In this article about Islam, about which libraries have been written, I will make or allude to these main points:
– In the Koran, more fundamental than the pervasive call to violence against non-believers is the pervasive call for coercion; and more fundamental than the pervasive call for coercion is the pervasive call for submission of mind and body, of thought and action. Islam is total submission of an individual’s reasoning mind in favor of militant mysticism.
– Every individual who considers himself a Muslim is morally guilty of sanctioning the evil fundamental to Islam.
– Contemporary Western Judeo-Christian culture has subordinated Christian mysticism to Aristotelian reason and the Western Enlightenment. Contemporary Islamic mysticism has been fueled further by Western post-Kantian subjectivism and nihilism.
– That Islamic doctrine demands coercion, and that a large proportion of Muslims puts this demand into practice, is enough evidence to consider every single Muslim a credible threat to freedom and to human life. For any individual Muslim, the onus of proof is on him to prove otherwise in his case. I do not see how this burden of proof can be met.
– More fundamental than immigration policy is war policy. America should be waging a declared war against Islamic states and other predominantly Muslim states that are waging war against us. These states include Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and ISIL. Our goal should be total conquest followed by colonization; permanent confiscation of energy assets, financial assets, and valuable lands; and permanent settlement of these lands by Americans and other civilized Westerners.
– It follows from rational war policy that no Muslims from these enemy states—that is, no individuals with implicit loyalty to America’s enemies—should be allowed in America to roam freely.
– For any individual seeking entry to America from a predominantly Muslim country, the onus of proof is on him to prove that his own ideology is something contrary to Islam and consistent with the ideology of America.
– The submission demanded by Islam is contrary to the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America. This contradiction is not merely grounds to deny immigration and other forms of entry to America, but also should constitute Grounds for Denaturalization.
– – –
Two weeks ago, I wrote about an article in the Southern Utah University student newspaper SUU News by SUU Provost Bradley J. Cook entitled “We must be an open-minded campus.” In his article, Provost Cook dismissed concerns about any security risk caused by SUU students from the Middle East, cautioned the community not to be bigots against Muslims, reported past instances of Arab students having been assaulted, and called for compassion toward our international students “in this time of a tragedy.” I pointed out that 160 of 161 SUU students from the Middle East in 2014 were from Saudi Arabia in particular, financed by the Saudi monarchy. I then wrote about the evil of that monarchy and its threat to America.
Now I will address the evil of Islam more generally, and recommend what Americans should do about this broader evil.
In his article in SUU News, Provost Cook wrote,
Islam is a diverse religion of over a billion people with vast differences of opinion depending on where you are in the world. Islam is not a monolithic religion. There are some extremists within it, for sure, but we have to be very careful not to paint the entire religion as a terrorist culture.
Contrast Provost Cook’s statement about “extremists” with this famous statement by Barry Goldwater, former U.S. Senator from Arizona, upon accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1964:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
If only Goldwater had won that election!
That an extreme adherence to a particular ideology is evil is a clear confirmation that the ideology itself is evil. But let us examine further this evil—sometimes ‘extreme’, sometimes ‘moderate’—known as Islam.
Of course, as Provost Cook states, there will be diversity of opinion across a billion people across the globe. Nevertheless, it is the task of scholarship to identify the essential elements of an ideology, by studying the ideology’s foundational documents along with the thoughts and actions of the ideology’s leaders. Cook has done that kind of work in his own scholarly writing. In the article, “Democracy and Islam: Promises and Perils for the Arab Spring Protests,” Cook and co-author Michael Stathis write (Cook and Stathis 2012, 177),
Unlike other religious approaches, Islam does not compartmentalize religious and temporal matters, or faith and practice, but provides an all-encompassing ordering for individuals and society and attempts a cohesive integration of all aspects of life. The term Islam in Arabic means a complete surrendering or submission to the sovereign will of God and is suggestive of Islam’s organic, atypical approach to life. The active participle of the word asalama is Muslim, meaning “one who submits.”
That Islam does indeed entail “a complete surrendering or submission to the sovereign will of God”—or else—is evident from the following opening verses of the English translation of the Koran approved by the Saudi government, as in any credible translation:
1. Surah Al-Fatihah
1. In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
2. All the praises and thanks be to Allah, the Lord of the ‘Alamin (mankind, jinns and all that exists).
3. The Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
4. The Only Owner (and the Only Ruling Judge) of the Day of Recompense (i.e. the Day of Resurrection)
5. You (Alone) we worship, and You (Alone) we ask for help (for each and everything).
6. Guide us to the Straight Way
7. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)….
2. Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow)
1. Alif-Lam-Mim. [These letters are one of the miracles of the Qur’an and none but Allah (Alone) knows their meanings].
2. This is the Book (the Qur’an), whereof there is no doubt, a guidance to those who are Al-Muttaqun [the pious and righteous persons who fear Allah much (abstain from all kinds of sins and evil deeds which He has forbidden) and love Allah much (perform all kinds of good deeds which He has ordained)].
3. Who believe in the Ghaib and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat), and spend out of what we have provided for them [i.e. give Zakat , spend on themselves, their parents, their children, their wives, etc., and also give charity to the poor and also in Allah’s Cause – Jihad, etc.].
4. And who believe in (the Qur’an and the Sunnah) which has been sent down (revealed) to you (Muhammad Peace be upon him ) and in [the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel), etc.] which were sent down before you and they believe with certainty in the Hereafter. (Resurrection, recompense of their good and bad deeds, Paradise and Hell, etc.).
5. They are on (true) guidance from their Lord, and they are the successful.
6. Verily, those who disbelieve, it is the same to them whether you (O Muhammad Peace be upon him ) warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe.
7. Allah has set a seal on their hearts and on their hearings, (i.e. they are closed from accepting Allah’s Guidance), and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be a great torment.
Note this wording in Verse 2.7 above: “a seal on … their hearings”; “on their eyes there is a covering.” That is, the senses do not provide non-believers with evidence for belief in ‘Allah’, but the non-believers nevertheless will suffer “great torment” for their non-belief. Islam demands belief without evidence, in defiance of reason, and punishes those who do not accept this blind belief. The same conclusion regarding this verse applies to all seven of these leading English translations.
More such verses, demanding complete, blind, unreasoning submission in thought and action, go on and on ad nauseam, infusing the entire Koran and all of the ‘holy’ books of Islam. Just turn to any page of the Koran and see for yourself. Here are two more samples from the Koran:
4.65. But no, by your Lord, they can have no Faith, until they make you (O Muhammad) judge in all disputes between them, and find in themselves no resistance against your decisions, and accept (them) with full submission.
33.36. It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed in a plain error.
The passage I quoted earlier from Cook and Stathis 2012 identifies another important aspect of Islamic submission: “Islam does not compartmentalize religious and temporal matters, or faith and practice, but provides an all-encompassing ordering for individuals and society.” That is, Islam dictates not only what one must believe, but also what one must do, and also what a whole society must do. That is, Islam is a matter of unreasoning belief, of unwavering action, and of political law. That is, Islam is a body of law to be imposed by force on an entire society. This body of law is known as ‘sharia’.
Islam’s demand for unthinking submission integrated with the demand to force others to do the same is evident in these verses in the Koran:
2.23. And if you (Arab pagans, Jews, and Christians) are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down (i.e. the Qur’an) to Our slave (Muhammad Peace be upon him ), then produce a Surah (chapter) of the like thereof and call your witnesses (supporters and helpers) besides Allah, if you are truthful. 2.24. But if you do it not, and you can never do it, then fear the Fire (Hell) whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.
2.216. Jihad (holy fighting in Allah’s Cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know.
Former U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney identifies the all-encompassing nature of Islam when he writes, in No Apology: The Case for American Greatness (Romney 2010, 65),
while Western nations take care to separate church from state, for the Islamists, religion and government are to be one. The founding fathers of Islam proclaimed that “Islam is a religion and a state.” Rather than limiting itself to prescribing only spiritual laws, fundamentalist Islam seeks to dominate and control every aspect of society, from economic policies to social interactions, and from individual daily habits to the functioning of government. Thus, Islamists would replace secular systems of justice with sharia.
Of course, the Koran is also filled with violent passages such as the “whose fuel is men and stones” above, and this one:
[8.12] … I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
The Web site TheReligionOfPeace.com identifies “109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.” The site also documents more than 27,000 Islamic deadly terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, and notes that the list is far from complete. The BBC tracked jihadist attacks for one month, December 2014, and documented more than 5,000 deaths—seven per hour.
But more fundamental than Islam’s call to violence, as Muhammad himself practiced, is Islam’s demand to use force. That is, there is no need to cut off someone’s head if the person can instead be forced to submit his mind and his body to Islam. As Romney (2010, 64) writes,
While most Islamists do not condone the tactics of the violent jihadists, they share the same vision for the course of the Islamic world. Every non-Muslim state is to be removed from any land that was once under Muslim control— including part of Western Europe, all of northern Africa, and the Persian and Arab lands of the Middle East. Within those lands, they seek to eliminate all governments and national boundaries in order to unify them under a religious caliphate. And ultimately, they subscribe to an Islamic quest to conquer the entire world. All violent jihadists are Islamists, but not all Islamists are terrorist jihadists.
So the call to force is more fundamental than the call to violence. But even more fundamental is Islam’s call to the individual to submit his mind—to renounce the evidence of his own senses, to renounce his own reasoning mind, and instead to follow blindly the life-numbing rules in a bunch of books created by and about a murderous tyrant (Muhammad) who claimed to speak for God.
A devout Muslim intellectual agrees with the characterization of Islam by Cook and Stathis 2012 when he writes to Americans as follows:
What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them – peace be upon them all.
It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.
The above passage is from Osama bin Laden’s “letter to America” [link updated 11/17/2023] published in English in November, 2002. Observe all the ‘peaceful’ phrases: “peace be upon him”; “peace be upon them all”; “sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety”; “kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights”; “enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart”; “total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.” All of these phrases are worse than empty when understood in the context of the following phrases: “complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down”; “unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah”; “Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s Word and religion reign Supreme.”
It is the demand for submission that causes the coercion and the violence.
For just an inkling of the kind of “best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety” that bin Laden refers to, consider this passage from Robert Spencer’s 2007 book, A Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t (pp. 186–187; URLs added by me):
Child marriage accords with the example of the prophet Muhammad: “The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).” [Bukhari, vol. 7, book 67, no. 5134.] The Qur’an takes child marriage for granted in its directives about divorce. When speaking about the waiting period required in order to determine if the woman is pregnant, it says: “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated ” (65:4, emphasis added). In other words, Allah is here envisioning a scenario in which a prepubescent girl is not only married, but is also being divorced by her husband.
Imitating the prophet of Islam, many Muslims even in modern times have taken child brides. In some places this even has the blessing of the law: article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful, “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”
In a 1960 lecture entitled “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” Ayn Rand said,
I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind— a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later.
Aristotle rightly thought of man as the rational animal. Islam entails the surrender of rationality in favor of total, blind belief in the absurd. Islam is an abdication of the joy and the responsibility of being human. As such, Islam is pure evil.
If a Muslim were the only human being alive in the world—that is, if there were no one else alive for the Muslim to murder or enslave—the Muslim would still be evil, for wasting his own human life.
Romney writes (2010, 64),
Radical, fundamentalist Muslims—Islamists—are estimated by Indonesia’s former president to number about 200 million people. Some believe that this is a very low estimate—that Islamists may be a “substantial minority” of the Muslim population.
Given that there are roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, the “very low estimate” of 200 million Islamists would imply that one out of eight Muslims wants to conquer America and force all Americans to become Muslim—or die.
But why is the proportion one out of eight, or one out of four, instead of 100%. The reason has several parts.
First, many if not most individuals hold inconsistent ideas. At the time of America’s founding, many Americans advocated both freedom and slavery. Though such inconsistencies are common, they are unstable and bound to come to a head, in the mind of each inconsistent individual and in the society of such individuals. In America, freedom eventually won out, for the most part, but at the cost of the freedom of slaves for four score and seven years, and at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives lost in civil war.
Similarly, many Muslims are not consistent Muslims. Such Muslims often are called ‘moderate Muslims’, but a more accurate term would be ‘inconsistent Muslims’. They pick and choose certain aspects of Islam to believe in, but reject other aspects—often the more overtly violent and tyrannical aspects. But such Muslims are unstable: we do not know what they will do—nor, in most cases, do they themselves know—when the contradiction between Islam and Western civilization comes to a head in their own life, requiring them to make a choice between submission and subjugation on one hand, and reason and freedom on the other. For instance, if an inconsistent Muslim man’s own daughter chooses to marry a Christian and become a Christian herself, will the inconsistent Muslim man choose to kill his own daughter as Islam demands? Or if there is a political struggle within America over whether to adopt sharia law, or if all-out war breaks out between the United States and Iran, Syria and/or Saudi Arabia, which side will the inconsistent Muslim take?
The United States of America is the most individualistic nation, the greatest defender of individual rights, in history. At the core of American individualism is the conviction that the individual reasoning mind is efficacious, that an individual’s reasoning mind is his basic means of survival and flourishing, and that therefore a man must be free to use his reasoning mind and act accordingly. That is, America is the one nation in history that is most opposite to the submission, in mind and body, demanded by Islam. Moreover, America is the starkest empirical proof that reason and individual rights—the exact opposite of the submission demanded by Islam—is the cause of human prosperity. America is the starkest empirical proof that the mentality demanded by Islam is evil. Therefore, America is the reproach to Islam that Islamists are most desperate to destroy.
Islam is an ideology, not an ethnicity such as being Japanese or German. A man born in Japan could have been completely loyal to the United States during World War II. But a man committed even partially to submission to Islam is to that very extent opposed in principle to the philosophy underlying America. Likewise, a man committed even partially to submission of his own reasoning mind is to that very extent sympathetic to the philosophy of America’s mortal enemies.
Inconsistent Muslims of course are not the only inconsistent people in America these days. Most of our leaders advocate an inconsistent mixture, to varying degrees, of capitalism and socialism—that is, of individual rights and submission of the individual to the collective. This mixture too is unstable, and America has been drifting for the past century toward more socialism, with the approval of most of American academia. Consider this passage from Cook and Stathis (2012, 180):
Scandinavian countries have successfully coupled liberal democracy with socialist principles to create what is perhaps even a more compassionate democracy than exists in the USA.
It is to be expected, given its advocacy for socialism, that much of American academia would now be sympathetic toward Islam. Socialism, like Islam, demands the submission of the individual’s mind and body to the direction of others. Socialists have blinded themselves to the evil of Islam, having committed themselves to the same fundamental evil.
The thesis of Cook and Stathis 2012 is that it is possible for some form of democracy and some form of Islam to be compatible within one political state. Though not for the reasons offered by Cook and Stathis, I too think that Islam and democracy can be compatible. Democracy, properly understood, demands the submission of the individual’s mind and body to the rule of the majority.
A more fundamental question is whether Islam is compatible with reason and individual rights. Based on what I have written above, the answer is no. At best, Islam combined with reason and individual rights would be a contradictory, unstable mixture.
In a personal journal published posthumously, Ayn Rand writes (p. 351),
Principles are much more consistent than men. A basic principle, once accepted, has a way of working itself out to its logical conclusion—even against the will and to the great surprise of those who accepted it. Just accept the idea that there are no inalienable individual rights—and firing squads, executions without trial, and a Gestapo or a G.P.U. will follow automatically—no matter who holds the power, no matter how noble and benevolent his intentions.
Accepting Islam ultimately crowds out reason, resulting in rule by an Osama bin Laden.
For one illustration of the contrast between rational, rights-respecting America and an Islamic state, consider this excerpt of a letter dated March 28, 1786 and signed by both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as diplomats reporting on their meeting with the Ambassador of Tripoli:
“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.
The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet ; that it was written in their Koran ; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners ; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners ; and that every Mussulman [that is, Muslim] who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Another aspect of the reason why self-styled Muslims often differ from one another in their beliefs and actions is that the Koran itself, along with other Islamic holy books, is obtuse and wildly contradictory. Contradictions are so rampant that the Koran contains a doctrine to handle them: ‘abrogation’. Whatever Muhammad said later in time supercedes what came earlier. Apparently, Allah kept changing his mind about morality.
It turns out that the more coercive and violent passages came later than—and therefore abrogate—the more civilized ones, but there is a more fundamental point to make. Muslims are willing to renounce their own reasoning, instead taking orders regarding matters of life and death from a book written by a deluded murderer and child rapist, even when it is obvious that the book itself is full of contradictions.
Consider the absurdity and evil of intellectuals defending the Koran and other Islamic texts on the basis that not all passages call for killing non-believers. That is, not only does the Koran call for murder, but it also calls for acceptance of contradiction; Islam is a religion of murder but also of peace.
Imagine a guy giving a speech. Imagine that half of the things he says are that everyone should respect everyone else’s rights. Imagine that the other half is for his worshippers to kill everyone who does not worship him as the prophet from God. Does the rights-respecting half mitigate the evil of the speech? Of course not. The rights-respecting half merely highlights the irrationality of the speaker, showing that he speaks contradictions.
Suppose some people claim that the murderous parts are taken out of context. But suppose you heard the whole speech, and heard that the murderous parts really did call to commit murder. Suppose also that the guy himself has committed many murders. That guy is Muhammad, and his speech is the Koran.
Imagine a National Socialist saying that Mein Kampf does not call for dictatorship, that Nazi Germany was a perversion of National Socialism, based on the presence of some innocuous and civilized passages in Mein Kampf.
Of course, these arguments all are ludicrous.
There is another important aspect to the reason why self-styled Muslims differ from one another in their beliefs and actions. Recall this statement by Cook quoted earlier: “Islam is a diverse religion … with vast differences of opinion depending on where you are in the world.” That is, the contradictory interpretations of the contradictory Islamic texts seem to follow some kind of geographic pattern. This pattern occurs because many if not most Muslims, being submitters, do not try to figure out the meaning of the Koran themselves. Being submitters, they submit to the interpretations by others who happen to be around them: their parent, their imam, their state leader, or whomever. Indeed, the contradictions in the Koran and other Islamic texts amplify the need for rank-and-file Muslims to follow the interpretation and the orders of some master.
To help in grasping the evil of Islam, imagine committing to follow blindly, for the next day, the instructions handed down by another person selected at random—no matter what those instructions were, and no matter whom those instructions might demand that you kill. Imagine the terror you would feel, the night before, over what evil you might commit the next day. Then imagine that the person selected to instruct you was someone who claimed to speak for God, someone who had killed many people himself, someone who had killed men and women who think for themselves and had spared only those who do not think for themselves. Try to imagine the unimaginable: the guilt, shame, and self-loathing you would experience for having made such an evil commitment.
A Muslim reaffirms that commitment every day of his life, five times a day.
A Muslim is someone who has replaced his moral compass with a roulette wheel. He points to a random person for instructions, and then points his gun or knife at someone else according to those instructions.
In The Ominous Parallels : The End of Freedom in America, Leonard Peikoff writes (pp. 45–46),
The aspiring dictator may not be able to identify in philosophic terms the clash between reason and his particular schemes. But he, too, is aware of it. In some (usually unverbalized) form, he knows that he cannot demand unthinking obedience from men, or gain their consent to the permanent rule of brutality, until he has first persuaded his future subjects to ditch their brains and their independent, self-assertive judgment. He knows that he can succeed only with a populace conditioned to seek neither evidence nor argument, a populace which, having shrugged aside the demands of logic, will agree with, and then endure, anything. Hence the spectacle of statists, of every variety and throughout history, both before and during their period in power, systematically attacking the mind. In some terms, these men have grasped that their political goals cannot be achieved until the proper epistemological base is established.
Hitler grasped it, too.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes (p. 924),
only the blind faith of the masses or the intuitive insight of the intellectually superior layers of leadership can be counted on.
In 1933, seventeen million Germans voted for Adolf Hitler. By that time, very few of these National Socialists had killed a Jew or anyone else. But in the ensuing dozen years, these National Socialists murdered millions of innocent civilians. Had the Nazis won the war, they would have murdered many times that number.
When the order came to kill, most Nazis followed the order, because they had already resolved to submit their mind and body to the Fuhrer.
A so-called “moderate Muslim” is an amiable Muslim—in the words of bin Laden, with “the best of manners,” “showing kindness to others”—who has not yet received the order to kill.
Apologists for Islam might argue that Christianity and Judaism also demand blind faith. Well, the period when Christianity ruled the West is aptly known as the Dark Ages. Fortunately, through the pro-reason philosophy of Aristotle rediscovered by Thomas Aquinas and incorporated into Christianity, the West had a Renaissance, an Age of Reason, and an Enlightenment, during which time religion became subordinate to reason. The West now separates church and state. Christians who still take literal Christian doctrine—instead of reason—as their fundamental guide to living are aptly called fundamentalist kooks and are often extremely dangerous. The Islamic world, in contrast, is still in its Dark Ages except to the extent that some Muslims have adopted—inconsistently—some Western Enlightenment values. Islamic states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are run by dark-age tyrants armed with modern weapons bought by oil assets robbed from Western industrialists.
Ironically, the writing of Aristotle, which caused the Renaissance, was available to the Arab world, which ultimately rejected this gift. The work of Aristotle caused the brief flourishing of the Arab world a millennium ago, while Europe was still in the Christian Dark Ages. But in the conflict between Aristotle and Islam in the Arab world, Islam prevailed, and the Islamic world has been in a dark age ever since.
Another irony is that the Judeo-Christian element of the West is today the most rational element that has significant influence. While Christians in Christian schools and universities still study Aristotelian logic and Enlightenment thinkers, ‘secular’ schools and universities have embraced post-modern subjectivism, denying the efficacy of human reason. (For an excellent historical account and philosophical analysis of post-modernism in American universities, see “On the Decline and Fall of the Liberal Arts,” by C. Bradley Thompson.)
And it is this post-modern aspect of the West that Muslims in the West are now absorbing from the West. Muslims in America attend secular schools and universities. As I wrote recently, more than 125,000 Saudi students financed by the Saudi government are currently attending American universities. These students are being taught by professors steeped in Kant, Hegel, and Marx to Foucault rather than Aristotle, Bacon, and Locke. Muslims in American universities also witness post-modern entertainment, ‘arts’, and sexual habits. These Muslims have learned all the post-modern condemnations of the Enlightenment West, and have witnessed—as well as experienced—all the post-modern Western depravities. The post-modernists have taught Muslims how to hate the traditional, Enlightenment West, and shown them why to despise the contemporary, post-modern West.
Immanuel Kant, the most influential philosopher in contemporary academia and the father of post-modernism, famously wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason (p. 29),
I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.
How ironic that the faith that Kant has made room for is Islam.
The post-modern, anti-Enlightenment lingo is evident in bin Laden’s “letter to America”:
You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. [Bin Laden was a feminist.]
…
You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries. [Bin Laden was an environmentalist.]
…
Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. [Bin Laden was a socialist.]
…
That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan … . [Bin Laden was a multiculturalist.]
…
The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only … . [To bin Laden, “Black Lives Matter.”]
What contemporary college student—Muslim or otherwise—who accepts what most professors are teaching, would not side with bin Laden against America?
But bin Laden also turns the tables on the post-modernists, showing that he hates them just as much as he hates the Westerners of the Enlightenment:
You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs … .
…
You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.
…
You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly.
If Islam ever takes over Europe and America, it will be the post-modernists—the avant-garde, the sexually promiscuous, the drug users—who get slaughtered most ceremoniously. Nevertheless, the post-modernists side with the Islamists. Ideology trumps common sense. Post-modernist subjectivists and Islamic mystics share a hatred for reason.
What Westerners of the Enlightenment know—and what post-modernists evade—is that Western societies prospered through one method and one method only: the practice of the virtue of reason. The most rational societies are the ones that prospered most. More rational—and therefore more free—England was more productive than, and defeated, less rational Spain. America’s more rational—and therefore more free—North was more productive than, and defeated, the less rational and less free South in America’s Civil War.
But when an ideology denies the efficacy of human reason, as do Islam and post-modernism, then prosperity is inexplicable. The false explanation that the reason-deniers embrace is plunder instead of production, vice instead of virtue. Hence the alliance of Islam and post-modernism in its special hatred of the Western Enlightenment’s greatest, most prosperous product: America.
In short, contemporary Christianity is the Bible mixed with Aristotle via Aquinas. Contemporary Islam is the Koran fueled by post-modern nihilism via contemporary Western universities. Although the Western philosophy of Aristotle made Christianity much better than it had been, the Western ‘philosophy’ of postmodernism is making Islam even more deadly than it had been.
In his letter to America, bin Laden also wrote,
We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands.
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Do not interfere in our politics and method of education.
Islamic societies, such as bin Laden’s, are tribes of men suffering from self-imposed intellectual impotence who want to remain ‘free’ to beat their wives and rape children, and who object when Western society “interferes” to stop these practices.
But bin Laden revealed what he really wanted when he wrote, as I quoted earlier, “What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you? (1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.”
Although he complained of America invading the Middle East, what Osama bin Laden really wanted was for America, along with every part of the world, to become an Islamic state. That is, he wanted Muslim men to become ‘free’ to beat any woman and rape any child anywhere in the world.
Osama bin Laden is dead, but his philosophy is the philosophy of Islamic states such as Islamic State, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. And even in America, according to a well known Pew poll in 2007, only 58% of Muslims said they had a very unfavorable view of al Qaeda.
Muslims will enter the civilized world when they come to think as Jefferson did when writing these famous words:
Fix reason firmly in her seat and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Muslims who come to think as Jefferson did will no longer be Muslim. They will no longer be those who submit. Any self-described Muslim who thinks today as Jefferson did is sacrificing his own human decency and sanctioning evil by calling himself a Muslim. To such an individual I say this: Face the facts—all of them. Consider not merely that you may like some habits of etiquette or diet specified by Islam, or that you may like the sound of the words of the Koran recited in Arabic, or that you like the feeling when praying, or that you like giving to the poor. Read the Koran objectively and ask yourself whether you fundamentally are one who submits and renounces your own independent judgment, not to mention one who renounces your own judgment in favor of a book filled with murderous ravings. Ask yourself whether you are a Muslim, or a human being with your own mind.
America cannot afford to wait for Muslims to have their Renaissance and Enlightenment while in the interim seeking nuclear weapons and also immigrating to America and killing people around them, possibly killing all of us by teaming with fellow American-haters on the post-modern, political Left. We must deal with the facts as they are now.
For many years, as well as recently, I have argued for war, conquest, and colonization of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria—at least. Such a war policy must precede any rational immigration policy. (For a good summary of acts of war committed by Iran and Saudi Arabia against America, see “The Jihad Against America and How to End It” by Craig Biddle. For my own account of the evil of these regimes, and what to do about it, see my articles, “Why and How to Conquer the Savages,” “The Age of Invisible Virtue,” “The Saudi Threat to Cedar City and All of America,” and my posts about Iran.)
A proper war policy would also go a long way toward solving the problem of enemy sleeper agents already in America, because many such agents would become discouraged and abandon their evil cause; also, their funding would dry up. But proper war policy would not make the immigration problem go away. The FBI reported last month that it currently is investigating 900 cases of ISIS activity within the U.S., not to mention the cases of other subversive groups, and not to mention the activity we don’t know about. Not all of these enemies will give up without a fight. Moreover, if we conquered the enemy states, many enemy agents and sympathizers from these states would try to flee to America.
In a recent post, I argued that it is suicidal to allow into America individuals from enemy countries whose ideology is consistent with these enemy countries. Such a policy is like admitting German National Socialists into America during World War II. I wrote,
The Islamic plan to take over an enemy country by immigration is so basic to Islam that there is an Islamic word for it: hijrah. The story of the Trojan Horse as the means by which an epochal war was won—and lost—is an archetype of warfare and of history. Muslim immigration to Europe and America is a herd of transparent Trojan Horses become a stampede. We must not evade the clear meaning of what our eyes and ears are showing us and what our enemy is boasting of openly.
It took only eight Muslims to kill more than a hundred citizens in Paris. It took only two Muslims to murder fourteen Americans in San Bernardino, and to injure gravely many more. What will happen when Iran or ISIL or some other influential Muslim leaders call on the hordes of Muslim order-followers in Europe and America to emerge from their Trojan Horses—their mosques, their jihadi training camps, their home basements, garages, and bedrooms—and kill non-Muslims? A million Europeans will be slaughtered in one day. Tens of thousands of Americans will be slaughtered in one day. Every day that America fails to fight to conquer the Islamic states, instead admitting more Muslims into America, we are adding to that future death toll.
In 2013, regarding immigration, I wrote,
Any non-criminal, non-disease-carrying individual should be free to enter the United States and work just like any American citizen.
On this point, I was wrong, as I explained briefly yesterday in my post, “Why I Oppose Open Immigration, on Principle.” Here, I present my thoughts on Muslim immigration in particular.
American statesmen from past centuries were wiser than I had been on this matter. The U.S. has a long history of “ideological exclusion” of prospective immigrants and those seeking non-immigrant visas. The 2005 article, “Keeping Extremists Out: The History of Ideological Exclusion and the Need for Its Revival” by James R. Edwards Jr., is well worth reading in its 15,000-word entirety (despite the unfortunate use of the term ‘Extremists’, which is not essential to the article’s reporting or thesis). Here is the abstract:
America has often faced the threat of foreigners promoting radical ideologies, including Jacobinism, anarchism, communism, fascism, and now Islamism. It is an unavoidable consequence of mass immigration. The higher the level of immigration, the more likely it is that individuals espousing hatred and violence toward America will gain entry. But whatever the level of immigration, excluding or removing noncitizens from the United States based on their promotion of such beliefs (“ideological exclusion”) can help to protect the country. Historically such efforts have played this role, especially during the 20th century. With the end of the Cold War, Congress effectively repealed ideological exclusion, meaning that only active terrorists on watch lists could be barred, while those promoting the ideologies of such terrorists would have to be admitted. To end this vulnerability, ideological exclusion should be restored, allowing aliens to be excluded or deported not only for overt acts but also for radical affiliations or advocacy. Such grounds for exclusion and removal should be based on characteristics common to the many varieties of extremism, rather than target a specific ideology.
This article describes numerous past instances of ideological exclusion, including these:
The Alien Enemies Act [of 1798] built upon the president’s war powers, authorizing him to apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove alien enemies residing in the United States during times of hostility with their native country.
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[A] 1903 law provided for exclusion and deportation of alien anarchists — those foreigners who believe in or “advocate the overthrow by force of violence of the Government of the United States or of all governments or of all forms of law, or the assassination of public officials.”
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[Bernadette] Maguire writes [in Immigration: Public Legislation and Private Bills, p. 143] that World War I led to… legislation prohibiting the entry of anarchists, subversives and others dangerous to national security [being] recodified. Further attention was also given to prohibiting the entry of those engaged in sabotage, or those engaged in writing, publishing, and otherwise advocating proscribed activities. Also excluded were aliens who were members of associations involved in the circulation of such material.
… A 1940 law barred foreigners who had belonged to a subversive organization in the past, as well as requiring aliens in the United States to register and be fingerprinted.
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As it had been invoked in previous wars, the Alien Enemies Act served as the basis for designating German, Japanese, and Italian nationals as enemy aliens, along with prudential controls during World War II … . … The 1940 Alien Registration Act resulted in nearly five million foreign nationals registering with the government during World War II.
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[T]he 1950 Internal Security Act … forbade the entry of persons likely to perform subversive activities in the United States. The codified security exclusions named such activities as sabotage, espionage, and public disorder. New categories of exclusion included membership in the Communist Party or its affiliates.
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The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, or the Immigration and Nationality Act, … emphasized immigrant character (barring criminals, communists, frauds, and other undesirables) … . … Regarding an alien’s ideology, three grounds related to security and politics. Section 212(a)(27) kept out aliens who would participate in activities that would be prejudicial to the public interest or public safety. Section 212(a)(28) excluded aliens who belong to subversive organizations or teach or advocate prohibited views. Section 212(a)(29) barred aliens deemed likely to engage in subversive activities once here. This non-controversial subsection kept out aliens expected to engage in espionage, sabotage, public disorder, or activity that risks national security or use of force or violence to overthrow the U.S. government.
The article also quotes James Madison, at the Constitutional Convention, stating that he
wished to maintain the [American] character . . . [by admitting] foreigners of merit and republican principles.
But the article also provides much evidence for this statement:
In short, the 1990 Immigration Act for the most part gutted ideological exclusion.
In my judgment, there are at least three important facts that together establish every foreign Muslim as a credible threat to the life and liberty of Americans:
1. An objective reading of the Koran and other books of Islamic doctrine establishes that Islam calls for unquestioning loyalty to a coercive and violent cause—which demands allegiance to a body of law, sharia—that is contrary to the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America, which begins as follows:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; …
2. Foreign enemy governments that are loyal to Islam are directing Muslims, outside and within the U.S., to act in accordance with the Koran against America, and many Muslims are following these directions.
3. Many Muslims have already committed coercive and violent acts that have killed many Americans, and many more Muslims are known to be planning and/or supporting more such acts, including the entire overthrown of the U.S. government in favor of Islamic (sharia) law.
I am not a military, security, intelligence, or immigration expert; but I do not have to be in order to be qualified to judge this matter. All such government experts in America are directed ultimately by civilians. Any reasonable civilian can see that the three points I have just enumerated combine to make any Muslim a credible threat to Americans. If an expert wants to make the case that some Muslims under certain conditions are safe to admit into the country, fine: let us see his argument. In light of the three points above, the onus of proof is on him.
Though I am open to such an argument, I do not see how one can succeed. A Muslim does not trust his own mind. Therefore, neither should we. Therefore, Congress should enact legislation to resurrect and strengthen, more than ever, some of the ideological exclusions that were “gutted” by the 1990 Immigration Act.
A similar onus of proof pertains to ascertaining whether a particular alien is in fact a Muslim, that is, whether he is loyal to Islam. Any individual coming from a predominantly Muslim country or territory, especially a hostile country or territory such as Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Somalia, should be considered potentially Muslim and therefore should be barred unless he can prove that his ideology is contrary to Islam. Perhaps intelligence experts can create a reliable test, as Glenn Beck claimed his experts did in vetting Christians seeking refuge from Iraq and Syria; again, the onus of proof is on such experts to convince us civilians that such a test is indeed reliable.
We do not owe immigration or American citizenship, or even non-immigrant entry, to any non-American. We do owe the securing of individual rights to individuals who already are American citizens. Imagine admitting an immigrant who had a one in eight chance of carrying a deadly disease. Imagine admitting millions of such people. Admitting willful enemies is worse. Admitting Muslims into America is almost as suicidal as Islam itself.
The same policy should apply to Muslims who are already in America on immigrant visas or non-immigrant visas, or who are here illegally. In my judgment, we should deport each of these individuals, unless such an individual can prove that he deserves an exception.
There is even more we can do. Consider these “Grounds for Denaturalization” and subsequent deportation of previously naturalized U.S. citizens:
1. Falsification or Concealment of Relevant Facts: You must be absolutely truthful when filling out paperwork and answering interview questions related to the naturalization application process. Even if the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) fails to recognize any lies or omissions at first, the agency may file a denaturalization action against you after citizenship has been granted. Examples include failure to disclose criminal activities or lying about one’s real name or identity.
2. Refusal to Testify Before Congress: You may not refuse to testify before a U.S. congressional committee whose job it is to investigate your alleged involvement in subversive acts, such as those intended to harm U.S. officials or overthrow the U.S. government. This requirement to testify in order to maintain citizenship status expires after 10 years.
3. Membership in Subversive Groups: Your citizenship may be revoked if the U.S. government can prove that you joined a subversive organization within five years of becoming a naturalized citizen. Membership in such organizations is considered a violation of the oath of U.S. allegiance. Examples include the Nazi Party and Al Qaeda.
In accordance with these grounds for denaturalization, many Muslims who have been naturalized within the past five years, or even ten years, could be denaturalized and deported.
Moreover, any U.S. citizen who is a member of an organization that violates rights and/or acts under orders of a foreign enemy is subject to criminal prosecution. After her testimony before the House Un-American Activities (HUAC) Committee in 1947, Ayn Rand writes in her journal (pp. 381–382),
The whole conception of civil rights (of free speech, free assembly, free political organization) applies to and belongs in the realm of ideas—that is, a realm which precludes the use of physical violence. These rights are based on and pertain to the peaceful activity of spreading or preaching ideas, of dealing with men by intellectual persuasion. Therefore, one cannot invoke these rights to protect an organization such as the Communist Party, which not merely preaches, but actually engages in acts of violence, murder, sabotage, and spying in the interests of a foreign government. This takes the Communist Party out of the realm of civil law and puts it into the realm of criminal law. And the fact that Communists are directed and financed by a foreign power puts them into the realm of treason and military law.
The Thomas Committee [J. Parnell Thomas was the chairman of HUAC] was inquiring, not into a question of opinion, but into a question of fact, the fact being membership in the Communist Party.
The Thomas Committee did not ask anyone whether he believed in Communism, but asked only whether he had joined the Communist Party. Membership in the Communist Party does not consist merely of sharing the ideas of that Party. That Party is a formal, closed, and secret organization. Joining it involves more than a matter of ideas. It involves an agreement to take orders to commit actions—criminal and treasonable actions.
Note that Ayn Rand in the above passage is writing about U.S. citizens, not aliens seeking entry into the U.S.
Once the U.S. government declares that Iran and Saudi Arabia are enemy states, then any citizen who remains connected with organizations—such as mosques and educational groups—that are directed by Iran or Saudi Arabia is committing treason. Congress should resurrect a HUAC Committee to investigate such treasonous activity. Of course, we should also shut down such organizations. Instead of suppressing such investigations and forcing our military, intelligence, and law enforcement to submit to Islam in every conceivable way, as our current President has done—see “Can America Survive Obama’s Pro-Muslim Bias?” by Paul Sperry, and this review by Edward Cline of the book Catastrophic Failure, by Stephen Coughlin—we must make such investigations an urgent priority. The citizens we should investigate include Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Valerie Jarrett, former President Clinton, and the former Presidents Bush.
Finally, we should repeal all laws that forbid private discrimination. I would not let a Muslim into my home, and I also have the right not to hire or sell to a Muslim. Above all, individuals and businesses have a right not to hire Muslims to interact with children.
With so many fanatical, blood-thirsty enemy agents already in America, it is probably too late to avoid massive American casualties from our Islamic enemies. But the policy of waging all-out, declared war and permanent conquest of our enemies in their own territory, combined with the policy of repelling and expelling enemy agents at and within our borders, will limit our casualties as much as possible. More importantly, this policy is the only way for America to win this war and survive.