Citizenship

I've butted heads many times with a veteran Jihad Watcher, one "Wellington" (example, my 2013 essay, The Wellington/Hesperado Tennis Match and later, my 2016 essay, Apparently, the Constitution is a Suicide Pact...), over the issue of the ultimate existential necessity of deportation of all Muslims from the West.

Wellington's argument concentrates on American law, and centers on the inviolability of natural born citizenship.  I've posted my long and detailed exchanges with Wellington a few times here; though often the links have become broken due, apparently, to Robert Spencer's tech genius, Marc, rendering comments fields to old Jihad Watch articles (I don't know when the cutoff date is) inaccessible.  One then has to spend much time and labor looking up the articles through the "Wayback Machine" archives, which do preserve the comments fields.  Given that comments fields often contain useful and intelligent nuggets of analysis and information about various facets of the problem of Islam (along with much hot air and tripe), Spencer's apparent decision to do this is shortsighted, if not arrogant.

At any rate, while taking a walk through Wayback Lane this morning, I ran into a comment by Wellington that implies clearly that his central concern is not, in fact, the Constitution, but the anxiety not to punish Muslims collectively, with a broad brush.  Concerning the former Moderate Muslim al-Awlaki, whose mask subsequently slipped so egregiously, even Obama felt it necessary to drone him, another Jihad Watch veteran, CGW, noted that al-Awlaki's citizenship was just an "accident of birth".  Wellington then responded:

Wellington replied to comment from CGW | September 30, 2011 6:11 PM | Reply 

 

Actually, CGW, an "accident of birth" did make al-Awlaki an American citizen since he was born on American soil and the 14th Amendment provides that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen of this country. But it's of no matter since the rube effectively declared war on the United States. Whether one is an American citizen (e.g., al-Awlaki) or not (e.g., Adolf Hitler), once that person engages in war upon the US, then he is fair game for termination under the rules of war and the Bill of Rights is effectively no longer operative. I might add that a non-American citizen is covered by the Bill of Rights in criminal and civil matters but, of course, not where it is war the non-citizen is engaged in against the US, just as the American citizen who has decided to wage war on America and acts accordingly is no longer entitled to 5th Amendment due process or anything like this. I'm surprised that any lawyer would aver otherwise.[bold emphasis added]

So now the question becomes (as William Buckley used to say) the question I've been asking the Counter-Jihad Mainstream in several essays over the past year:

What's the difference between an al-Awlaki and any given Muslim?

Are the Softies from the Counter-Jihad Mainstream willing to defend the proposition that any given Muslim -- qua being Muslim and no other datum -- is not beholden to an ideology of sedition against all non-Islamic polities?  That the mainstream Islam of any given Muslim is not in fact predicated upon a trans-national allegiance to the Umma, specifically and grandly based upon a perennial war against the non-Muslim world (either in the mode of hot war, or, when the Muslims happen to be too weak by circumstance, sedition and deceitful infiltration)?  And that, by logical extension, any "citizenship" which a Muslim enjoys anywhere in the West is, in the context of their mainstream Islam, not merely a vehicle for sedition masked by deceitfully false assimilation?

Apparently this is the standpoint of the Softies from the Counter-Jihad Mainstream; though their habit of dancing between denial and incoherence on this matter (when they don't go into attack mode against their interlocutor who would bring up this issue to them) puts off the question from the clear & cogent response it deserves.

What makes it clear to Wellington that al-Awlaki has "effectively declared war on the United States" but that countless other Muslim citizens of the U.S.A., whose Constitutional rights Wellington anxiously wants to protect, are not effecitvely part of that seditious war against us?

Wellington, of course, like all the Counter-Jihad Softies, is granting Muslims the axiomatic generosity which the West has developed as a part of its moral and legal culture: presumed innocent until proven guilty.

There are exceptions for everything; and Islam in this case, as in so many others, breaks the mold.  Given everything we know about Islam (or should know, by now), it would be reckless of us to extend that generosity to Muslims.  And yet, time and time again, either overtly or implicitly, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream upholds the principle of that generosity.

Speaking of morality and law, and defending society from danger, a quote from Thomas Jefferson (cited in that 2011 thread by the aforementioned Jihad Watch commenter CGW) is apposite:

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."

Further Reading:

Re-Match

You'll Thank Me Later