At Antiwar.com Muhammad Sahimi is almost completely right

In today's Antiwar.com, Muhammad Sahimi has an article, What the Islamophobes Won’t Say About the West’s Destruction of theMideast, that almost perfectly reflects the Neutralist's position on the Middle-East.

Mr. Sahimi details the reasons Muslims might not be absolutely happy with the American and allied intervention in the region he hails from.  It is a record we can neither deny nor be proud of if we are honest.

Though the Neutralist agrees, our meddling invites blow back, at least a time out from Muslim immigration is warranted.  This is not because we believe the followers of Islam are all evil, it is because your average US citizen does not deserve a San Bernadino or Marathon bombing or a Fort Hood shooting, even if he or she blindly agrees with the propaganda.

As Mr. Sahimi's case is well made, it only bolsters the case for Neutralism.  We need to withdraw our forces from MENA, let them solve their own problems and when they have sorted it out, resume a relationship on a basis we can all agree on.*

I urge anyone who is not conversant with our adventures in the Middle-East to read the article.

There is a problem I have.  I think he correctly decries the neocons and their attitude, but there is a more nuanced view of the Islamic world that he does not address.  Our country's first foreign war after the revolution was with the Barbary states of North Africa.

These entities would send their raiders to prey on Europe's commercial shipping and after the American Revolution on ours.  The Neutralist has touched on this before.

We have mentioned the words of the Tripolitan ambassador to Jefferson,

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Most progressive Americans don't get what that means and some conservatives thinks it means we have an eternal war

That was mainstream Muslim thought in the early 18th Century, why would it not be today?  

The local UCC (Congregational) is the direct descendant of the Puritans, a theocracy as virulent as the Wahabis.  Cotton Mather would have thought abortion nothing other than an abomination. The UCC agreed until 1971.  The malleability of doctrine, that one day something is a horrible sin and the next, choice is not seen as crazy.**

The Muslim, believing the Koran the word of God, sees that it can’t change.  It is a consistent position and no one should blame the believer for holding it.

So the ambassador’s words are, speaking loosely, gospel in the early 1800s as well as the 21st century.

The folks who have the coexist bumper stickers don’t get it.  Trump voters do.  Quite the divide.

The we are the world types see Jihadists a tiny minority and the neocons as forever war. The former don't quite get that the Muslims have not changed with the times and polls show that many of them believe death is proper for Apostasy.

Is there hope?  Yes, but not immediately.  As the local Calvinists no longer preach Old Testament fire and brimstone and no longer burn witches (unlike some people today) it is to be wished that Islamic preachers will emphasize passages such as To You Your Religion and To Me Mine (Qur'an 109:1-6) instead of those more favored by the ambassador.

So time out until we have a better vetting process (assuming we can ever trust our own government to do it honestly) that can weed out the bad apples completely and we need to stay home as well.

*This is not something the Neutralist takes any pleasure in suggesting.  He grew up in a town with a Moslem community in the 1950s.  They had started coming in the early 20th Century.  I cannot speak to the exact level of assimilation, but no one had a bad word to say about them.

Still, there are always people in every society who cannot separate out the good and the bad.  Most Americans by now see Middle-Easterners as troubled at best.  Who cannot understand that the odd Moslem might resent all in the West and not just the neocons.

**Lest any one is wondering, this is not about abortion for or against, just illustrating how an organization can shift when the time comes to get with it.

Being against immigration does not mean you hate the foreigner

NPR no longer makes even a pretense at balance.  It doesn't have to.  It is all about sympathy for the poor victims of "Islamophobia" or something.

So this is just to say, one does not need to hate the foreigner to not want them to be here.  That there may be some wonderful folks among the refugees does not mean admitting them is all good.  The undeniable fact is that if no immigrants had been allowed in France, there would have been no Paris bombing.

Of course, one does not need to hate another to not want to have them as neighbors.  I don't hate people who listen to loud music at 3:00 a.m., but I don't want to live in the same apartment.

We have people in the West spouting about how the refugees are salt of the Earth and the terrorists are perverting the faith.  One needs to look to history for what is reality.

When Thomas Jefferson asked the Ambassador of Tripoli in London, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, by what right the Barbary states took our ships and enslaved sailors and demanded tribute the envoy replied,

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Now this would have been mainstream Muslim theology back in the day.  Why would it have changed?  A religion that changes doctrine with the wind is not much of a belief system.  The diplomat said it without trying to soften it.  It was certainly believed in Tripoli, Cairo, Constantinople and kabul as well.

There is no reason to believe it is not the theology to day.  There is no reason to belief your peacefull, professional neighbor, if honest would not say, "Well, yes, I do have a right to enslave you, but it is not in my interest at this point in time."  If he does not say it, if asked, he is being cute.

If the above is true, both for the short and long term, separation is the best and most humane policy.

The Neutralist is open to correction.  If someone can, without obfuscation, reasonably convince me that the Haji was wrong and an aberration back in the day, I am open to hear it.

I suspect I won't be putting a coexist bumper sticker on the car anytime soon.