It is wrong to say that Muslims have simply "replaced"
communists as the main threat to the West; they are but two faces of the same
menace, of the closed society and the closed mind. The totalitarian nature of
Islam, akin to Communism and Nazism, makes the threat different in degree to that
faced during the Cold War, but not in kind. It demands a similar response. Perhaps
only one in a hundred communists living in the West was an active Soviet spy;
maybe not one in a hundred Muslim immigrants is an active Bin Laden asset. Nevertheless,
managing the communist risk 50 years ago entailed denying entry visas (let alone
permanent residences, college training, or passports!) to self-avowed Party members.
Doing the same now, with Bin Laden's potential recruits, is the key to any meaningful
anti-terrorist strategy. It is time to pay attention to the fact well known
to INS officials: that all too often the attitudes of Muslims who want to live
in the United States change rapidly once their status in America is secure. When
applying for admission and while awaiting green cards, in interviews with U.S.
officials they complain about the lack of freedom in their native country, citing
specific instances in the area of human rights and politics. But as soon as they
gain permanent residence, let alone citizenship, they suddenly turn against their
host nation and begin to praise the virtues of an Islamic state, forgetting their
pleadings with immigration officials to accept their application. Current precautions
at the ports of entry are a welcome, necessary and useful first step in protecting
America, but they must not be the last. A thorough and systematic background check
of each applicant, coupled with psychological tests and one-on-one in-depth interviews
with specialists qualified to detect such "dual personality" traits
in potential immigrants, need to be introduced for all newcomers from the countries
at risk, as well as for Muslims from non-Muslim countries, like the "Frenchman"
Zacarias Moussaoui. The alternative is a non-targeted, sweepingly general,
clampdown on civil liberties that will be as ineffective in curbing Islamic extremism
as it will be undoubtedly successful in making life less pleasant and less dignified
for the peoples of the West. A coherent long-term counterterrorist strategy, therefore,
must entail denying Islam the foothold inside the West. Like Communism, Islam
relies on a domestic fifth column-the Allah-worshiping Rosenbergs, Philbys, Blunts,
and Hisses-to subvert the civilized world. It also relies on an army of left-wing
fellow-travelers who sympathize with Islam partly because it is a leading historical
rival of the Western civilization they hate and partly because they long for a
romanticized and sanitized Muslim past that substitutes for the authentic Western
roots they have rejected. Those roots must be defended, in the full knowledge
that those who subscribe to Islam and its civilization are aliens, regardless
of their clothes, their professions or their places of residence. The West
faces two clear alternatives: defense, or submission and acceptance of sacred
Arab places as its own. Western political leaders, including President Bush, have
every right to pay compliments to Muslim piety and good works, but they should
be as wary of believing their own theological reassurances as they would be of
facile insults. Islamic populations and individuals draw very different things
from their religion, its scripture and traditions, but anti-infidel violence is
a hardy perennial. The challenge remains-how to prevent theocratic terror from
winning support, and how to prevent it sheltering behind secular-liberal toleration. While
it is proper for democratic government to refrain from legislating the practice
of religion in any way, Islam is a special case because it is, on its own admission,
much more than "just a religion." It needs to be understood and subjected
to the same supervision and legal restrains that apply to other cults prone to
violence, and to violent political hate groups whose avowed aim is the destruction
of our order of life. Once it is accepted that "true Islam" does
not recognize a priori the right of any other religion or world outlook to exist-least
of all the atheistic secular humanism -a serious anti-terrorist strategy will
become possible. The current terrorist threat to the United States comes almost
exclusively from the members of the Muslim community. Critical to reducing the
chance of an attack in the future are an immediate moratorium on all immigration
from the risk-nations, an expansion of the Border Patrol to the point of zero-porosity,
a radical reduction of visas issued to nationals of states that harbor or produce
terrorists, abandonment of amnesty debate and the swift and rigorous deportation
of all illegal aliens, and especially those from rogue nations that threaten America. We
are being indoctrinated into the dogma that the trend is inevitable, that economically
motivated, unceasing immigration on a vast scale is unstoppable because it is
due to inexorable global market forces. This is not true. Free citizens must not
submit their destiny, and that of their progeny, to a historicist fallacy. Immigration
from Islamic nations, and indeed all others, can, and should, be subject to the
democratic will of the American people. They have every right to defend themselves
and their way of life. The struggle against terrorism starts with knowing thy
enemy. A new paradigm on Islam, immigration, and Western identity are needed.
Then, and only then, will human intelligence assets be usefully deployed to identify,
target, and then destroy the individuals and networks dedicated to our destruction.
All will be in vain unless murderous Islamic extremism, manifested on September
11, spells the end of another kind of extremism: the stubborn insistence of the
ruling liberal establishment on treating each and every newcomer as equally meltable
in the pot. Reducing and gradually ending unnecessary and harmful dependence
on Middle Eastern oil is probably the easiest to achieve of all prerequisites
for the policy of survival. Greed has always blinded power-wielders to danger,
however, and it still does, and I am grateful that the President has included
this important issue in his State of the Union address. Yes, Islam has an inherent
advantage over the tepid ideology of multicultural mediocrity in that it offers
Allah in the place of nothing. Its adherents should not be condemned for maintaining
their traditions. We should blame ourselves for refusing to acknowledge the facts
of the case and failing to take stock of our options. People did not take Mein
Kampf seriously, at their own peril. The Qur'an's exhortations to the believers
to annihilate the non-believers, to confiscate their land and property, to take
their women and enslave their children are equally frank, and the fruits visible
through the centuries. We have no obligation to "respect other cultures"
and ideas when those cultures and ideas lead to human suffering, misery, and servitude.
We have every right to protect our ideas and way of life by openly proclaiming
the superiority of our principles. Our problem is not prejudice about Islam, but
folly in the face of its violence and cruelty. There is a huge problem for
all Muslims-the violent message of the Qur'an. We cannot solve it for them, and
we should not be asked to deem the problem solved by pretending that the Qur'an
is a pacifist tract. Humans are perfectly capable of reinterpreting scripture
when absolutely necessary, but until the petrol dollars support a line of Islamic
exegesis that can renounce the ideals of jihad, terror, tax, and subjugation we
must have the guts to call a religion of war by its right name. Islam is a
collective psychosis seeking to become global, and any attempt to compromise with
madness leads to becoming part of the madness oneself. No one who believes that
jihad is the right or duty of all Muslims, or who promotes adoption of Shari'a
law or reestablishment of the caliphate, should be allowed to settle in any Western
country, and every applicant should be asked. The passport of anyone preaching
jihad should be revoked. This may be called discrimination but the quarrel is
not of our choosing. They will scream "Discrimination!" and we'll reply
"Sedition!" Those who submit to that faith must solve the problem
they set themselves. Islam discriminates against us. Until the petrodollars support
a Qur'anic revisionism that does not, we should resist it by all means available.
Secularists and believers of all other faiths must act together before it is too
late.
Statement Delivered at 30th Annual Conservative Political Action
Conference Washington, DC, Saturday February 1, 2003.
