Trump is right: Muslim immigration should be suspended
In its Dec. 17 edition, the Valley Times ran a front-page story titled “Coming Home” about the Muslim Educational Trust’s new community center on Scholls Ferry Road. In it, MET president Wajdi Said called presidential candidate Donald Trump “ignorant” for his proposal to temporarily suspend Muslim immigration.
Ignorant? America’s European-derived, constitutional system of government respects the free exercise of religion but does not favor one faith over another. How, then, can we admit and hope to successfully assimilate large numbers of people who believe that their faith, even in matters temporal, must reign supreme?
“In Islam,” notes prominent Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, “there is no distinction between church and state.” Instead, writes author Roberto de Mattei, “religion and politics form a single and inseparable whole ... Among Muslims, power and law do not find their legitimacy in a nation ... but in religion.” Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan is blunter still: “Where Islam is the ruling faith, the Quran is secular law.” If, in years to come, millions more Muslims are admitted to America, what will happen to our long-established church-state separation?
In France, England, Germany and Scandinavia, countless Muslim immigrants and their European-born children consider themselves not citizens of their host nations but members of a worldwide Muslim “ummah,” an Arabic word meaning “community.” They do not merely separate themselves from, but are contemptuous of and antagonistic toward, the native European peoples. Of the continent’s increasing Islamization, writes essayist Daniel Johnson, “there is potential ... for a civil war that could tear Europe apart.” And this state of affairs has come to pass in a mere two generations.
On the matter of Muslim immigration, then, Donald Trump is hardly “ignorant.” He is sensible, courageous, patriotic — and absolutely right.
