammedans could/would “wipe out American decadence”, but as I mentioned, I have no faith in the Mohammedans ability to ANYTHING without the power of the Yankee backing them, eg the civil war in Iraq.The Mohammedans are as likely to “wipe out American decadance” as the Amish.

Also, there just aren’t enough Hispanics, by far the most populous immigrants, converting to Mohammedanism to make that much of a difference.  We’ll come back to this in 40 years and see that America has been “over-run” by Hispanics, most of which remain of the Catholic Faith, but with a sizable number converting to any of the numerous “Evangelical” cults.  Meanwhile, England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, and Australia will become increasingly Mohammedan; namely because of what I mentioned, but no one else has: The Commonwealth of Nations.  It is MUCH easier to move from Pakistan to Canada than from Pakistan to the USofA.  Which brings up ANOTHER point: securing the NORTHERN border.  All anyone ever hears about is the southern border, but that is because people are worried about the brown Mexicans sneaking into America to “take their jobs”, but they are clueless about the Pakistanis in Canada that might be willing to sneak into America and blow stuff up!

@AndyCapp555:

“Also, there just aren’t enough Hispanics, by far the most populous immigrants, converting to Mohammedanism to make that much of a difference. ”

Gee, you’re right!  How could I ever have been so foolish!  Of course, the number of Hispanics who converted to Islam last year will remain constant, as will the percentage of Muslim converts who are recent Hispanic immigrants.  Trend lines mean nothing.

Like, for instance, the fact that, in 2000, the percentage of Muslim converts in the United States who were Hispanic was less than one percent.  By 2004, it was six percent.

I’m glad, though, that you can assure us that that trend will not continue.  And I’m sure you’ve got some explanation for why those good Catholic Hispanic immigrants became a larger portion of converts to Islam three years after September 11.

@AndyCapp555:

“It is MUCH easier to move from Pakistan to Canada than from Pakistan to the USofA.  Which brings up ANOTHER point: securing the NORTHERN border.  All anyone ever hears about is the southern border, but that is because people are worried about the brown Mexicans sneaking into America to “take their jobs”, but they are clueless about the Pakistanis in Canada that might be willing to sneak into America and blow stuff up!”

Unless, of course, one reads Chronicles, attends Rockford Institute conferences, or picks up our new book, Immigration and the American Future.  Then, one would be familiar with the articles, speeches, and book chapter of James Bissett, the former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, who has been warning about our porous northern border in all those places.

Of course, Ambassador Bissett is also concerned about the growth of Islam in Canada and America, so we can immediately discount his testimony.

re converts to Islam. 

Islam feeds off decadent societies, just as Savonarola and Calvin fed off Renaissance decadence.  Get rid of the decadence, and you’ll get rid of conversions to Islam. In the same manner, if Hispanics are becoming Islamic or Evangelical Protestant, then it may be because the Catholic church in the USA has manifested, publicly since 2002, its own decadence and infidelity to Rome. 

For example, a Muslim throws a grenade into a shopping center during the “Christmas” shopping season.  A deplorable reaction to be sure, given the sacrosanctity of human life.  That doesn’t change the fact that “The Winter Holidays “ have become a pagan holiday of mass consumption, and thus is worthy of our contempt.

Better and Islamic Europe and American than a decadent one.  Fortunately, those aren’t the only choices.

@Sid Cundiff:

“In the same manner, if Hispanics are becoming Islamic or Evangelical Protestant, then it may be because the Catholic church in the USA has manifested, publicly since 2002, its own decadence and infidelity to Rome. ”

Amen.  And in discussing Hispanic converts to Islam, as in the Chicago Daily Observer piece I’ve linked to earlier and in another piece on this site, I’ve laid much of the blame straight at the feet of American Catholicism.

“Better and Islamic Europe and American than a decadent one. ”

You’re right: Those aren’t the only choices, thank God.  But saying “Better an Islamic Europe and America . . . “ plays into the despair of those who think that these are the only choices.  We need to keep making it clear that there are other alternatives--and that neither an Islamic America nor a decadent one is acceptable to Christians.

Muhammad is now the single most common name for newborn baby boys inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Not in the Occupied Territories. Inside the pre-1967 borders. So what is AIPAC, or the AEI, or the PNAC fighting for? We should all be fighting for Arabism against Islamism in the circumstnaces as they actually exist.

Muslim emigration to Europe (and to America - watch that space) is being actively encouraged in order to stoke up resentments such as might be used to support repression at home and wars abroad. Islamic states are being created in Europe (in Bosnia, and putatively in Kosovo) to that same end.

A new and compliant working class is being imported here. The English-speaking working class (black and white) is being increasingly oppressed by means of state multilingualism.

And ill feeling is being engendered by the import of goods from Asia, and thus by the export of jobs thereto, i.e., to countries where workers’ rights are often minimal or non-existent.

Likewise, Hispanic emigration to the United States is being actively encouraged in order to stoke up resentments such as might be used to support repression at home and wars abroad (beginning in Venezuela, but certainly not ending there). Hispanic statelets are starting to emerge in the US to that same end.

A new and compliant working class is being imported there. The English-speaking working class (black and white) is being increasingly oppressed by means of state bilingualism.

And ill feeling is being engendered by the import of goods both from Latin America (most lately by means of the extension of the NAFTA arrangements to Peru) and from Asia, and thus by the export of jobs thereto, i.e., to countries where workers’ rights are often minimal or non-existent.

http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com

Mr. Richert;

You don’t suppose the fact that there are many more Latino immigrants in the United States than there are Muslims might have something to do with the fact that the United States has a largely unsecured 1500-mile long border with the Latino world, do you?

It does not have such a border with the Muslim world.

How, then, are the Sultan’s hordes going to get here? I have full faith in the ability of the United States Navy to protect us both from conventional invasion via the high seas and from flotillas of Arabic-speaking boat people. The only way they’re getting here is invited, and that will simply never happen. There’s the obvious reason, of course, but the real reason is that they’re not needed. The cheap unskilled labor force that in much of Western Europe is provided by Muslims is, in the United States, provided by Latinos. Again, this is because in Europe, a large supply of Muslims who will work for cheap wages is closeby and easily accessible, whilst a large supply of Latinos who will work for cheap wages is not. Vice versa in America.

Thus there is no more motive, means, or opportunity for a large-scale wave of Muslim immigration into the United States than there is for a large-scale wave of Latino immigration into Europe.

So don’t get yourself worked up - in fifty years it will still be impossible to get a decent burrito in Paris, and there will still not be a Muslim fifth column of any significant size in the United States.

P.S. Mr. Richert;

To answer for myself the question you posed to Mr. Capp -

My answer is neither that I expect the fires of Islam to purify American secular hedonism nor that I equate Islam with, say, the Catholic thought of Chesterton or Lewis.

But if America, with its toxic culture which has infected the world, its irreligiousness, its Trotskyism, its imperialism, and its self-righteousness, all of which has brought it into conflict with the Islamic world, wants my help or sympathy, it can expect from me only the sentiment Orwell captured so eloquently:

“Wistful glances were sent in the direction of Foxwood. If Pilkington and his men would help them, the day might yet be won. But at this moment the four pigeons, who had been sent out on the day before, returned, one of them bearing a scrap of paper from Pilkington. On it was pencilled the words: “Serves you right.”

All we need is Islam to clean up our act, yeah, that’s the ticket. Then what do we do with them? Oh yeah, convert or become second class. Anyone who thinks that we can use Islam to cleanse our souls, so to speak, is a fool.

@Nergol:

“The only way they’re getting here is invited, and that will simply never happen.”

It’s happening now.  Or did you miss the part about how Islamic immigration to the United States in 2006 was higher than ever in U.S. history?

“There’s the obvious reason, of course, but the real reason is that they’re not needed. The cheap unskilled labor force that in much of Western Europe is provided by Muslims is, in the United States, provided by Latinos.”

Right.  Which is why the Muslims who lead the mosque in Rockford are doctors and engineers and educators.  And yet, they raised money for the Pakistani jihad in Indian Kashmir, recruited converts to fight in Kosovo, and declared, in an interview with me, that they want to see sharia imposed in the United States.

Tell me--who is likely to be more dangerous?  Unskilled Muslim immigrants, or skilled ones?  When the latter subscribe to the same ideology as the former, my money is on the latter.

Mr. Richert

First let the US get out of the military entanglements with all the Muslim countries and populations around the world. It is just not the middle east as you well know. We are entangling ourselves with just about every Muslim place I could think of all around the world.

Then we can argue about what happens in 40 years.  I frankly don’t care what happens to the current Orweillian England. The “problem” you allude to is manageable as far as the US goes, but with the current foreign policy of the war party consisting of both the donkeys and the elephants, we are headed into the abyss.

@Ravi Kuppusamy:

“First let the US get out of the military entanglements with all the Muslim countries and populations around the world. It is just not the middle east as you well know. We are entangling ourselves with just about every Muslim place I could think of all around the world.”

Look, we agree (as I’m sure you know) on the need to end U.S. military adventurism, not only in Muslim countries, but everywhere.  But every person I’ve ever met who says, “We have to do that first” rather than “Let’s do both now” does not want to reduce or eliminate Muslim immigration.

Reducing Islamic immigration does not depend on ending American interventionism first.  Let’s do both now.

@Ravi Kuppusamy:

“Then we can argue about what happens in 40 years.”

If we do both now, we don’t have to argue about what will happen in 40 years.

It appears one of the more repellent qualities of cultural Marxism, that being of course, its loathing of the West has mutated and put down roots among the putatively conservative readers of several blogs such as this.  They variously deny that there is a Western people, that they are guided by a particular religion or they disparage their folkways.  Some even seem to delight in hearing bad and worse news.  How can these so-called conservatives look on with anything like equanimity regarding the cultural, demographic and intellectual devastation of their people? To think that being displaced by others of whatever description is anything other than a chastisement to be avoided by reform is madness. I’m not going to get into a pissing match with PC enforcers about who we are and what we are, the stakes are plain to see. Suffice it to say I’d rather gouge out my eyes than see a mosque in my hometown or order a “decent burrito” in Paris.

Scott,

Great op-ed.  Thanks for sharing it.

Everyone should read:

http://cdobs.com/our-columns/the-padilla-factor-from-andalusia-to-aztlan/

Andrew,

If you trade Third World immigrants for those who have occupied the West since the beginning of recorded history, and replace Christianity, the religion of the West for 1,500 years, with Islam, then we shall no longer have the “West.” It will be something else entirely.  It’s as David Hume once said:  If you replace each board on a ship, even one by one, eventually you will have a different ship.

test

Yeah, I couldn’t post here earlier today…

Anyway, I had all kinds of links proving that the vast majority of Hispanic converts are Puerto Rican and Cuban females.  Also, the major Mohammedan centers in Mexico are run by an Englishman convert to Mohammedanism, a Scottish convert to Mohammedanism, and a Spanish convert to Mohammedanism.

So, if you want to keep Hispanic Mohammedans out of America, start deporting female Hispanics of the Caribbean.  Don’t believe there’s any chance of Mohammedanism growing among the mestizos of the Americas.

It’s happening now.  Or did you miss the part about how Islamic immigration to the United States in 2006 was higher than ever in U.S. history?

Yes, apparently it went from statistically insignificant to statistically insignificant plus a small increase. Sorry, I still don’t think it’s time to start mixing the Greek Fire.

And yet, they raised money for the Pakistani jihad in Indian Kashmir, recruited converts to fight in Kosovo

And my answer is a big fat “So what?”. Am I an Indian? Or a Serb? Does supporting one side or another in a faraway war between one foreign nation and another make one a disloyal American? Need I remind you of the many thousands of Irish-Americans who raised money and provided other support for the IRA during the last forty years? And certainly, the UK is a far closer and more important ally than India or Serbia. Shall we start raiding the pubs of South Boston

I sent five dollars of my allowance money when I was 13 to an organization that bought arms for the Afghani mujahedeen to use against the Soviet Army - am I to make your list of potential traitors?

and declared, in an interview with me, that they want to see sharia imposed in the United States.

And I want to impose a ban on abortion on the United States - a position influenced largely by my Christian faith. What, effectively, is the difference? Did your interviewees state that they wished to achieve that goal by armed revolution? If not, then the have as much right to work for any social change they want as any other citizen. If so, they are fools, as they are an insignificant percentage of the population, a situation which I see no basis for believing will change - you’ll see the Eskimos overthrow the U.S. government and impose their culture on the citizenry by law before you’ll see the Muslims do so.

Tell me--who is likely to be more dangerous?  Unskilled Muslim immigrants, or skilled ones?

Where do I even begin with this?

First, how many of each are we talking about? given the choice between facing ten thousand angry peasants who wanted to kill me or one angry tax attorney who wished to kill me, I’d take my chances with the latter.

How many Muslims are there in America as compared to how many Latinos?

Next, what is your evidence of simmering treason amongst America’s Muslims? If you have some, why have you not informed the FBI? If you have none, then is this just a case of “I bet them no-good Muslims is up to no good!” ?

If, sir, I was to say exactly the same thing, but substituted the name of some other group (use your imagination) for the word “Muslims”, how would you react to me?

And with no hard evidence of this simmering treason, how is this not just another scare like a thousand we’ve seen before - the waving of yet another boogeyman in our faces? The red menace, the yellow peril, Reefer Madness, the wild Indians that wanted to scalp every white man west of Galway, the Japanese-Americans of California, teenagers who dressed like James Dean, “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” - all of these were going to bring our country to it’s knees and deliver us all to our enemies, and none of them did.

Please leave the hysterical scaremongering to the likes of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck - it doesn’t suit you.

If you trade Third World immigrants for those who have occupied the West since the beginning of recorded history, and replace Christianity, the religion of the West for 1,500 years, with Islam, then we shall no longer have the “West.” It will be something else entirely.  It’s as David Hume once said:  If you replace each board on a ship, even one by one, eventually you will have a different ship.

And if you replace it instead with atheism, materialism, hedonism, and cultural Marxism?

Sorry, but the S.S. Western Civilization took a fatal (and self-inflicted) torpedo hit in 1914. It is no longer the ship on which you or I sail. So if the Muslims sink the S.S. Cultural Marxism - so what? Why should I care? A war between atheism and Islam reminds me of Henry Kissinger’s quip about the Iran-Iraq War: “What a shame they can’t both lose”.

@Nergol:

“Next, what is your evidence of simmering treason amongst America’s Muslims? If you have some, why have you not informed the FBI? If you have none, then is this just a case of “I bet them no-good Muslims is up to no good!” ?”

Have you bothered to read the pieces I’ve written for this site and Chronicles and elsewhere?  Do you think that there’s no connection between the local mosque supporting jihadists elsewhere and a man worshiping at that mosque attempting to launch what he called “violent jihad” on the largest shopping mall in the area?

Or no connection between his views and the views of his roommate, on trial for passing classified information to a jihadist website?

Or between the views of the roommate and the jihadist website, which sold graphic videotapes of Chechen Muslims decapitating Russian soldiers?

You’re right.  It’s all hysterical scare-mongering.  And when the next Muslim shoots up a mall or community center or airport in your town, and someone you know gets caught in the crossfire, and the media tells you it has nothing to do with the fact that he is a Muslim, you keep on believing them.

@Nergol:

“A war between atheism and Islam reminds me of Henry Kissinger’s quip about the Iran-Iraq War: “What a shame they can’t both lose”.”

They can both lose--if Christians such as yourself start taking them both seriously.  But as long as you look forward to playing one off the other, they’ll win, and we’ll lose.

Oh, and regarding the FBI, who do you think arrested Derrick Shareef?  And how do you think they found him?  The confidential source who established the case against Shareef was working for the FBI in the mosque.

Couldn’t possibly be that they were there because they sensed a threat.  Everybody knows that the FBI spends all their time and resources tracking good, upright citizens.

@Nergol:

“Need I remind you of the many thousands of Irish-Americans who raised money and provided other support for the IRA during the last forty years? And certainly, the UK is a far closer and more important ally than India or Serbia. Shall we start raiding the pubs of South Boston”

If, as you mentioned, you sent $5 of allowance money at age 13 to the Afghani mujahideen, then you must be my contemporary.  If so, don’t you remember, in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, the various arrests of IRA supporters in the U.S.?  I just googled around to find some of them, and this page from PBS.org has a nice list: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/inside/weapons.html

Mr. Richert;

But as long as you look forward to playing one off the other, they’ll win, and we’ll lose.

Actually, playing one enemy off the other is a fantastically winning strategy with a sterling track record in world history. Why you would put it down is beyond me.

Have you bothered to read the pieces I’ve written for this site and Chronicles and elsewhere?  Do you think that there’s no connection between the local mosque supporting jihadists elsewhere and a man worshiping at that mosque attempting to launch what he called “violent jihad” on the largest shopping mall in the area?

Yes, and I’m also aware that on the Fifth of November, a Catholic radical tried to blow up King James. That does not mean that all Catholics are responsible for that, nor that oppressing Catholics or proscribing Catholicism was a justified response.

A few radical pro-lifers shoot abortion doctors. Shall we proscribe opposition to abortion as a font of terrorism? Who went to the same church as Eric Rudolph? Shall we close their church? Drag them all in for questioning? What if a few of them also donated to the IRA in the 80s? Shall we suspect a papist plot to overthrow the American and British governments?

We keep dancing around the issue of bigotry here, so let me be plain. I don’t know you, and I don’t know what’s in your heart. But as a Catholic whose maternal grandfather’s last name was Bernstein, let me say that when someone comes before me trying to get me worked up about the mortal threat posed to the nation by a tiny minority, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding and untroublesome, pointing out only the failed plottings of a couple of disaffected losers, internal alarms go off. I simply can’t think of a time that that line of thinking has led any nation anyplace good.

Please, for your own sake, reread everything you’ve said, and substitute the words “Jew”, “Catholic”, or “nigger” for the word “Muslim”. You’ll find that all these things have been said by someone else before, virtually verbatim, and you’ll realize how they sound.

@Nergol:

Wonderful.  You can’t argue with the evidence, so you turn p.c.  It’s astounding how often the commenters on this conservative website turn out to be to the left of the New Republic.

@Nergol:

“Yes, and I’m also aware that on the Fifth of November, a Catholic radical tried to blow up King James. That does not mean that all Catholics are responsible for that, nor that oppressing Catholics or proscribing Catholicism was a justified response.”

Of course not.  But Guy Fawkes wasn’t being encouraged by Catholic priests to blow up Parliament, either.  The same can’t be said of Muslim clerics who recruit people to fight jihad.

And, by the way, a reasonable response to the Gunpowder Plot would have been to prevent any other Catholics from entering England.  It’s amazing how, whenever one mentions any kind of restriction on immigration, people go nuts and start talking about “bigotry.”

Tell me: Who should a nation put first when formulating its immigration policy?  Its citizens, or those who want to immigrate?

Or, to put it another way, if someone knocks on your door and you refuse to let him into your house, does that make you a bigot?

<<Or, to put it another way, if someone knocks on your door and you refuse to let him into your house, does that make you a bigot?>>

Not letting them into your neighbor’s house makes you meddlesome.

Do “we” own the country?  Do “we” have the right to decide to whom a person sells or rents property?

If your answer is YES, then consider yourself a communist.

@AndyCapp555:

“Do ‘we’ own the country?  Do ‘we’ have the right to decide to whom a person sells or rents property?”

So you’re in favor of completely open borders, and you deny that the federal government has the authority to impose, much less enforce, any immigration policy?

Because, see, I’m a little confused.  Earlier, you wrote:

“Best way to keep the Mohammedans out of America?

I’m all for that! ”

So I guess you consider yourself a communist?

With so much fear, bigotry and hatred being spewed out here it may be useful to remind ourselves how the original christians who worship in Bethlehem in the Church of The Nativity relate to all those muslims:

It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity for centuries. In fact, the Qur’an - the holy book of Islam - refers often, and with great reverence, to Jesus and Mary. Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain within the Ka’ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all over the world. [5]

Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognise Jesus as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However, Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ’s divinity. Muslims believe that there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the Trinity ­ a major tenet of Christianity ­ compromises that singular divinity of God.

It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of Christianity[7], and indeed today, St John would probably be more comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian Zionism.

So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from ignorance. In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha. As one young Bethlehem tour guide commented in 2002:

“We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together. We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation. The same week that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a 17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers. We’re all inmates together, Muslims and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine. We have no freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no travelling to Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future.”

And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace and justice: the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians ­ Christians and Muslims.

Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there. Nor are they likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister’s hallelujah will just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith, unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really do something to stop Israel’s crimes against both Christians and Muslims in Palestine.

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See http://www.womenforpalestine.com
Pl see counterpunch for full article about what the Chritian Zionists have done to the hapless christians and muslims of Bthlehem.

<<DON’T LET THEM IN!>>

I was referring to people actively not allowing Mohammedans by refusing them entry, ie blocking their crossing of the border.

You see, we need privately owned borders, not publicly owned, as we have them now.  While the borders are publicly owned, they are controlled by the government, which means, essentially, not controlled at all.  If someone is on your property, I don’t believe you have the right to kill them outright, but you do have the right to send them around your property, after adequately caring for their humanitarian needs, if they have them, of course, such as drinking water, medical attention, etc.

I believe in government by a distinct landlord, even a group of people formed in a kind of “corporation”, as opposed to government by elected officials with no real “ownership” of land, nor control over it, which allows for open highways that one can not argue to be “shut down” without legitimizing the government that controls them.

One Question:

How come muslims are multiplying much faster than the rest of us?
The are obviously having a lot more sex than we are.
I think i’m ready to convert right now.

Mr. Richert;

Facts? What facts? That a few disaffected losers within a community that is largely law-abiding and productive came up with bad plots that went nowhere and hurt nobody? Sir, in the six years that have passed since 9/11, about 100,000 Americans have been murdered in this country - and not one by a Muslim terrorist. I’m sorry - the idea that we’re all about to be killed by the Muslim hiding under the bed is baseless hysteria. There’s too much of that going around in the world, and I’m not buying into yours, either.

Yes, I am sure that there are a few Muslims who would like to blow something up for Jihad. There are also a few black men who dream of nothing more fondly than the rape of white women. There are a few Jews who are money-grubbers who take pleasure in cheating the goyim. There are a few Mexicans who are lazy, Poles who are stupid, blondes who are bimbos, and gays who want to molest little boys. Such people should be despised. 

But they should be despised individually. Collective judgement is a product of bigotry and collective punishment is a tool of tyranny. If the belief that Christian morals and just civil law require that we should judge each man individually based on his own actions makes me a PC liberal pinko commie who probably wears lacy underpants, then I suppose I’m guilty.

But in all honesty, this:

“And when the next Muslim shoots up a mall or community center or airport in your town, and someone you know gets caught in the crossfire, and the media tells you it has nothing to do with the fact that he is a Muslim, you keep on believing them.”

is little more than “If you let the niggers start moving onto your street, you’ll have no one but yourself to blame when your daughter ends up getting raped” plus fifty years.

As for immigration policy, I am completely in favor of a nation’s right to set immigration limitations and policies that benefit it. But have we learned nothing from the Chinese Exclusion Act? Excluding all Muslims because a handful of them may take a plodding, incompetent stab at political violence is little different than excluding all Italians because a small percentage may join the Mafia. And the argument that we should have just so excluded Italians was made in the early part of the last century - an argument that now we see as silly, bigoted, and hysterical.

Mr. Richert, when gun control nuts come and tell me that we have to ban guns because some nutcase shot up his school or a mall or a church, I tell them as cold-heartedly as I can that a Columbine every now and again is the price we pay for the securities and freedoms that the right to keep and bear arms guarantees us. Just as an airplane crash every now and again is the price we pay for not having to spend a week in a Conestoga Wagon every time we want to visit Aunt Bessie in Omaha, or making pictures of naked women marginally more accessible to teenage boys than it was to me in the pre-internet world of 1983 is the price we pay for the ability of you and I to have this discussion.

If some Muslim nutjob shooting a few people at an airport counter somewhere is the price we have to pay for not pushing this country a big chunk further down the road of being a bunch of bigoted hysterical ninnies who are terrified of their own shadow and the boogeyman under the bed, then frankly I accept that. The desire to Nerf the world, the endless obsession for security over freedom, over justice, over principle, and over right - is what Fred Reed rightly called “the seldom recognized totalitarianism of the female”. That sir, is effeminate liberal weenieism at its worst.

@Nergol:

“As for immigration policy, I am completely in favor of a nation’s right to set immigration limitations and policies that benefit it. But have we learned nothing from the Chinese Exclusion Act? Excluding all Muslims because a handful of them may take a plodding, incompetent stab at political violence is little different than excluding all Italians because a small percentage may join the Mafia. And the argument that we should have just so excluded Italians was made in the early part of the last century - an argument that now we see as silly, bigoted, and hysterical.”

Once again, you don’t make an argument, but fall back on p.c. accusations.  Answer the question plainly: If someone knocks on your door and you refuse to let him in your house, are you a bigot?  If not, why is a restrictive immigration policy bigotry?

“Have we learned nothing . . . “ “An argument we now see as silly, bigoted, and hysterical . . . “ And you accuse me of “effeminate liberal weenieism”?

I’m sorry that some folks might not have liked your grandmother.  My maternal great-grandparents were Polish Catholic immigrants who came to this country at a time when they weren’t particularly welcome, either.  But unlike you, I don’t whine about it, and I don’t think so highly of myself that I would delude myself into thinking that immigration policy should be set based on the experience of my ancestors.

@Nergol:

“Sir, in the six years that have passed since 9/11, about 100,000 Americans have been murdered in this country - and not one by a Muslim terrorist.”

You claimed above that you’ve read the pieces I’ve written for this site and Chronicles.  If so, you’d know that your statement is a lie.

@Nergol:

“a bunch of bigoted hysterical ninnies who are terrified of their own shadow and the boogeyman under the bed”

Tell me: Have you ever spent eight hours at a mosque and Muslim school, interviewing people who, five months after September 11, professed admiration for Osama bin Laden?  I have.  And then I wrote about it.  And then I was threatened with a lawsuit, and I didn’t back down.  And then they dropped it, because they knew that everything I wrote was what they told me, or what I observed.

Does that sound like I’m terrified of my own shadow or the bogeyman under the bed?

There’s someone in this conversation who’s terrified of a bogeyman, but that bogeyman is bigotry.  Wake up; get over yourself and your hang-ups about how your family may or may not have been mistreated in the past.  Grow up; become a man.

@Nergol:

“The desire to Nerf the world, the endless obsession for security over freedom, over justice, over principle, and over right”

I’ve written extensively against the PATRIOT Act and restrictions on the freedom of American citizens.  There is a reason I support Ron Paul in the presidential race, you know.

But look at what you wrote.  Security over whose freedom?  In this context, we’re talking about the freedom of people who want to come to this country, and the security of people who are already here.  Why do you prefer the former over the latter?

Security over justice?  Why does justice demand that we have to allow everyone into this country?

Security over principle?  What principle?  Your effeminate liberal weenieist principle of “non-bigotry”?

Security over right?  I assume you mean “over what is right,” but again, why do you assume that what is right is to elevate the rights of people who want to immigrate to this country over the security of citizens who are already here?

Quit mouthing liberal platitudes, and start reading what you write with a critical eye.

Over the past six-and-a-half years, I’ve come to realize one very important thing: I infinitely prefer the straightforwardness and open disdain of the Muslims I interviewed to the effeminate liberal weenieness of those self-identified Christians who scream “bigotry!” whenever you mention restricting Muslim immigration.

I may disagree with Dr. Siddiqui and Magdy Kandil and Atteya Elnoory; but they, at least, are real men.  They don’t want to restrict Muslim immigration to the United States (obviously), but they certainly understand why I want to.  And if they situation were reversed, we’d still understand each other.

They know the stakes.  Nergol and AndyCapp555 and others who comment on this site do not.

@Nergol:

One final thing:

“If some Muslim nutjob shooting a few people at an airport counter somewhere is the price we have to pay for not pushing this country a big chunk further down the road of being a bunch of bigoted hysterical ninnies who are terrified of their own shadow and the boogeyman under the bed, then frankly I accept that.”

What, exactly, happened to your grandmother?  What kind of bigotry did she experience that was so horrifying that you are willing to say that it would be better for people to die violent deaths than for other people to experience bigotry?

Here it is again:

I don’t believe the government has any right limiting immigration because:

the government of the USofA has no right to even EXIST!

Once I agree that the government has the right to tell me who and who I can not allow to rent or buy property, I then have no argument against ANYTHING the government does.

I don’t trust government, I don’t believe it can accomplish great things with great power, like you do Mr Richert.  That is where we disagree.

Scott with all due respect, the reason Mohammed is so popular is because there are millions of muslims in Briton.My Christian name is John, which was the most popular name in this country for most of it’s history.Now most kids have weird names of movie stars or obscure names. I named all my kids after saints.Even most Christians use Old Testament names today, not John Mary and James.So baring a revival of the Church which I pray for every day we are going to have to put up with all these different non Christian sects.They built a big hindu temple 2 miles away from my house. the Hindus are pouring into the neighborhood.I don’t see much control on immigration unless Ron Paul is elected.He is the only viable candidate with a workable plan to restrict immigration.All the democrats and Romney,McCain,Frudy,Huck and Thompson will do nothing.
I have been arguing with the a couple of Muslims on the Allah thread and they are now here.I can see why Ferdinand and Isabella kicked out both the Jews and Muslims.I don’t like what Israel or Islam is doing to this country. The only answer is honest discussion and spreading the good news of the Gospel.There are Muslims converting to Christianity everyday all over the world or many are abandoning there faith for the secular life, just like Christians.Most hispanic converts to Islam,a very small number, are those with muslim men in their lives.

I very much agree with Nergol that I don’t have a dog in the fight between Moslems and modernist secularists.  I’d like to keep Moslems out of the country just to be on the safe side, but I’d like even more to keep out liberals.  The former won’t be done and the latter can’t be done without expelling most of the populations.  In the end, immigration “reform” will mostly keep out Catholics, which it is mostly intended to do.  Anti-immigrant sentiment in the US has always been anti-Catholic.  The Mexicans and other Latinos will be stopped by the border fence while jihadists will continue to fly in on visas issued by tourist agencies if they come from Saudi Arabia or without the need for any visas at all if they come from Europe.

@Jack:

“Scott with all due respect, the reason Mohammed is so popular is because there are millions of muslims in Briton.”

That is, after all, my point, which is why I brought up Powell’s speech and rolled the clock back 40 years, to a time when there weren’t millions of Muslims in Britain.  What will the next 40 years bring us?  Without a change in immigration policy, we know this: The Muslim population in the U.S. will increase at a greater rate than the general population, because the Muslim birthrate, even in the U.S., is higher than that of the general population.

“The only answer is honest discussion and spreading the good news of the Gospel.”

Amen.  That was one of the lessons I took away from my visit to the mosque in February 2002.  We need to pray for the conversion of Muslims, and we need to engage them in dialogue, as I explained in my article (published here) on Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/pope_benedict_xvi_and_islam_allah_the_irrational/

As I ended that piece:

“What [Pope Benedict] did not say, but which he clearly knows, is that, if our Muslim interlocutors do embrace this reason and reject their own voluntaristic conception of Allah, the dialogue not only can start but will be well under way: because, to return to the early paragraphs of Benedict’s speech, that reason is the Logos, and the Logos is with God, and the Logos is God.  Entered into with the intention of seeking the truth, this dialogue ends only in conversion to Christ, the eternal Logos, the unity of Reason and Word.”

Combine prayer and dialogue with a reasonable immigration policy, and we’ve got a plan.

@Scott:

Maybe your next project should be to interview the christians who worship in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and ask them how many muslim terrorists they have encountered in the last 1400 years. I fear for this country’s future where its intellectuals lack insight, integrity, are amoral, lack intellect. I have not seen one christian sentiment here from all the “christians” bloviating here, including you.

@Al:

“I have not seen one christian sentiment here from all the “christians” bloviating here, including you.”

A Merry Christmas to you too, Al.  Now why don’t you go read the piece that I linked in the comment just before yours, and tell me why it, too, is un-Christian.

@Al:

“Maybe your next project should be to interview the christians who worship in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and ask them how many muslim terrorists they have encountered in the last 1400 years.”

You display an astounding ignorance of the toll that Islam took on the Holy Land in the centuries after it was invented by Muhammad.  The fact that the few remaining Christians in Bethlehem today (the Holy Father has recently expressed his fear that, in a few years, there will be no more) live more or less in peace with their Muslim neighbors, while both suffer persecution from the Israeli government, does not really tell us much about the clash between Islam and Christianity in the Holy Land, especially in the first half-millennium after the creation of Islam.

@Kirt Higdon:

“The Mexicans and other Latinos will be stopped by the border fence while jihadists will continue to fly in on visas issued by tourist agencies if they come from Saudi Arabia or without the need for any visas at all if they come from Europe.”

Yes--especially if people who understand the need to restrict Islamic immigration (as you do) simply throw up their hands (as you just did) and say “it won’t be done.”

Despair gets us nowhere.  One remarkable difference between the Islamic school we visited in 2002 and many of the conservative Christian (even traditionalist Catholic) schools I’m familiar with is the complete absence of despair.  The Muslim students, parents, and school board know what they want, and they’ve structured their education to get it.

As the students sang to us: “Give me ya-Allah, give me iman and victory / Give me ya-Allah, give me strength to set us free / as we struggle on your path, mujahideen.”

Scott:
The Holy father is right, you keep up the holocaust in Palestine, and the Barbarism in Iraq you are looking at a dark future.
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!
Start by attoning like King Henry of England for your crimes against humanity that have gone on far too long.
By the way has it occured to you that you cannot convert the converted. The muslims already believe in Jesus and Christianity and have elevated Jesus and The Blessed Mary to a far higher status than You “christians”
I duispute any of you is christian just as the zionists are not jews.
So thank you we muslims won’t be converted to your heresies.
God forgive them they know not what they do!

@Al:

“So thank you we muslims won’t be converted to your heresies.”

Ah.  Well, I appreciate you coming clean about your adherence to Islam.  I’ll keep you, in a special way, in my prayers for the conversion of Muslims.

SO CLOSE TO THE POPE AND THE “CHURCH” AND SO FAR FROM GOD!

POOR “CHRISTIANS”

TAKE HEED!

Iran-Sanctities-Rafsanjani
Experts Assembly Head Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani here Friday called on the world Christians and the Christian leaders not to allow certain groups to insult Islam and its holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Addressing the Eid-ul-Adha congregational prayers, Ayatollah Rafsanjani deplored desecration of Islamic sanctities in the West and said the sacrilegious practices are contrary to the spirit of divine religions.

“No Muslim would tolerate insult to Prophet Jesus (AS); So, one should not allow desecration of the divine religions,” he added.

He said Muslims, based on Quranic injunctions, do not make any distinction among the divine prophets.

“I call on all the Christians, especially Christian ulema, to take commonalities of the divine religions into consideration,” he urged.

He said Holy Quran has invited the divine religions to cooperate with Muslims on commonalities.

He insisted that commonalities of followers of divine religions are much more than their difference.

1420**1664

Mr. Richert,

Looks like most people, even conservatives argue like liberals these days. Facts? Only bigots need facts! Give me some emotion.  Why you dirty scare monger. Don’t you have any facts? Those statistics are meaningless...Just keep on moving the goal posts kids. 

Anyway good work on a tough, thankless and needed task.

Mr. Richert;

Once again, you don’t make an argument, but fall back on p.c. accusations.  Answer the question plainly: If someone knocks on your door and you refuse to let him in your house, are you a bigot?  If not, why is a restrictive immigration policy bigotry?”

I don’t know quite how I could have made things any plainer, but I’ll try.

Yes, you have a right to refuse entry to anyone you like (or don’t like, actually) into your house, and a nation has the right to set any immigration policy it likes.

But this argument dodges something I’d learned by, well, by the time I was sneaking peeks at those non-digital naked women back in 1983: That having the right to do something does not necessarily make it the right thing to do.

You do, for example, have the right to not allow black people into your house because you simply don’t like black people. No one is disputing that you have that right, and anyone who wishes to deny that right to you is a tyrant. But that said, if you do make that decision based on that criterion, you are a bigot and a fool and someone not to be taken seriously.

I am not disputing that the United States has the right to set any immigration policy it likes, including a Muslim Exclusion Act. I’m disputing wether that would be an unreasonable, hysterical, bigoted, stupid, and weenieesque thing to do.

“You claimed above that you’ve read the pieces I’ve written for this site and Chronicles.  If so, you’d know that your statement is a lie.”

Come on, Mr. Richert. As Dr. Phil might say - get real. I don’t live in fear of Muslim terrorism in America because there is essentially no Muslim terrorism in America to be afraid of. More people have died in the last six years in America because of accidents involving toilet seats than have died by the hand of Islamic terrorism. But if I wanted a law passed banning toilets (a measure that is actually *more* reasonable and representative of a *more* legitimate fear than your proposal, because again, more people died in this country because of toilet seats last year than because of Islamic terrorism), I would, I’m pretty sure, be scoffed at by most. You, Mr. Richert, can poop out in the woods out of mortal terror of the hazards of toilet seats. I prefer to remain indoors, in comfort, and brave them.

Tell me: Have you ever spent eight hours at a mosque and Muslim school, interviewing people who, five months after September 11, professed admiration for Osama bin Laden?

I’m not disputing that you did see that. But I can spend eight hours in the ghetto and hear admiration professed for gang members and cop killers. Does this make the majority of black people dangerous to whites? I can go to a yeshiva in Flatbush and hear endless complaints about the iniquities of the goyim. Does this make the majority of Jews haters of Christians? So some loudmouths in a mosque made blew some hot air at you. Is this cause to bring back the Alien and Sedition Acts?

“But look at what you wrote.  Security over whose freedom?  In this context, we’re talking about the freedom of people who want to come to this country, and the security of people who are already here.  Why do you prefer the former over the latter?”

Having lived in Japan for a while, I found Japan’s immigration policies (while personally aggravating) to be completely sensible. The Japanese like Japan to be Japan, want it to stay Japan, and see little reason to significantly alter the character of Japan in order to please denizens of third-world countries who would like somewhere nicer to live. If the United States were to adopt Japan’s immigration policies for itself, I would be in full support of it.

But that, of course, is not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about proscribing one and only one particular group out of fear. Considering that we seem to have always regretted that whenever we’ve done it before (the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese Internment), should we not stop and take a moment to decide wether we really want to do something that we’ve always regretted before yet another time?

How many times do we have to see how badly collective judgement and collective punishment end up going, and how much everyone involved regrets them later, before we decide that it’s a bad idea in general?

“What, exactly, happened to your grandmother?  What kind of bigotry did she experience that was so horrifying that you are willing to say that it would be better for people to die violent deaths than for other people to experience bigotry?”

Again, back to the gun control debate. I accept that my right to keep and bear arms means that some people (and potentially even I) will die violent deaths because someone somewhere will have a gun who shouldn’t have one. I accept that my right to not have my house searched on the whim of any passing police officer who has a bad feeling about me means that some people (and potentially even I) will die violent deaths because somewhere, a policeman is right about someone he suspects to be the next BTK.

There are all kinds of things we could do to make the world safe