Is America to be the global gathering place for all victims of Islam?

At her website, Pamela Geller copies a speech by Charles Jacobs which was read by black pastor Gerald Bell at yesterday’s rally of the Human Rights Coalition against Radical Islam (see my earlier entry describing the rally). Here Jacobs addresses what do about the Islam threat:

So how can America defeat this barbarism? By being what America has been—a pluralist society based on liberty, defending freedom … only here can all of the victims of jihad, all those … threatened by jihad, and even those who might have been tempted by the supremacist visions of Jihad, instead join in a brotherhood and sisterhood of freedom.

Here, we are guided by America’s doctrines of liberty which were created to defeat tyranny, and which have defeated tyranny. Today, we stand united, ready to fight for our freedom and the freedom of all those who are oppressed and threatened by Radical Islam. We will do everything … to defend our lives, our civilization and our freedom.

Jacobs says that we will defeat radical Islam by being a pluralist society. But of course it was precisely as a result of our being a pluralist society, i.e., as a result of our allowing all peoples into America without discrimination under the 1965 Immigration Act because we believe that excluding any group is morally wrong, that Islam has taken root in America. It was precisely as a result of our belief in pluralism that George W. Bush made it much harder to get information on possible terrorists and the government authorities allowed Muhammad Atta and his crew free access to this country. It was precisely as a result of our belief in pluralism and openness to people who are different from us that Agriculture Department official Johnelle Bryant didn’t report Muhammad Atta to the authorities after he threatened to cut her throat and threatened to destroy Washington D.C. (“I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from. I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could.”) It was precisely as a result of our belief in pluralism and non-discrimination that airline ticket agent Michael Tuohey on the morning of September 11, 2001 rejected his inner warning that Muhammad Atta looked dangerous and allowed him and his companion to board their flight bound for Boston: (“I said to myself, ‘If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.’ Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this.”)

Since it was through our belief in diversity and in avoiding discrimination at all costs that we allowed mass murdering Islamic jihadists to have their way with us, how will embracing pluralism and non-discrimination help us defend ourselves from jihadists?

But this part of what Jacobs said is even worse:

[O]nly here [in America] can all of the victims of jihad, all those … threatened by jihad, and even those who might have been tempted by the supremacist visions of Jihad [i.e., former radical Muslims], instead join in a brotherhood and sisterhood of freedom. [Italics added.]

In order to oppose Islam, America must turn itself into a global “brotherhood and sisterhood of freedom.” Our nation’s mission is to become a collection of all (I repeat Jacobs’s word “ALL”) the world’s victims of Islam and all the world’s potential victims of Islam. And not only must ALL the victims and potential victims of Islam come to America, but “even those who might have been tempted by the supremacist visions of Jihad,” i.e., former “radical Muslims.” So, according to Jacobs, we shall oppose radical Islam by bringing into America non-radical Muslims and former radical Muslims, and presumably he means all non-radical and former radical Muslims, since they are victims or potential victims of radical Islam, all of whom must come here. We shall welcome into our society all Muslims other than outright terrorists and jihadists.

This is the way liberals, including the immigrant liberals at the rally, see America, not as a country in its own right, but as refuge for all humanity, including the co-religionists of the specific part of humanity that threatens us. This is the way they think we can oppose Islam.

Pamela Geller, a pro-immigration, libertarian Randian, probably loves Jacobs’s idea. If she doesn’t, she can correct me.

Also, I heard another speaker yesterday whom I forgot to mention in my earlier entry, a grey haired man with a Bronx accent (I didn’t get his name), who criticized the immigration of radical Muslims to America, but said that it was driven by “big business and its desire for a quick buck,” an idea he repeated several times. So, at this rally of Diverse Liberals against Radical Islam, the fact that LIBERALISM is the reason we now have Islam in the West is not only not spoken, it is actively denied.

So forgive me for my less than adoring response to this rally. There were admirable and uplifting things about it. But so long as diversity and pluralism and non-discrimination remain our guiding ideals, our responses to the Islam threat will be under the banner of those ideals, and we will only open our society further to the very danger we think we are opposing.

- end of initial entry -

May 5

A reader writes from California:

America was tribal when I was growing up. Norman Rockwell portrayed the tribe in paintings. That was my tribe. I don’t think we need any Muslims, radical or not. The West is on a suicide mission.

Mark P. writes:

This is exactly the problem.

We are a day care center, a learning annex, a free clinic, a job board, and now a refugee camp for the rest of the world.

Nice.

Bill Carpenter writes:

For disordered minds, the only cure for the ills caused by disordered policies is more disorder.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 04, 2009 04:53 PM | Send