Why Muslim Immigration is a Threat to Western Democracy
From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-10-16 07:11
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
(Bertold Brecht)
I have warned earlier, especially (in the essay Electing a New People: The Leftist-Islamic Alliance), against Islamic infiltration of Leftist parties in the West, most recently demonstrated in Belgium, and the threat this poses to Western democracy. This is part of the reason why I advocate containment of the Islamic world and an end to Muslim immigration. Pundit Ohmyrus makes some of the same observations. But there is also another way in which Muslim immigration threatens our Western society.
In Policy Review, Lee Harris reviews Andrew G. Bostoms excellent book The Legacy of Jihad. In his acknowledgments, Bostom expresses the wish that his own children and their children may thrive in a world where the devastating institution of jihad has been acknowledged, renounced, dismantled, and relegated forever to the dustbin of history by Muslims themselves.
But, as Harris asks,
Why should Muslims renounce and dismantle an institution that, while it may have been devastating to those who have been its victims, has nevertheless been the historical agent by which Islamic culture has come to dominate such a vast expanse of our planet? [] Indeed, what is most striking about the collective project of jihad has been its immense and, with few exceptions, permanent success. Once Islamic culture sank in, it became virtually impossible for any foreign cultural influence to make any headway against it.
He warns against those who dismiss the idea that Jihad constitutes a serious Islamic threat to the West because we are technologically superior to the Islamic world:
Jihad has demonstrated an astonishing adaptability to different historical and material conditions. Yet the secret of the success of the Arab bands lay less in their own warlike qualities than in the weakness and decadence of the empires they overthrew. [] The jihadists are not interested in winning in our sense of the word. They can succeed simply by making the present world order unworkable, by creating conditions in which politics-as-usual is no longer an option, forcing upon the West the option either of giving in to their demands or descending into anarchy and chaos.
It is tempting to call this approach the crash of civilization.
It does not take a modern, sophisticated army to bring down a fragile and delicately balanced political order. Those who have no interest in preserving order, who are eager to destroy it, will welcome disorder for its own sake.
Accordingly, says Harris, Muslims
do not need to achieve the same degree of force that is the monopoly of the established order. In the crash-of-civilization paradigm contrary to Clausewitzian warfare the enemy of a particular established order does not need to match it in organizational strength and effectiveness. It needs only to make the established order reluctant to use its great strength out of the understandable fear that by plunging into civil war it will itself be jeopardized. This fear of anarchy the ultimate fear for those who embrace the politics of reason can be used to paralyze the political process to the point at which the established order is helpless to control events through normal political channels and power is no longer in the hands of the establishment but lies perilously in the streets. [] The jihadists do not need to win in the battle against the West; it is enough if they can force the West to choose between a dreaded plunge back into the Law of the Jungle and acceding to their demands. This is a formula that has worked many times before and may work again.
Muslims can thus undermine Western democracy in two ways: By massive immigration and infiltration of established, especially Socialist, parties until they can be turned to serve the Islamic agenda, or by simply creating a climate of fear and distrust that gradually makes the democratic system unworkable. In Western Europe right now, they are making significant headway on both accounts.
