Vetting, Assimilation and Terrorism

Vetting, Assimilation and Terrorism

Virginia Byers

Islam expands either by military conquest or by using the weapon of hijra: immigration. Muhammad conquered Medina through immigration. Hijra is what we are experiencing today. The Islamisation of Europe continues and the West has no strategy for dealing with the Islamic ideology, because our elites say we must adapt to them rather than the other way round.

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.”

---Geert Wilders

“An army of sheep lead by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.”

---Arab proverb

Introduction

America has been ignoring the overall threat that has been attacking her people since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.  Throughout history, Americans have been attacked in various countries as well as in the United States by individuals whose aim is to destroy her. The last major US incident, the attack of 911, jolted the American citizens into action. Many young men and women enlisted into the military to go fight the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan while safety measures were put into place within America’s borders.  The people today are more vigilant as they watch for suspicious persons and activity within their environments. 

It has been well known that Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda extremist terrorist group want to destroy the United States, its values, and the Western culture.  The United States did not react with a strong club in hand when incidents such as the shoot down of Pan Am 103 flight, the various attacks against the US embassies in Africa, the USS Cole ship which had been bombed, and the World Trade Center explosion in the l990s.  But when the 9/11 attacks occurred using commercial planes to hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the US finally came out of a deep sleep by deploying troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and declaring war on terrorists.  This action, right or wrong, has shown the world if circumstances dictate America will stand to protect its people.

The real issue is to look at the whole picture involving Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Shabab, Hezbollah et al.  Despite the terroristic attacks, the United States and its citizens have continued on.  If the goal is to make the United States fall from within what better way than to plant Muslims within its society to feed off the financial institutions and increase the Muslim population  by gradually  overtaking  American society through strength and uncompromising fundamentals.  This tactic has already been demonstrated within such countries as the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and France plus others within the European Union.

Research Question – Is there a threat to the United States and its interests by allowing Muslims, without proper vetting, to be allowed inside but once in they refuse to assimilate into the United States’ culture?

This conceptual study will discuss the impact of the Muslim immigration in the United States as well as the European states, the Sharia Law vs. the US Constitution or civil law, and the threats posed internally and externally from this organization of people.

Muslim Immigration in the US and European States

Throughout the European and Muslim history, there has been confrontations from both sides which explains today’s relationship and possibly tomorrow’s.  Authors Scott Stewart and Sidney Brown reports that “Islam, in the early 700s, invaded Spain and France but later down the road during the Crusades (1700s and 1800s) Europeans were colonizing North Africa and South Asia” (2013,1). The Ottoman empire would encompass a vast area to “include Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Hungary, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Parts of Arabia, and much of the coastal strip of North Africa” (BBC 2009, 1). When the “Turks took Jerusalem in 1065 and killed 3000 Christians, the Crusades would start in 1095 to take back the holy places of Palestine from them” (Lords 2013, 1). Eventually, the Ottoman Empire would fall after the First World War and Europe would again start to colonize the Middle East. This back and forth interaction between Europe and the Muslims still continues today as immigrants continue to flow back and forth across borders.

Today Muslims, who immigrated to Europe for various reasons, are now in large groups, some have integrated, some have not assimilated, and many are not employed due to the economic crisis in Europe. The lack of employment in Europe would enhance their “feelings of discrimination, at odds with European society, disenfranchised or voiceless, and some may even feel resentment” toward their host country (Stewart 2013, 2).

The Pew Research had estimated that “Europe has grown from 29.6 million in l990 to 44.1 million in 2010 (a 49% increase). By 2030, Muslims are expected to make up 8% of Europe’s population” (2011, 1). What is interesting in the survey is that some of “the biggest increases will occur in the next twenty years in United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and other countries in Western, Northern, and Southern Europe” (Pew 2011, 2). With a bigger percentage or rise in Muslim population will only acerbate economic, societal problems, and possibly terrorists’ actions.

With the arrival of more Muslim immigrants from various places throughout the world, are they being vetted properly?  When an immigrant comes to the United States, he/she can apply for legal permanent resident (LPR) status. This allows a person to live, work, own property, attend public schools, colleges, and universities as well as join branches of the US Armed Forces. After 5 years living in the US, the LPR participant is able to apply for US citizenship. The LPR applicant form (I-360) containing the usual requested personal information does not question the LPR participant’s connection to any criminal or membership of groups, organizations, or associations in which they have advocated the overthrow of the US government. It is possible that any background checks on foreign LPRs may be done through the US embassies within the respected home countries.  It is likely that local nationals hired by US embassies are doing the background checks since they speak the language and understand the environment of the foreign applicant. This allows for corruption for monies to be paid to be granted for visa approval and the possibilities that terrorists will be able to slip through the channels to enter into the US undetected.

Through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics representative Nancy Rytina reported that on “January 1, 2012 there were an estimated 13.3 million LPRs living in the United States” (2013, 1). There was no listing for the number of Muslims who had LPR status for this time period as the US Census Bureau collects only voluntary “self-described religious identification of the adult populations which is done by random-digit-dialing telephone surveys of residential households in the continental US during 1990, 2001, and 2008. The survey estimates that in l990 there were 527,000 Muslims; in 2001 there were 1,104,000; and in 2008 there were 1,349,000 who considered themselves Muslims” (U.S. Census 2012, 61).

When the Census Bureau takes a census among the US population, the question is asked what category does one self-identify with in regards to race. The categories are: White, Black or African America, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific islanders, two or more races and some other race during the 2010 census. The “White” category is described as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “White” or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian (U.S. Census 2012, 61).  Understanding the definition of each of these categories shows that one is not able to distinguish the number of actual Middle East peoples, or Muslims who are actually living in the US whether legally or illegally.

One of the requirements of becoming a citizen is to live in the US for five years before an applicant can submit a completed Form N-400 for Naturalization.  Included in this form are questions such as the number of times that LPR has been outside the US during the past five years, dates of departures and returns, what countries were entered, and were any trips six months or longer. Another category asks the LPR what “affiliations of any group, organization, fund foundations, part, club, society, or similar group in the US or in any other place in which the applicant must identify or report.  Has the applicant ever persecuted (directly or indirectly) any person because of race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group or political opinion” (U.S. Form N-400 2013, 7). In this author’s opinion, these types of questions should be asked on the legal permanent resident application form I-360 which may help to alert officials of possible terroristic leanings before the foreign immigrant has been granted entry into the US.  This assumes of course that the potential terrorist or subversive would provide true statements or that the local national (LN) approving the document would bother to do a background investigation.  Since 9/11, it has been the radical Muslims who have terrorized and waged a campaign against the US and Western affiliates and because of this America has had to spend huge amount of monies towards security measures which places an economic burden on the American people. 

The above mentioned process applies to those who seek actual US citizenship.  It does not account for those whose goal is to simply infiltrate the US to possibly commit terrorist acts.  This is easily accomplished by acquiring a job with a US contracting company within their country.  The US Embassy in both Iraq and Afghanistan (assume it occurs in other countries) put on lectures with various contractors as to how their employees could vet local nationals (usually Muslims) to be allowed into the US.  This is a vetting procedure by a contractor with virtually no knowledge of the individual beyond the facts of their work ethic and how they got along.  Once the LN receives a signature and statement and with no obvious problems, it was quite common to get up to a 10 year US visa.   With that visa in hand there is no further need to complete the process of assimilation let alone become an actual US citizen.  

Shariah Law vs. US Constitution

Shariah Law comes from two sources: “The Quran, which many Muslims consider to be the literal word of God; and the Sunnah, the divinely guided tradition of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad” (Sacirbey 2013, 1). There are three components of Shariah—belief, character, and actions. The belief component “commands Muslims to believe in God, the angels, prophets, revelation, and other… aspects of the faith” (Sacirbey 2013, 2). This is contradictory to the Christian beliefs that it is up to the individual to accept or reject God. The Bible does not command anyone to believe or not believe as it is written in the New King James Version, John 3:16 that “whosoever believeth in him (God) shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

Since the US Constitution was based on the Biblical principles of crimes against person (i.e. murder, manslaughter, bodily injury from assaults, kidnapping, slander against another); crimes against immorality (i.e. adultery, sexual relations with next of kin, sodomy, whoredom, bestiality, rape); crimes against society (i.e. obstructing or perverting justice, contempt for the law, perjury or lying, bribery, rebellion against government or rules, treason, civil liberty); crimes against property (i.e. theft, fraud, destruction of public or private property), it is found that Shariah Law covers these types of crimes, too. Therefore, there is no need to have a second form or a shadowed form of government with an overbearing religious rule of law within the United States. By acknowledging of Shariah Law and allowing it to exist within a democracy only breaks down the principles in which Americans have lived for over two hundred years. These Constitutional principles have kept our society from being ruled by any one religion and from a totalitarian or dictatorship government.

For our forefathers emphasized that our government was not to have a state overrule the church and likewise, the church shall not overrule the state.  Classical Shariah Law (100% enforcement) can be seen in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as Author Omar Sacirbey contends. Countries like Turkey, Chad, Tunisia, Senegal, Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan (to name a few Muslim-majority nations) Shariah Law plays no role in government. Sacirbey goes on to say that “some Muslim-majority countries have criminalized violations of the belief, character, and action components of Shariah” (2013, 2-3). As an example, the detention of the American Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-born US citizen, who was arrested in Iran June 2012 and incarcerated in September 2012 after being charged “for undermining the Iranian government, the basis for the charge was Christian gatherings” (Ferrell 2013, 2).

This is an example of a country which is ruled by Shariah Law and does not allow the practice of freedom of religion as provided by the United States Constitution.  This shows that a US democratic freedom society and a ruling religious-led Sharia Law society would not be able to co-exist in a civil society such as America. Muslims will expect Americans to compromise or give into their demands to incorporate their Shariah Law. Sharia Law contradicts the law of the land in which law enforcement must investigate crimes against persons such as husband beating wives, killings of children who dishonor the Muslim family, or murder of converted Muslims to other religions.

Threats Posed Internally and Externally from this Organization of People

Despite the increase of drone operations to counter the radicalized elements of Islam by eliminating them from their safe havens, Islam is not dead. Author John Cooley (2000) in his book, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, argues that Islam is taking another approach to increasing their power. “Islamists in many lands are trying to infiltrate the rest of society; to impose curbs on what people can read; see on television or in the movies; what clothes they (especially women) can wear;  and how they can amuse or entertain themselves” (Cooley 2000, 262). Even Dr. Petr Pelikan an Arabic scholar, Czech Muslim, and an honorary Sudanese consul in the Czech Republic argues in his writing The Future of Islam that “one of the basic characteristic of Islam as a religion is its rigorous adherence to tradition and the rejection of development” ( 2011, 81). He points out that “European society strictly adheres to two incompatible principles (l) the idea that civic identity is more important than religious affiliation, and (2) that everyone should have the freedom of religion.  These two principles are incompatible to Islam and are far from the reality of Islam” (Pelikan 2011, 84). If this is the case, then Western democracies will never get the Muslim immigrant populations to successfully integrate fully into their societies. These democratic societies will only be fooling themselves.

The former Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini leader’s ideology as well as those who have followed in his footsteps, want to “garner political power that would ensure the running of Muslim states in a Muslim manner as defined by such ideologues, and thereby able to resist Western control over minds, resources, culture, and politics while simultaneously reinstate pride in Islam and self-governance—hence the definition of an Islamist as one who holds that every aspect of a Muslim’s life must be governed by Islam through Shariah Law and whose ultimate aim is to take over the reins of both public and private life and to regulate these according to the particular illegal regime of the orthodoxy creator to whom they subscribe” (Sterba and Kassan 2003, 120).

To support the concept that radical Muslims are quietly working behind the scenes of their European and American host countries,  Author Lorenzo Vidino has “proposed or describes a pyramid of three levels of radical Islam. The bottom of the pyramid contains the largest section of radical Muslims. They support democracy and integration into the European communities, openly, but underneath they work to radicalize the population of the Muslims. The second level houses those who oppose or reject any of the Western values and advocate establishing a world Islamic state. This group is made of violent and non-violent organizations. The very top of the pyramid includes the smallest group of Jihadists who push their Salafism interpretations of Islam and this group has fallen under al-Qaeda’s umbrella of total jihad of the world through violence” (2009, 168-174).

Even though each level is a threat to Western cultures and values, the lowest level Muslim group operates under the moderation theme while staying under the wire of scrutiny. The Western governments as well as the US are taken in by the Muslim façade of moderation as a way to justify to native populations that Muslims are okay. By earning the trust of host country nationals they also gain legitimization and power so they can push for their Islamic agenda. This is only leading host countries down the path of cultural, rule of law and nationalization destruction. The clerics within a host country in this pyramid’s level are quietly pushing their agenda—“the spread of Islam, until it rules the world” as expressed by Muhammad Akif, the supreme guide of the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (Vidino 2009, 172)

It is not just the immigrants coming through customs which pose a threat; it is the unknown number of illegal Muslims that may be the greatest threat of all.  “While Americans have had their sights on Al-Qaeda and the Middle East, Hezbollah, the most technically and militarily capable terrorist organization in the world has moved into our own backyard.  There have been multiple intelligence and law enforcement reports that the influence and criminal activity promoted by Hezbollah is already making its way into the United States” (Bencie 2013, 13).

One report in July of 2011 reported to members of Congress “indicated that the threat to the US border is already here and that Hezbollah operatives were already infiltrating the Southern border with Mexico as well as Canada.  In July 2010, their first improvised explosive device exploded in the US-Mexico border town of Ciudal Juarez” (Analysis 2011, 3).  The Assistant Secretary of State, Roger Noriega stated; “I believe there will be an attack on US personnel, installations or interest in the Americas’ as soon as Hezbollah operatives believe that they are capable of such an operation without implicating their Iranian sponsors in the crime”(Analysis 2011, 3). 

“Hezbollah has training bases and sleeper cells in Mexico.  They also assist drug cartels such as Los Zetas with skills in bomb making and explosives.  Hezbollah has created tunnels on the American border that are extremely similar to those dividing Gaza and Egypt. These tunnels can be used to transport conventional and biological weapons to Muslim contacts within the US.  Weapons built by Hezbollah are capable of killing thousands of US citizens” (Rosenthal 2013, 3). 

“The conflicting views between the diplomatic corps and the defense apparatus are creating a significant barrier to any attempts at a unified government response to combating Hezbollah’s influence in regions south of the border.  This lack of a comprehensive approach could very well be a more significant threat than the presence of Hezbollah itself” (Bencie 2013, 16). While everyone has their attention elsewhere, Muslim terrorists are silently moving into our own backyard and even into our unprotected home. 

In the end it will be non-Muslim populations who will take on the Muslim influences and some of their beliefs. A democracy has the concept of compromising but an Islamic state does not. Islam will not change so what will be the next step for Western and Muslim societies?  Dr. Petr Pelikan an Arabic scholar and Czech Muslim, suggests that extreme immigration limits may be implemented to curb migration, no future construction of mosques, or even forced exodus which could produce more radical Islamists. From the other end of the spectrum, “forced exodus of Europeanized Muslims back to the Middle East could introduce more Western elements into their local societies” (Pelikan 2011, 85-86).

It has been suggested that Western civilization who wishes to keep its freedom should adopt the motto “we do not tolerate intolerance” (Janda 2011, 79). Janda argues that it is impossible to force Muslim immigrant minorities to integrate and assimilate.  His suggestion is “to educate the group that religion is a private matter within a secular society but that building of assimilated Muslim middle class should be the aim” (Janda 2011, 79).

If immigrant Muslims, who refuse to adhere to the values, philosophies, and the rule of law of their host country, then they should return to their home country where they can practice and maintain the Muslim culture as they see fit and not force their beliefs on other cultures or nationalities.  After all,” history tells us that national declines are preceded by cultural declines” (Clark 2013, 263).

Conclusion

From history and from the attacks that have taken place, both in and against Europe and America by Muslim extremists, it is obvious there is a threat and one that is growing.  This threat is compounded by the refusal to adapt to American values, norms and culture.  Previous immigrants, regardless of country, have assimilated.  They wanted to become Americans not just for the purpose of having access to monies or to conquer that nation but to have all the freedoms which America promises.  With the unlimited and largely un-vetted migration through either legal or illegal means (through Mexico and Canada), the threat will continue to grow.  The increase in legally registered Muslims in Europe has grown by 49% in 20 years.  The numbers of illegal increase that percentage by an unknown factor but are assumed to be high.  With Hezbollah on our border and the failure of our government to recognize let alone respond to the events taking place only serves to increase the danger America is facing.  

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