Time for a Moratorium on Immigration from Muslim Lands?

And now San Bernardino.  It is surely 'interesting' that in supposedly conservative media venues such as Fox News there has been no discussion, in the wake of this latest instance of Islamic terrorism, of the obvious question whether immigration from Muslim lands should be put on hold.  Instead, time is wasted refuting silly liberal calls for more gun control.  'Interesting' but not surprising.  Political correctness is so pervasive that even conservatives are infected with it.  It is very hard for most of us, including conservatives, to believe that it is Islam itself and not the zealots of some hijacked version thereof that is the problem.  But slowly, and very painfully, people are waking up. But I am not sanguine that only a few more such bloody events will jolt us into alertness.  It will take many more.

So is it not eminently reasonable to call for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands?  Here are some relevant points.  I would say that they add up to a strong cumulative case argument for a moratorium.

1. There is no right to immigrate.  See here for some arguments contra the supposed right by Steven A. Camarota.  Here is my refutation of an argument pro.  My astute commenters add further considerations. Since there is no right to immigrate, immigrants are allowed in only if they meet certain criteria.  Surely we are under no obligation to allow in those who would destroy our way of life.

2.  We philosophers will debate until doomsday about rights and duties and everything else.  But in the meantime, shouldn't  we in our capacity as citizens exercise prudence and advocate that our government exercise prudence?  So even if in the end  there is a right to immigrate, the prudent course would be to suspend this supposed right for the time being until  we get a better fix on what is going on.  Let's see if ISIS is contained or spreads.  Let's observe events in Europe and in Britain.  Let's see if Muslim leaders condemn terrorism.  Let's measure the extent of Muslim assimilation.

3. "Overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Islamic law (sharia) to be the official law of the land, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center." Here.  Now immigrants bring their culture and their values with them.  Most Muslims will bring a commitment to sharia with them.  But sharia is incompatible with our American values and the U. S. Constitution.  Right here we have a very powerful reason to disallow immigration from Muslim lands.

4.  You will tell me that not all Muslims subscribe to sharia, and you will be right.  But how separate the sheep from the goats?  Do you trust government officials to do the vetting?  Are you not aware that people lie and that the Muslim doctrine of taqiyya justifies lying? 

5.  You will insist that not all Muslims are terrorists, and again you will be right. But almost all the terrorism in the world at the present time comes from Muslims acting upon Muslim beliefs. 

Pay attention to the italicized phrase. 

There are two important related distinctions we need to make.

 

There is first of all a distinction between committing murder because one's ideology, whether religious or non-religious, enjoins or justifies murder, and committing murder for non-ideological reasons or from non-ideological motives.  For example, in the Charlie Hebdo attack, the murders were committed  to avenge the blasphemy against  Muhammad, the man Muslims call 'The Prophet'  and consider Allah's messenger.  And that is according to the terrorists themselves.  Clearly, the terrorist acts were rooted in Muslim religious ideology in the same way that Communist and Nazi atrocities were rooted in Communist and Nazi political ideology, respectively.   Compare that to a mafioso killing an innocent person who happens to have witnessed a crime the mafioso has committed.  The latter's a mere criminal whose motives are crass and non-ideological: he just wanted to score some swag and wasn't about to be inconvenienced by a witness to his crime.  "Dead men tell no tales."

 

The other distinction is between sociological and doctrinal uses of terms such as 'Mormon,' 'Catholic,' Buddhist,' and 'Muslim.'  I know a man who is a Mormon in the sense that he was born and raised in a practicing Mormon family, was himself a practicing Mormon in his early youth, hails from a Mormon state, but then  'got philosophy,' went atheist, and now rejects all of the metaphysics of Mormonism.  Is he now a Mormon or not?  I say he is a Mormon sociologically but not doctrinally.  He is a Mormon by upbringing but not by current belief and practice.  This is a distinction that absolutely must be made, though I won't hold it against you if you think my terminology less than felicitous.  Perhaps you can do better.  Couch the distinction in any terms you like, but couch it.

 

Examples abound.  An aquaintance of mine rejoices under the surname 'Anastasio.'  He is Roman Catholic by upbringing, but currently a committed Buddhist by belief and practice.  Or consider the notorious gangster, 'Whitey' Bulger who is fortunately not an acquaintance of mine.  Biographies of this criminal refer to him as Irish-Catholic, which is not wrong. But surely none of his unspeakably evil deeds sprang from Catholic moral teaching.  Nor did they spring from Bulger's 'hijacking' of Catholicism.  You could call him, with some justification, a Catholic criminal.  But a Catholic who firebombs an abortion clinic to protest the evil of abortion is a Catholic criminal in an entirely different sense.   The difference is between the sociological and the doctrinal.

 

6.  Perhaps you will say to me that the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists is tiny.  True.  But all it takes is a handful, properly positioned, with the right devices, to bring the country to a screeching halt.  And those who radicalize and inspire the terrorists need not be terrorists themselves.  They could be imams in mosques operating in quiet and in secret.

 

7.   You will tell me that a moratorium would keep out many good, decent Muslims who are willing to assimilate, who will not try to impose sharia, who will not work to  undermine our system of government, and who do not condone terrorism.  And you will be right.  But again, there is no right to immigrate.  So no wrong is done to good Muslims by preventing them from immigrating. 

 

8.  Think of it in terms of cost and benefit.  Is there any net benefit from Muslim immigration?  No.  The cost outweighs the benefit.  This is consistent with the frank admission that there are many fine Muslims who would add value to our society.

 

9.  Perhaps you will call me a racist.  I will return the compliment by calling you stupid for thinking that Islam is a race.  Islam is a religious political ideology.

It is Saturday night and I'm 'Islamed out.'  I could say more but I've had enough for now.   So I hand off to Patrick J. Buchanan, Time for a Moratorium on Immigration?

Comments

[Anonymous]

It is clear and obvious that such a moratorium is called for and you list many of the reasons. Additionally, I would say that anyone concerned with preserving America and not turning the country into something very different should support an immediate total immigration moratorium, not just for Muslims, like we had for something like forty years in the twentieth century. The current immigration laws that go back to, I think, 1965 have been a disaster, as they give overwhelming preference to non-white, non-European immigrants and allow for these people to bring large numbers of their family over as well. They have dramatically altered the demographics of the country and if we don’t stop this immediately, traditional American will be gone. And by ‘traditional America’, I mean a lot more than just the racial composition of the country.

As I’ve been saying in our conversations here, there is not even a conceptual framework that Americans have for talking about this. Virtually all political discourse in our country, including conservative and libertarian discourse is so conceptually impoverished or blind to the problems that the moratorium, which is obviously warranted, is not even on the radar politically. Until there is a common understanding and acknowledgment of how misguided and destructive to human well-being diversity and multiculturalism are when implemented within a country, and until it is understood and acknowledged how homogeneity is so fundamentally important for human well-being, I don’t think we can even get anywhere. So, again, I think the best we can probably do is map these things out for future people who will look back on western civilization and wonder what went wrong. But perhaps I’m being pessimistic.

[BV]

>>Virtually all political discourse in our country, including conservative and libertarian discourse is so conceptually impoverished or blind to the problems that the moratorium, which is obviously warranted, is not even on the radar politically.<<

I agree that both libertarians and conservatives are blind to the problems caused by mass illegal and legal immigration. But libertarians are worse since they do have a conceptual framework that justifies 'open borders.'

('Open borders' is like 'open marriage' -- the phrases imply no borders/marriage at all.)

Conservatives by and large are too unintellectual or anti-itellectual to have thought the problem through properly.

But the fiery Judge Jeanneane (sp?)Pirro last night on Fox gave a blistering 'opening' as she call it in which she called for a closer scrutiny of visas.

[Wm Tingley]

Trump has now breached the media wall of silence on Muslim entry into the U.S. Per "The Art of the Deal" the billionaire has once again set the terms of the debate and the gabfest begins. (It is beyond me, Bill, that the media and the political consultants still cannot figure out that Trump, being a businessman, is running for president as a businessman.) Kudos on anticipating this issue.

Bill T

P.S. Also a thumb's up for that delightful turn of phrase "effete and epicene".

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Bill,

It's been a while. I hope you are well.

People like Trump because he is fearless and because they are sick of wimpy, p. c. 'conservatives.' The immigration question is obviously a legitimate one, so let's discuss it!

[Jeremy]

"Think of it in terms of cost and benefit. Is there any net benefit from Muslim immigration? No. The cost outweighs the benefit. This is consistent with the frank admission that there are many fine Muslims who would add value to our society."

What is missing from the list is any indication that citizens of one country may have duties of assistance, protection, or, dare I say, love, towards refugees of civil war, religious persecution, etc. There is an immense and I think unmeasurable benefit, which seems to have no place in your calculus, for those thousands upon thousands of poor families struggling to find some kindness in their torn-apart worlds whom we can help. I'm guessing your understanding of the purpose of government doesn't admit of such duties towards non-citizens. I think that is a flaw in it.

[Anonymous]

Jeremy, why aren’t you taking into account the same “immense [and] unmeasurable benefit” to help one or several of the thousands of people (e.g., homeless people or children that you could adopt or be a foster parent for) that you or your family could help right now? Do you draw boundaries upon whom you let into your house and whom you support like a member of your family even though helping them is an “immense” and “unmeasurable” benefit? Of course you do! A county and culture has (or its members have) the same kind of moral rights and status that you have to preserve and protect your family and preserve your way of life. Do you not see this?

Bill never said that there aren’t reasons to help other people or that we shouldn’t do things to help them. But just as you obviously don’t have to destroy the integrity and safety of your family by turning your house into a homeless shelter, we don’t have to destroy the integrity and safety of our country by allowing large amounts of Muslim immigration.

[Bill Vallicella]

Jeremy,

The first responsibility of a government is to protect its own citizens, their life, liberty, property, and way of life. A government that fails to control its borders or allows the legal immigration of extremists bent on destroying the country of which it is the government is failing in its very first duty.

There is no moral right to immigrate. It follows that there is no moral obligation for any nation to allow immigration. This is entirely consistent with taking in refugees. But acceptance of refugees is supererogatory. I am not opposed to it. In fact I would support it in the case of Christian refugees from Syria and other countries. After all, the USA did play a role in destabilizing the whole region.

But no Muslim refugees, at least not at the present time. So I would apply a "religious test." Is that not perfectly reasonable given the destructive nature of Islam?

I would not oppose helping Muslim refugees just so long as we don't bring them here.

[Jeremy]

Anon - I can't really see the relevance of your point. I did not claim that there is an absolute or overriding duty to help those in need, just that there is a duty, and that it should at the very least be given due weight and factored into the considerations above. I deny the empirical claim that letting a few thousand refugees in would have anything like or analogous to the consequences of turning my (one bedroom apartment) into a homeless shelter.

Bill (if I may) - I agree that protection is the first responsibility, but I don't think it's the only responsibility. I also do not think rights are more basic than duties. I'm a bit wary of rights talk at all, but it seems to me far more clear that we (collectively) have a duty to help refugees (when doing so will not undermine our own safety, etc) than that there is no right to immigration. So if duties and rights are connected the way they are often taken, I guess I do think there is at least a prima facie right to immigrate. So we disagree primarily about both what sorts of duties attach to states, and the, it seems to me empirical, question about what is at stake for us in allowing in refugees.

(FWIW, I think there are other considerations in favor of allowing and against disallowing that you don't discuss, centered around the perception our actions give rise to to moderate Muslims. The fanatical side insists that there is a war between the West and Islam. The moderates are not so sure, they want to believe co-existence is possible. When Western countries tell suffering and desperate people they are not wanted because of their religion, it will make the fanatical ideology look that much more attractive.)

[Anonymous]

Jeremy, you refer to letting in “a few thousand” refugees. Is that really what you are concerned about? Are you saying that you agree that we are clearly not required to let in the hundreds of thousands as is being discussed, but that we should let in some extremely limited number of a few thousand? Is that what you are arguing for?

[Wm Tingley]

I think the intellectually serious dispute about Trump's proposal to temporarily deny Muslim non-resident aliens entry into the U.S. is grounded in the conflicting Wilsonian and Jacksonian concepts of America. (We can ignore the Left because they will say anything in their pursuit of power.)

Wilsonians think America is, in essence, a country where all people can flourish because it is dedicated to the universal ideals of the human condition to which everyone aspires if not frustrated by oppression. Therefore Wilsonians tend to favor open borders and nation-building. They argue that "American Way" is natural to each and every human being who will become a liberty-loving citizen of a democratic capitalist republic given the opportunity to do so.

Jacksonians think America is a NATION defined by history and geography with a distinctive character and culture that Americans rightly protect and preserve. It is a mistake to pigeonhole Jacksonians as nativists or worse, bigots, as Wilsonians are wont to do; one of the defining distinctions of the American character, according to Jacksonians, is the belief that America is the shining city on a hill. It is the place where human beings best flourish regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or creed IF AND ONLY IF they can and will assimilate. Therefore Jacksonians tend to favor limiting immigration to those who will assimilate and are dubious of military action overseas unless American lives and interests are at stake.

The political conflict between the Wilsonians (the "establishment") and the Jacksonians (ordinary Americans) defines the current divide. This conflict has been brewing since identity politics took hold after Word War II with increasingly fierce contests every 20-25 years -- to wit, Thurmond, Wallace, Perot, and now Trump. This contest may be the one finally fractures the current party system. It will be interesting to see.

[Bill Vallicella]

Good analysis, Bill. The key notion here is assimilation. Those who can't or won't assimilate should not be let in. My mother came from Italy when she was ten speaking Italian. She became fluent in English and she named me "William,' Not 'Guglielmo'!