Why, Indeed
Stephen Schwartz has a great article on why it’s so hard for an American Muslim to speak out in favor of his adopted country.
I have a good friend, a fellow USN shipmate who emigrated from the Middle East, who is a lucky immigrant because he had skills he could quickly put to use in the larger world. He and his wife homeschool their kids because the Islamic schools in the DC area are too Wahabi. This is one reason:
What happens when ordinary Muslims rebel against radical domination in America? They are ostracized, thrown out of mosques, and subjected to extraordinary public insults and threats.
This is one reason why my view of things is a bit different from Charles Johnson’s. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of personal and family risk, to do the right thing sometimes. We saw this in the Civil Rights Movement days, when it was in the best interest of people with power wanted to keep the viewpoints in line.
That’s why the first email I sent after we pulled in following 9/11 was to my Muslim USN friend. It’s pretty lonely in that position, and those folks who get it need all the support we can muster.
Who can you support? How can I find a way to defeat the German-American BundCAIR?
5 Responses to “Why, Indeed”
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December 22nd, 2005 at 11:14 pm
“They are ostracized, thrown out of mosques, and subjected to extraordinary public insults and threats.” Sorry , Chap, this treatment sounds too similar to the treatment conservatives receive at the hands of those calling themselves “mainstream Americans”. Either Wahhabis are more fearsome than liberals, or ordinary Muslims are not as fearless.
[For purposes of the analogy above, a mosque is considered an institution of learning, civic order and social programs equivalent to American faculties, tax districts and religious welfare sponsors].
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:39 am
Well, I compare the experience of the (for instance) Afghani grocery guy down the street in DC with the experience of the Russian Jewish immigrants I met in 1990, or the Korean immigrants I worked alongside in 2000, all first generation. I did some study on the American immigration experience back in 2002 and found that with two glaring exceptions, all American immigration tends to follow a general pattern regardless of source or immigrant.
if you’re a first gen immigrant, it’s not as if English is your primary language. Church is pretty important, and one of the primary spots one can connect with the community of other first gen immigrants–and reading English ain’t easy for someone used to Cyrillic or Arabic, so the extra effort when working fourteen hours a day trying to pay rent and raise kids is hard to find. Many folks started their small businesses, or got jobs, or housing tips, from that community of folks.
For that community to become a poisonous creature is very, very hard for the first few people to speak out. I ain’t exactly a conservative (what am I conserving? It depends), but I’ve been in Berkeley and Cambridge and San Francisco–it’s a little difficult and tedious to be “out” with one’s political beliefs, sometimes an occasional fight of one kind or another. What groups like CAIR and the Wahabs in the mosques and the tayyib(is that the term? Lying tactically to achieve a goal) do is poison the whole environment for someone in a very weak position. In Afghanistan they would have just killed your family or thrown you in jail or something, but that’s a little harder to do here–so the evil ones find different ways to hold people down.
The parallel with the 1960′s is the pressure racists put on whites to not get in their way–which in some cases was rather successful.
This societal and economic and personal protection weakness being used as a tool of suppression is preying on weaker people–and works. It may be another reason, perhaps, why prisons are a prime recruiting pool as well.
December 23rd, 2005 at 7:42 am
So what’s the solution, Chap? If Muslims won’t stand up to their own bullies, who does? Right now there is only one group I can think of that always stands up to bullies, no matter who they are, and even if they are one of their own. Christian, Redneck, Southern White Boys (many of whom are bullies when they are young) are taught by their Dads that you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. My kids’ experience today is that most of the bullies in school ain’t good old boys from the South. It has been Latin and Black gangs. And those folks haven’t given up bullying when they grow up. Why not? Because Dad ain’t around to slap them back into line when they keep it up far past the time they should have outgrown it. Everytime there has been an altercation in schools around here it has been the Christian white boys who break it up. They have strength and moral conviction.
I’m not racist. Culture is the cause of folks’ acceptance of bad behavior. Good old white boys accept killing animals for sport, Black kids accept running with gangs who kill or rob people, Latin gangs accept something similar, but outgrow it a lot sooner. They all tend to stay in their own culture and keep their own rules of behavior accepted by their community, especially in integrated schools. Muslims do the same. Islam is a culture. It actually codifies and teaches how to behave towards everyone who isn’t Muslim. And I can read what it says the behavior is supposed to be. I see the results on my TV every time somebody who looks like me gets beheaded.
Now, you and I both know the above observations are rash generalizations. Many (I don’t know how many) Black kids are really good kids and have nothing to do with gangs and antisocial behavior. I have seen some of the finest kids at my son’s schools who are Black, Hispanic, Asian, South Side Snake Handler, whatever. His best friend was a Mexican kid who ran with gangs in Mexico and dropped that when he got here. He had a code of respect for women and respect for his elders, too. When I went to high school 50% of my class was Hispanic. I learned the language. I learned the rules and got along perfectly with them.
It isn’t the color of a bully’s skin that burns me up. It is the way they act, the way they treat my daughter (and any woman they come in contact with), how they feel about paying their debts. How they treat their less popular friends. And the experience of the most redneck country schools or urban cesspool schools around here in the heart of Redneck Texas is that good kids are good because Mom and Dad will keep them in line if they get out of line, including slap them around for their own good. If you didn’t spank before high school, it’s too late of course. Latin kids especially get slapped back into line in high school because their Dads are around and are working hard.
But Muslims train their kids to disapprove of anyone who isn’t Muslim and doesn’t agree with the Koran and the hadiths. It is institutionalized. It can’t be changed until their Old Man changes his attitudes towards America. So they either do it themselves or the Christian adults will end up doing it for them.
And don’t think Afghanistan couldn’t happen here. Anytime the little people of a country refuse to rise up and redpudiate the evil ones, they get the kind of government they deserve. Dictatorships naturally tend to self perpetuate. Once someone is in charge unchecked, he kills or imprisons everyone who disagrees. Comparisons of this to America now are ridiculous. Dhimmicrats should know that. When True Evil comes along, they won’t have the balls to stand up to it, because they will have disgraced or killed every right wing American who would stand up for freedom. And they will get the government THEY deserve. But not the one I deserve.
Subsunk
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:22 am
Smartest guy I ever worked with in the USN was a 1st gen IRAQI Christian (father emigrated in early-60′s). He went to the US Naval Academy and rose to command one of your SSNs during GW-1.
He was as American as Davy Crockett. We fished together and came up (actually most ideas were his) with all kinds of dad-gum joint stuff for a certain 4-star as part of our day work. He’s running one one of them thar power generating plants last I heard.
It’s amazing to me sometimes how little emnity has been shown toward ME Muslim American immigrants since 9-11. I would categorize the backlash as isolated at best. That, despite the B.S. of CAIR or the homegrown Wahabiism taught at certain schools in Alexandria near Fort Belvoir….
B2
December 31st, 2005 at 7:11 pm
[...] The concept of hirabah might be a meme worth propagating. Recently I’ve noticed some people discussing what I mentioned last week–”moderate Muslims”–and how to keep us from getting blown up right proper. I’ll describe some articles I’ve recently discovered or seen in the last few days, mention what this harabah thing is, and make a general observation or two. I hope someone who actually can do something about it reads this post or at least thinks about the same things. [...]