Observers and interested parties have expressed amazement, confusion and concern at the growth of Islam in the West since 9/11. Apparently, no acts of mass murder, familial barbarism and cruelty, jihad violence against non-Muslims, and threat of (nuclear) war from leaders of Islamic states are sufficient to dissuade some “searchers”.
After the 9/11 Islamic atrocities, conversions to Islam in the United States increased markedly – and have kept a steady pace of growth. It did not take long for this startling increase in conversions in the US to be widely noticed. According to the New York Times (October, 2001), “some clerics say they have seen conversion rates quadruple since Sept. 11.”
Favorable reactions (no response could be more “favorable” than conversion) to the 9/11 attacks in Europe were also widely noticed there. A Times of London article that appeared not long after the attacks included the following:
There is compelling anecdotal evidence of a surge in conversions to Islam since September 11, not just in Britain, but across Europe and America. One Dutch Islamic centre claims a tenfold increase, while the New Muslims Project, based in Leicester and run by a former Irish Roman Catholic housewife, reports a steady stream of new converts. (Times of London, 01/07/2002 as referenced in Joel Richardson’s “Islamic Anti-Christ.”)
For most thoughtful Americans only profound shock and confusion (and dismay) can result when faced with these growing trends of approval (through conversion – the highest form of “approval”) in the society for the perpetrators of the 9/11 barbarities and their draconian, supremacist ideology.
Many say the events of Sept. 11 only confirmed their commitment. …Upon hearing of the hijackings [one “searcher”] immediately grabbed a book from her backpack and recited the Arabic declaration of belief; she made the conversion official 12 days later.
New York Times, October 22, 2001
Certainly psychologists, religious and political leaders, and anyone concerned about our societal health andsurvival would wish to understand the foundations of a decision that propels someone to identify with the 9/11 killers (and their ideology) rather than with their innocent kafir/non-Muslim victims.
Things have not improved in the ten years since the 9/11 mass murders. According to the UK Daily Mail of January 5, 2011:
The number of Muslim converts in Britain has passed 100,000, fuelled by a surge in young white women adopting the Islamic faith.
The figure has almost doubled in ten years – with the average convert now a 27-year-old white woman fed up with British consumerism and immorality.
The investigation as to comparative morality whereby Islam requires jihad against non-Muslims, considers women second class citizens (including religious and legal sanction for wife beating), and an undying ancient enmity against Jews and Christians (and all non-Muslims) that continues to fuel atrocities across the world versus the perceived moral failings of UK society in which the horrors of Islam are often viewed as more attractive by some British “searchers” elicited this:
The survey …asked converts for their views on the negative aspects of British culture. They identified alcohol and drunkenness, a ‘lack of morality and sexual permissiveness’, and ‘unrestrained consumerism’.
Daily Mail, 01/05/2011
Why some British non-Muslim “searchers” find their answers within a reactionary, absolutist worldview from Arabia rather than make a personal decision to not partake in such activities – or convert even to some more localized absolutist approach to existence like, say, Puritanism – if avoidance of sexual permissiveness, drunkenness, unrestrained consumerism, etc., is the goal of those who convert to Islam, is not particularly clear. Though the very public conversion of Lauren Booth, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, and Prince Charles numerous favorable comments on Islam have greatly benefited Islam in the UK in recent years they cannot explain the attraction the people in an open society have towards totalitarian, absolutist ideologies such as Islam.
Certainly, many have a deep need for surety and definitiveness. What could be the source of more certitude than an absolutist ideology to which one submits in entirety? After all, the word “Islam” translates to “Submission”, and “Muslim” to “one who submits.” Islam is about nothing else if not “Islam” – it’s an all-encompassing submission to an all-encompassing self-referential view of existence. Rising numbers of conversions to Islam seem to show that Islam’s brutal absolutism has found a fertile soil in the apparently morally confused and falling cultures of the west.
Many people need answers, but haven’t any idea as to how to ask the right questions. There are such “searchers” in every generation; those who know that “something is wrong” but haven’t any clear idea as to what.
Absolutist ideologies, religions, worldviews, political and legal systems (Islam includes all of those) are a welcome haven for such people from the challenges and confusions of daily life in open democratic societies. For too many, submission is by far easier than the frustrations and difficulties of the search for meaning itself.
Suna is the “Way of Mohammed.” It originates from the Hadith (Traditions), and the Sira (the biography of Mohammed). According to Islamic doctrine Mohammed is the greatest human being whose life is the perfect model for all Muslims to follow forever. Obeying Mohammed is commanded in the Koran. Devout followers of Islam follow the path of Suna – whatever Mohammed ordered others to do or did himself are the finest things that any human could do. We should not underestimate the power of examples.
The apostle said, ‘Kill any Jew that falls into your power.’ Thereupon Muhayyisa b. Mas`ud leapt upon Ibn Sunayna, a Jewish merchant with whom they had social and business relations, and killed him. Huwayyisa was not a Muslim at the time though he was the elder brother. When Muhayyisa killed him Huwayyisa began to beat him, saying, ‘You enemy of God, did you kill him when much of the fat on your belly comes from his wealth?’ Muhayyisa answered, ‘Had the one who ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut your head off.’ He said that this was the beginning of Huwayyisa’s acceptance of Islam. The other replied, ‘By God, if Muhammad had ordered you to kill me would you have killed me?’ He said, ‘Yes, by God, had he ordered me to cut off your head I would have done so.’ He exclaimed, ‘By God, a religion which can bring you to this is marvellous!’ and he became a Muslim.
-Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah as translated by A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, page 369
Note:Supporting Hadith from Sunan Abu-Dawd (19:2996), can be seen here
There is no doubt that absolutism appeals to many and always has, but there is cause for hope in that Islam’s supremacism, definitiveness, and cruel legal system (Sharia law) while attractive for some, is not at all for others. (More on Sharia Law here, and here, and here, and here.)
The day after the UK newspaper published its report that “100,000 Britons have chosen to become Muslim… and (the) average convert is (a) 27-year-old white woman” poll results were reported in the same newspaper (Daily Mail) that showed “Islam (is) now considered ‘a threat’ to national identity by almost half of French and Germans.” (Le Monde poll as cited in UK Daily Mail, 01/06/2011.)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel set the most high profile public tone of open criticism some months ago when she stated that multiculturalism (i.e., integration of immigrant groups) had “utterly failed” in Germany. In Britain, some public discussion starting in 2009 that massive immigration was a purposeful effort to forever alter the cultural makeup of the United Kingdom (that is, make it more “multicultural”) seems to show that the influx of Muslim immigrants into the UK is a component of a post-modernist, multicultural social engineering project that has utterly failed with disastrous consequences.
Rising awareness of Islamic doctrine, history, and its draconian, misogynist legal system (Sharia) in the United States is providing Americans with the foundational knowledge from which insightful questions about Islam can be formulated. The answers to these questions, more often than not, are – unpleasant, and show that the essential concepts of Islam, inclusive of submission and supremacism, to be incompatible with the US Constitution.
According to the Le Monde poll (comments on the article suggest that results would be duplicated in the UK) rising numbers of French and Germans now view Islam as a challenge to their national identities. The poll “…also found a majority in both countries believe Muslims have ‘not integrated properly.'”
If the history of jihad and Islamic expansionism are to be guides, non-Muslim citizens of France and Germany have cause for concern.
Ironically, the same day the Le Monde poll results appeared in a British newspaper the United States Constitution was read for the first time from the floor of the Senate.
The reading of the Constitution was recommended by Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia with the following by way of explanation (as if such explanation is required for the first public reading on the Senate floor of the central document of American history):
One of the resounding themes I have heard from my constituents is that Congress should adhere to the Constitution and the finite list of powers it granted to the federal government.
Kansas City Star, 01/03/2011
The limitations of federal powers and the enforcement of checks and balances are favorite themes of conservatives during this 2nd year of the Obama administration. It is correct, laudable, and understandable in our highly charged national political environment that the proper extent of federal power according to the Constitution should be so seriously considered.
While German and French poll respondents have reasonably identified Islam as a threat to their respective national identities, there appears to be little need for discussion to determine what a Frenchman or a German means when he/she talks about their “national identity.” This question: “what does it mean to be an American?” is now a central issue in the United States.
It was once widely understood that the concepts and freedoms delineated in the Constitution were the foundations upon which the country were constructed. With the post-war (WW2) advent of post-modernism and multiculturalism and a corresponding rise in national self-doubt and guilt, the proud idea of “American” now has become for too many one of confusion, dismay, self-doubt/self-disgust.
Some political observers have suggested that the reading of the Constitution on the Senate floor was a Republican right-wing “stunt.” Some members of the minority party chose to express their opinion about “the Constitution-reading stunt” by not attending the session. There has yet to be any definitive explanation provided by opposition voices as to what it is that is partisan about reading the foundational document of American politics from the Senate floor.
There are larger and more important themes than the silly “political theater” accusation (and thus dismissal of the reading). It seems a bizarre oversight on the part of all former Congresses that the Constitution had never been read aloud on the Senate floor – it ought to be read at the opening of each new Congressional session.
Charles Krauthammer in his article “Constitutionalism” rightly notes the event as the beginning of a new way of looking at ourselves as Americans – the old way.
Krauthammer suggests that a renewed focus on the central document of American political/public life by Republicans likely indicates a new national political focus on core values based around those guaranteed to the people under the Constitution. This focus on the Constitution should always be the core of conservatism.
Some liberals are already disdaining the new constitutionalism, denigrating the document’s relevance and sneering at its public recitation. They do so at their political peril. In choosing to focus on a majestic document that bears both study and recitation, the reformed conservatism of the Obama era has found itself not just a symbol but an anchor.
National Review – January 7, 2010
Until recently the Constitution was commonly understood (and appreciated) as the foundation of the concept of “American” as well as the literal core of our concepts of freedom, and government. (Since we are in the midst of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it should be noted that both Northerners and Confederates considered themselves Constitutionalists). Until recently the answer to “what does it mean to be an American” almost always included some or all of the following components:
- our Constitution
- our Founders
- the “melting pot”
- our individual freedoms
- our special consideration from Providence
- and the sacrifices our heroes have made throughout our history to preserve our country and protect the Constitution.
It is good that we are returning to the core concepts of what it means “to be American” especially during this time of economic, ideological, cultural, and international crises.
If our understanding, appreciation of, and linkage with the US Constitution is re-established; and we can again see ourselves (without post-modernist false doubts/guilt) within a context of historical development over time and compare our foundations and core beliefs to most any other culture and country on the planet we will know once again our own value, and the contributions we have made to the world.
Since 9/11, the growth of Islam in the United States has increased by immigration, high birth rate, and conversions. It is almost counter-intuitive that Americans would convert to a religion/political ideology whose adherents committed the atrocities of 9/11 (specifically because they were adherents of that ideology) – the largest atrocity of mass murder in American history. We can look to Mohammed’s biography (Suna) and our own embrace of post-modernism for an answer.
The adherent of Islam who told his brother that he would decapitate him if commanded to do so by Mohammed impressed his brother so deeply with his zeal and surety that the horrified brother immediately converted to Islam. This is the very same scenario to explain the wave of post-9/11 conversions to Islam in the West.
Some people were apparently so impressed at the absolute zeal and surety of the 19 Muslim hijacker killers (rather than revolted by their cruelty, brutality, and hatred), they adopted the ideological path of the killers rather than the path of compassion for their victims.
The popular post-911 suggestion (now falling from favor) that the Muslim killers of that day had somehow “hijacked” the “religion of peace” and were not representative of it (an approach that would minimize the moral horror and inversion of converting to Islam) is not borne out by any reading of Islamic doctrine. Nor does such a view take into account the statements of those jihadists and those who followed them (both as individuals and as members of organizations/states) as they justified then and now their barbaric cruelties within an Islamic doctrinal context.
Searching for answers is a great tradition for people lucky to live in open societies, and one of our greatest freedoms. The great danger of searching is that some will find their “answers” on the wrong path.
It is good and right to look to our foundations, to the great people and ideas that created our country. If we put our national political and cultural life back on a Constitutional path – understanding that these core ideals are alive and belong to all of us and are not reserved for any particular party but for all Americans – and if we compare other ideologies and systems against our own, founded upon the standard of our Constitution, we will not find ourselves wanting.
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