by EDWARD  CLINE

Earlier this month author and former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy gave  a terrific, informative, and comprehensive address  at The Center for Security Policy at the National Press Club. It was principally  an answer and a rebuttal to the criticisms of a group of five House  representatives who called for a multi-agency investigation into the backgrounds  of numerous Muslims now employed in various capacities in those agencies. One of  those letters went to deputy inspector general of the State Department, and one  of the persons named in the letter was Huma  Abedin, Secretary Hillary Clinton’s deputy  chief of staff.

McCarthy was the point man in the prosecution of  Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the “blind sheik,” over the 1993 World Trade  Center  bombing. He is a Republican conservative with a libertarian bent who writes for  National Review.

Abedin, it seems, has very close family ties to the Muslim  Brotherhood, an Islamist supremacist  organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the conquest of the  United States (if not its destruction, as well). The Mainstream  Media and its allies on the Left immediately  charged Michele Bachmann, representative from Minnesota, with alleging that  Abedin is an operative or spy for the Brotherhood. McCarthy and others have  countered with the facts: that Bachmann, based on knowledge that Abedin  especially has had family connections with the Brotherhood, suggested that  perhaps she had not been as thoroughly vetted as a possible security risk.  Bachmann and her colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee were requesting  an investigation of the vetting of Abedin and other individuals. And nothing  more.

The ensuing attack  on Bachmann gave Senator John  McCain of Arizona a chance to grandstand in Congress in Abedin’s defense.  Abedin and McCain, apparently, are friends. However, he committed the same error  as the mainstream media made, and interpreted Bachmann’s request for an  investigation as an allegation of “guilt by association.”

McCarthy not  only deflated such a charge in his Center for Security Policy speech, but  provided ample evidence that the Brotherhood has indeed infiltrated the highest  ranks of government for the purpose of influencing American foreign policy.  During his speech, he said he could not now say how many Muslims were in  positions of influence or even had access to security-sensitive documents.
However, there was a reservation in McCarthy’s depiction of the Islamic  peril. That reservation compromises and qualifies everything else he had to say.  These are the troubling paragraphs. The non-bolded Italics are  mine:

Now, let me be clear about what I said and what I didn’t say. I said Islamist influences, I did not say Muslims. I don’t know  how many Muslims work in the U.S. government, but I feel pretty safe saying  there are thousands. As a federal prosecutor on terrorism cases, I had the  privilege of working with several of them. These were patriotic American  Muslims, and a number of Muslims who may not be Americans but who have embraced  America and the West. Without them, we could not have infiltrated jihadist cells  in New York and stopped terrorists from killing thousands of people.   Without them, we could not have translated, understood and processed our  evidence so it could be presented to a jury as a compelling narrative.  Pro-American Muslims serve honorably in government,  in our military, in our intelligence services, and in our major  institutions. We are lucky to have them because they have embraced  the culture of individual liberty that is the beating heart of Western  civilization. They have accepted the premise of our society that everyone  has a right to freedom of conscience and equality before the law. They have  accepted our foundational principle that free people are at liberty to make law  for themselves, irrespective of the rules of any belief system or ideology. They  construe Islam’s spiritual elements and its laws as a matter of private  conscience, not as a mandatory framework for society. (Italics  mine.) Those Muslims are not Islamists.

What is troubling is that this is a common sentiment among virtually all  well-read, knowledgeable, and actively out-spoken anti- and  counter-jihadist writers and observers. The only Muslims I would  completely trust with my life would be apostates: Ayaan  Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, Wafa  Sultan, and a handful of others. These individuals have repudiated Islam in  its entirety, discarded it as moral code, and warned that there can be no such  thing as a moderate Islam. They have acknowledged that there is no such thing as  a “moderate,” peace-loving Muslim, either, that there is no halfway point  between obeying Allah’s commands and the laws of man-made governments, which  Allah decreed, through Mohammad, were an “abomination.”

Parenthetically, the concept of a conscience is strictly religious in  nature, by which one’s explicitly held moral principles are at variance with the  more pragmatic or “practical” actions one must take to pursue one’s ends. As  such a dichotomy, a conscience serves more as a leash rather than as a  guide to moral action.

Let us for the moment take McCarthy’s statement  as true – that these “patriotic” Muslims are not security risks and who  sincerely do not wish harm on the United States – and pose some important  questions:

Which parts of the Islamic doctrine do “moderate,”  peace-loving, “patriotic” Muslims reject, or object to, or claim have been  misinterpreted by “extremists” and “radicals”? To my knowledge, this question  has never been answered, neither by any “moderate” Muslims, nor by any  non-Muslims such as Andrew McCarthy or Robert Spencer or Daniel Pipes. It would  be interesting to know which parts of that doctrine do not call for death,  destruction, enslavement or conquest – that is, the later, abrogating Koranic verses.

And if one could identify those parts, and  segregate them from the belligerent, violent parts, could the remainder be  justly called “Islamic”? Could a Muslim who adhered to those non-violent parts,  and eschewed the violent ones, still be called a “true Muslim”? Would he be any  kind of “Muslim”? Would “conservative” or “extremist” Muslims regard him as one,  or label him a slacker, or an apostate?

If one has serious  reservations about one’s beliefs, yet steadfastly holds onto them in the face of  the choices of rejecting them, compromising them, or of being consistent with  them, is this a matter of faith, or of a congenital psychological or  epistemological disorder? If a private conscience is a personal matter,  characterized by a belief in an all-knowing, omnipotent deity who commands one  to be moral (without any demonstrable, perception-based, reality-grounded  proofs), where would one’s strongest loyalty lay? With the belief, or with  secular law? In a crisis, would a Muslim’s personal ‘belief system” trump his  purported belief in the “foundational principle that free people are at liberty  to make law for themselves”?

Islam’s basic tenets reject any kind of  individualism. Islam is inherently hostile to such concepts of individualism and  political liberty. Islamic ideology seeks to extinguish those things. To wit, as  cited in the Journal  Huma Abedin worked on for twelve years:

The Western habit of reducing religion to the function of a residual force,  separating it from the state and relegating it to personal and individual  affairs, places a deep gulf between the West and other traditions,  especially the Islamic. (p. 6) The Islamic world sees the West as  arrogant, materialistic, repressive, brutal, and decadent with a lack of human  moral values. The domains of Islam perceive Western culture as threatening  because of its materialism, imperialism and its championing of unfettered  individualism at the expense of the common social good. These hallmarks of  Western culture are seen as the source of all troubles. (p. 9) Muslim  intellectuals believe that Western modernity is based on a metaphysical  foundation of immanence that denies transcendence. Sayyid Husayn Nasr describes,  “The embodiment of the Divine Will, as a transcendent reality which is eternal  and immutable, as a model by which the perfections and shortcomings of human  society and the conduct of the individual are judged….”   Sayyid QuÏb described it [modern Islam] as “a disastrous combination of avid  materialism and egoistic individualism.” (p. 9) The war that  has been declared against Western modernity now seeks a new modernity, and,  unlike Western modernity, it is not based on a revolution of rising expectations  and infinite progress, but, rather, on the idea of a human mind at peace with  itself, committed to the sanctity of man and of nature. The search for this new  modernity in the Islamic world gives a high priority to the ideal of justice and  the balancing of individual human rights with the rights of the human  community as a whole. (p. 11) The most common notion of freedom in the  West today is to do, be or say whatever one wishes without  intervention. A substantial range of actions by individuals or groups  cannot be questioned. But in the Islamic notion of freedom, an individual’s or group’s freedom is restricted if fellow human beings  complain of sentimental or sensual feelings as a result of those actions. (p.  11)

All Italics are mine. Need I point out the inherent hostility  of Islam to individualism? Islam requires the unquestioning submission  of the individual to Islamic authority.

All non-Islamist or  non-supremacist Muslims are faced with such a contradiction and the attending  problematic conflict of conscience. If they refuse or are unable to question  their faith, what then? If one could demonstrate to them that their faith is  incompatible with their purported patriotism and loyalty, what would they do  about it? Repudiate Islam, or continue to profess double and irreconcilable  commitments?

Read more: Family Security Matters

Edward Cline is the author of the Sparrowhawk novels set in  England  and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period, of several detective and  suspense  novels, and three collections of his commentaries and columns, all  available on  Amazon Books. His essays, book reviews, and other articles have  appeared in The  Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Information Ethics and other  publications.  He is a frequent contributor to Rule of Reason, Family Security  Matters,  Capitalism Magazine and other Web publications.

Related articles

• Andrew McCarthy: My Speech on the Muslim Brotherhood and ‘Guilt By Association’ (paulmarcelrene.wordpress.com)
• “They ARE the Reformation” (markdurie.com)
• Muslims in the West: Loyal to Whom? (meforum.org)
• Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser’s Koran (counterjihadreport)