Hugh Fitzgerald: Arsalan Iftikhar and Trump’s Reign of Terror
The Muslim hysteria is upon us. I don’t mean hysteria about Muslims, for none is discernible; rather, it is the hysteria of Muslims, or many of them, their expressions of supposed terror – in the newspapers, the airwaves, and the Internet — over what a President Trump will do. These reports of “terrified” Muslims are appearing all over the place, short on facts but long on fear. For what exactly has Trump said or done to strike such putative terror? He’s suggested that the vetting of Muslim migrants leaves a lot to be desired. Given how many Muslims have been admitted to the United States in how short a time, and given that our government has been a positive hindrance to those of its agents who would like to find out more about the ideology of Islam, and given, too, how hard it has been to read the minds of Muslim migrants, at least some of whom we have good reason to believe (see New York, Washington, Fort Hood, Boston, Chattanooga, Orlando, San Bernardino, or outside this country, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Moscow) may be intent on sowing murder and mayhem among the Infidels, doesn’t Trump; have a point? On December 7, 2015 (for Muslims, a date which will apparently live in Trump-infamy), Donald Trump called “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” This was apparently beyond the pale, as “ far-right” or as “white nationalist” (the newly-fashionable term of opprobrium for anyone who voted for Trump) as all get-out.
Was it really? What exactly had Trump called for? It had not escaped Trump’s notice that since 9/11/2001 there have been nearly 30,000 terrorist attacks by Muslims around the world, and that quite a few of those terrorists have the habit of quoting from the Qur’an and Hadith to justify those attacks, while others remain quiet about their plans; officially, we in the Western world (see Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pope Francis, Angela Merkel) are all encouraged to believe that these attacks “have nothing to do with Islam.” But res ipsa loquitur, as the lawyers like to say, the thing speaks for itself. Confusion is piled upon confusion when it comes to Islam. And since many people seem still to be unfamiliar with what is in the Qur’an and Hadith, and many in the American government, as elsewhere in the West, are fearful of offending Muslims by suggesting there might be something in those texts to worry about (which is why Robert Spencer found himself a pedagogue non grata as far as those now running the Homeland Security industry were concerned, when he insisted on reading the texts rightly), so it was perfectly sensible for Trump to say that in these matters the government has a duty to “figure out what the hell is going on” before even more Muslims are admitted, given the life-and-death stakes. There is nothing outrageous about that. Just because so many others have been derelict in their duty is no reason for Trump to score easy points by following suit.
CLICK TO READ MORE
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment