In last week’s L.A. Jewish Journal, editor Rob Eshman celebrated the fact that his wife, Rabbi Naomi Levi, sent out a huge virtue-signal about Muslim immigration: Bring ’em on; I’m not afraid!! After brooding on that bit of suicidal idiocy for a few days, my friend Lulu was moved to write a rebuttal, reminding Eshman, Levi, and any other virtue-signaling Jews (and Christians) out there that we have ample real-time proof the Muslims desperate to get into America are no like any other immigrants America has ever welcomed. I think you’ll find that, as I do, you agree with Lulu:
After the shock of 911, I realize that my response was to do something different than the vast majority of people in my liberal town/state. Instead of reading about how frightened Muslim-Americans felt about the inevitable anti-Muslim backlash (which never happened) from journalists who didn’t seem to know much about Islam, I went straight to the source, or as close to the source as I could as a non Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, or other Muslim majority country language speaker. That is, I went to YouTube and to Memri.org and I listened to what Muslim people tell each other on their own television shows, news shows, and in their newspapers. Memri translates all this without judgment. They just expose the mentality, values and trends of parts of the world we must know more about. Some of the clips are horrifying. Some messages from reform minded people are hopeful. But what is obvious is that the cultures and values are hugely, enormously different than our own.
I saw television clips of preachers giving lessons on the proper techniques of wife beating. I saw discussions and sermons promoting the murder of apostates and infidels (that is, non-Muslims). I saw the basest of anti-Semitism, including blood libels, promulgated. I watched young Palestinian children on kiddie shows being encouraged to become suicide martyrs and murder Jews. I saw the defense of honor killings, female genital mutilation and support for the denial of rights for women as normative and right.
We all know how the Internet works. One link leads to another. I then saw articles about the pedophilia in Afghanistan, the kidnapped young boys forced to dance for men and perform sexually for them. I saw articles about young female children, under the age of ten sometimes, married to grown men or middle aged men who raped them. I read about young wives locked in their homes, so miserable and desperate to end their suffering that they literally set themselves on fire as their only means to escape. Picture after picture reveals the horror. I read about Christians burned, beaten, and stoned to death, their daughters kidnapped and forced to serve as sex slaves. I read about young couples who dared to fall in love dragged out of prison (jailed for being together) and beaten to death by lynch mobs. I read and saw pictures of gays tossed off buildings and hung in public squares. I read about the horrible mistreatment of animals; beasts of burden, dogs, bear baiting.
I would look at these source materials and think, how can America’s journalists not be aware of this? How can they be so naïve? But no one really wanted to look at these readily available films, photos and articles. They were uncomfortable, painful and challenged cherished points of view that all cultures were equally good or bad, we all worship the same God, and other Coke commercial clichés.
So I have watched with horror and dismay as Sweden, perhaps the most self-congratulatory nation on the planet, in a noble experiment and to atone for Swedes’ blond hair and fair complexions, took in an enormous number of people, primarily young men, from these precise cultures . . . expecting what to happen, exactly? Beautiful integration? Sexually outré Swedish metrosexuals sipping coffee with people who viewed them with contempt? No, the Swedes embraced their immigrants with wide open arms and assumed they’d be reciprocated with gratitude and worldwide accolades. Instead, Sweden has become known as the rape capital of Europe. Values collide. Just a few weeks ago, a group of Afghan asylum recipients filmed themselves on Facebook-live gang raping a young Swedish woman. Tack sa mycket, Sverige!