Fitzgerald: Who decided that we owed this to Somalis?

Eighty thousand Somalis, almost all of them Muslims, have been allowed into this country. What they have done can be seen in Lewiston, Maine, where their enormous burden on the benefits system left so little for the native poor, who had been paying into that system for decades, that the Mayor of Lewiston publicly expressed his alarm at the Somali influx. For his pains he was mechanically, and roundly, denounced as a "racist.” Or it can be seen in the places where some Somalis do work, rather than live on benefits, such as those meat-packing plants in Nebraska and Colorado where the non-Somali workers, who bear the brunt of the behavior and attitudes of the Somalis in their midst, revolted when the meat-packing company was prepared to supinely give in to Muslim demands, demands that would have given preferential treatment to Muslim workers. One of the non-Muslim workers was widely quoted: "The Latino is very humble," said Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. "But they are arrogant," he said of the Somali workers. "They act like the United States owes them."

In Minneapolis, Somali and other Muslim taxidrivers have refused to pick up people carrying liquor (at the airport where those arriving from abroad dutifully carry their Duty-Free) and also blind people with seeing-eye dogs. It is fascinating to consider that because in seventh-century Arabia some Arab, who may or may not have existed, is said to have said that he wouldn’t enter a house “with statues or dog,” in twenty-first century America a blind person waiting patiently for a taxi may not be picked up. And consider this, while we have stopped to look at that Hadith: for 1350 years Muslims have had to stifle whatever creative impulse they might have had to create statuary. And not only that, but wherever they have been able, they have destroyed the statues -- Greek or Roman, Byzantine or Buddhist -- all across the vast lands they have conquered. They haven’t stopped today. Look at what the Taliban did not only to the Bamiyan Buddhas (with engineering help from Pakistanis and money from Saudis), but also to the already pathetically teeny-tiny contents of the Kabul Museum, with its remains of so many civilizations that had overlapped or overlaid one another, in palimpsestic fashion, over that swath of territory now known as Afghanistan.

Those Somalis were allowed into this country as “refugees.” But why are Muslims who leave a Muslim country, where they are not persecuted for being non-Muslims but instead can do the persecuting, and who bring their supremacist Total Belief-System with them and show in a hundred ways that they believe their faith Superior and they Superior as well, owed a living in Lewiston, owed special favors in Nebraska and Colorado, owed exemption from the hack-license rules in Minneapolis? They clearly believe that it is we, the Infidels who gave them misplaced rescue and succor of every kind, who must change our ways, who must yield to them.

Who decided that we owed this to Somalis? Was it because the Americans went to Somalia to prevent the natural state of Hobbesian man into which Muslim lands descend without a Muslim bully-boy or despot to manage things the way Muslim rulers do, through their absolute control of the military and the mukhabarat and some version of the mutawwa -- the three M’s of Muslim rule that keep those Arab despots the longest-ruling rulers or dynasties or juntas in the last century? See Khaddafy in Libya, see the Hashemites in Jordan, the Sherifians in Morocco, the FLN military men in Algeria, the Bourguiba-Ben Ali reign in Tunisia. The military, embodied currently by Mubarak, have ruled over Egypt since the coup of Nasser and Naguib back in the early 1950s. See also the Al-Saud, the Al-Thani, the Al-Maktoum, the Al-thises and Al-thatses, up and down the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. See the vicissitudes of the same small group of zamindars and generals who rule, and own, Pakistan, see see see. Military, Mukhabarat, Mutawwa (the variant spelling in the Islamic Republic of Iran is “Mullahs”).

That’s the Three M’s of Modern Muslim Rule. Forget your Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, your Mill and Bentham, your Bagehot, your Oakeshott, your Rawls or, in the alternative, your von Hayek. It’s a completely different world, the world of Islam. This is something our credulous, hopeful, sentimental, arrogant rulers, the ones who were going to “remake the Middle East,” did not understand, because they had lost, in the hectic vacancy of Washington, the habit of study, the ability to think.

Perhaps that lesson can be learned even by some of those raised in the Age of Ignorance, the Western Jahiliyya -- the Age, that is, before an Awareness and Grasp of Islam as a Total Belief-System with an amazing hold on the minds of men. But they, most men everywhere, are primitive, which is why it is best that their primitiveness be channeled by a faith less dangerous to all those who do not submit to the same faith, and one that just possibly is founded on principles that, if actually followed, could do a lot of good. Just because you rise to the top in Washington, you can’t stop learning, and you have to learn to undo the clichés of the past, about Islam as a “bulwark against Communism,” or about Islam as a “religion of peace” (which arises from the dreamy idea that All Religions Are The Same, and We All Want The Same Thing).

You have to learn about the texts and tenets of Islam, unlike James Baker, with his Saudi baker-and-botts wheeling-dealing, and unlike Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. with the fabulous largesse the Saudis and other Muslims have presented to their Presidential libraries, and unlike the “respected” (by whom? For what?) Colin Powell, who has been supremely aware since his earliest military days of the need to be attuned to politics and pleasing the powerful. He hasn’t looked back, he “seen his opportunities and he took ‘em.” Powell was happy to pocket the keys of the Jaguar that Prince Bandar, his tennis-and-racquetball partner and pal, gave him. Powell learned from Bandar so much about the Al-Saud, about Saudi Arabia, about Islam, so much that he can pontificate indignantly about unfair worries or suspicions about Muslims in high office, and can get away with using as his point of departure (and his sole point, come to think of it), a single photograph of a Muslim mother grieving at the grave of her Muslim son. That son was one of a handful who must have enlisted in the American army.

Colin Powell was not asked to explain what makes him so sure that the doctrine of Islam is not worrisome, what makes him take as “representative” this particular soldier, and not the Muslim Marine who went AWOL, leaving his post and returning to Lebanon, not the Muslim soldier who rolled a grenade into a tent, killing two officers, not the Muslim sailor who apparently was offering to give secrets about his ship to other Muslims for their own deadly use, not all the other examples of Muslim mendacity. Instead, this single example, of a photograph, caused Colin Powell to become a great and reassuring authority on Islam on national television, without a single bit of information about Islam other than what he gleaned from Prince Bandar (he of the jangling keys to the Jaguar, pocked by Mrs. Powell just a few days after Colin Powell left office, and could now “accept the gift” that a few days before would have been illegal).

Some, many, of these people must be prevented from again being in positions of authority. And all those who have not yet shown signs of coming to understand, of even making the attempt to understand Islam –- through direct and personal study, and not through vicarious study, that is having an aide or two has read a book or two, and then “summarize” in power-point form what “Islam is all about” -- should be kept out of any position. For they represent, in their ignorance, and in their continuing influence, a supreme danger. Inertia plays a part, inertia and being overawed by those who, simply because they have served high up in this or that administration, are foolishly accorded a respect that their own display of mind does not suggest they have earned, or are capable of earning.

And not just in foreign policy, but in domestic policy. If you cannot recognize the Jihad, don’t want to find out what it is, what it means, and why Islam is not merely a “religion” in the commonly-accepted sense but also an Identity, a Loyalty, both to what is a Total Belief-System and to the other Believers, the other Members of the world-wide Umma, an identity and a loyalty that trump all other possible identities and loyalties (or at least, that is what Islam inculcates -- a few may ignore what is inculcated, but then they may well be “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims), then you may not be able to connect the contents of this article about the killing of the Somali Christian for daring to be a Christian (and daring to suggest that the attendees at a wedding, including the bride and groom, had a right to understand the ceremony) with the attitudes of Somali Muslims, “Muslim refugees from Islam” (???), who have been allowed to settle deep within our borders, within what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines of Dar al-Harb.