Hugh Fitzgerald: Justin Trudeau and the Delights of Diversity
And if there was no place for him in Somalia, which is hard to credit, why was he not taken in by his coreligionists in any of the 57 Muslim-majority states? And especially, why have none of the fabulously rich petro-states of the Gulf been taking in such “refugees” as Abdulahi Hasan Sharif? Why are no demands made by the “international community” for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the Emirates, to take responsibility for fellow members of the umma? Why have the advanced peoples of the Infidel West allowed themselves to be snookered into thinking they have some kind of duty to welcome into their countries people who have no desire to integrate, who have every desire to pocket whatever aid they can receive from the limitlessly generous Infidels, and who have been taught to believe that the Infidels, “the most vile of creatures,” exist only to be taken maximum advantage of, as they supply the Jihad Seeker’s Allowance? How, in what way, do Abdulahi Hasan Sharif and so many others like him make Canada stronger? Tell us, Prime Minister Trudeau. Youth wants to know.
While whistling in the dark, Trudeau does let in a brief crack of light, when he said after the Edmonton attack that “while the investigation continues, early reports indicate that this is another example of the hate that we must remain ever vigilant against.”
Trudeau stumbles over himself in discussing the Edmonton attacker. He first calls the attack a “senseless act of violence,” but then he offers the “sense” he thinks it possesses, which is the desire of the attacker, and of all such Muslim attackers, to “divide us” (that is, we Muslims and non-Muslims who are otherwise so solidly united). Following his reasoning, if such attacks are allowed to “divide us,” so that we begin to take a less than delighted view of Islam, possibly even a critical one, we would only be allowing “the terrorists to win.” No, insists Trudeau, “we will not be cowed by those to seek to divide us.” The only way, then, by this topsy-turvy logic, to “not let the terrorists win” is to make sure, after every Muslim terror attack, that we fall all over ourselves in restating our solidarity with Muslims, re-pledging ourselves to make Muslims welcome, assuring one and all that “we stand together with our Muslim brothers” and possibly even visiting a local mosque to meet with its members who, we keep being told, are “scared” and need our reassurance. Every Muslim attack becomes an occasion to reassure….Muslims. But apparently we Infidels, the targets of all these attacks, need no such reassurance for ourselves.
Then there’s the Trudeauvian platitudinous peroration:
“We cannot – and will not – let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada’s strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear. Edmonton is a strong and resilient city, and I am confident that its citizens will support one another to overcome this tragic event.”Not a word about anything in those Muslim texts that just might need to be examined. For all the justin-trudeaus of this world agree: We don’t need to examine them to know we don’t need to examine them.
The Edmonton attack, says Trudeau, is an “example of the hate that we must remain ever vigilant against.” Which “hate” is that? Does he, could he, possibly mean only the “hate” Muslims are taught to feel for Infidels? But that is not possible. He has never been able to hint, not even obliquely, as to whose “hate” it is that is behind terrorist acts, nor dared to suggest on the basis of what teachings, to be found in what texts. He remains perennially ambiguous, as if the “hate” is free-floating,
inexplicable, not tied to a particular ideology, a cloud over Canada. He may want us to think that this “hate” is simply in the atmosphere, now expressed by the “violent extremists” who just happen to be Muslim, as at Edmonton, and at other times expressed by the “violent extremists” — the “right-wing Islamophobes” — among the non-Muslims, with both groups “trying to divide us.” And for Trudeau and so many like him, those symmetrical haters, Muslim and non-Muslim “extremists,” “must not be allowed to succeed.” But these supposedly equivalent “hatreds” expressed by “violent extremists” are in fact quite different. If Muslims “hate” Infidels, it’s not for anything they have done; it’s for being Infidels. Nor are Muslim terrorists “trying to divide us,” for they know that Believers and Infidels are already permanently divided. The Qur’an itself does the dividing, being full of commands for Muslims to never take Christians and Jews as friends, to strike terror in the hearts of the Unbelievers, to wage violent Jihad, or Jihad by other means when necessary, against those Unbelievers, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere.
Those non-Muslims who “dislike” or even “hate” some Muslims do so not because of who they are, but because of what they do. We hate Osama bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi and Al-Zarqawi and Al-Awlaki and Jihadi John because they have been responsible for the murder of so many innocents, not because they are Muslims. And non-Muslim “violent extremists” are not trying “to divide us,” but merely attempting to point out what it is, in Islamic texts, that explains why Muslim terrorists do what they do. It is the acts of terrorism, and not the attempt to correctly understand those acts, that divide us.
And what about Trudeau’s use of the word “hate”? The Western world has been writhing in agony over any signs of hatred by the white Western non-Muslim world. “Hatred” is out, no matter how well deserved. Apparently it is now an impermissible emotion. But hatred can and should be felt, against those who decapitated Daniel Pearl, James Foley, Nick Berg, or those lines of orange-jumpsuited Christians and Yazidis and even Shi’a, their heads lopped off seriatim. Are we allowed to hate those Muslims who groomed English girls to be passed around as sex slaves in the U.K.? Can we hate those who tortured Yazidis to death in Iraq? Are we allowed to hate those who mow Infidels down with trucks, as in Nice and Barcelona, massacre Infidels — by shootings, stabbings, slitting of throats, explosions — at schools, in churches, at museums, national monuments, government offices, nightclubs, sports arenas, on the streets? Are we morally deficient in hating Osama bin Laden, or Al-Baghdadi, or Al-Zarqawi? Wouldn’t there be something wrong with us, rather — something morally wrong — if we were incapable of feeling hate for such people? Such “hate” is not a duty imposed on us as it is for Muslims; the “hate” we may reasonably feel is not something we have been inculcated to feel. It is the emotion we experience, or should, when we are reacting as morally alert creatures to the behavior and attitudes and acts of many Muslims, responsible for nearly 32,000 attacks since 9/11 alone. Who would argue that it is wrong to hate Hitler or Himmler, or Stalin or Beria? “Hate” may be well-founded or not, but is not an emotion we should simply reject in every case. The “haters” are sometimes right.
Trudeau wants Canadians to be “vigilant” against this “hate,” but should begin to make clear which “hate” and against “what,” he is talking about. It sounds as if “hate” is the common lot of mankind, divorced from any teachings or beliefs. But what he does not mention is where the “hate” comes from. He does not urge the Canadian public to investigate, much less publicly discuss, the contents of Islamic texts that spell out the reasons for that hate and the resulting attacks. There is no doubt that for the terrorist Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, there was a direct line leading from the contents of the Qur’an and Hadith, about which he had been taught from an early age in Somalia and, for all we know, he may have taken a refresher course in Islam-prompted hate at a mosque in Canada, to his attempt to mow down Infidels, for the crime of being Infidels, in Edmonton.
Trudeau ended his brief statement with this:
“We cannot – and will not – let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada’s strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear. Edmonton is a strong and resilient city, and I am confident that its citizens will support one another to overcome this tragic event.”This paragraph is sentimental tosh, nearly every word of which unhappily reflects the banal spirit of the age. There is no “violent extremism” that has “taken root” among non-Muslims in Canada. There are those non-Muslims who, very much on their own, and refusing to swallow the party line on Islam, have read the Islamic texts, and drawn their own grim conclusions. But what we call “violent extremism” in the Muslim population, as if it were limited to a handful of semi-demented people, is nothing more than the mainstream teachings of Islam, being taken to heart by some Believers, who then act on those teachings, as they have all over Europe. This is not a “twisted” or “distorted” understanding of Islam, as Trudeau and others like to insist, though they never offer any proof for this claim. These “extremists” read and follow the same Qur’an, the same Hadith, the same Sira, as all other Muslims. Nor need we be “cowed” by those who wish to silence us by claiming that we are to be counted among those “who seek to divide us or promote fear” if we fail to express anything after every terror attack but undying affection for Muslims and anxiety over how they — the Muslims! –may suffer as a result. We have a perfect right to feel fear after so many attacks by Muslims all over the Western world.
As for Trudeau’s standard-issue remark about those who would “divide us,” we are divided already, by a Qur’an that calls on Believers to fight the Infidels, to strike terror in their hearts, never to befriend them, and to understand that they are “the most vile of creatures.” (98:6) If those are immutable truths spoken by Allah, how can a devout Muslim not feel a “divide” between himself and all non-Muslims? The attempt to unite us will fail as long as Muslims follow what is demanded of them in the Qur’an and Hadith.
To sum up: Muslim terror attacks are never “senseless,” but make perfect sense. The command to fight the Infidel, and to “strike terror in the hearts” of Unbelievers, is to be found in 109 verses of the Qur’an and in endless numbers of stories in the Hadith. These are what explain, endow with sense, Islamic terrorism. Prime Minister Trudeau could profit from fewer bromides and a little more burning the midnight oil over the Qur’an. And his people could profit, too, were he at long last to direct attention to, rather than divert attention away from, what is in the Qur’an and Hadith.
“Diversity” is an idol of this benighted age, but we should reject the trudeauvian impulse to mindlessly celebrate it, and instead cast a cold eye on the effects, especially, of the large-scale Muslim presence in the Western world, which has led to everything from cultural incoherence to a diminished sense of physical security. We have a right, as well, to compare the outcomes of different immigrant groups, instead of lumping them all together, and to change our immigration policies accordingly, all over the West, and, even in arms-wide-open Canada. If, as the data available all over the Western world strongly suggests, it turns out that Muslim immigrants (and second-generation Muslims) have much higher rates of long-term unemployment, of criminality and incarceration, of living (sometimes lavishly, especially if plural wives are involved) on the dole, than do any non-Muslim immigrants, then it is perfectly reasonable, and not “Islamophobic,” to decrease or end Muslim immigration. It is especially maddening that the richest Muslim countries have not taken in any Muslim “refugees.” The Western world ought to be clamoring — at bilateral meetings with Gulf Arab countries, at meetings of the E.U., the U.N., even NATO — for the rich Muslim states of the Gulf to start taking in, not just as workers but as immigrants, fellow members of the umma.
The next time Prime Minister Trudeau calls an attack by Muslim terrorists “senseless,” let his office, let the Canadian media, in letters to the editor, be bombarded with explanations of the “sense”of those attacks — quote the Qur’an, quote the hadith — he is apparently too dull-witted to descry. The next time he praises, in the abstract, “diversity,” give that claim the same treatment: present the figures on the cost of Muslims on the dole, on long-term or permanent Muslim unemployment, on Muslim incarceration rates and the costs of maintaining so many prisoners, and on the huge expense of enhanced security measures made necessary by the large-scale presence of Muslims.
It probably won’t prevent Justin Trudeau from continuing to avoid reality. But there just might be others, waiting in the wings even of his own party, who will start to think things through. They might — stranger things have happened — start to read, carefully, the Qur’an. They might even open the Hadith. And that, O Canada!, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
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