Hijra in reverse?

Are we talking about a Muslim Moonwalk?

No, it actually involves the Islamic concept of Hijra, or "emigration".

Back in November of 2012, a guest essayist on the Gates of Vienna blog, one "VaeVictis", penned an interesting proposition.  It involved an examination of the Koranic obligation imposed on Muslims which requires them to emigrate to the Dar al-Islam (the "House of Islam" or the areas on Earth where Islam prevails) if they find themselves ruled by infidels, living in a “position of inferiority”.  This would be the doctrine of the Hijra, emulating the prototypical emigration of Muhammad from a Mecca still inimical to Muslims, to a more potentially favorable Medina.

VaeVictis then reasonably wonders:

Why is it, then, that so many devout Muslims have chosen to live in the lands of the infidel West, and do not return to the Islamic world as soon as they have the opportunity?

We of course know the PC MC answer that anxiously offers its own solution to this quandary:  Why, of course, these Muslims are streaming by the millions into the West because they are "seeking a better life"; and if we only accommodate them more, they will learn more and more to discover their "inner Westerner" and will over time assimilate fully and unproblematically.

Back to reality.  VaeVictis is under no illusions, and so he continues to follow the logic of the question to seek a more informed answer than one that makes sweepingly glib assumptions about Muslims.

Obviously there appears to be a blatant contradiction in the behavior of millions of Muslims regarding this injunction. Are we to believe that all Muslims today residing in non-Muslim countries have simply forsaken an important aspect of Islamic law for personal convenience or economic gain? If so, where is the condemnation? Are there fatwas, or even the hint of debate one would expect from Muslim scholars and the rest of the Muslim world?

However, while the writer's questions and logic begin well, I think they take a wrong turn at a certain juncture -- at the point where he proffers a way out of the seeming conundrum.  Before we get there, we note the remaining pieces of the puzzle he is working himself out of:

To answer these questions requires a closer examination of the practice within Islamic jurisprudence. The concept’s origins are rooted in the belief that Islam, as the one true religion, must never be subject to another religion or put in a position of inferiority.

Or, as he puts it later in the essay:

...the underlying basis for the prohibition against living under infidel rule is because Islam must never be put in a place of inferiority or subservience to another religion.

His radical explanation?  The West into which Muslims have been emigrating by the millions for the last half century (only increasing exponentially post-911) has transformed, due to PC MC, into a realm that favors Muslims -- so much so, apparently, that they can enjoy their Islam in Islamic superiority.

I realize it is tempting for the Counter-Jihadist, frustrated and exasperated as he has become at the West's PC MC bending over backwards to accomodate Muslim sensitivities, to swallow this startling thesis by VaeVictis whole, with eager alacrity.  Not so fast, I say.

If Muslims already found the West so hospitably accommodating to their doctrine that supposedly mandates they only emigrate to a land if they can be superior, not inferior, why then are they continuing to cause so much trouble, with various forms of jihad violence (including terror attacks of various kinds) only increasing? 

His thesis doesn't make sense on that account; and it's a formidable objection.  In addition, VaeVictis doesn't seem to factor in the massively relevant problem of taqiyya and stealth jihad.  Once we factor those in -- not only theoretically and abstractly from the textual history of Islam but also from the mountain of evidence we have over the years of Muslims in the West pursuing & practicing it in one way or another -- it seems more plausible to answer his initial question differently:  that, in fact, Muslims have been emigrating into the West in such great numbers for so many decades (only increasing exponentially post-911) in order to invade as a Trojan Horse -- i.e., as a demographic jihad, to supplement the other jihads (violent jihad of terror attacks, violent jihad of disparate criminality and anti-social behavior, violent jihad of threats and intimidation, stealth jihad of propaganda and taqiyya).  They are doing this because it is their Islamic imperative (and dream for centuries since Muhammad) to conquer "Rome" -- i.e., the West.  But since they have realized over the past couple of centuries that they can't do this through frank military invasion (which they attempted for a good millennium from the 7th to the 17th centuries) because they have sunk too far into a nadir of weakness vis-à-vis their enemy, they must pursue it in other ways, including the aformentioned concatenation of tactics.

The motivation which so puzzled VaeVictis is therefore revealed through a reasonable inference from the stealth jihad (and its interdependence on violent jihad).  Only ostensibly does such a mass exodus into the West seem puzzling; but not when the goal -- the glittering jewel of finally conquering "Rome" ever dangling before their fanatically scripted imagination -- is factored in.