As Americans, we have a long and legendary history of welcoming and assimilating immigrants. This includes granting political asylum to those in flight from political persecution. But as Americans we must also ensure that what has gone wrong in Europe – or what some are now calling “Eurabia” – does not happen here.
At this moment in history, we cannot allow a large influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants who have no intention of assimilating into a Western, modern, and democratic American way of life. Please note that I am saying a “large” influx of immigrants who do not wish to “assimilate.” I am not talking about Arabs and Muslims who not only want to assimilate but are actively in flight from repressive Islamist regimes.
According to the scholar Bat Ye’or and the journalist Oriana Fallaci, Europe became “Eurabia” due to a massive influx of hostile Muslim immigrants with a high birth rate whose passage to Europe was aggressively funded both by Arab oil money and European doctrines of “multicultural tolerance.”
A similarly dangerous multicultural tolerance also exists in America. So far, however, it has won support mainly among our intellectual elite and our liberal and progressive media. Respect for barbarism thankfully does not yet exist among most ordinary Americans. However, our concept of “religious tolerance,” academic freedom, and free speech are now being used to promote and protect hate speech against America and Israel and against the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The American Civil Liberties Union is fighting to overturn the State Department’s decision not to admit Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan’s grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood and his father joined the family business. (The Jew-hating Brotherhood is a staunch advocate of jihad against the West). Ramadan, a suave apologist for Islamic religious and gender apartheid, is, arguably, pro-jihad. Nevertheless, the ACLU sees his right to teach and preach as a First Amendment issue. Perhaps they have a point. My questions: Are we obligated to extend First Amendment rights to our enemies when we are at war? Even if doing so endangers us?
And further: Why did PEN – the distinguished association of writers of which I am a proud member – feel obliged to honor or “invite” Ramadan to their festive annual conference which will take place at the end of April? Would they extend a similar honor to Hitler? Would they do so simply because the American administration had banned the sale of his book or refused to allow Hitler to preach here?
According to the Iranian dissident Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, PEN was going to honor both Ramadan and Magdi Allam, the Egyptian-born non-practicing Muslim deputy editor of Italy’s premier newspaper, Corriere della Sera, but Allam refused to appear together with Ramadan. I called PEN and it was confirmed to me that Ramadan was still “invited” but was no longer being given an award.
Why does an American organization dedicated to free and artful speech feel that “even-handedness” obliges them to honor a Muslim anti-Islamist and a Muslim Islamist apologist at the same event? Whose favor do they curry, whose censure do they fear? That of Western politically correct intellectuals or that of Islamists? Is there an operative difference when it comes to pro-Islamist free speech?
More recently, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Norman Seigel, followed by the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, defended the right of the New York City’s top Muslim prison imam to rage against America, Jews, and Zionists. At a conference of Muslim students, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil claimed that Muslims were being “tortured” in city jails; that “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House”; and that we should not allow “the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us.”