Islam is—for all intents and purposes—political Islam

(Note: Bill Warner did not reply to the message I posted to him at his website. While I don’t have a copy of the message, as I remember it was reasonably civil. I praised him for his work, and then asked him what, beyond studying political Islam, ought we to do to protect ourselves from it.)

A very interestng interview at FrontPage Magazine with Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. Warner says that the overwhelming predominance of the core Islamic texts teach political Islam, the pursuit of power over non-Muslims. His analysis of Islam is succinct and powerful, though I had trouble understanding a couple of his points. His organization has published versions of the Koran, the Hadiths, and the Sira (the biography of Muhammad) that he says make the real meaning of the Islamic teachings clear and intelligible to a Western reader.

However, I was struck by the fact that after describing Islam repeatedly and in no uncertain terms as an unappeasable and mortal danger to all non-Islamic societies, Warner completely neglected to address (and Jamie Glazov of FP neglected to ask) the most important and obvious question raised by his dire warnings: What should we DO to protect our society from Islam? I wrote Warner an e-mail asking him about this. Based on the CSPI’s mission statement, I would expect that he will not have an answer to that question, since the purpose of the CSPI is “Making the political doctrine of the Koran, Sira and Hadith (the Trilogy) available to the world.” In other words, Islam may be political, but the Center for the Study of Political Islam is not; while the mission of Islam is to spread the power of Islam, the mission of the CSPI is to spread an understanding of Islam’s political mission, not to fight it. The CSPI seems to hope that other people will use the CSPI’s information about Islam to propose actually doing something about Islam. But if the people who have the best understanding of the danger posed by Islam decline to tell us how to defend ourselves from it, who will?

Indeed, if the scholarly critics of Islam continue their worthy labors, we may reach a point when the Western world shall be full of the knowledge of Islam, as the waters cover the sea. But even that will still not answer the question, what do we DO about Islam?

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Note 3/1/07: About a week after I posted my letter to Bill Warner at the CSPI website, I got a reply from CSPI which read as follows:

You wrote Bill Warner at Center for the Study of Political Islam in response to an article about political Islam. We apoligize for our slowness in reply. We were overwhelmed and unprepared for the response to our article.

What we must do will be answered in our next interview.

Thank you for your interest and the work you do.

A couple of weeks later, Bill Warner had a follow-up interview at FrontPage Magazine which I will discuss in a separate blog entry. Repeatedly asked by Jamie Glazov what his strategy was for dealing with Islam, Warner emphasized education and communication. We need to inform people about what political Islam really is. But beyond that he had no suggestions. Immigration was never mentioned.

End of note.

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Maureen C. writes:

Re your question: “What do we DO about Islam?”

It’s all so pathetic. 19th century European or American men would have KNOWN what to do about an enemy at or within its gates—and would have taken care of business immediately. But our softspined, legalistic society thinks all problems can be settled by negotiation and law courts.

Warner has done a magnificent service in identifying the necrotizing disease properties of Islam for the slower-witted. Action cannot be taken until people understand the lethality of the problem. But instead of defending the U.S. by ending Fifth Coilumn infiltration by Muslims and deporting illegals, we’re in Iraq—acting out our Christian view of the world—trying to prevent one aggressive Muslim from killing another aggressive Muslim instead of defending the Christian world from the Islamic expansion.

Leave the Muslims alone in the Mideast to stew in their nasty juices. Let their Sunni-Shia hatreds rage and absorb the aggressive energies of their men.

If it weren’t for trying to protect Exxon’s and Mobil’s monopoly over the oil in Saudi Arabia—and keep it out of the hands of the Chinese and Russians and the French—we wouldn’t even be in the Mideast except to bomb it from the air.

Maureen writes:

It just occurred to me, Lawrence, that my comments might be construed as a direct criticism of you—which was NOT my intent. You clearly do know what to do about the problem and have long been advocating your solution of “separation” from this new Islamic totalitarianism. I was merely sharing your frustration at all these scholars who painstakingly point out the problem but stop short at biting the manly bullet and advocating active measures, such as:

banning the political system of Islam (the way the old political system of Communism was banned); expanding efforts to detect and deport illegals; ending automatic citizenship for babies born in this country to illegal parents; directing the FBI to investigate tax fraud in alien charities and businesses (ending the careers of jihadists, the same way they did Al Capone’s); ending the current practice of allowing first generation “Americans” to fill Top Secret jobs in our US Government Defense institutions and State Dept; disbanding the Refugee-Industrial Complex (aka State Dept’s Refugee Committee).

LA replies:

Thanks to Maureen for the clarification, though I understood she was not intending to criticize me.

One quibble: Communism has never been banned in the U.S. I certainly think it should have been, but it wasn’t. In fact, the U.S. government in the late 19th century took a harder line on Mormon polygamy than it ever did on Communism. The federal government banned not only polygamy, but even the advocacy of polygamy, and it did so on the basis that polygamy is antithetical to our civilization. That’s what we need to do in relation to Islam.

I said the other day, as a kind of Platonic thought experiment, that in a well-ordered America there would be no Incorporation Doctrine eliminating the states’ ability to legislate in the area of religion, and the states would be free to restrict Islam. However, as much as I hope for restoration of constitutional order, it is unlikely to occur in our lifetimes, and the more likely scenario would be measures against Islam on the national level—not on the basis that, under a proper understanding of the Constitution, the states do not come under the First Amendment and can legislate on religion as they like, but rather on the basis that Islam as a political religion should not receive First Amendment protections.

Maureen writes:

Re: “I said the other day, as a kind of Platonic thought experiment, that in a well-ordered America there would be no Incorporation Doctrine eliminating the states’ ability to legislate in the area of religion, and the states would be free to restrict Islam.”

An observation: Allowing individual states to legislate against Islam could have the following “unintended” effect: pushing all Muslims into one or two liberal states, allowing their numbers to vote themselves into office and “their” states out of the United States.

LA replies:

Interesting point. In fact that is an excellent argument for the proposition that certain issues are of such national scope that they cannot be dealt with adequately at the state level, but must be national. For example, the federal government did not leave polygamy up to the states; it took firm action at the national level, on the basis that polygamy is antitheitcal to our very civilization. By the same token (assuming for a moment the total fantasy that our constitutional order with states’ rights had been restored), Islam is so completely antithetical to our society that it needs to be dealt with nationally, not only by the states. I make the same argument with regard to homosexual marriage.

Maureen writes:

I should have worded my point more clearly as: “banning adherents of the political system of Islam the way members of the old political system of Communism were banned from immigrating into the U.S. or getting US Gov jobs;”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 06, 2007 01:08 AM | Send