Can An Open Society Prevent a Persistent and Determined Islamic Encroachment?

Wednesday

The following is an excerpt from a book review of Serge Trifkovic's book, Defeating Jihad. The reviewer is Brian Mitchell. You can read the entire review here.

The excerpt addresses the problem of how an open society can ethically deal with the dilemma created by freedom of religion on the one hand, and laws against sedition on the other. Up until now those two laws have not created a problem. But with the immigration of Muslims into democracies, the dilemma has become obvious.

How will free societies protect themselves from overthrow, and yet remain free? Mitchell writes:

[Trivkovic] insists that Islam itself is “inherently seditious” but recommends action against only “Islamic activism,” defined as the political act of propagating, disseminating or otherwise supporting “Jihad”…, discrimination against Christians, Jews and other “infidels,” discrimination and violence against women and sexual minorities, anti-Jewish bigotry, sanction of slavery, etc.

Trifkovic knows, of course, that the Koran propagates all these things and that there can be no Islam without the Koran. His point seems to be that the Constitution empowers us to ban Islam because of its politics and not because of its religion. “We do not need new legal theories, or a different conception of the First Amendment,” he writes. “[W]e need an educational campaign.”

He might be right about the law. As Justice Jackson pointed out, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and there is certainly no overestimating the willingness of American jurists, when provided enough political cover, to argue around inconvenient legal obstacles. It seems to me, however, that a paradigm shift sufficient to get us honestly out of our ideological box would require us to admit that the First Amendment’s Anti-Establishment Clause is a large part of the problem. Any schoolboy can see that, if some religions are inherently seditious, a constitution tolerating all religions invites its own overthrow.

Our educational campaign must therefore teach two truths: that Islam is seditious, and that the Founding Fathers were wrong. Teaching the former and not the latter will cause confusion and keep us thinking inside the box.

There is also the danger that the prosecution of “Islamic activism” alone, especially when clouded by the requirement of unrestricted religious freedom, will not protect us from “moderate” Muslims who disavow the seditious aspects of their religion only until they are too strong to oppose. Trifkovic indeed warns that moderates cannot be trusted because Muhammad’s doctrine of taqiyya sanctions dissembling for the sake of Allah. He also warns that nominal Muslims, when demoralized by Western culture, sometimes sincerely rediscover their own true faith — with violent consequences.

What is needed to strengthen this book’s recommendations for a practical response to Islam is a more thorough theoretical treatment of the problem of Popper’s Paradox, which says (in words too plain for Karl Popper himself) that even open societies, if they are to remain open to some, must remain closed to others.

What do you think?

11 comments:

Anonymous 3:46 PM  

IT'S ALREADY HAPPENING- THE ATTACK ON INTERNET FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION GATHERS MOMENTUM AS THE MSM SEEK TO RE-ESTABLISH THEIR MONOPOLY

This article refers to the US, but those countries with no First Amendment (such as the UK) are in even greater danger.


"The old media fears the new one. The latter watches the watchers, polices the police. It has cut into the Rathersphere's market, causing a diminution of circulation, viewership and - this is what really gets their collars up -- power. They can no longer propagandize with Tass-like impunity, for the e-hills have eyes.


Yet this is no time for a victory dance. The new media is under attack, as the left aims to silence dissent before it grows strong enough to block the thought police's coup de grace.

This is the race for the American mind. And we are losing.

The attack upon free expression is more varied than one may think....

Read the rest at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/the_race_for_the_american_mind.html

Anonymous 11:22 AM  

An open society is always vulnerable to attack. The preventative measure is the response that is guaranteed by that open society when attacked.

Security and Freedom, while not complete opposites do have a lot of items that oppose each other.

Anonymous 4:21 PM  

Intimidators try to silence textual analysts of the Koran who prove it is a human rather than divine document:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA15Ak03.html

Citizen Warrior 11:27 AM  

In an article entitled, Radical Islam is not a reaction against the "injustices" in Palestine, the French writer, d'Alexandre del Valle says:

"Are pluralist democracies and open societies really prepared to confront this Third Totalitarianism which clearly aspires to destroy them from within, that is to say, by using their own territories, their populations which Islamists seek to convert, conquer and, above all, intimidate?

"Are the Western societies able to fight against an enemy with many faces whose one hand is in the petrol of the Gulf and in the Western societies themselves and the other one in the terrorism; an enemy which counts more and more followers in the world; an enemy whose best allies are the very values of Western democracies: the liberty of movement, of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience? For it is within the framework the total liberty, even in the name of the right to be different and in the name of multiculturalism that the hateful ideology of Islamist totalitarianism is advancing insidiously in Europe and in the United States.

Anonymous 5:42 AM  

I have always been of the mind that you need to careful of what you ask for. If you want prayer in schools, the question becomes what prayers. The same is true with the freedom to practice religion, which religion. Over recorded history these questions and their answers have resulted in untold barbaric brutality. Today we see nothing more than history repeating it self, but now it is broadcast globally and not contained regionally. The Bosnia war in 1992 is a prime example of a regional outbreak, now we are dealing with a global outbreak, one that can not be solved with bombs and bullets. We as a global community need to respond as a global community to resolve this problem or it will not get resolved it will only fester until such time that the infection is beyond a cure. In plane language we the global community need to get our collective heads out of our asses and work together to resolve this problem, not just bandage it with bombs and bullets.

Anonymous 8:55 AM  

I share no one's hopeful thoughts or beliefs about peacefully coexisting with Islam/Muslims. I think believing such is a dangerous, nation-killing delusion we are currently refusing to awaken from.

The founding fathers weren't "wrong". We're wrong in our interpretation of the intent of the founding fathers. They weren't dealing with Muslims, on the scale we are, at the time. And, simply because they're not completely applicable today, doesn't mean that they weren't right back then. Our founding fathers had to make some assumptions about basic sanity, civility, etc. They did not found an insane asylum for the criminally insane, so we should not expect their concepts to be perfectly harmonious with our problems of today.

Everything about Islam is antithetical to America. This should be patently obvious to everyone by now. Yeah, I know there are a few apostates now and again, here and there, but not enough to make any difference.

Besides, even if Islam was somehow magically amenable to reform, how much of our nation's resources can we continue to waste tolerating these savages and how safe would we ever really be? Besides, it could take hundreds, of not thousands, of years to purge Islam of its poison. Therefore, what good is that going to do us today?

Walter Sieruk 10:23 AM  

All of this encroachment by the forces and powers of Islam that is held by Islamic groups both violent and not violent of of course based on Islam. Which is base on the "holy book" of Islam which is the Quran. To better understand what the Quran really is it therefore needs to be stated that way before the birth of the founder and prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was the Christian Church. The Christian Church had and still has the Gospel of Christ, First Corinthians 15:1-8. In contrast what Muhammad ending up giving the world was ,in reality, another gospel. Muhammad even claimed,at times,to get some of the information that eventually went into the composition of the Quran, another gospel, through an angel.Such a thing as this was warned about in the Bible. Which reads "Though we, or an angel from heaven,preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than ye have received, let him be accursed." Galatians 1:8,9. [K.J.V.] In conclusion, Muhammad who gave this false message of Islam was one of the "many false prophet" who have entered in the world, Matthew 7:15. First John 4:1.,that gave false teaching that led and still leads many people astray and is he,Muhammad, stands accursed by and of God.

An interesting Christian internet site I found is answering-islam.org

Citizen Warrior 3:00 PM  

B Kop emailed a comment, and gave permission to post it here:

Am I against religious freedom? If so, then I must be against the Constitution of the United States. Do you agree? By citing our Constitution's first amendment, you point out that I'm disregarding our laws. You might tell me to go to the following site to see and read what our lawyers rely on:

First Amendment - U.S. Constitution – FindLaw ‪constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1.html‬ Cached... Annotations Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, ... U.S. Constitution; ... or abridging freedom of speech, ...

There you will find the real language:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

Nowhere does it say that anyone must be religious; it does say that there can be no government sponsored religions. That implies a citizen's freedom to choose or not to choose to be religious.

But it does one other thing; it makes a most important demand of each citizen. To share in that protection and its freedom, one must pledge allegiance to the United States and its laws. In other words, if we want our country's protections and liberties, we must abide by our laws that are based on our American Constitution (and its democratic principles).

For those who have been reading my work for years, you will know about my opposition to granting freedoms and liberties mentioned above to Islam. As unpopular as my stance is among some of you, I have maintained that there is good reason.

Interestingly, it relates to the First Amendment!

That amendment clearly states that the United States and its Constitution is not intended to support a theocracy. In case you're wondering, theocracies do exist; just look at the Constitutions of each Muslim majority country. Each makes clear that no law may be passed that contradicts the Koranic based shariah law.

In other words, none of those countries have anything resembling our First Amendment.

And that's what makes their theocracy so different from our democracy.

Citizen Warrior 3:01 PM  

Here's the second part of B Kop's comment:

As for Muslims who are good Americans, I applaud them. But their goodness does not change Islam or its tenets. THEIR problem, not ours, is to find a way to separate their so-called religion from its theocratic intent.

Sadly for them, that can't be done. Just ask any imam about that; listen to any sermon preached at any mosque. Every member of the Islamic ummah (community of Muslims) is obliged by the shahadah to pledge allegiance only to Allah and the Prophet and perfect role model, Mohammad.

In the United States, such Muslims may be regarded as being remiss; in Muslim ruled countries such a position is blasphemous, tantamount to treason. And the punishment is death:

Ayatollah Tortured, Near Death, in Iran for Criticizing Political Islam
by Shadi Paveh
February 5, 2014 at 5:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4158/ayatollah-hossein-kazamani-boroujerdi

In other words, “political Islam” refers to Islam's role as the governing theocracy.

For those American Muslims who claim to be loyal to our democracy and its Constitution's tenets, one must ask whether they still abide by their commitment to the shehadah and its simple but unmistakable demands:

Shahada (Faith): First Pillar of Islam - ReligionFacts
‪www.religionfacts.com › islam › practices‬
Mar 17, 2004 · Shahada: Confession of Faith What is Shahada? The first of the Five Pillars of Islam is the shahada. Shahada is the Muslim profession of faith, expressing ...
The first of the Five Pillars of Islam is the shahada. Shahada is the Muslim profession of faith, expressing the two simple, fundamental beliefs that make one a Muslim:
La ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah.

There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.

Sincere recitation of this confession of faith before of two Muslims is the sole requirement for those who wish to join the Muslim community. It represents acceptance not only of Allah and his prophet, but of the entirety of Islam. [my emphasis in bold letters here and below]
As one of the Pillars, the shahada must be recited correctly aloud with full understanding and internal assent at least once in every Muslim's lifetime.

The shahada is also recited in the muzzein's call to prayer, included in the salat (daily ritual prayer) and incorporated in Sufi contemplative prayer. It is also recited in the moments before death.

From the shahada are derived the other fundamental doctrines of Islam: angels, the Qur'an and the Bible, the prophets, and the Day of Judgment.

Citizen Warrior 1:29 PM  

Richard Hobbs, author of Death by a Thousand Cuts, emailed me this comment:

The answer is to stop calling Islam a religion and label it appropriately as a totalitarian ideology and therefore against our Constitution. We need to stop giving it the protection of a religion and treat it like communism.

Citizen Warrior 12:44 AM  

Mike emailed this comment:

Trifkovic is close to being right but I think we need to redefine Islam! Simply call it what it is: “A totalitarian IDEOLOGY practiced religiously by 1.5 billion people” notice the redefinition. Call it what it is an IDEOLOGY not a religion. Then you are able to address it ex the 1st amendment.

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