The unspeakable massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which forty-nine innocent people were brutally murdered by a radical Muslim, has produced what all such events have produced in the past: enough handwringing to set entire cities ablaze and enough heated debate over gun control to make one’s head spin. Unfortunately, none of it can or will do anything to attack the root cause of Islamic extremism and prevent future reoccurrences.
A December 17, 2015, letter from Senator James Lankford, Oklahoma’s first-term junior senator, is a perfect example of the head-in-the sand attitude of western political leaders. Lankford began by thanking me for contacting him with my concerns about Islamic immigration. Then he went on to explain that, “The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of all Americans to practice the religion they choose, or no religion, without fear of government interference or retribution.” He went on to explain, “Religious liberty is vital to a free nation. The First Amendment to the Constitution states, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Disruption of religious liberty for one person endangers the liberties of us all.”
What the senator is suggesting, without actually putting it into words, is that all non-Muslims in America should view the language of the First Amendment as a suicide pact. To the contrary, if we in the west are to protect our children and grandchildren from the horrors of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, we must first dispense with the cruel fiction that Islam is just another religious denomination, subject to all of the legal protections afforded legitimate religious sects.
Islam is not a religion, subject to First Amendment protections, as we in western cultures understand the term. Rather, it is a complete political, legal, economic, military, social, and cultural system with a religious component. Wherever we find them, its adherents refuse to assimilate into host country cultures, insisting that they be allowed to exist as a separate culture within a culture, not subject to the laws of their host countries. In order to accomplish their ends, they rely on anti-western directives of the Quran to preach the overthrow of host governments, by force and violence if necessary.
If we are to find a final solution to Islamic jihad we must begin by identifying Islam for what it is. Abandoning the political correctness of the political left, it is imperative that we begin by officially defining Islam, not as a religious denomination, but as a brutal 7th century culture totally foreign to and incompatible with 21st century values and cultures. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholics and other Christian denominations are evolving at a snail’s pace in their approach to Islam. In a most thoughtful and thoroughly researched treatise, titled, Islam, Interreligious Dialogue, and Evangelization, published on May 8, 2015, Andre Villeneuve, Ph.D. of Saint John Vianney Seminary, describes the evolution of the Catholic Church’s approach to Islam in just the past half century.
According to Dr. Villeneuve, “Since Vatican II (1962-65) the Catholic Church has taken a conciliatory approach toward non-Christian religions in general, and Islam in particular. Interreligious dialogue has tended to focus on similarities rather than differences…” He quotes the Council Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, saying, “Since in the course of centuries, not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.”
The conciliatory theme within the Catholic hierarchy continues to this day. Dr. Villeneuve writes that, “After praising the commitment to prayer, faith, devotion, and ethical values of many Muslims, (Pope) Francis encourages Christians to adopt a welcoming attitude towards the increasing number of Muslim immigrants in traditionally Christian countries, while asking for a reciprocal freedom of worship for Christians living in Muslim countries.”
This is in sharp contrast to a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI in his Regensburg Lecture of September 12, 2006, a statement that was not well received in the Muslim world. Benedict quoted the 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who said, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
Yes, as Pope Francis has suggested, we should first ask for reciprocity from the Muslim world, but asking is not the same as demanding, and it’s time that political and religious leaders in the Christian world demand that non-Muslim denominations be allowed to establish churches and synagogues and to practice their faith throughout the Muslim world, signaling that serious repercussions… including an outright ban on mosques in Christian nations… will follow if reciprocity is not granted. Nothing less will suffice.
Needless to say, the response from the Muslim world has not been what the Vatican might have hoped for. Instead of reciprocating, in kind, radical Islam has pursued a brutal, unrelenting jihad against the Christian world. Dr. Villeneuve quotes a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document, titled, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” The memorandum explains that the Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
At this writing, the focus of the western world is on Syria and Iraq where ISIS, one of history’s most bloodthirsty organizations, is literally butchering its way across the Middle East. The limits of their savagery are beyond comprehension, yet Western leaders, chiefly Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, sit idly by, not knowing what to do or how to prevent the ISIS butchers from slaughtering us on our own home soil.
Accordingly, the first step in coming to grips with the Islamic threat is to officially declassify Islam as a protected religion in the hearts and minds of western populations. Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, and Presbyterians do not stone women to death; they do not behead those who are of a different faith; they do not throw homosexuals from tall buildings; they do not place their enemies in steel cages and lower them into tanks of water, or spray them with gasoline and burn them alive; they do not capture large numbers of women and young girls and sell them into sex slavery; and they do not sexually assault women and girls in public places because they think their style of dress is an open invitation. No, these are atrocities that are unique to the Muslim world. They are not, and can never be, protected religious practices by anyone’s standard.
The next and final step in dealing with the Islamic threat is for western governments to codify opposition to Islamic jihad. Senator Lankford and other political leaders are apparently unaware that as recently as the 1950s our country has taken steps to protect itself from domination by foreign ideologies. For example, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Public Law 82-414 (the McCarran-Walter Act), Section 212(a), enacted two years prior to the Communist Control Act of 1954, provides no less than 31 criteria under which “classes of aliens shall be ineligible to receive visas and shall be excluded from admission into the United States.”
Included among these, Section 212(a)(28) of the Act denies access to all aliens “who are anarchists, or who have at any time been members of or affiliated with any organization (such as Islam or the Communist Party USA) that advocates or teaches the overthrow of the government of the United States by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means.” This is precisely what Donald Trump has suggested, and it is precisely this statute that President Carter cited in his Executive Order of April 7, 1980, in which he invalidated the visas of all Iranians in the country and prohibited the issuance of new visas to Iranians for the duration of the Iranian hostage crisis.
Islam is the only “religious” movement on Earth that proposes to extend its dominion to every corner of the Earth by rape, murder, terror, and oppression. And since the 95% of Muslims who are described as either “moderate” or “un-radicalized” appear unwilling to play an active role in keeping their radicalized brethren in check, we have no long term alternative but to quarantine them… prohibiting them from residing anywhere within the civilized nations of the Earth.
Barack Obama appears convinced that we have little to fear from Muslim immigration. That simply is not the case. Our political leaders live each day inside protective cocoons, safe from the bloodlust of the Muslim muhajirs, whose sole purpose in life is to impose their brutal 7th century culture on 21st century Judeo-Christian nations. And since our political leaders appear unwilling to do what is necessary to protect us, we cannot escape the possibility that We the People may ultimately be forced to take matters into our own hands.
Unless we defeat radical Islam in the deserts of the Middle East and in the streets of Europe in the months and years ahead, they will surely confront us at the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, and in the streets of America. If that comes to pass, western civilization will be lost forever. We cannot bequeath to our children and grandchildren the prospect of fighting a bloody battle that should have been fought and decided in our time.
Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College. He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma’s Green Country.