Home Columns Books Papers Biography Contact

"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

October 2016

Immigrants vs Self-Radicalizing Jihadis



With the latest outrage of terror attacks by two US citizens in New York-New Jersey and Minnesota on September 17, the news media were reporting our leaders? very conflicting viewpoints. The attacks gave fuel to Donald Trump?s notion that terrorists are coming into this country with refugees. "Keep all Muslims out until we know what?s going on!"

The problem with this is that the two terrorists were not "refugees." They were citizens and had spent all their formative years here, not in Afghanistan or Somalia. Trump has no program for dealing with self-radicalized thugs.

The liberal press and officials tried to remind us all that although these terrorists were Muslim, this does not warrant holding all Muslims as guilty. There were indignant comments that we cannot profile Muslims when trying to identify Islam-inspired self-radicals. The trouble with this view is that when terrorists themselves claim Islam as their motive, how can we ignore it?

I find both of these analyses shallow. What if we try a third agenda for vetting immigrants?

? Refugees. There is no way to ignore the desperation of whole families fleeing the horrors of total war in Syria. We ignored this desperation when Jews were fleeing Nazi Germany and six million deaths later, civilized nations swore never to let such a thing happen again. A family fleeing with new-born infants and elderly parents need a hearing as applicants for asylum.

However, refugees in large numbers must be vetted because terrorists do try to infiltrate their numbers to gain access to the west, which they will attack. This vetting is now being done. In Germany, which has taken in the most refugees, the authorities are now infiltrating the refugee camps with agents and real refugees are growing bolder in outing dangerous ones.

? Self-Radicalizing Citizens. As former Mayor Giuliani once noted, when the FBI was trying to go after the Mafia, they didn?t look for them in Irish neighborhoods. Profiling is absolutely essential, but it should be intelligent profiling. The Muslim communities are wittingly and unwittingly harboring jihadis. Parents and family members are reluctant to report dangerous relatives to the authorities. Many Muslim clerics have been trained and paid for by the Saudi Wahhabi establishment and they should be profiled! If we are not planting moles in these communities, we are not doing our business.

? Refugee Travel. People who come to this country for asylum, with the understanding that they were fleeing intolerable persecution, should not be travelling back to that very country without being profiled. Imagine a Jewish family that fled Nazi Germany permitting their child to travel back to Germany to bring back a wife and learn fluent German. This is a ridiculous notion. Why, then, are Muslims families who begged for asylum from Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Somalia, letting children go back to such places where, we now know, they get training as jihadis? Almost every one of the long list of home-grown jihadis were readmitted to this country after travelling to the very countries from which their families had fled. This should be a red flag.

? Not the Real Islam. We hear from apologists on the left and from Muslim spokespersons themselves that although these attackers identified themselves as Muslims doing their religious duty, that is not the "real Islam," which is a "religion of peace." Unfortunately, while there are indeed peaceful Muslims, the religion is not, and has never been, a religion of peace. When literally followed, Islam is a militant faith at war with the world.

We must profile those institutions and neighborhoods where Islamic fascism breeds. When a young Muslim-American suddenly gets religious (headscarves and beards where before there were none), it is a red flag. And we must abandon the notion that poverty is responsible for Muslim disaffection. These jihadis are having an existential crisis. They resent the West but are not sophisticated enough to know they are being exploited by something much worse.

Some brave Muslims are urging a Reformation for Islam. In Muslim-majority countries this is criminal. In the West, however, this may provide salvation for this troubled religion.

679 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

Print