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Bible preaching forbidden in Birmingham, England in Muslim areas

In the name of giving yet more fodder to hypothetical unsympathetic readers who might think concern among W4 authors about Muslim activities is exaggerated (and also, in passing, getting out some information that seems to me rather important), I present this story.

In the UK, in Birmingham, a Muslim police officer tells two Christian preachers passing out Christian literature and trying to speak to Muslim young people that a) they cannot preach where they are, because it is a "Muslim area," b) he is going to take them to the police station for their activities (presumably, if they don't go away), c) trying to convert Muslims to Christianity is a hate crime, and d) if they return to the area and get beaten up, they "have been warned." He summons two other policemen, presumably non-Muslims, one of whom backs him up at least to the extent of ordering the two Christians to leave the area and not return. The Christians complain, and the only action taken is that the department defends the Muslim as "acting with the best of intentions." They say that they have offered him "guidance" on what constitutes a hate crime and on "communication style." What that guidance is, we aren't told, nor whether it contains the unequivocal statement that preaching the Gospel is perfectly legal in Britain and that there are no special "Muslim areas" where sharia law obtains and preaching Christianity is illegal.

I have been rather surprised not to have seen this story headlined in other blogs such as Jihad Watch or LGF. So I want to give a very special hat tip to The Religion of Peace site. TROP has always been a good clearinghouse of articles from newspapers around the world, and now that LGF seems to be doing less in the way of covering Muslim issues than it used to, TROP's role has become that much more important.

The story seems to me particularly important both for the legal issues it raises and for the facts on the ground it points to in England. Had the story been discussed on LGF and on other sites with a large and busily-investigative readership, I would have hoped to get more definite confirmation that, in fact, there is no such law on the books in England as this policeman alleged. But I would be willing to guess that there isn't. We all know how "hate crimes" laws in England and Europe are kept deliberately vague and how they morph and grow to prohibit ever larger classes of activities.

In one sense, it's a good thing if it is not formally illegal to preach Christianity in England in designated "Muslim areas." Who could possibly want such a law to exist with the explicit approval of Western lawmakers? On the other hand, it is frightening to realize (what could have been predicted) that the idiotic practice of deliberately recruiting Muslims to the police force to act as "community liasons" has had the effect of putting in positions of authority Muslim bullies who are eager to make up such "rules" as they go along and impose them upon ordinary folk. Worse is the fact that their non-Muslim colleagues, sheeplike, back them up rather than calling their crazy diktats into question. So preaching the Gospel in Muslim areas simply will become, de facto, illegal in England, as part of the de facto spread of sharia in that land. And if preachers get beaten up, I don't expect the Muslim-infiltrated police force to do much to help. After all, from their perspective, those stupid, wicked, hateful infidels have been warned!

Nor is this the only way in which the deliberate packing of British authority structures with Muslims has caused harm to the innocent, as this article shows.

And for the "it can't happen here" department, consider this: The city of Miami police department is about to institute a Muslim liason program.

Comments (42)

Just when the Irish troubles have died down...Usually it's the new immigrants that have to take it on the chin for a while, isn't it? and not the other way 'round?

I'm feeling rather irascible today, rather more so, in fact, than is usual; that being the case, I'll just state forthrightly my opinion on the matter: What else do the supine Limeys expect? For two miserable generations they have cravenly acquiesced in every official sermon, ukase, and diktat to the effect that the most heinous sin conceivable was to notice that the Other is, in fact, THE OTHER, and in consequence, their nation has been stolen from them, their patrimony squandered, their children disinherited. And yet, they do nothing. They keep that stiff upper lip, bite through the agony of dispossession and try to go along to get along. Wouldn't want to rock the boat, and certainly wouldn't want to intimate that the BNP has a point. Britain is dead because her people are dead in spirit, incapable of mustering the will to survive; they are Last Men, who do nothing more than carp at their circumstances - they do nothing more than complain as they grow old and die. If the British possess even a faint ember of the will to survive, they will one day bring the nation to a standstill, economically and politically; they will render the sceptered isle ungovernable, unless and until the alien and unassimilable Others are encouraged to return whence they came; and should their demands be refused by the anarcho-tyrants who dispossess them to their personal profit and ideological self-stroking, some of the latter will end their wretched lives as did Mussolini, swinging from lampposts. Perhaps these words are harsh, even incendiary. But until the British acknowledge that politics-as-usual will not avail them, until they tender the non-negotiable demand that their dispossession end definitively and absolutely, they will be dead souls, waiting only for the end certain and complete.

I really think myself that the process started after WWII. Just for example: Owning a gun and/or defending oneself has been illegal in Britain for much longer than Muslim immigration has been a problem. (By my recollection that Norfolk farmer who went to jail some years ago for defending his farm with a gun was being plagued repeatedly by ordinary white British thugs, not by Muslims.) The death penalty has been gone in England for a long time, too. The British acquiesced in an enormous amount of nationalization of industries (much of which has now been reversed) under Labor and to deliberately confiscatory levels of taxation, designed specifically to destroy the aristocracy, and they acquiesced in these things with that same resignation, stiff upper lip, and stoicism that Maximos is decrying in their present response to the multicultural insanity. I don't really understand it, because it seemed to happen so suddenly. Or was it the war? Certainly, the rationing was absolutely draconian during the war, and they put up with that, too, but at least there there was the excuse (though not perhaps a very good one) that all of this was necessary for the war effort. I was reading an essay by Dorothy Sayers the other day in which she was going on about the British character and about how the British will always be different from other peoples, will never be regimented, will retain their ability to improvise and their resistence to standardization, and I really couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing, because it was so sad to see how wrong she was in the event.

Aspects of the problem long antedate the influx of Mahometans to the British Isles. Essentially, the problem is that of a homogenous culture within which such stoic endurance and deference was a coherent response to hardship: the nation itself endured hardships as a collectivity, confident that shared sacrifices would see them through, and those to whom one deferred were largely members of a common ethno-cultural stock. There were regional differences and tensions, but these were merely contrasts to the main themes. It is true that this culture was an artifact of history, and that its creation was fraught with injustices, but it existed all the same. The difficulty is that this culture had no means of grappling with the interrelated threats of an alienated elite and the immigration of unassmilable foreigners. The cultural psychology experiences the anomalies, but remains trapped in a state of dissonance; the logical responses contradict the conditioned responses, and this state is resolved and expressed as a grumbling acquiescence.

The British people must realize that their situation is not that of an integral nation resisting some intrusion, which entails a collective response, from the leadership on down, but that of a betrayal, a treason of the elites, a simmering intramural struggle or civil war.

As a Brit I fear Maximos cuts close to the bone. Our intermediate institutions (churches, local government, schools etc) are hollowed out and bureaucratically congealed. The upshot is a desperate atomisation and the only rhetoric on offer from a sclerotic government (and it has to be said, the opposition)is managerial and economically utilitarian. We are dully complacent and hopeless in our public discourse which necessarily infects the private realm. Not good.

Why is it always America martyrs? Perhaps they deserve it. Yes Britain has abandoned herself and all of that.

Please note, MZ, that one of the people involved was an Egyptian convert to Christianity. But perhaps Americans still have some notion of freedom of speech and are more willing than Brits to try actually to use that freedom for (gasp) the promotion of religion. I suspect, too, that passing out Bible excerpts and talking to strangers might seem weird to some Brits (though I believe there are some segments of British society where that sort of thing would be tried). But frankly, however much you or anyone else might dislike cold-turkey street evangelism and tract passing as methods of evangelism, the suppression of these sorts of things in the name of Islam is an important bell-wether and tells us much about the tenor of the time and place. I, like many Americans, consider it important to the overall atmosphere of religious freedom in the culture that these options be kept open as forms of Christian expression and witness, even though I don't (anymore) engage in them myself.

So, no, they don't deserve it, and that sort of "Oh, brother" snobbery is one of the very forces that is allowing this sort of Muslim takeover to flourish in Britain, and will allow it later in America, I sadly predict: Just keep quiet; don't make noises; don't go out flaunting your Christianity; don't, above all, try to convert anyone; if you do and offend somebody and get hurt you really deserve it. And so forth. We hear about that sort of thing in India. A mob stones a Christian missionary and the government kicks him out for starting a riot! Come to think of it, we hear about it in the book of Acts: "These men have turned the world upside down." But up until very recently I had thought and hoped that the West might remain free of that sort of religious suppression.

But perhaps you were not serious. I can hope so, anyway.

But perhaps you were not serious. I can hope so, anyway.

I wasn't completely serious. Can one be conflicted about tribal instincts? Personally I wish we as a society would act more tribally, and I can appreciate people paternalistically looking over a community and saying, "Don't be doing that sort of stuff." This is after all a blog where a writer has explicitly called on proscribing some elements of Islamic inculturation. While I'm not sure it is for the same reasons as you, I don't see much value in having a pluralistic society.

In the name of giving yet more fodder to hypothetical unsympathetic readers who might think concern among W4 authors about Muslim activities is exaggerated (and also, in passing, getting out some information that seems to me rather important), I present this story.

Exaggerated?

Are you serious?

Take for instance:

Outcry after French court rules on virginity: Annulment of Muslim marriage raises debate on secular vs. religious values

EXCERPT:

"The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union has stunned France and raised concerns the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities."

I can appreciate people paternalistically looking over a community and saying, "Don't be doing that sort of stuff."This is after all a blog where a writer has explicitly called on proscribing some elements of Islamic inculturation. While I'm not sure it is for the same reasons as you, I don't see much value in having a pluralistic society.

If I understand you correctly (but perhaps I do not), the implications of what you are saying are fairly stunning: "England is now a Muslim society. Or at least parts of England may rightly be regarded as pieces of Muslim society. There isn't much value in a pluralistic society. So it's okay for Muslim policemen in England to suppress Christian preaching paternalistically in the name of Muslim cultural preservation and homogeneity in the areas that are owned by themselves, as a tribe."

Do you also endorse his "paternalistically" implying--let's not kid ourselves--that if they get the tar beaten out of them for coming back to the Muslim neighborhood, he won't lift a finger to stop it because they've brought it on themselves? So "tribal" Muslim policemen in "Muslim areas" of Britain "acting tribally" is okay by you?

Let's hope it doesn't come to your town, USA.

Yes, Aristocles, that intro. was somewhat tongue in cheek. I was referring to the comment I linked there from the anti-anticommunism thread, below.

"England is now a Muslim society..."

It's pretty apparent even in its entertainment programs (e.g., the new Robin Hood series on the BBC where this Robin Hood actually preaches the Koran and defends Islam in a certain of its episodes).

Wow. That's a new one on me. Robin Hood preaching the Koran. Sheesh.

But it's not okay with me for it to be a Muslim society, and I'm sure as heck not blase about their banning Christian witnessing in the name of Islam.

I also feel moved to point out that if it is Paul's jihad sedition law that you are referring to, MZ, there is a very large difference between preaching the overthrow of the government by jihad, preaching terrorism, and so forth, and preaching redemption of one's soul by faith in Jesus Christ. Forbidding the former is by all measures a good deal more rational than forbidding the latter. No one should be forbidding the latter.

Mr. Cella's support went beyond that, but my only disagreement was relatively minor and more a side issue. I used tribal rather than societal since I didn't want to include all of Britain but rather a particular community occupying a certain area. The idea that Britian is a Christian society rather than a secular one is I think a premise that moves us a part. Inculturation serves to increase the power of the secular, something for which I have no interest. Seeing Christianity as a minority culture in Britain allows me to not be vested in whether the secularists or Muslims "win".

Whoever loses, and however one defines British society, it shouldn't be the Christians. If you are a Christian, I would have thought you would agree with that. But I haven't followed your comments closely enough to be sure on that point. In any event, your indifference on "tribalist" grounds to the suppression of the preaching of the Christian gospel leaves me a bit puzzled. Perhaps you just don't like this particular type of Christian. Perhaps you have no particular concern about the suppression of Christian witness by Islam generally. But whatever else, one thing is clear: It does not fill you, as it does me, with disgust and horro to see Christianity suppressed in the name of Islam in Britain, which in the very recent past was at least a place of freedom for the Christian religion, and not all that terribly long ago could have been referred to even as a Christian society.

In my estimation, Christians of the West ought to adopt the territorialist ethic of Islam: any territory falling within the compass of what once was Christendom should be considered irrevocable and inalienable, and Islamic influence therein entirely illegitimate, the Near East, for obvious prudential reasons, tragically excepted. No compromise. No quarter. We've got nowhere else to go, and we will be besieged, over the generations, if we acquiesce in the permanence of the Islamic cultural presence - because what Muslims have done in Europe, in establishing their no-go-for-Euros sharia zones, in what they will do, forever and ever, amen. The acceptance of Muslim tribal enclaves in the former Christendom is a courting of disaster, like ingesting a poison for which the body cannot develop a tolerance.

Grrrr. What a state Britain has come to. Does it matter to you, MZ, that Britain, the cradle of American culture in the vast majority of its aspects, is dying? I admit that much of American culture is nothing to shed any tears over - as it is currently, anyway. But much of what we inherited from Britain (and, by the way, helped to spread elsewhere in the world) is truly good in the finest Christian sense. I'm with Maximos: use their own tactics against them, and deny Muslims the right to anything they deny to Christians.

In fact, I am in favor of the our finally coming to realize that absolute, total freedom of religion means the death of religion as a culture, and crack down on all sorts of stupid crud - Wicca being the first in line, and Islam not far behind.

Maximos,

Are you will to back up your little manifesto there with a willingness to countenance a certain degree of genocide? If you aren't, I suggest you retract it. If you are, welcome aboard.

But if it makes you feel, I'm not myself married to my previous comment.

It would help if these countries would stop Muslim immigration and phase-in the revocation of the visas of all non-citizen Muslims there presently.

But it's my opinion that it would be less impossible (I realize this is grammatically wrong) than I think some people think actually to show the Muslims that they can't just take over because they happen to exist and to be in some country. The wretched nonsense in my post happened as a result of bend-over-backwards deference to Islam, not even simply because of its presence in Britain. If the Americans had trouble in the area, a police force operating under my principles (which would discriminate against Muslim policemen rather than actively recruiting them) would have sent them a personal guard both to insure their safety and to send a message: "No no-go areas. No special Muslim areas. You don't own this region. There is freedom to witness for Christianity in Britain."

Oh, and I think it would be a revolutionary and useful first step if handgun ownership and concealed-carry were permitted in Britain and expressly encouraged for purposes of self defense. It would, among other things, send the message that people are permitted to defend themselves _at all_, which has more ramifications for overall British and European thought than just the defensive value of the handguns themselves.

Does it matter to you, MZ, that Britain, the cradle of American culture in the vast majority of its aspects, is dying?

No. I'm not bothered that it is dead. And no, I don't have any particular affection for the American project.

Whoever loses, and however one defines British society, it shouldn't be the Christians.

The Christians lost so long ago it isn't funny. Pick you marker, it doesn't really matter which one, but the Christians have been fighting a rear guard action in Britain for better than 200 years. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Let the Muslims fight the secularists.

George, my policy recommendations are simple: the enactment of laws defining the propagation of the Islamic doctrines of jihad, sharia, and dhimmitude as seditious and treasonous (for American citizens); the complete cessation of all Muslim immigration; and the creation of financial inducements, as proposed by Steve Sailer, for Muslims to return whence they came. Beyond that, we ought to remain adamant that our cultural norms are writ, even in Muslim-majority districts.

The Christians lost so long ago it isn't funny.

Indeed they did. But they - and we - have no other place to go. Stand and fight, else the rising tide engulfs us, too.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Let the Muslims fight the secularists."

I can't tell if this means that MZ regards the Muslims as his friends or (if he were consistent) both the Muslims _and_ the secularists as his friends, as they are the enemies of each other. Or are only the Muslims his friends, since the secularists clearly have no stomach for fighting the Muslims but the Muslims are only too happy to fight the secularists? Either way, this is an exceedingly dangerous attitude to take. I really doubt that MZ would be happy living under sharia after the Muslims have defeated the secularists. When his church has to ring its bells softly so that the Muslims can't hear it outside, all Christians have to pay the jizya, and all remarks deemed insulting to "the Prophet" are punishable by death, as well as apostasy to MZ's preferred form of Christianity from Islam (and I could go on with more and greater horrors, such as we see nowadays in Muslim countries, including the unpunished kidnaping and forcible conversion and marriage of Christian girls to Muslims), it may come home to him just what it means for the Muslims to win over the secularists--and the remaining Christians, too, while they're at it.

Wow. That's a new one on me. Robin Hood preaching the Koran. Sheesh.

Yup. In fact, I thought there would be more outrage about this little fact given it is 'Robin Hood' we're talking about here -- a heroic (albeit fictional) figure of England's legendary folklore.

However, the only extent I found such outrage was the following bit:

Robin Hood: "Praise be to allah!"

Excerpt:

"Also, while we're on, Robin Hood, yeah? Supposed to be a former Crusader, so how come in the bits I have seen I have heard him quote the Qur'an, seen him defeat Saladin's assassin squad who were trying to kill someone in England because he was a Muslim Prince and was spreading the joyous word that Allah wants peace, I've seen the merry men jump up and down shouting "Praise be to allah!" because the new Muslim member of their band had cared for the injured Maid Marion. It's just silly, it's trying to push some modern day and very out of context political message on to the viewer, instead of getting on with the business of entertaining them."


While I must admit, I did watch the entire first season just to see how the modern depiction compares with past renderings; I could not bear watching its subsequent season due to the aforementioned atrocities.

Maximos,

I like those policies; but the financial-inducement part is weak. How about this for a better financial inducement: if they leave now, they may keep the money they have. That way the money and property of those who refuse to leave can be used to pay for the cost of their expulsion.

Does the term reciprocity mean anything to you George R.?

How about this for a better financial inducement: if they leave now, they may keep the money they have. That way the money and property of those who refuse to leave can be used to pay for the cost of their expulsion.

That would be the next logical step in the progression, but for the fact that it is difficult to expel people unless another nation has agreed to receive them. Delicate diplomatic engagement would be a necessity, and by 'delicate', I really mean the contrary.

As regards reciprocity, it is the Mahometan custom to requite addled tolerance, even fulsome embraces, with evil; perhaps we ought to concern ourselves more with what is beneficial for the majorities of us who dwell in our own countries than with what might benefit expats. I'd trade our presence in their part of the world for their absence from ours.

M.Z. does have a point --

Has anybody considered the possible repercussions of such a hostile policy; more specifically, increased persecution or even the total annhilation of Christians living in Muslim countries?

I would gather that the actual descendants of the early Christians in those regions whose Christian families go far back as 1500 years ago (and, in fact, still speak Aramaic, the language of Our Saviour) deserve to live less these precious remnants of our ancient Christian Heritage die out and go extinct permanently?

Or is this privilege only reserve to today's modern, secularized Christians?

I'm ambivalent about the financial-inducement policy for various reasons that I don't have time to go into.

But as for the notion that we shd. worry about possible repercussions for Christians abroad and allow this to shape our domestic policy, I entirely reject it. We cannot allow Christians living abroad to be treated as hostages for whose mere toleration and non-murder we will negotiate on things important to our own security and to the continuation of our own civilization within our country.

I'm sorry, Lydia, but I thought the Christians living in that region, many of whom are the descendants of the early Christians, would be our brothers and sisters whose well-being should especially matter to us.

Or is the new Christendom defined as being limited to that of the modern-day secularist?

I don't quite understand why you are going in this direction, Aristocles. Let me put it this way: Yes, indeed, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. But if we are talking about American policy (or British talking about British policy), the duty of a policy-maker is first and foremost to his own citizens and to making their country a good, just, etc., country for them to live in. He should not compromise these duties because someone might murder a Christian abroad if he doesn't agree to compromise those duties, not even if he is himself a Christian.

Where I see the considerations you are raising going is somewhere like this (though you may not intend this): Muslims in essence tell Western policy-makers that they must (for example) pass laws banning criticism of Islam, suppress preaching of the Gospel in their own countries, fail to prosecute terrorists, prosecute those deemed to have "insulted Islam," in short, to acquiesce in the spread of sharia in their own lands, _or else_ more Christians will be outright murdered in lands already Muslim. Surely that should strike you as a bad move.

Or look at it this way: As long as free lands exist, if our brothers and sisters in Christ can get the opportunity to come here, "here" is different from "there." There's still some island of non-Muslim sanity in the world. If we acquiesce in the Islamicization of our own countries, there is nowhere left for anyone to go, and it will be our brothers and sisters _here_ who will be getting murdered by Muslim mobs. Consider here, again, the fact that one of the missionaries harassed in Birmingham in the main post is an Egyptian Christian convert. How many times have we seen it said by non-Muslim immigrants to politically correct, Islam-deferring Western lands, "I came away from my own country to get away from this sort of thing. Don't give in here, too." Something similar happened in Australia, where a Christian pastor who had gone to Australia from Pakistan was prosecuted for criticizing Islam by the PC thought police there. He was horrified to find what amounted in practice to Muslim anti-blasphemy laws operating in Victoria, Australia.

Now, I realize that this question of considering the Christians in Muslim lands originally arose because of Maximos's proposal that we offer money to Muslims in the West to leave. So you may be wondering why I am bringing up these other things--acquiescing in laws against insulting Islam and so forth. The reason I am bringing them up is because once we start guiding our domestic policy by worrying about what Muslims might do to Christians in Muslim lands, there is no reason why we should stop in one place rather than another. What if Muslims will murder more Christians abroad if we place _some_ restrictions on Muslim immigration? What if Muslims will murder more Christians abroad if we _refuse_ to prosecute some writer about whom a fatwa has been issued and about whom riots are being carried out in Muslim lands? What if Muslims will murder more Christians if we do this, or do that, or don't do this, or don't do that, here on our own shores--in short, if we refuse to give in on the thorough Islamicization of our own country? Well, that might happen. But we really, ultimately, do no one any good by crawling back into our holes and becoming good dhimmis because we are afraid of what the Muslims might do abroad. We just insure that before all is said and done, they will be doing those same things here as well and the whole earth will be turned to darkness, because we have snuffed out our small light.

Lydia:

I agree to the extent that concerns over our Christians brothers and sisters abroad in these hostile Muslim lands should not, objectively speaking, govern our policy. I had meant it more on the level of a charitable consideration (especially given the aforementioned details) in that regard.

I also agree that measures must be taken to prevent the dhimmitude of the Christian nation.

As I alluded to earlier, the influence of Islam had infiltrated (and continues to infiltrate) even the entertainment medium of that country to surreptitiously promote such an agenda. While programs as the one I mentioned may seem ostensibly harmless, the ulterior motive behind these cannot be ignored.

However, to enact such an aggressive policy as that which Maximos had proposed earlier would only result in more substantial harm than good (particularly, the general well-being of our own citzenry). There are far too many potential negative ramifications that can occur as a result.

Mind you (and most unfortunately), followers of Mahomet have even insinuated themselves into the upper echelons of our U.S. government as well as in other critical facilities across our beloved country.

Do you think they would not have us suffer the consequences of such actions?

This is the dilemma that the 'politically-correct' America has welcomed due to its liberal policies.

This is why I generally agree with your cautious attitude in these matters and, unlike others, do not take such vigilance as paranoia.

Which things, specifically, were you thinking would do more harm than good to our own citizenry? Were you thinking specifically of the idea of paying Muslim U.S. citizens to give up their citizenship? Frankly, if we ever got to the point of even considering such a thing, we would have had to develop a tough enough stance to protect our citizenry anyway. And it's too confusing to try to imagine an America that could consider such a policy while still having Muslims in its upper echelons of government. I mean, obviously, we have to start by purging (for example) the CIA of Muslim moles long before we get to more radical policy proposals.

Would you say that my idea of blocking further Muslim immigration would also do more harm than good? See, the thing is, if we take even _some_ of the obvious steps, the fact is that the Muslims aren't going to like it. We can't let that stop us, though, because there's just no getting around it.

Frankly, if we ever got to the point of even considering such a thing, we would have had to develop a tough enough stance to protect our citizenry anyway. And it's too confusing to try to imagine an America that could consider such a policy while still having Muslims in its upper echelons of government. I mean, obviously, we have to start by purging (for example) the CIA of Muslim moles long before we get to more radical policy proposals.


Precisely!

I would urge a more gradual policy in these matters until such a defiant stance can be ultimately obtained.

To do otherwise would unnecessarily bring about such negative consequences including (but certainly not limited to) the endangering of lives of the general populace.

However, I strongly doubt that anybody would welcome such an idea in today's popular PC American culture including even those benign measures that would help, even if mildly, facilitate such an objective.

Caution is not usually one of my virtues in advocating public policy. My own hesitation about paying people to renounce their citizenship is a result of considerations other than worries about backlash. E.g. Would we be indirectly funding terrorism by making such payments? Could even a voluntary and compensated renunciation of citizenship be made to "stick" or would it just be overturned by court decree years down the line? How much money would people demand anyway for such a radical thing as giving up American citizenship and leaving, and should/could we pay that much? And so forth.

My own hesitation about paying people to renounce their citizenship is a result of considerations other than worries about backlash. E.g. Would we be indirectly funding terrorism by making such payments?

Then why not back my proposal, which would not cost taxpayers a dime?

George R., I _think_ you are being facetious and trying to push me and/or Maximos into saying something that would make us look bad. But then again, I'm unsure. Maybe you are completely serious.

My own serious answer to the question is that your proposal would amount to confiscating the property of American citizens simply on the grounds that they are Muslims by religion. Much as I dislike Islam (and I don't think my Islam-disliking credentials need any buffing for readers of this site), I don't think that is right, and it is probably unconstitutional. "Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." And then there's that bit about "Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]." It's one thing to offer people a reward for doing something they probably don't want to do on the grounds that they are Muslims. It's quite another to tell them that because they are Muslims they must leave or have all their property confiscated, which looks an awful lot like an outright punishment for believing that Mohammed is the prophet of God. I'm perfectly happy to revoke the visas of non-citizens on grounds of religion, but that is because non-citizens have no legal or moral entitlement, per se, to be here. Citizens do. Perhaps unfortunately, we have some citizens we could do without. But from the perspective of the rule of law and of constitutionally limited government power, citizenship has its privileges, and rightly so.

Lydia,

I assumed Maximos was talking about non-citizens vis-a-vis the financial inducements. "Citizenship has its privileges." Absolutely. I would not think of suggesting that a citizen should have his property taken away without due proccess.

However, I agree with Maximos that promulgating the doctrines of jihad and sharia should be codified as an act of sedition. And the punishment for that would fall on U.S. citizens.

By the way, why do you always think I'm being facetious?

I know there is a category of non-citizens known as "permanent legal residents." I have no idea what the law is on this group or what would be required to revoke their visas and tell them to leave. But with that exception, my impression is that it wouldn't be necessary to offer financial inducements to "ordinary" non-citizens to get them to leave. Suppose a man has a four-year visa or something like that. You just tell him that it won't be renewed. That simple. Of course, I could be hopelessly wrong here about what is legally involved. One problem is that I believe there are now actual _courts_ for people who are going to be deported at which they can argue that something bad will happen to them if they are deported and thus that they mustn't be, and the judges can order the government to let them stay. This whole situation has problems with it which probably need to be resolved before we can do anything about our immigration problems, whether of Muslims or anyone else. But in any event, I was assuming that with sufficient governmental will (which of course we don't have), we could do without bribery altogether on the non-citizen front.

I think it was MZ that I last asked whether he was being serious or not, rather than you, George. I've forgotten the occasion or occasions of my asking you that previously, so I can't give a very informed answer to your question. Probably the problem arises because you often sound a bit radical on some issues, and so (working in an electronic medium) I'm guessing as to how serious you are.

Muslisms are not our brother in Jeus,who said that show in deed that Islam is a product of muhammed alucination,that deny all the apostolic doctrines.And their meaning of convert pepole is through imposition.If you are nom muslisms,or if you are a christian,their holy book demand that you must beheaded.This is their loving god's policy...A am not afraid to say that this religion is deeperly root in hell.No more fridom to this fanatics.They may do anything they want in western nations,even prohibting the preaching of the gospel in non muslisms nations !They act as they are the law !It is about time to say enough is enough !!!

Muslisms are plaguing the world.It is illegal for christians to distribute bible literature in muslisms nation,we can face death for doing this,but any muslism may come to western nation and do whatever they please and will be all right.
Soud Arabia is building mosquet everywhere in the world in the atempt to become the major religion.Our goverment should create a law to limite the fridom this fanatics to do what they want...Slowly they start their true intention,if our authorities don't act quikly,muslisms will criate a parallel state within western nation !And when they feel they have a rasonable number of muslisms adherents,they certanly will start what their "holy" book teach them emphaticaly to do,which is cuting off people heads.We all know,Islam is not a peaceful religion,It is a bloody devilish sect,we should treat them with the same way they do to christianity.They cannot implant their law(sharia)in no muslisms sovering nations,when they try do do that,they are showing a great lack of respect,And is what they are...Jack futon

Deciding which is more humane, a liberal technocratic order, or an Islamic one just became harder;


"Oxford city council confirmed the events in the city would be renamed 'Winter Light Festival' to make them more inclusive, provoking outrage among shoppers in the city who called for a return to tradition.

The idea has come from the charity Oxford Inspires, the cultural development agency for the county, which runs the celebrations.

Sabir Hussain Mirza, chairman of the Muslim Council of Oxford, said: "I am really upset about this. Christians, Muslims and other religions all look forward to Christmas."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3367390/Christmas-banned-in-Oxford-by-council-owned-charity

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