There’s an interesting, slightly counter-intuitive claim in this post at The National Interest from John Allen Gay:
Because jihadism is unpopular with the majority of Muslims, the only way that the West could experience waves of Islamist violence is by the admission of large numbers of people from places with these cultural tendencies—by a system of mass immigration with no fundamental restrictions on where that mass immigration comes from. And all this comes as mass immigration is on track to get more massive; at current rates, within ten years the foreign-born share of the U.S. population will be larger than any other time in our history. It’s a similar story in Europe. If current trends continue, the West will only see more violence.
I’ll need to ruminate on that for a while but it made me start thinking. What’s our greatest concern?
The perpetrator in the Orlando murders wasn’t an immigrant. He was the American-born child of immigrants. Similarly, Nidal Hasan, the murderer at Fort Hood was the American-born child of immigrants.
Syed Rizwan Farook, the murderer in the San Bernardino terrorist killings, was also the American-born child of immigrants. His wife was herself an immigrant.
The perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings were immigrants and IIRC naturalized American citizens. One of the Tsarnaev brothers came here as a young teenager; the other at eight or nine.
The perpetrators of 9/11 were visitors or on overstayed student or tourist visas.
Now let’s look for commonalities. They were all Muslim. Most were young. Most were men. There’s some evidence that they grew up in homes filled with resentment. The perpetrators of the spree killings were, by and large, native-born albeit reared in immigrant homes. The perpetrators of the mass killings of 9/11, the only incidents that were definitely suicide attacks, were not native-born.
Roughly 70 people were killed in the terrorist spree killings with some scores of injured. Thousands were killed in the 9/11 attacks and thousands more were injured. The number of perpetrators in the terrorist sprees is under a dozen. The number of perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks was 19.
I don’t see a great deal of evidence to support the idea that terrorist attacks can be eliminated or their number reduced simply by not accepting large numbers of Muslim immigrants. The terrorist sprees were mostly perpetrated by native-born Americans and the number of perpetrators is quite small.
If you have discovered a way to prevent resentment in young people, please publicize it. You’re the first.
I think the evidence is actually pretty clear. Whether you’re concerned about terrorist spree killings or mass terrorist attacks (like the 9/11 attacks), there are no non-draconian solutions. The problem of terrorist attacks is not amenable to simple solutions, at least not simple solutions that are palatable to a substantial proportion of Americans.
“Because jihadism is unpopular with the majority of Muslims . . .”
Very imprecisely stated claim, jihad is justified by the Koran; what the source for this claim asserts is that a lot of Muslims “do not think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.” How many? In the U.S., 81% say never. But in a lot of third-world countries, the percentage is much lower:
Afghanistan: 40%
Egypt: 40%
Palestine: 34%
The survey didn’t poll Saudi Arabia, Iran & Syria, because of political sensitivities, but the impression is that except for Iraq, support for killing civilians to “defend” a religion has a lot of support in the heart of the Arab world, extending into the subcontinent, but not in former Soviet states in Central Asia, and parts of the Balkans.
If we take the premise that a majority is the standard and apply it accurately on a country-by-country basis, then one gets uncomfortably close to Trump’s position.
To be clear, I think violence against civilian targets is not justified by conservative Islam, but the polling suggests that a majority of third-world Muslims are at least partially radicalized.
The nexus seems to be 2nd generation muslim immigrants. Why are they more prone to these kinds of attacks than 2nd generation hispanic or east asian immigrants?
I think there’s a certain amount of sophistry at work. Those justifying attacks against those we’d generally think of as civilians point out that the military couldn’t exist without support from the non-military population which renders them legitimate targets.
Status as an immigrant seems irrelevant. In fact, with respect to sprees it seems a feature. What better vehicle is there?
The commonality is the religion, which for some reason I can’t understand, is not allowed to be pointed out. President Obamas remarks yesterday seemed particularly unpersuasive, bordering on delusional. Further, we see this religious commonality in issues of lesser “newsworthyness” than sprees, like throwing homosexuals off buildings, raping of women or groping of women in public places. There is more at play here than just resentment. But again, we can’t talk about that for some crackpot notion that we will trigger otherwise peace loving Muslims (Muslim Mother Teresa’s, no doubt) into homicidal rage.
It doesn’t seam supernatural to me that people from other cultures and religious traditions might have far, far different world views than us. Notice I didn’t say all, or that there couldn’t be commonalities, just a higher propensity for fundamental differences. And by inference, a lower propensity for assimilation or acceptance of prevailing Western customs.
Why wouldn’t we restrict such people from immigrating? It’s not a right. Why must we avoid discussion, to the point of pathological naïveté, of the cultural and religious differences at the risk of more Orlando-like events?
I think it’s puzzling. There have been companies that have been sued out of existence for product failure rates far lower than the rate at which Muslims support violence against non-Muslim civilians. And yet somehow musing over whether we might be a lot more selective about whom we allow to enter the country is taboo.
Heck, Canada is more selective than we are and it’s one of the most respected countries in the world. We need new public relations managers.
I note your question relating to “invading the world, inviting the world”
seems to be requiring an answer without a synchronized question regarding whether the Empire will continue invading the world to the same degree as it has , say from the period it sparked jihadism by its anti-Soviet actions and its subsidization of and wars fought for Israel since the 1970s to the present.
I was trying so hard to be diplomatic……..but….
Obama seems to have entered office with a combination of a blame America first worldview, academicians naïveté and plain old (narcissistic) rigidity. The world must be the reality he wants, not that is. Having embarked on a manifestly feckless policy stance he is now boxed in. Benghazi didn’t fit the narrative. Radical Islam doesn’t fit the narrative. The rise of ISIS in Iraq doesn’t fit the narrative. So we get tales of inciting YouTube videos, kinetic military activity, and home grown extremists with easy access to guns. Nothing about Islam mind you. (Hence my crossing to the other side of the street every time I see a suspicious looking Dane.)
I think Obama is stubborn, pathetically thin skinned and desirous of having yes men around him. (Poison for a leader by the way). I don’t believe he is stupid. Just don’t. I don’t think he believes his BS for a second. That we have a nation with larger numbers of people willing to debate and support notions of YouTube videos etc rather than spit out their milk upon hearing such childishness is unsettling.