Islam is incompatible with a free society

By Gina Miller

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In my columns, I don't normally address the "concerns" of liberals in response to anything I write, but today I will. Last week I wrote a column condemning Brandeis University for its shameful withdrawal of an honorary degree it was to bestow on human rights activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Brandeis' capitulation was in response to a slanderous open letter about Ms. Hirsi Ali written to Brandeis by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The slanderous nature of the open letter was in CAIR's description of Ms. Hirsi Ali as a "notorious Islamophobe" and that promoting her work is "... equivalent to promoting the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites," among other bogus descriptions of her. The CAIR letter also describes Ms. Hirsi Ali's views as "unconstitutional" and "anti-constitutional."

After posting my column on my public Facebook page, a liberal named Rob came on scolding me, saying:

"This is a very selective reporting of her activity. She has not merely declared war on radical Islam but moderate Islam as well, and she wants to close down all Muslim schools in America, regardless of their politics. This is what Brandeis is concerned about and by omitting these facts you are lying by omission."

First, a note for clarification. He mentions "radical Islam," because the title of my column as posted at BarbWire.com, is "Brandeis Bows to Radical Islam." The streamlined title was written by our senior editor, because it was better than the original, cumbersome one I had written. But, I do not use the term "radical Islam," because I believe there is no such thing as "radical Islam." Likewise, there is no such thing as "moderate Islam." There is just Islam, period.

Liberal Rob's comments that Ms. Hirsi Ali wants to close down all Muslim schools and that she has declared war on Islam are references to CAIR's open letter. He accuses me of not including this information in my column, although I did provide a link to CAIR's letter in the piece. That wasn't good enough for Rob the liberal. He still accuses me of "lying by omission" for not transcribing her words in my article:

"Lying by omission is when you specify "Radical Islam" when you mean "All Islam." Lying by omission is when you fail to tell your readers the extent of the woman's anti-Islamic crusade (which includes shredding our Constitution with radical First Amendment violations!) that are the actual reasons for Brandeis withdrawing the honor."

The real question is whether or not Ms. Hirsi Ali is working to subvert the United States Constitution, and I firmly contend that not only is she not working to subvert the Constitution, she is, in truth, working to protect it from the Islamic threat to its very existence.

Ms. Hirsi Ali's quotes that were included in CAIR's letter came from a 2007 interview in Reason Magazine. Here are Ms. Hirsi Ali's selected words from that extensive interview that CAIR and Rob the liberal claim to mean that she is acting against the Constitution:

Reason: Do you think Islam could bring about... social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don't you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world's 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, "defeat Islam"?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they're the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, "This is a warning. We won't accept this anymore." There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don't do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

... Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it...

Reason: Here in the United States, you'd advocate the abolition of –

Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I've been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn't allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with – what's the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.

Reason: Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights – documents from more than 200 [years] ago – ought to change?

Hirsi Ali: They're not infallible. These Western constitutions are products of the Enlightenment. They're products of reason, and reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly. So now that we live under different conditions, the threat is different. Constitutions can be adapted, and they are, sometimes. The American Constitution has been amended a number of times.

Here is a pertinent passage that CAIR omitted from its open letter to Brandeis:

Reason: You're in favor of civil liberties, but applied selectively?

Hirsi Ali: No. Asking whether radical preachers ought to be allowed to operate is not hostile to the idea of civil liberties; it's an attempt to save civil liberties. A nation like this one is based on civil liberties, and we shouldn't allow any serious threat to them. So Muslim schools in the West, some of which are institutions of fascism that teach innocent kids that Jews are pigs and monkeys – I would say in order to preserve civil liberties, don't allow such schools.

As I told Rob the liberal, Ms. Hirsi Ali is warning of the danger Islam poses to the freedoms of the West, as she fights against the brutal treatment of women and children under Islam. I also pointed out that it is the pushers of Islam, not Ms. Hirsi Ali, who are working to subvert our freedoms and Constitution. This is by their own admission. Besides the plethora of shouts of "death to the West and the Great Satan U.S.!" from Muslims all over the world, an official Muslim Brotherhood document introduced into evidence during the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial made it quite clear that the followers of Islam have very bad intentions toward the United States and the West.

Concerning, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," written by Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram, Discover the Networks reports:

Written sometime in 1987 but not formally published until May 22, 1991, Akram's 18-page document listed the Brotherhood's 29 likeminded "organizations of our friends" that shared the common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the U.S. into a Muslim nation. These "friends" were identified by Akram and the Brotherhood as groups that could help convince Muslims "that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."

Akram was well aware that in the U.S., it would be extremely difficult to promote Islam by means of terror attacks. Thus the "grand jihad" that he and his Brotherhood comrades envisioned was not a violent one involving bombings and shootings, but rather a stealth (or "soft") jihad aiming to impose Islamic law (Sharia) over every region of the earth by incremental, non-confrontational means, such as working to "expand the observant Muslim base"; to "unif[y] and direc[t] Muslims' efforts"; and to "present Islam as a civilization alternative." At its heart, Akram's document details a plan to conquer and Islamize the United States – not as an ultimate objective, but merely as a stepping stone toward the larger goal of one day creating "the global Islamic state."

The fact is that Muslim operatives are using our Constitution and our freedoms against us. They are furthering their stealth jihad against the United States by hiding under our freedom of religion. When our Founding Fathers created the Constitution and codified our God-given freedom of religion, they never intended it to protect the subversive activities of Trojan horse enemies of the United States. They never meant for the First Amendment to give cover to anti-American treachery.

So, is Ms. Hirsi Ali's call for the eradication of Islam and Islamic schools truly anti-Constitutional? No. We must come to understand that Islam is a tyrannical, militant-political ideology operating under the guise of a "religion," and its followers seek to overthrow the United States by stealth subversion of our freedoms and institutions. If we hope to survive as a free country, our leaders must one day have the courage to call a spade and spade when it comes to Islam. I am in agreement with Ms. Hirsi Ali on the nature of Islam and her call for its ouster from any free society, because it is utterly incompatible with freedom. As she states at the end of her Reason Magazine interview:

The Western mind-set – that if we respect them, they're going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away – is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger.

© Gina Miller