Fw: Swearing in the Enemy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: Swearing in the Enemy


Hirsi Ali tells us, "
I wasn't immune to the appeal of this new fundamentalism. I myself
joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and social movement in which
we were urged to implement Shariah in our families, communities and
nations."
Yet, here she is today, an American Citizen, embracing our Constitution and
committed to the belief that we can somehow screen out those who would
become citizens in order to turn upon our Way of Life.
Certainly I understand her concerns...I hope they are concerns and not
unreasonable fears. But the thought of turning the application process into
a process for screening out undesirables rather than educating applicants in
what America is, and nurturing our ideals, is troubling to me.
She mentions the oath, "I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the
Communist Party", as an example of the sort of screening questions we might
consider. But a person bent on making trouble will give you the answer that
you will accept. And the use of such questions leaves the citizenship
application process open to being manipulated if a very restrictive
government takes office, and finds a particular People to be undesirable.
Besides, we all...or at least a majority of us...change our beliefs from
time to time. I was a Born Again Baptized in the Holy Spirit Christian at
one time. Today I am an Agnostic. Who knows what I might be next year?
Are there questions that will determine if my Agnosticism and Radical
Politics will make me a threat to my country? Maybe to a particular group
of politicians holding our government captive, but how do you distinguish
between the two?
So if we're going to devise a questionnaire that screens out undesirable
applicants, why not have it given to every citizen and anyone flunking the
test will be run off to some desert island? Or shot at dawn, since we have
an over abundance of guns.
Any form of government carries with it potential dangers. A dictatorship
insists that you bow before the Dictator or be punished. The free nature of
another government could mean that it is subject to attacks from within by
people who are opposed to that government. That's the risk of keeping a
democracy free and open.
Here is a question. Are there more suicide bombings and violent attacks on
governments in democratic nations, or in oppressed or occupied nations? Are
we travelling down the road toward making our nation "safer" at the expense
of our Freedom?
Rather than fuss around with the citizenship application process, let's put
our energy into making America a freer nation, and encourage all citizens to
participate in making it even a better Land. And we could begin by
demanding one citizen, one vote. And defining a Citizen as a living Human
Being. No Corporate Persons and no purchasing a Citizen's vote.

Carl Jarvis

Original Message -----
From: "R. E. Driscoll Sr" <llocsirdsr@att.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" s<blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 6:30 AM
Subject: Swearing in the Enemy


I read this article last week and debated sending it on. My first
thought was that it would be too disruptive so I did not send it on.
Last night I received a message from a friend in California who
recommended that I reread the article and then reconsider sending it on.

I have done so this morning and the article follows.

R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578486931383069840.html?mod=WSJ_myyahoo_module


Swearing In the Enemy
One of the suspected Boston bombers was a naturalized citizen, and
the other was on his way. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a new citizen, asks
how we might change the process of becoming an American to exclude those
who hate America.

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
<http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=AYAAN+HIRSI+ALI&bylinesearch=true>
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578486931383069840.html?mod=WSJ_myyahoo_module#>

Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who recently became a U.S. citizen, argues that
immigration reform needs to include measures to detect the radically
anti-American beliefs of some newcomers who seek to become Americans.

On April 25, 2013, I took the oath to become a citizen of the United
States. Perhaps only those who have taken this oath can fully understand
how I felt that afternoon in Boston. I felt a strong sense of belonging,
and tears welled up in my eyes more than a few times during the hourlong
ceremony.

I have no reason to doubt that the 1,834 other men and women who took
the oath with me also felt that special sense of homecoming. On that
sunny afternoon, it seemed unreal that just 10 days earlier, another new
citizen of this country had taken up arms against it---against us---in
the very same city.

As the whole world now knows, that new U.S. citizen was Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, only 19 years old. He had taken the oath just seven months
earlier---on Sept. 11, in fact, a grim irony whose lessons we are still
struggling to learn. His alleged partner in crime and mentor was his
elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who himself had applied for
citizenship and was well into the process, awaiting approval and the
invitation to take the same precious oath.

That approval and invitation would surely have come, because
Americans---we Americans---are a generous people. And yet, strangely,
today's debate about immigration reform has little to do with keeping
out people like Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Elizabeth Dietz

The author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, during her naturalization ceremony on April 25.


Related

* *What the Oath for New U.S. Citizens Says
<http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2013/05/17/what-the-oath-for-new-u-s-citizens-says/>
*

The Tsarnaev brothers are emblematic of the divided loyalties of our
times---and they are not the only ones. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani
national, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived the American dream: He
arrived on a student visa, married an American citizen, graduated from
college, worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a junior
financial analyst for a cosmetics company in Connecticut, became a
naturalized citizen at the age of 30 and then, a year later, in 2010,
tried to blow up as many of his fellow citizens as possible in a failed
car bombing in New York's Times Square.

Prior to sentencing, the judge asked Mr. Shahzad about the oath of
allegiance he had taken, in which he did "absolutely and entirely
renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince,
potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been
a subject or citizen." The defendant replied: "I sweared [sic], but I
didn't mean it." He then expressed his regret about the failure of his
plot and added that he would gladly have sacrificed a thousand lives in
the service of Allah. He concluded by predicting the downfall of his new
homeland.

Every naturalized citizen has a unique story to tell. My own journey to
America was not only geographical but also intellectual, emotional and
cultural. I grew up in Muslim communities in Somalia, Saudi Arabia,
Ethiopia and Kenya. In my early years, these communities (with the
exception of Saudi Arabia) were moderate in their religious beliefs and
practices.

Enlarge Image


Photo Illustration by John Kuczala

The challenge is to uncover the deceit of phony citizens.

But during my teenage years, I saw a change. Friends and family members
began turning to Islamic scripture, interpreted literally, for answers
to all their problems. I saw religious leaders who emphasized ritual
observance replaced by a new breed of imams who urged hostile action,
even violence, against Jews, "infidels," and Muslims who neglected their
religious duties or violated Shariah, the Islamic law.

I wasn't immune to the appeal of this new fundamentalism. I myself
joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and social movement in which
we were urged to implement Shariah in our families, communities and
nations. For a young woman, this might mean strict obedience to her
husband and quiet propagation of the message; for a young man, it might
mean seeking martyrdom through a violent attack against the infidels.
One person might contribute money, another his home, yet another his
political and social connections. What mattered was being united around
the ideal of a world ruled by Shariah.

Over time, I began to question that ideal. My journey included a decade
in the Netherlands, where I lived a life of profound dissonance,
mentally vowing to remain steadfast in my faith while my lifestyle
drifted further and further from the narrow Islamic path. I knew that
the freedom I experienced in the Netherlands was supposed to be
abhorrent and evil, yet I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for it
and for the generosity with which the Dutch people welcomed me and so
many other émigrés. I discovered that I was more comfortable with the
idea of treating women, gay people, and people of different races and
faiths equally than I had ever been with the strictures of Shariah.

It was this journey from a world dominated by strict adherence to
religious law into a world of freedom both for and from religion that
led me to that ceremony in Boston, where I finally became a citizen of
the country that, above all others, represents freedom to the world. I
have devoted the past decade of my life to working as hard as I can to
expose the threat posed by what I label, as carefully as possible,
"political Islam."

It's a subject about which I know a great deal. Political Islam killed
my Dutch friend Theo van Gogh, who dared to collaborate with me in
making the film "Submission," which criticizes the mistreatment of women
in the name of Islam. Adherents of political Islam regularly threaten
me, an apostate from their faith. Political Islam eventually made my
life in the Netherlands impossible. If it were not for political Islam,
I would almost certainly still be Dutch.

What is political Islam? It is not precisely the same as the spiritual
dimension of the faith. Islam is multidimensional. It has a religious
and social aspect but also a very strong political dimension. Political
Islam is a comprehensive vision of ideas and ideals derived from Islamic
scripture as interpreted by various scholars widely accepted as
authorities on its meaning. Virtually all of these scholars agree that
Muslim societies must accept Allah as the sovereign power and struggle
to abide strictly by Shariah law as exemplified in the Sunna (the life,
words and deeds of the Prophet). Political Islam prescribes a set of
specific social, economic and legal practices in a way that is very
different from the more general social teachings (such as calls to
practice charity or strive for justice) found in the spiritual dimension
of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other world religions.

All of this, obviously, flies in the face of the American---and more
broadly Western---ideals of religious freedom and the separation of
church and state. But most Americans ignore the fundamental conflict
between political Islam and their own worldview. Perhaps this is because
they generally assume that "religion," however defined, is a positive
force for good and that any set of religious beliefs, however unusual,
should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. I agree with that.

The problem arises when those who adhere to a particular faith use it as
divine license to break the law. It is a wonderful truth about
America---one of its powerful attractions for millions of immigrants
like me---that you may think and say whatever you wish as long as you do
not act on your beliefs in a way that harms others. Unfortunately, a
minority of the adherents to political Islam wish to take violent action
in support of their beliefs---threatening the lives of innocents like
those killed and maimed as they stood watching the Boston Marathon.

It is reasonable to ask yourself: How many more young men like Tamerlan
and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are already living a double life in America, ready
to take up arms for the cause of political Islam? And how many more will
be naturalized this year? None? That seems pretty unlikely.

In a 2011 Pew survey, 1% of American Muslims said that suicide bombings
were "often justified"---a tiny proportion, to be sure. The overwhelming
majority of American Muslims want to lead peaceful lives. But 7% of
those surveyed said that suicide bombers were "sometimes justified," and
5% said they were "rarely justified." Taking Pew's conservative estimate
that Muslims now constitute 0.6% of the adult population of the U.S.,
this means that more than 180,000 American Muslims regard suicide
bombings as being justified in some way.

Still more worrisome, a 2007 survey by Pew revealed that Muslim
Americans under the age of 30 are twice as likely as older Muslims to
believe that suicide bombings in defense of Islam can be justified. The
same survey revealed that 7% of American Muslims between the ages of 18
and 29 had a "favorable" view of al Qaeda.

To repeat: The proportion may be small, but the number of Americans
committed to political Islam and willing to contemplate violence to
advance it is surely not trivial. And rising immigration from the Muslim
world is likely to increase the proportion of Americans sympathetic to
political Islam.

A 2013 Pew report revealed the extraordinarily large proportion of
Muslims around the world who favor making Shariah the official law of
their own countries: 91% of Iraqi Muslims and 84% of Pakistanis, for
example. Comparably high proportions favor the death penalty for
apostates like me. Are immigrants to the U.S. drawn exclusively from the
tiny minority who think otherwise? I doubt it.

When trying to explain the violence of some political Islamists, some
Western commentators blame hard economic circumstances, dysfunctional
family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young
males and so on. In other quarters, the mistakes of American foreign
policy are advanced as an explanation. Even if one accepts these
arguments---and these factors may indeed play a role in exacerbating the
sense of violent alienation among many young Muslims---it remains hard
to understand why a convinced political Islamist would sincerely want to
become an American citizen.

The naturalized citizen swears to "support and defend the Constitution
and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign
and domestic...bear true faith and allegiance to the same...[and] bear
arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law."
Naturalized citizens tie their own destiny to the destiny of this
society, not their former one, for better or worse. So the potential
bomber takes an oath to defend the Constitution and the U.S. against all
enemies, while committed in his heart to a radically different political
order.

The challenge that this would-be bomber poses for us is not to change
our foreign policy or improve economic conditions in the Muslim world.
We already do that. The challenge is to uncover the deceit of such phony
citizens.

One measure employed during the Cold War was to question prospective
citizens about whether they had ever been members of the Communist
Party, a recognition that communism was an ideology fundamentally
hostile to the American way of life. That question about the Communist
Party is still asked today, even though the threat posed by communism
has receded to a few desperate holdouts. I was surprised to encounter it
not once but twice during my own application process. And it got me
thinking: Is it not time to update the application form, substituting
political Islam for Communism?

Of course, the question alone would do nothing to uncover deceit on the
part of a determined terrorist. But it would establish the principle
that adherence to political Islam, with its dreams of a society ruled by
Shariah (not to mention a world ruled by a restored caliphate), is
incompatible with the terms of the oath of allegiance.

During my application process, the Citizenship and Immigration Services
requested that I show up at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in
downtown Boston only twice---once for fingerprints and pictures, a
second time for an interview with a civil servant to review my
application. It was a purely bureaucratic procedure, empty of any larger
moral or political meaning---as it must have been for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
and Faisal Shahzad and as it would have been for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, too.

The question now is whether the interview process should remain so
devoid of meaning. Is that what we want for the next zealot of political
Islam who wants to enjoy the benefits of American citizenship until the
day he tries to slaughter as many of us as possible?

A half-century ago, the U.S. turned away from the era when immigration
was restricted with the deliberate intention of keeping down the number
of Chinese and other ethnic groups, who were deemed undesirable. I have
no wish to go back to those bad old days. There should be no
discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity or faith. But it is not
enough to confine the current debate on immigration reform to a narrow
argument about the future of illegal immigrants. I believe that we are
entitled to filter out would-be citizens who are ideologically and
morally opposed to the U.S. and pose a threat to its population.

Every applicant should be interviewed by an ethnically and religiously
diverse panel made up of experts on ideological extremism, who would
then advise the government on whether or not to allow the applicant to
proceed along the road to citizenship. Muslim applicants need not feel
singled out; the panel would look out for any individual whose political
convictions, religious or otherwise, radically clash with the government
and principles to which the applicant is preparing to swear allegiance.

This would include any and all extremists who openly advocate or engage
in political violence as a means for attaining their ideal society.
Examples would include members of terrorist organizations such as the
FARC in Colombia, the PKK in Turkey, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and so on.
The most important question is not what they believe but what they
do---or believe it would be legitimate to do. Requiring candidates for
citizenship to respond to questions from such a panel might do more than
all the other inconvenient, expensive, and undesirable measures to
combat terrorism that we currently put up with.

A big job to organize and implement? Absolutely. But such screening is
necessary to ensure that the U.S. continues to draw and naturalize
people who are genuinely attracted by what makes the country great and
who want to make their own contribution to that greatness, while keeping
out enemies bent on our demise.

"I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose
of evasion: so help me God." Those closing words of the Oath of
Allegiance are now etched indelibly in my memory. But as I said them, I
thought of the Tsarnaev brothers, whose mental reservations about
America grew to the point that they were prepared to sow murder and mayhem.

Immigration reform that does not make it harder for such people to
settle in the U.S. would be, to say the least, very incomplete.

/Ms. Hirsi Ali is a founder of the AHA Foundation and author of
"Infidel" and "Nomad: My Journey from Islam to America." She is a fellow
at the Belfer Center of Harvard's Kennedy School and a visiting fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute./

A version of this article appeared May 18, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S.
edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Swearinginthe EnemyH.




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