Andrew Bostom's microcosm

Stealth Jihad, as I have outlined, includes a panoply of non-violent styles of jihad, all calculated to deepen the infiltration of Muslims into our society so that in the distant future (probably a generation or two after all the current stealth jihadists will have passed away) Muslims will be able to engage the JIhad of the Sword more effectively against this great enemy -- "Rome" (i.e., the modern West) -- which currently Muslims are unable to topple.

The styles I have been able to discern I listed in an essay, The Multifarious Strategy of Jihad:

Jihad of the Pen & Mouth
Jihad of the Feet
Jihad of the Womb
Jihad of Lawfare
Jihad of the Publicity Stunt  
Jihad of Victimology & Grievance  
Jihad of the Phony "Hate Crime"
The Jihad of Just Being Here.

(Readers are encouraged to go to the link above for a fuller discussion of these).

Aside from the diversity of styles, indicated by the self-evident names I've given them, there is also the factor of the dimensions of macro and micro.  Readers should consult that link to know in more detail what I mean.  Today I only wish to call attention to a vivid glimpse of the micro, in the form of a personal anecdote the otherwise great Counter-Jihad analyst Andrew Bostom relates parenthetically in a symposium he participated in (the Education Policy Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, in January of this year).

Someone in the audience asked Bostom a question after he had finished speaking, so he returns to the podium to answer it.  After adverting to one massive aspect of the macro dimension of the perennial jihad (the Barbary pirate onslaughts on Europeans for centuries and on Americans for over a century), Bostom begins his curious parenthetical statement that reveals, unwittingly it seems, a telling glimpse of the micro dimension of the Stealth Jihad:

"It's a conundrum I deal with all the time.  I'm currently mentoring two junior faculty who are Muslim women and working on their grants with them, etc., in my real job in the kidney disease division.  All I can tell you is that I think there is something to this notion that open, sort of in-you-face expressions of piety may be at least a red flag, because these young very gentle women are totally embracing the gift that is America -- they are very secular; and again, sometimes things can be a facade, but I will say that the faculty -- I have to deal with everybody -- are more pious, are very much more detached and removed.  And again, you can't universalize about these things.  But the problem is the institutions, whether we look at America or whether we look overseas.  The institutions [in the Muslim world] are traditionalist, conservative, bigoted, to an overwhelming degree."

Bostom goes on to illustrate his last point with solid evidence about the fanaticism of Al-Azhar university in Cairo -- a major, if not the major, institution for Sunni Islam.

What's interesting to me is Bostom's thought process as he seemingly unwittingly divulges it in this brief anecdote he tells.  He exonerates these two Muslim women he is mentoring at his American university without the slightest shred of an indication that he has done any vetting of them at all.  He seems evidently swayed by nothing more than their manner.  He calls them "very secular" but tells us nothing about how and why he comes to this conclusion.  One surmises that it's their dress -- wearing Western clothes -- and perhaps other subtle indications, such as parenthetical mentions of pop cultural references they may let slip in the hallway or in the minutes of small talk before and after his academic mentoring sessions with them.  I.e., it's reasonable for us to conclude that his verdict of "very secular" was arrived at at the prompting of superficial data that could easily be either a) feigned, or b) irrelevant to an underlying Islamic fanaticism.

Other superficial data that seem important to Bostom about these Muslim junior faculty members:  They are "young very gentle women" who "are totally embracing the gift that is America."  How does he know they are "totally embracing" the gift that is America?  Because they are taking advantage of the intellectual wealth of our academic superiority?  Just because they are availing themselves of our American bounty, through our academic culture and through the economic largesse that allows them to get grant funding and allows them to immigrate to enjoy these things and so many other benefits of our society, doesn't mean they are "totally embracing" America.  The naivete of Andrew Bostom in this regard is rather marked, and disconcerting -- especially given how much he knows about the fanaticism of Islam, and the taqiyya deceit of Muslims in advancing Islam.

Speaking of taqiyya deceit, Bostom breezily alludes to it -- "...and again, sometimes things can be a facade..." -- only, apparently, in order to dismiss such a concern. 

After this point in his brief anecdote, Bostom's locutions become a bit unclear, but we can reasonably restore their sense through square brackets:

...these young very gentle women are totally embracing the gift that is America -- they are very secular; and again, sometimes things can be a facade, but I will say that the faculty [i.e., these two Muslimas, whom earlier he referred to as "junior faculty"] -- I have to deal with everybody -- are more pious, are very much more detached and removed.  [This seems to contradict his earlier distinction he made about these Muslimas, contrasting them with the "open, sort of in-you-face expressions of piety" -- while now he is emphasizing that they are "more pious" and even "very much more detached and removed."  How are they "more pious" if they are also "very secular"...?  Bostom never clarifies.]

And again, you can't universalize about these things.  But the problem is the institutions, whether we look at America or whether we look overseas.  The institutions [in the Muslim world] are traditionalist, conservative, bigoted, to an overwhelming degree."

The rather confused locutions Bostom's anecdote devolves into seem to indicate that these Muslimas he works with, whom he is exonerating from our suspicion that would demand a vetting process of them, do in fact give off indications of certain data that could be suspicious, but that other superficial data override Bostom's concern -- they are "young", they are "very gentle", they are "very secular" (without defining what he means by that), they "totally embrace the gift that is America" -- again not defining it, and a rather silly locution that sounds more like something a political candidate might say glibly just to earn public, politically correct approval. 

It is telling, then, that Bostom ends his account with an oblique reference to the macro/micro distinction, and insisting that the locus of the problem is the macro, not the micro:

And again, you can't universalize about these things.  But the problem is the institutions, whether we look at America or whether we look overseas.  The institutions [in the Muslim world] are traditionalist, conservative, bigoted, to an overwhelming degree."

Certainly, the macro level is important; but the Counter-Jihad should know by now that one way the Jihad advances is through Stealth Jihad -- and one tactic of the Stealth Jihad is to operate like army ants, where the efforts of each ant may seem to be a minuscule, microscopic, and therefore negligible, phenomenon.  However, if considered in terms of a massive concerted operation, these individual micro jihads are having their effects.  The stealth jihad of these two Muslimas whom Bostom is uncritically recounting would pertain, I think, to the subcategory I call The Jihad of Just Being Here -- and which I defined in my previously linked essay as:

...merely settling in, setting down roots, getting jobs, raising families, having sandwiches, walking around in the streets, shopping, going to school, attending college, joining gyms, etc., all non-verbally telegraphing the overall message: "We're here, we are insinuating our threads into your cultural fabric, get used to it."

With an Andrew Bostom, the Muslimas he is mentoring are helping to predispose him to relax any tendency he might be cultivating for a zero tolerance of all Muslims.  When that is relaxed in enough people in the West, it will help to weaken our resolve in the future when we might have to do things that will seem to be overly harsh to innumerable numbers of nice, "very gentle" Muslims like the ones Andrew Bostom knows personally.

Conclusion:

If the only way the West will be able to save its societies from Jihad will be to extract all Muslims from its midst by deportation, we will have internal, formidably psychological inhibitions to do so, to the extent that the Jihad of Just Being Here (especially with myriad interpersonal relationships on the micro level of many different kinds intertwined with us Infidels) along with the increasing Jihad of the Feet (immigration) continues to advance and deepen throughout the West.