Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 51

Alinksi Does Afghanistan, Part II

If you read Part I, after the President's West Point speech a year-and-a-half ago, you knew what he was going to say last night. If there weren't so many lives of our best young people at stake, it would be faintly amusing to listen to the mainstream media commentary about how Obama's strategy just might be political rather than designed to achieve military success in Afghanistan. Obama's strategy has never been anything but political. As I said in Part I:

Obama knew he’d be fine politically [in the West Point speech] as long as he agreed to send some reinforcements — low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 extra troops in [General Stanley] McChrystal’s request. Now the president can continue purporting to define the mission, in his own words, “narrowly . . . as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies,” while conservatives gush that we are over there to demolish bin Laden’s network and the Taliban. In reality, we’ll be chasing the thankless, impossible dream of turning Kabul into Kansas. Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months, during which time we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan’s and that the hapless Karzai isn’t producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.

In the middle of 2011, the “taking into account conditions on the ground” part of Obama’s strategy will kick in. If, by talking down Karzai (which Obama continued doing in his [West Point] speech), the Left succeeds in souring the country on the Afghanistan enterprise such that the president’s reelection chances won’t be impaired by a withdrawal, the president will pull out. If, instead, the noble cause is still popularly perceived as noble, Obama will reprise the West Point two-step: satisfying the Right by staying the course, and satisfying the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then). That’s the plan.

Okay, okay, I got the unemployment rate wrong -- it's actually higher than 12 percent if you consider the real rather than the cooked numbers. More significantly, I failed to account for the possibility that our forces would find and kill bin Laden. That feat -- in Pakistan, where we obviously don't have 100,000 troops -- made last night a no-brainer: Obama would declare "mission accomplished" and not worry about a somnolent American media asking how we could have surged to defeat the Taliban while simultaneously negotiating with the Taliban and calling for the Taliban's inclusion in any Afghan political settlement. What I said 18 months ago remains true today: Obama's plan "would be preposterous if it were actually a national-security strategy. But it's not. It's a political strategy." It doesn't need to be coherent or effective. It needs to get Obama through 2012.

Wilders Acquitted of Hate Speech Against Muslims

I'm not prepared to say there is still hope for Europe, but this is a major victory for the freedom to think and to speak. Details here.

UPDATE: I'm just catching up and hadn't realized Mark already hit this -- read it if you haven't.

Don't break out the champagne quite yet on the new Moroccan constitution

Roger Kimball has beaten me to the punch in reacting to Jen Rubin's post in praise of King Mohammed VI's new constitution for Morocco. The constitution appears to transfer some important powers from the monarch to a democratically elected legislature and chief executive. Further, it ostensibly guarantees equality under the law for women, as well as freedom of religious practice, conscience, and speech -- all under an overarching commitment to protect human rights.

Jen effuses that the constitution and the king's speech announcing it "explode several myths: diversity isn’t possible in a Muslim country; tribal and ethnic divisions make a nation state problematic if not ungovernable; Islam and the secular rule of law are incompatible; and human rights will inevitably be sacrificed if democratic reforms expand in a Muslim country." I wish it were that simple.

Morocco is not just a "Muslim country" in the cultural sense. It is a country proudly adherent to sharia law. Since 1969, Morocco has been a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose Islamic member states proclaimed, in 1990, the "Declaration of Human Rights in Islam." The rationale for this proclamation -- which is also known as the "Cairo Declaration" -- is that the signatory nations do not accept the concept of "human rights" as it is understood in the West and outlined in such instruments as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the Cairo Declaration is a rebuttal.

Islamists always lard up their proclamations with sweet sounding guarantees like "human rights," "equality," "justice," etc. They do it precisely to beguile the West, and they have no small number of champions who will dutifully tell us to take it all at face value. (To be clear, Jen is most certainly not one of these, although I fear she is giving Morocco too much credit on this one.) You always have to read the fine-print, though -- and it's usually not too difficult to realize that you are being played once you understand the game.

So here we have the king's preamble: "The first pillar is the commitment to the Moroccan nation's immutable values, the preservation and sustainability of which is entrusted to me, within the framework of an Islamic country in which the King and Commander of the Faithful ensures the protection of the faith and guarantees the freedom of religious practice." Jen italicizes the bit at the end about "protection of the faith and guarantees the freedom of religious practice." The salient passages, however, are the references to "the Moroccan nation's immutable values" and to how everything happens "within the framework of an Islamic country[.]"

Jen selectively construes the passage to mean Islam is relevant only in the sense that it is the source of the king's legitimacy, making the king "the highest religious authority"; she cleaves off the guarantee of "freedom to practice other religions" (her italics) as if it were somehow not controlled by Islam but by some universal understanding of religious liberty shared by all of mankind. But, as the king himself makes clear, everything must happen within the framework of an Islamic country and consistent with the Moroccan nation's immutable values -- which are Islamic values. That means sharia -- Islam's all-encompassing law. The fact is that the king is not Morocco's "highest religious authority." Islam is not a religion; it is a comprehensive system regulating not only spiritual life but every detail of life. (My weekend column discussed this crucial distinction.) The king is the highest authority in the sense that he is ultimately responsible for the enforcement of Allah's law, which is not religious but totalitarian. 

According to the Cairo Declaration signed by Morocco, "the Islamic Ummah, which Allah made the best nation . . . has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization." The "role" of the Ummah is "to guide" humanity away from "the chronic problems" of "materialism" and "affirm [mankind's] freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah." Everything -- every right, every duty -- is qualified by sharia. That is not just my interpretation. It is made clear throughout the Declaration, and it is made emphatic at the conclusion -- in Articles 24 and 25, which Roger quotes in full: All rights and freedoms are subject to sharia, and when there is any doubt, sharia is the only permissible "source of reference for the explanation or clarification."

This is the necessary context for understanding what the Moroccan king has done. We have to grasp this or we will forever be surprised -- forever, like the State Department, fawning over constitutions (like Afghanistan's) that purport to safeguard human rights, then being shocked when some Christian convert is given a death-penalty trial for the capital "crime" of apostasy from Islam. When Islamic authorities speak of "human rights," "equality for women," "freedom to practice religion," "freedom of speech," and so on, they do not mean what you think you are hearing.

"Human rights" are the rights that humans have under sharia law -- and no others. "Equality for women" consists of the rights women are granted by sharia, which we in the West see (quite rightly, I think) as being grossly subordinate to the rights of men (in particular, Muslim men). In stark contrast, Islam considers them merely different from the rights of men -- more suitable, sharia scholars will tell you, to life as Allah intended women to live it, in light of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of their natural condition. As the Cairo Declaration puts it (in Article 6): "Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform[.]" Yes, she "has her own civil entity and financial independence" -- but only within the framework of what sharia permits. Indeed, Article 19 pronounces that not only women but "All individuals are equal before the law, without distinction between ruler and ruled." But again, this notion of "equality" is not the Western notion; when the law is sharia, to be equal "before the law" is to be saddled with sharia's very different treatment of men and women, and of Muslims and non-Muslims. 

Similarly, "freedom to practice religion" comes with the severe restrictions sharia imposes on non-Muslims. Yes, they are "free" to practice their religion in the sense that they are not compelled to convert to Islam (Article 10 makes that explicit), but there are considerable legal and financial disadvantages to being a non-Muslim in a sharia state. And "freedom of speech" does not include the freedom to utter statements that cast Islam in a poor light or that sow discord among the ummah -- regardless of whether those statements are true. Observe Article 22's weighty caveats (my italics):

Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah. Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'ah. Information is a vital necessity to Society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate the sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values, or disintegrate, corrupt or harm Society or weaken its faith. 

Is it possible, as Jen maintains, to have diversity (by which she means different groups with truly equal rights) in a Muslim country? Of course it is, but it will have to happen despite Islam, not because of Islam. It will require a ruler who will suppress sharia. Were that to happen, it would not "explode the myths" that "Islam and the secular rule of law are incompatible" and that "human rights will inevitably be sacrificed if democratic reforms expand in a Muslim country." It would confirm that these are not myths at all. It would be an instance of a ruler suppressing sharia so that his country can thrive.

Like Jen, I hope that Mohammed VI turns out to be such a ruler. But I'm not nearly as optimistic. Not only is the constitution filled with sharia caveats. As Roger notes, we have neither seen nor heard anything to suggest that Morocco has renounced the Cairo Declaration. Nor am I aware of Morocco's having separated itself from the OIC's ongoing campaigns to criminalize criticism of Islam and to spread sharia in the West. Absent such steps, I would not celebrate the new Morocco constitution until we see how it actually operates.

Re: "This is Isolationism"

Senator McCain, I wonder what Ronald Reagan would be saying about your friendly visit to Qaddafi in that Tripoli compound that President Reagan bombed -- remember, the 2009 visit where you helped smooth the way for U.S. taxpayer underwriting of Qaddafi's armed forces -- the ones you've now decided we need to wipe out. Remember, back when you were swooning over "the many ways in which the United States and Libya [ACM -- that would be Qaddafi's Libya] can work together as partners." I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say about Congress's vote to increase funding to Qaddafi so he could bulk up his military and improve his air force ... just weeks before you suddenly decided Qaddafi was an incorrigible terrorist who had to be overthrown -- starting with taking out his air force and his military.

But let's not be isolationists. Let's stay in Libya until the "rebels" have beheaded every black African in the country, or at least until the al Qaeda chiefs in Libya have taught the "rebels" everything they learned fighting American troops in Iraq.

Romney's Religion Problem

Mitt Romney is said to be the early frontrunner in the GOP presidential sweepstakes. One rival, Newt Gingrich, is perceived as floundering in a swirl of unforced errors and staff insurrection. Yet when it comes to Islam, which will continue to matter mightily in the next administration, the frontrunner could learn a thing or two from the flounderer. The issue is not religion. It is the seditious Islamist political program.

Most Americans, myself included, would prefer not to have to think about Islam at all. Muslims forced their beliefs onto our consciousness by wanton violence and gross violations of human rights. While there are fitful efforts to reform Islam, and thus differing interpretations of its dogmas, mainstream Islam is still founded on sharia, Islam’s archaic, immutable legal framework (also known as “Allah’s law”).

#ad#Sharia systematizes discrimination against (and brutal repression of) women, homosexuals, and, above all, non-Muslims (“dhimmis”). It is thus ironic that when the left-leaning legacy media broaches the subject of Islam, as CNN did during the GOP candidates’ debate this week, the context is usually claimed discrimination against Muslims. It is a testament to how deeply front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood -- an enterprise that marries Islam’s Salafist fundamentalism to modern statism, under the populist banner of “social justice” -- have seeped into the Democratic party, from which the press gets its talking points. And given how desperately the GOP establishment craves the crumbs of love that fall from the media’s table, it should not surprise us that Republicans, too, are cowed by the Brotherhood’s agents. That was not a Democratic president hustling over to the nearest mosque after the 9/11 attacks to brand Islam the “religion of peace.”

With barely concealed contempt, a CNN correspondent recounted Herman Cain’s prior statement that “a lot of Muslims are not totally dedicated to this country,” then pointedly asked the candidate, “Are American Muslims as a group less committed to the Constitution than, say, Christians or Jews?” For CNN, as moderator John King made clear, this is strictly a matter of religious discrimination: Even amid a war against Islamic terrorists, even amid unabashed promises to “conquer America” from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, to regard Muslims differently is to violate the constitutional protections accorded to religious believers.

Cain gave a game albeit wandering answer, distinguishing “peaceful Muslims” from “militant Muslims” who are “trying to kill us.” This dichotomy leaves out a third, more insidious group: ostensibly peaceful, covertly terror-supporting Muslims who are trying to destroy the U.S. from within by using the freedoms available in the West to infiltrate our government and institutions -- what the Brotherhood describes its “Grand Jihad” (the descriptor I used as the title of my book on the subject). Cain, however, did address this third category, at least implicitly, in objecting to sharia’s creep into American courts.

King construed Cain as seeking to impose “a purity test, or a loyalty test” uniquely on American Muslims before allowing them to serve in government -- a fair description, though a bracing one that drew Cain’s objection. The exchange teed up the issue for Governor Romney. King asked him, “Should one segment of Americans -- in this case for religion, but in any case -- be singled out, treated differently?” Of course, the problem is not that Islamist Muslims are members of a religious group but that under the auspices of religion they pursue an anti-American political program. Yet Romney did not question King’s premise. He accepted it, and he exhibited a disturbing detachment from reality on the ground: “Well first of all, of course we’re not going to have sharia law applied in U.S. courts,” he said. “That’s never going to happen. We have a Constitution, we follow the law. No, I think we recognize that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, our nation was founded on the notion of religious tolerance, it’s in fact why some of the earlier patriots came to this country. And we treat people with respect regardless of their religious persuasion.”

The late-breaking news for the man who would be America’s next president is that we already have sharia law being applied in U.S. courts. Put aside the embarrassingly patent fact that having a Constitution has never meant “we follow the law” -- judges ignore the Constitution regularly, and Romney’s own campaign aims to show that President Obama has run roughshod over our constitutional order. The fact is that sharia-based claims are now routinely posed in American legal cases and, increasingly, entertained by courts. Indeed, right before Romney spoke, Cain alluded to a New Jersey judge’s refusal to grant a protective order to a Muslim woman who was being serially raped by her Muslim husband -- reasoning that the husband was merely following Islamic tenets, under which the wife is chattel and has no right to refuse.

#page#Apologists hell-bent on burying this alarming trend point out that the New Jersey case was reversed on appeal. But we only know about the case because it got to the appellate courts. Thousands of lower court cases never make it there, and, since these are rarely reported on, we have no way of knowing how often sharia principles are affecting litigation. Nevertheless, the Center for Security Policy has just released a study, “,” which -- using standard Google search techniques -- uncovered 50 cases, from 23 states, in which Islamic law materially impacted the litigation. In 15 trial-court cases and 12 appellate cases, courts found sharia to be applicable. This sampling, as the report observes, is just “the tip of the iceberg,” because Google Scholar is only a general Internet search tool -- there is no complete database of state legal cases involving sharia.

#ad#Moreover, this tip of the iceberg refers only to outputs from the justice system. What about the inputs? For well over a decade, federal and state governments have compelled their law-enforcement agencies to undergo Islamic “sensitivity training,” often conducted by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates. Academic institutions including Harvard and Georgetown, supported by tens of millions of Saudi endowment dollars, aggressively support such initiatives as sharia-compliant finance, regularizing Islamic financial strictures in the American banking, mortgage, and insurance sectors.

Perhaps someone should tell Governor Romney that, a little over a decade ago, apologists were telling us it was preposterous to claim that sharia would gain a foothold in Europe. Has he had a look at Eurabia lately? Does he really think that what is happening there couldn’t happen here?

Legal infiltration aside, though, where Romney -- like CNN, like the Republican establishment -- truly goes off the rails is in his mulish determination to analyze Islamist ideology through the prism of religion. To the contrary, it is a totalitarian political program masquerading as a purely spiritual doctrine -- banking on the fact that Americans don’t know much about it and that their reverence for religious liberty will prevent them from piercing the veil.

There are four salient points about Islamist ideology, and whoever would be our next president would do well to master them. First, it is not a fringe movement. It is mainstream Islam, the Islam that is propagated in American mosques, just as it is propagated in foreign capitals from northern Africa to eastern Asia, and from Ankara to Dar es Salaam. Minimizing it as if it were just the doctrine of al-Qaeda or Iran’s mullahs is foolish. Those factions are more brutal tactically, but strategically, they are no different -- no more hostile to Western liberalism -- than reputedly “moderate” groups that seek to impose sharia but are content to proceed incrementally.

Second, while religion is what makes sharia binding, the substance of sharia is not primarily, or even mostly, about spiritual life. It governs matters that, in the West, are considered secular concerns: civil and criminal law, economics and finance, the use of force, privacy, sexual preferences, social interaction between men and women, etc. Consequently, when a politician insists that American principles of religious liberty forbid us from inquiring into a Muslim’s beliefs, he is not just insulating spiritual principles; he is removing from scrutiny a plethora of matters that are not controlled by religion in pluralistic societies.

Third, a defining principle of sharia to which this mainstream interpretation of Islam adheres is that there can be no separation of mosque and state -- of religious doctrine and civil society. It is not just that sharia features laws that are different from American laws; it is that this dominant form of Islam does not allow the Muslim to say, “Sharia is just for my private spiritual life, and I can otherwise ignore it -- or at least put it aside -- where it conflicts with laws in the secular sphere.” Where there is a conflict between American law and sharia, this mainstream interpretation of Islam calls for the Muslim to follow sharia and to labor to make sharia the law of the land.

#page#Fourth, the divergence between sharia and American constitutional law is fundamental and unbridgeable. Apologists for Islam try mightily to obscure this fact. They pretend not only that a reformist brand of Islam is more prevalent than it actually is, but that, in this sugary “moderate” creed, sharia has no existence other than as an aspirational guide to private spirituality. This badly misses the point. The issue for America is not who is right about sharia; it is that most Muslims in the world accept the Islamist interpretation of sharia propounded by influential Muslim clerics and reject the smiley-face sharia on offer from Western politicians. When a woman is convicted of adultery in a country where sharia is binding, they don’t throw aspirations at her. They throw stones.

#ad#This widely accepted interpretation of sharia rejects the foundational principle of American law, that we are free to govern ourselves as we choose, irrespective of any religious code. Sharia rejects freedom of conscience (apostates from Islam face ostracism and death); freedom of speech (speech critical of Islam is considered blasphemy and punishable by death -- and truth is not a defense); equality under the law (sharia systematically discriminates in favor of men over women and Muslims over non-Muslims); Western notions of privacy (homosexuality is a capital offense under sharia, which also rigorously regulates social interaction between the sexes in a manner that segregates and often oppresses women); the protection of private property (sharia nominally protects private property but the owner is considered a mere custodian of property that actually belongs to Allah, such that its use can be dictated by the Islamic state); and economic liberty (sharia condemns the charging of interest and agglomerations of wealth, which are seen as the exploitation of the have-nots by the haves). Moreover, sharia encourages both the use of violence when necessary to compel fidelity to Islamic norms and lying if it is helpful in advancing the mission of spreading Islam.

In our society, these are not religious issues. And contrary to Governor Romney’s palaver, the relevant questions do not involve “tolerance” and “respect” for Muslim spirituality. What is at stake are everyday matters of public life. Sovereignty over them belongs to the people, not to a code that styles itself as a religious belief system. A president cannot stick his head in the sand about that, under the guise of religious tolerance, and simultaneously preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

However beleaguered his campaign’s missteps may have left him, Newt Gingrich grasps what Romney has yet to learn. Reacting to the frontrunner’s mush, the former Speaker forcefully countered, “I am in favor of saying to people, ‘If you’re not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration. Period.’” He pointed in particular to the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani who had no compunction about taking a loyalty oath to become an American citizen, which helped him plot against our country from within. America is his enemy, he told the sentencing judge, so he lied. He wasn’t lying about spiritual principles. He was lying about his fidelity to an anti-American, anti-constitutional political ideology.

As Gingrich recounted, we did not flinch from inquiring into ideology when the threat to America came from Nazism and Communism. Of course, he noted, “It was controversial both times.” Most Germans in the U.S. were not Nazis, and most liberals were not Communists. They were patriotic Americans, the kind we should embrace. But patriotism entails understanding that, when there is a real threat to our liberties, such inquiries are essential to protect the nation. That is why patriotic American Muslims are a lot less exercised by them than the Muslim Brotherhood’s grievance industry.

When the threat came from 20th-century totalitarian ideologies, Gingrich concluded, “we discovered after a while, well you know, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country, and we have got to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘No.’” It is every bit as essential today to say “No” to Islamists who use the shield of American religious liberty as a sword in the service of a dark political program -- one that has precious little to do with spirituality. It remains to be seen whether Republicans will offer a presidential candidate with the guts to do it. If Mitt Romney is to be that candidate, he’s got work to do.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Re: Perfect the enemy of the good on E-verify?

Mark, I have more sympathy for Kris Kobach's arguments than you do. I wrote a column, after the Supremes' decision in the Arizona case, contending that the regulation and punishment of illegal alien trespassers were generally understood for the first century-plus of our history to be a state matter, not a responsibility of the federal government. I also contend that the Court's ruling in the Arizona case was not one to be celebrated: While the majority ruled for the state, all the justices seem to accept the principle that immigration enforcement is so clearly a federal matter that Congress could, if it chose to do so, completely preempt the states from any enforcement. In fact, I said that if the Obama administration was smart, they would carry out the non-execution of the immigration laws by recommending that Congress pass more sweeping ones -- Obama could then fail to enforce those while the states would be impotent to do anything about illegals within their borders (and the media would perversely give Obama credit for the toughness of his proposed laws rather than highlight the irresponsible absence of enforcement).

The fact that you support Rep. Smith's bill weighs heavily with me, but I do worry that the bill is exactly what I was concerned about: the feds preempt the states and then do no enforcement themselves.

As I read the preemption section of the bill (starting at p. 50 of the pdf), it does -- as you say -- bar the states from any enforcement action except yanking licenses for failure to use e-verify. But what if you had employers who used e-verify but then ignored what the e-verify system told them -- hiring the illegal alien anyway? Unless I'm reading this wrong -- and if I am, I'd be grateful to be corrected -- the bill would not permit the state to take any enforcement action in those circumstances: The fraudulent employer is essentially insulated by going through the motions of using the system. Why would an employer do such a thing, you might ask, since using the system and then ignoring its feedback would be very strong evidence of intent to violate the law -- it would make the federal case against the employer stronger. Well, the employer would be banking on the fact that only the federal government had jurisdiction to punish such behavior, and that the feds (i.e., Obama/Holder/Napolitano) would have no interest in doing so.

Again, if I have that wrong, I'd love to be corrected. Meanwhile, I have to take issue with a couple of your other points points. First, you say, "Only the federal government can make the determination that a firm has knowingly hired illegal aliens, so preserving the state's ability to pull a business license for that is irrelevant if the feds aren't making any determination of that sort." (Emphasis added.) I don't see why this is so.

There are a lot of ways a state could determine that a firm knowingly hired illegal aliens. To be sure, one way to prove it would be for the feds to tell the state that an alien hired by the employer is illegally here and ineligible to work -- and, in fact, Arizona's statute mandates that the state rely exclusively on the federal determination of the alien's status (i.e., the state law does not permit state investigators to do their own independent investigation because they don't want conflict with the feds on that status finding -- a record of conflict is bad for the state in a preemption litigation). But saying that only the federal government can make the determination about a particular alien's status is different from saying that only the federal government can make the determination that a firm has knowingly hired illegal aliens.

One could easily imagine a situation in which state investigators get access to informants who either are part of the firm's management and involved in a scheme to hire illegals, or are smugglers who steer illegals to that firm (or are perhaps even the illegals themselves). This would give the state a basis to yank the license. Sure, it would be useful, in order to corroborate the informants, to have the federal determination that some of the aliens hired by the firm are, in fact, illegals. But that federal determination might not be necessary to prove the case.

You also assert, "The bigger problem is a confusion about the purpose of the state laws on immigration. They are a means to an end -- better federal enforcement everywhere." I could not disagree more. The purpose of state laws is to protect the people of the state -- that is the end to which they are the means. A state does not legislate in order to achieve better federal enforcement. In a properly functioning federal system, where the federal government would be limited to the few things we need it to do, the states would be doing most law enforcement, tailored to their priorities, not to the policies of whatever administration happened to be in power in Washington. 

Obviously, if one's highest concern is the national immigration situation, then one might argue for a one-size-fits-all system (provided, of course, that the central government would actually enforce the rules of the system). But if I were a lawmaker or governor of a state, my priority would be to protect my state. If I held office in, say, Arizona, and my aggressive enforcement made illegals think it was better to try Texas or New Mexico, that would be fine by me. And if some states wanted to compliment federal inaction against illegal immigration with sanctuary policies, that wouldn't be my concern either -- as long as my state did not have to foot the bill for it or be much affected by the consequences of it. If the feds were not keeping illegals out of the country, and New York was keen to be a sanctuary state, I'd be happy that the illegal aliens had some welcoming place to go ... as long as New York was forced to shoulder all the burdens of its generosity.

I guess I just don't see what is so desirable about a single national standard of immigration enforcement. It seems to me that on this issue, as on so many, letting the states deal with conditions in their own territories, and being content with the inevitability that some will be strict, some lenient, and some in between, is the most attractive feature of federalism: It allows people to gravitate to the places where life best suits them. The imposition of uniform standards where there is no necessity of having them is what causes so much civil strife.  

Re: Bring Back the Lash

Jonah, this dovetails with a thought experiment I've been pushing for a while now, in rebuttal to the claim that waterboarding (as it was administered by the CIA on three top al-Qaeda detainees) is torture. If you gave every inmate serving, say, two years or less in prison the option of being waterboarded or completing his sentence, what would he choose? I'd be stunned if fewer than 95 percent chose waterboarding.

Re: King Probes Islamic Radicalization in Prisons ...

Bob Costa posted yesterday on the King hearings, which are the subject of my column this morning. As I note there, Pete King is a good friend and those of us who care about the security of the country have to be grateful that he has the courage to shine a light where Congress has been too timid to go before. But I fear the hearings may turn into a non-event, in large part because they are not hearing from all the right witnesses -- experts like Steve Emerson and Robert Spencer. These experts have been excluded, evidently due to fear of the predictable reaction of the Muslim Brotherhood's American grievance network. Even more significantly, though, the hearings are proceeding on a false premise: namely, that Muslims are being "radicalized" by some aberrant ideology that is a perversion of Islam.

The regrettable fact is that there is nothing "radical" about the aggressive, anti-Western interpretation of Islam. As I outlined in a column last week, which detailed a new "mapping sharia" study by David Yerushalmi and Mordechai Kedar, this form of Islam -- complete with its endorsement of jihadist violence -- is propagated in over 80 percent of American mosques. Not coincidentally, it is also the Islam of 80 percent of the Middle East, and even enjoys a majority following in reputedly "moderate" countries like Indonesia.

As Bob's post recounts, Rep. King asserts, "I have repeatedly said the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans." That may well be true. But it doesn't follow that because most Muslims may be good Americans that Islam -- the doctrine -- is either good or pro-American. If Congress is not willing to face up to that reality, the hearings stand little chance of advancing our understanding of what is happening in the Muslim community, or of what patriotic American Muslims are up against from the imams who run their mosques and community centers -- which are heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. (By the way, why hasn't there been more coverage of the fact that, while Rep. King's witnesses fret that the Brotherhood is being "demonized," and the Obama administration masquerades the Brotherhood as a moderate, "largely secular" political organization, the Brotherhood's supreme guide in Egypt recently declared war against the United States?)

What "radicalizes" Muslims is Islam -- the mainstream interpretation of it. The "radicals" propagating it do not need the "captive audience" provided by the prison environment. The "radicalization" is happening in plain sight. 

Cast a Wider Net

Peter King, the New York Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has been a good friend to those of us who work to protect American national security. In launching an investigation into the ideology that fuels the Islamist threat against the United States, he has had the courage to go where Congress has been too intimidated to go before. Still, with the second round of his committee’s hearings on “radicalization” having been completed, it is necessary to question his approach. 

The committee has kept on the sidelines the peerless analysts Steven Emerson and Robert Spencer, who were sounding the alarm before most people in this country knew there was an Islamist threat -- very much including most people in our government. King holds the work of these experts in high regard. Yet, he has decided the public’s understanding is better served by calling as his main witnesses (a) Muslims, who can give a firsthand account of what goes on in their communities, and (b) law-enforcement officials, current and former, who’ve designed and carried out what passes for the counterterrorism strategy followed by police agencies throughout the country -- basically, terrorism investigations and Muslim outreach.

#ad#There are serious problems with this approach. Hearing from Muslims is obviously important, but to limit the committee to their input on what’s happening inside the Islamic community is to fall for the fallacy that you have to be a member of the group to grasp and explain the group’s dynamics. If that were true, why would anyone care what King’s analysis is? Congress is not a Muslim body, so why would its insights be any more valuable than those of experts like Emerson and Spencer?

Moreover, while the Muslim community in the United States includes many patriotic Americans, it also includes Islamists who seek to undermine our country. The latter adhere to taqqiya, a principle that endorses misrepresentation when necessary to advance the Islamist cause. This principle’s operation is not mitigated by putting these people under oath at hearings, because their fidelity is to sharia, not American law -- if they think it will help to lie, they will lie.

Recall the testimony of King’s very first witness back in March, CAIR’s favorite congressman, Keith Ellison (at least, I think that’s the name he’s going by these days -- he’s used several in his checkered past, well documented by Powerline’s Scott Johnson). As Matt Shaffer recounted on the Corner, Ellison -- a hard-Left Minnesota Democrat and the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives -- gave the committee a weepy account of American bigotry against a Muslim American who died heroically trying to save lives on 9/11. Not surprisingly, Ellison’s story was riddled with falsehoods. To be sure, there is value in watching some of these characters dodge, dissemble, and demagogue. But they are a big part of the challenge we face, so it’s foolish to make them our window into the Muslim community.

As for law enforcement, it is seized by political correctness (as I discussed at length in Willful Blindness). Again, there is value in hearing from those who have investigated cases involving jihadist terror and who formulate strategies for gathering the intelligence needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Many of these officials, however, are wedded to the premise that Islam is not the problem; in fact, they say it is the solution to the problem. Even if they privately believe otherwise, they wouldn’t dare say so publicly -- not if they want to continue their upwardly mobile careers.

Which is to say that these officials resolutely avoid acknowledging the very thing that King is trying to probe. Moreover, their perspective -- observing the Muslim community from without -- is obviously no more valuable than that of non-police experts such as Emerson and Spencer, who have been at it for a lot longer, tend to know more about the subject, and are less afraid that making trenchant criticisms sure to get them smeared as “Islamophobic” would be career suicide.

#page#It is worth considering these points, because the continuation of the hearings this week had some curious aspects. Let’s start with what was not presented. As I detailed in a column last week, the most important recent development in our understanding of Islamic “radicalization” -- the stated focus of the hearings -- is a new study by the “Mapping Sharia” project, headed up by David Yerushalmi of the Center for Security Policy and Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar. It shows that 81 percent of American mosques disseminate Islamic literature that endorses jihadist violence and that imams actively recommend these tracts to worshippers in nearly 85 percent of these mosques.

#ad#Today’s hearings were not focused on the mosques, though. They homed in on radicalization in American prisons. Far be it from me to suggest that jails are not a concern, but the premise of the hearing was that “radicalization” is helped along by the fact that inmates are a captive audience. To the contrary, the Yerushalmi-Kedar study demonstrates that the purveyors of Islamist ideology do not need a jail setting; they find a comfortable home in four out of every five mosques in the country. Their success, right out in the open in Islamic communities, mirrors the experience of Muslim populations overseas, where, for example, more than 80 percent of Egyptian and Pakistani Muslims desire to live under sharia and to insulate their countries from Western influences.

No, the problem is not radicalization in the prisons. It is our overly optimistic concept of “radicalization.” The very use of that term implies that mainstream Islamic doctrine must be moderate and peaceful, and therefore that heterodox “radicals” would need a coercive setting, like a jail, to inculcate their violent, anti-Western corruption of that doctrine. In fact, the worrisome interpretation of Islam is not radical. It is the dominant construction of Islamic doctrine, even in the United States. That doesn’t mean all Muslims will buy what the “radicals” are selling, but it does tell us why “radicalization” is so prevalent.

If your approach to the problem is wrong, your solutions are apt to be counterproductive. To prove that point, look no further than this New York Post report lauding the committee’s focus on prison radicalization. It relies on a New York City Police Department study on homegrown threats, which laments the lack of imams in federal and New York jails -- only ten in the federal system just a few years ago for nearly 200,000 inmates, and just 40 for the state’s 67 prisons. If we could just fill the jails with chaplains from among those legions of moderate imams, the thinking goes, then inmates would no longer be subjected to “radical” Islam.

But the Yerushalmi-Kedar survey underscores that the imams are the problem, not the solution. The moderate ones appear to be outnumbered about 4-to-1. Indeed, the NYPD study highlights longtime prison chaplain Warith Deen Umar, a firebrand who praised the 9/11 jihadists as “martyrs.” If we look at Islam as we find it, rather than Islam as the government wishes it were, we might very well conclude that Umar is more the rule than the exception. After all, he has hardly been ostracized just because the authorities finally booted him from the chaplain program. He remains an influential presence on the American Muslim scene, featured, for example, as a speaker at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in 2009.

ISNA, the most significant Islamist organization in the United States, was shown to be a coconspirator (unindicted) in the Justice Department’s 2008 Hamas-financing prosecution against the Holy Land Foundation, a case that laid bare the Muslim Brotherhood’s ambition to destroy the United States from within. ISNA’s history of Brotherhood ties and Hamas support doesn’t stop thousands of Muslims from attending its conventions. And why should it? It doesn’t stop the Obama administration, either: The headline speaker at the 2009 convention at which Imam Umar appeared was none other than Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s close friend and adviser.

The issue isn’t the prisons. The prisons are a microcosm of the broader threat: mainstream Islam.

Fear not, though, for that was most certainly not what the House committee heard from one of Wednesday’s star witnesses, Michael Downing, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. As Patrick Poole recounts at Pajamas, Chief Downing is perhaps best known for his admonition that “we should not demonize the Muslim Brotherhood.” That’s a rather strange position. Relying on Barry Rubin’s reporting, Poole notes that the Brotherhood’s “supreme guide,” Mohammed Badi, has just declared war against the United States. As Poole dryly adds, “the Brotherhood does a good job of demonizing itself.” I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that Downing made his remarks at an LAPD outreach event held at the Islamic Center of Southern California. The center just happens to have been founded by the Hathout brothers, Hassan and Maher, and they just happen to be longtime fans of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna, and of the “freedom fighting” waged by Hezbollah. There’s nothing like outreach.

To present a realistic picture of what we’re up against, though, King would be well advised to reach out to Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer, David Yerushalmi, and Mordechai Kedar.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Re: When you've lost the porn star ...

Dan, do you have to have seen Lesbian Seductions 1 through 27 to, er, grasp the plot of Lesbian Seductions 28?