Is There Anything Wrong With Being Islamophobic?

The day before the midterm elections, PBS ran a piece claiming that “In the run-up to the midterm elections, experts have documented a surge of Islamophobia in political ads and speeches.”

And now that Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed will become the country’s first Muslim U.S. senator, it’s a certainty that any criticism of his statements or positions will be labeled as an attack on all followers of Islam.

But as the country’s Islamic population grows and Muslims continue to gain access to the levers of power in the U.S., we need to do what we didn’t as a nation do after 9/11, and take a hard and uncompromising look at the threat Islam poses to Western civilization.

It’s hard to get an accurate figure, but the Muslim population in the U.S. was likely 2 million to 3 million in 2001. Pew Research puts the figure at 5.5 million, with mosques having grown from 1,200 in 2000 to 2,800 in 2020. Europe’s Muslim population reached 46 million in 2020, quite an explosion since 2000, when, according to some estimates, the number was as low as 500,000.

Let’s not forget that it was after 2000 when Islamic jihadists killed nearly 200 in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, 52 in the 2005 London train bombings, and 12 in the 2015 slaughter at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine.

Some will rage at our recitation of the facts above, but it’s not the Amish or even the Baptists who have increased in these numbers. We know there are fellow countrymen out there who will tell us “You can’t say that” due to political correctness and the suicidal empathy that will take the lives of many more, and we strongly suggest they come to their senses and find a little courage to get past their political correctness and their commitment to being woke.

Two months ago, Issues & Insights wrote that “25 Years After 9/11, America Dotes On Its Enemies.” One reader accused I&I of “a lot of ‘Muslim’ hate,” and clearly doesn’t understand the difference between hatred and fear. That editorial merely pointed out facts that those who believe in their absolute moral superiority, who are slaves to diversity and the narrow thinking that produces that bondage, don’t want brought to light.

Both Americans and Europeans have every reason to fear Islam. We see more and more Muslims whose dogmatic ideology is irreconcilable with a representative republican government, as well as Western civilization, which, we fear, is in decline in large part due to the suicidal empathy that has infected many in the West. Carriers of the condition live in greater fear of being called intolerant and racist than in being harmed by migration and crime.

Here’s a partial list of why we should fear Islamists:

• “New York had been in the crosshairs of Muslim terrorists for decades. The city is the world capital of finance, media, advertising, publishing, and culture, from painting to theater,” says author Lee Smith. “The serial efforts to bring the city to its knees would require making Western civilization doubt its strength, virtue, and purpose.” Over time, he adds, we’ve seen the “proof that these efforts worked.”
• Shaykh Uthman ibn Farooq, identified by Wikipedia as an Islamic “preacher,” declared last month that “we love this country” and “we want good for this country,” so “that’s why we want Islam for this country, ’cause we think that’s the best thing.” He encourages other Muslims “to adhere to Sharia law,” even though it’s entirely incompatible with our law and our society.
• Somalis, 99% of whom are Muslim, make up only 1% of Minnesota’s population yet account for 30% of its gang members.
• Readers are free to decide for themselves if any, all, or none of these statements, all made in English, are an accurate and fair representation of Islamist ambition. They also need to ask themselves if it’s fine for Islamists to incite conflict by declaring that Islam must “enter every home,” “America will be a Muslim country,” “we’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over,” and telling us straight up that those who resist will become slaves.
• Islam is more of a political system than a religion. It has produced devoted followers, but it has more than its share of fanatics, a criticism that we can also level at the Democratic Party, whose socialism had been closeted for the last half century.
• More than a few Islamists have become popular even though they believe America deserved 9/11 and apparently approve of an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who declared that “America is going down.”
• Sharia-compliant enclaves of Hamtramck, Michigan, Dearborn, Michigan, and Paterson, New Jersey, “are providing a theocratic blueprint for surrounding towns.”
• Linda Sarsour, a “Palestinian-American activist,” whatever that means, told the Islamic Society of North America almost a decade ago that Muslims’ No. 1 “priority is to protect and defend our community, it is not to assimilate and please any other people and authority.”
• We go on: The director of the Muslim American Society believes that “as a Muslim,” it is his “life’s mission” to fight the U.S. government, U.S. Army, and ICE until his “last breath.” It is his “reason for existence.”
• And on: This Muslim migrant who landed in Sweden admits, if the translation is correct, that she doesn’t “belong” there, which is why she’s “destroying this country as much as” she is able to “and sucking up all the benefits and tax money to the absolute max.”
• And on again: Berlin mayoral candidate Elif Eralp inadvertently acknowledged that she fears Hamas and therefore shouldn’t be publicly addressing the antisemitism in her party.

We’re not sure who “Dr. Maalouf” on X really is, if he even exists at all, but even if he is a bot, we think he’s more right than he is wrong when he says “the entire purpose of the Palestinian movement is to advance the Islamic takeover of the West.”

Why so many in the West, almost all of them on the political left, don’t see this, or refuse to see that there is much to fear, is both a mystery and an outrage.

Are there Muslims in the U.S. and Europe who want to assimilate and wish no harm to their hosts? Of course. But who are they? It’s almost impossible to know because it’s too easy to hide behind taqiyya, an Islamic legal doctrine that allows Muslims to conceal their internal beliefs. Or, as Dictionary.com explains, it’s “the practice of denying one’s religion, permissible when one is faced with persecution.”

What this nation and the West desperately need are the voices of courageous Muslims to separate themselves from the fundamentalist, hatred-filled, jihad-by-the-sword Muslims. Some speak up. They are to be commended. But more are needed. If they are in this country to achieve the American dream, if they are in Europe as refugees escaping religious hell in their former homes, they have to speak out. Organize marches. Offer themselves for media interviews and podcasts. Establish and grow institutions that promote moderation and assimilation.

To the American and European enablers of Islamic fundamentalists: Wake up — or we all lose the civilizational struggle that was set off by suicidal empathy.