When immigrants arrived to the United States of America via New York Harbor between the latter half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries, they were greeted by the Statue of Liberty with the words that represent the American spirit “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Today, however, the US attitude towards newcomers has changed. The American people, as well as Europeans, have shown a growing concern over the obvious metamorphosis of nature and the types of immigration, which they consider a threat to national identity. Theirs is not a position against foreigners preserving some of their cultural or religious traditions in as much as the non-conformist mentality from migrants and refugees stemming from Muslim countries.

US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis—a son of Jewish immigrants—said in his 1915 speech on True Americanism that immigrants seeking a home in America needed to do much more than learn English and have good manners. He argued that they “must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.” The influx of Muslims, as Westerners fear, threatens to reshape their ethnic and religious composition of their nation-state, their democratic-capitalist tradition, and their social values. This concern has been heightened by the fact that many Muslims have cultivated an autonomous sharia-based society in our homeland, such as in Dearborn, Michigan, where animosity towards Christians has been constant and at times violent. We also see this with the establishment “Muslim friendly” hotels in prominent places such as Florence (Italy), sharia patrols in German cities, and sharia courts in England. In London alone there are at least one hundred sharia tribunals which parallel the established legal system by which Muslims are free to disavow any civil law or regulation they see fit in the privy sector. In 2017 a survey was conducted in Europe to learn about the extent of popular support for a restrictive immigration policy. To the surprise of many, polls showed that a high percentage of Europeans favor a ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries. In fact, an average of 55 percent of people across the 10 European countries surveyed are seeking to stop all future immigration from mainly Muslim countries.

According to Steven Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, circumstances that had helped immigrants acculturate to their new home during the turn of the last century are absent today. In America, legislation in the early 1920s dramatically reduced new arrivals, and by 1970 less than 5 percent of the US population was foreign-born. This reduction helped immigrant communities assimilate as they were no longer continually refreshed by new arrivals from the old country. In recent decades, however, the dramatic growth of immigrant enclaves has likely slowed the pace of assimilation. This has been the case with Muslims who have displayed an overall collective unwillingness to adapt to their new homes, to say nothing of those who enter with terrorist intentions. A primary reason is due to their disdain of secularism, i. e, the elimination of God in the public realm or the moral vacuum, such as abortion, same-sex unions, pornography, and the like that the West (and now Eastern Europe) deems as human rights. Logically, Muslims who uphold certain family values seek refuge within the sharia, even if imams require them to adopt cruel and oppressive norms that may even require killing innocent people.

Shadi Hamid, senior fellow in the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy maintains that most Muslims indisposition to compromise in the face of secularizing pressures makes Islam both vibrant and distinctive. Indeed, Islam has proven remarkably resistant to the persistent attempts to relegate it to the private sphere. In fact, the individual Muslim has developed an intimate sense of commonality with other Muslims in which he is able to see himself and his brethren in meaningful terms through the medium and locus of Islam. They are able to relate to each other’s experience of injustice and suffering, which encourages them to act on the basis of that identification. Both the US and European heads of state, or for that matter the United Nations, have been reluctant if not disinterested to set fort policies that would restructure traditional family principles and foster natural rights, as well as enforcing laws that would help Muslims adjust. Instead, they have sought to solve the Islamic immigration problem with tolerance or what Geert Wilders (leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom) calls the “Patriotic Spring,” classified by some as nationalism.

Under this wave, just as it was with the proposed building of a wall across the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration, President Donald Trump’s 90-Day Travel Ban to contain would-be migrants and refugees from certain Middle Eastern Islamic countries to the US has thus far been the only proposed solution. Other statesmen, like Matteo Salvini in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary have also pursued identical policies in their respective countries as a means to deal with the influx of unwanted immigrants and refugees. And, Poland announced in August of this year that it is ready to welcome migrants from Europe, but not from the Middle East or Africa. As Witold Waszckkowski of the Polish Law and Order Party said: “Poland is open to migration from Europe, Belarus and the Balkans, we simply do not want to participate in the mandatory process of reintegration of migrants from Africa and the Middle East.”

Undoubtedly, there are many Muslims who seek to flee from the draconian sharia rules in their native countries with the hope of creating a new and dignified life. This is an obligation that is owed to them. At the same time, others migrate because of the Hijra doctrine (patterned on the migration of Muhammad to Medina from Mecca in 622). As compelled by Islamists: imams, Islamic rights activists, and extremists, they feel it is their duty to leave (or are forced to leave) their homeland in order to spread the kingdom of Allah: “Aisha reported that the Messenger of Allah was asked about migration, whereupon he said: ‘There is no migration after the Conquest (of Mecca), but Jihad [holy war] and sincere intention. When you are asked to set out (for the cause of Islam), you should set out.’” (Sahih Muslim, Book 20, hadith 4599)

What we face now is an Islamization of the West, which was foreseen by then-Algerian President Houari Boumendienne in 1974. In an address to the United Nations, he stated: “One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
Let us keep in mind that a nation has the right and duty to protect and secure its borders. Yet while the fears of Americans and Europeans are valid, the closed-border policy has not solved the Islamic phenomenon, which in the end is a doctrinal one. Because the promotion of the aforementioned human rights by both US and European governments has divided Western society, non-conformist Muslims have justified their isolation and non-conformist positions. Regrettably, because of the political correctness in our culture, primarily instigated by the left-wing politicians and philanthropists like George Soros who seek the demise of civilization, one cannot even rationally address the Islamic dilemma, lest he or she be accused of Islamophobia. We should therefore not be surprised when Muslims collectively refuse to assimilate themselves, nor should we be startled that inadvertently at least, we have conformed ourselves to their demands.

Mario Alexis Portella is author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up

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