Friday, September 11, 2009

Is Radical Islam invading Tennessee?

I was out raking leaves from the yard and thinking about Vijay Kumar and my response to his article http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/09/political-islam-in-tennessee.html . Perhaps I unjustly maligned him. He sounded naïve and impractical to me, but perhaps there really was an Islamist threat in Tennessee; so I put away my rake and set about searching:

http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34916

This is an article by Ryan Mauro. It was posted on Front Page Mag on May 19, 2009, and entitled “Muslim Row.” It is subtitled “How radical Islam is invading the State of Tennessee.” I’ll quote from it and then comment below

The Bible-belt state of Tennessee is not known to have been targeted by Al-Qaeda or any other radical Islamic terrorist group, but the Volunteer State may be becoming a hotbed for the growth of extremism. Reports from Nashville, Shelbyville, and Dover indicate that Tennessee has gradually become a stronghold for radical Islamic forces that are transforming parts of the state.

Ryan Mauro writes, “On May 13, I reported on the discovery of extremism at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Nashville by award-winning counter-terrorism expert Dave Gaubatz, an individual that once held top-secret security clearance as an agent for the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations. The library carried extremist texts and audio tapes by known radicals such as Syed Maududi and Ali Al-Tamimi, who was convicted for his role in terrorism. . . .”

“Al-Farooq Mosque is attended by many Somali immigrants, and Islamic websites say that services are offered in Somali. Nashville alone is home to about 5,000 such immigrants, and their lack of assimilation is becoming a common complaint in Tennessee. The town of Shelbyville is the most dramatic example of this problem. . . .”

“Moseley says that the local authorities described being frequently disrespected by the Somali immigrants, which number between 400 and 1,000, and are noticing that many become involved with gangs.

“’Firefighters have told me that the Somalis refused to evacuate their apartment complex during a blaze and when they responded to alarm calls, the firemen are told to leave and that they are not welcome there…I have been told off the record that many officers are hesitant to even patrol after dark the apartment complex where the Somalis live,” he told Jerry Gordon of the New English Review.

“He also reports that the school system is having some difficulty in working with them, as they “have difficulties” with females with positions of authorities, and are very demanding that the schools conform to their wishes. They often try to haggle with storeowners, and sometimes refuse to speak to female supervisors at stores, schools and hospitals.

“The presence of a radical Islamic compound in Dover makes the potential for radicalization among these Somalis much more dangerous. According to unconfirmed reports received by the Christian Action Network, where I serve as a national security researcher, some of these Somalis have moved to this compound, run by a group called Muslims of America, a front for Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The residents here are followers of a radical Muslim cleric named Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, who currently lives in Lahore, Pakistan. . . .”

“These issues, of course, do not mean that all Somali immigrants are problems, but it is clear that the government needs to find better ways to assimilate those who travel to the U.S. in large numbers as refugees. As these communities grow, the U.S. may find itself with unassimilated masses asserting themselves as a state-within-a-state and over the long term, dealing with the "No-Go Zones" and their subsequent instability as seen in France. Should this happen, Americans will look to Tennessee as one of the places where it first started.”

COMMENT:

This is interesting information, and while the article is referring to relatively small numbers of Somalis and some minor problems, I don’t see anything here to make me think I owe Kumar an apology. Mauro tells us of a small number of Somalis causing minor problems, and of a radical Mosque where Radical Islamism is being taught. Rather than the alarmist subtitle that drew me to this article he should have expanded something he mentions as an afterthought, “. . . it is clear that the government needs to find better ways to assimilate those who travel to the U.S. in large numbers as refugees.”

We learn in this afterthought that this is not a premeditated invasion of Islamists intending to cause America trouble, but a group of refugees. We Americans seem to be always taking in refugees from one country or another, but I wonder why we are taking in unreconstructed Islamists, if that is what we have done. Why would we do that?

And then I wonder if perhaps we didn’t do that; if, rather, what we have here is a group of non-Islamist Somalis, some of whom have been converted to Radical Islam the leader of a radical Mosque after they got here. The short solution to this sort of problem would be to shut down Mosques where Radical Islam is taught. Of course we have difficulty in the US curtailing any sort of thought, even anti-American thought, even treasonous thought. There are laws on our books against treason, but authorities have not been willing to enforce them. Perhaps if Radical Islam became a serious presence in the US, that could change, but for now it exists in the shadows, in the periphery, in the margins.

It is not normally the government’s job to integrate immigrants, but if we are going to import many more groups like the Somalis, unusual steps would be advisable . . . if we could manage those steps without running afoul of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Up until now we have had a good record of assimilating our immigrants. We have stood in contrast to France and other areas in Europe in that regard. It would be a shame if in the process of rescuing people that would suffer and perhaps die if we left them where they were, we create a danger to our own citizens.

I have commented elsewhere that we should enforce laws against the declared enemies of this country, but I’m not willing to keep kicking that dead horse. Evidence suggests that we won’t go after traitors and Fifth-Column-type enemies until they seriously hurt us. Which means Kumar is premature at the very least with his Anti-Sharia platform.

And actually, we have never been very good, as a nation, at crying before we were hurt. Objective observers could have seen we were wrong by not acting sooner against the Germans in World Wars One and Two. They could have seen we were wrong by not acting sooner against the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor. They could have seen that we should have taken precautions against the men who destroyed our Twin Towers. Despite those obvious truths, we haven’t learned anything, and we haven’t changed. We still don’t like to act until something serious happens, and even after we do act, we aren’t so sure we really needed to, or that we needed to quite as much as we did, or that we needed to in quite the way that we did. Notice that Kumar is as guilty of that sort of thinking as others. He bizarrely, given his concern, opposes the actions America has taken against Radical Islam in the Middle East. He sees nothing good in it. For Kumar, it is all bad.

2 comments:

Fahim kamran mirza said...

What Does "Islam" Mean?

The word "Islam" itself means "Submission to Allah." The religion of Islam is not named after a person as in the case of "Christianity" which was named after Jesus Christ, "Buddhism" after Gutama Buddha , "Marxism" after Karl Marx, and "Confucianism" after Confucius.

Similarly, Islam is not named after a tribe like "Judaism" after the tribe of Judah and "Hinduism" after the Hindus. The Arabic word "Islam" means the submission or surrender of one's will to the will of the only true god worthy of worship, "Allah" (known as God "the Father" in Christianity).

Anyone who does indeed submit to the will of Allah as required by Islam is termed a "Muslim," which means one who has submitted to the will of Allah. Many people in the West have developed the sad misinformed trend of calling Islam "Muhammadenism" and it's followers "Muhammadins." This is a totally foreign word to Muslims and unrecognized by them. No Muslim has ever called his religion "Muhammadenism" or called himself a "Muhammadin."

What Is The Basic Concept of Islam?

Islam teaches us that this life is a life of worship. We are placed on this earth in order to worship Allah and obey His command. During this earthly life we are subjected to a series of trials. We have the option of enduring these trials and conforming to certain laws, and our reward will be great in the next life, or we may decline to endure these trials and choose to not conform to the law, then we will be made to regret it in the next life.

Each person will be solely and completely responsible for their own final reward. We are also told that God has designed these laws to make this life a better, safer, and more tolerable one for us. If we elect to conform to them then we will see the result in this life even before moving on to the next.
We are told that the earthly life is a life of faith and work, and the next life is one of reward and no work. We have been placed on this earth to worship God, fast, pray, be industrious, good, kind, respectful, and a source of uprightness and morality. We are told that God has no need of our worship. Our worship can not increase the kingdom of God nor add to His power, however, it is in our best interests both in this life and the next that we do.

Unlike some other religions which claim that God entered in a covenant with a certain group of people and that this group is genetically better than all other human beings, or closer to God, Islam on the other hand teaches that no color, race, tribe, or lineage is better than any other. Islam teaches that all humans are equal in the sight of Allah and that the only thing that can distinguish them in His sight is their piety and worship.

"O humankind! Verily! We have created you from a male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. Verily! the noblest among you in the sight of Allah is the most God-fearing. Verily! Allah is The Knower, The Aware." The noble Qur'an, Al-Hujrat(49):13.


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Lawrence Helm said...

Fahim,

See my comment at http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/09/re-is-radical-islam-invading-tennessee.html

Lawrence