A thought experiment about immigration

[Scarberry, Mark]

Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me of Islam and of Islamic cultures
could comment on the following point (which I don't think is at all original
but which may be important). 

I have heard it said that no area that was Muslim dominated has ever ceased
to be Muslim dominated except by way of force (e.g., Spain). Is it possible
that traditional Muslim belief involves such a total submission of the
adherents' lives -- perhaps including as I have heard a prohibition on
leaving Islam on pain of death -- and such tight family, community, and
cultural constraints on religious dissent, that it should not be analogized
to other religious, political, or philosophical traditions? Of course a
Muslim may say that Islam is simply a superior religion, and that is why it
seems to "stick." Nevetheless, might the possible "totalizing" effect of
traditional Islam reasonably be seen as a barrier to acculturation to
American political values (including democracy, freedom of religion, and
protection of dissent)? And might that barrier give a reasonable person
pause in thinking that large scale immigration of traditional Muslims is an
unalloyed good?

I recognize that the same point was made at one time about communist
regimes; it was said that no country that had become communist had ever
ceased to be so absent forcible intervention. The irreversible, horrific
quality of the "totalizing" society in Orwell's 1984 loomed large in the
minds of some of us as we considered communist regimes. That view has now,
of course, been falsified many times over; it seems communism was far less
able than some of us feared to remake human beings and fix them in a mold.
Perhaps the same is true, or will become true, of the supposedly
irreversible nature of Islamic culture. I do not mean by this to suggest
that traditional Islam is like the society in Orwell's 1984 (except perhaps
for its supposed irreversibility). And of course it is undeniable that there
are many Muslims who are good American citizens. 

Perhaps time will show that traditional Islamic culture is no more
irreversible than communism (or traditional European Christian culture)
turned out to be; but I wonder whether that is true. Islam already has been
around a lot longer than communism, and nearly as long as European Christian
culture.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
 

-----Original Message-----
From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 9:41 AM
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: RE: A thought experiment about immigration

	It seems to me that there's a limit to the utility of arguments from
past immigrations.  The Puritans were a radical extremist religious group
when they immigrated.  They set up something of a theocracy that, to my
knowledge, did some pretty bad things before it was displaced.  By the
standards of their era, they were probably not so bad.  But if future
radical Muslims really were going to be like the Puritans, and as
influential as the Puritans (and I take it that Frank Cross's quite sensible
point is that they likely wouldn't be nearly as influential), that would
confirm my fears, it seems to me, not disprove them.

	This reminds me of a cartoon that I once saw:  Some American Indians
were watching what was meant to be Columbus's ships, and complaining to each
other that the passengers were "just a bunch of illegal immigrants."  I
think the cartoon was intended to be a criticism of the critics of illegal
immigration, and a reminder that our ancestors were once immigrants who came
without permission of the existing inhabitants.  But it seems to me that the
cartoon demonstrated the exact
opposite:  The American Indians were of course ruined by these illegal
immigrants, and would have been in many ways far better off if the Spaniards
and all who came after them were promptly deported.

	My concern about radical Muslims, as I suggested in earlier posts,
is simply that I wouldn't want to be governed by radical Muslims, just as I
wouldn't want to be governed by Puritans (but have nothing against being
governed by other immigrants); I would think that most on this list would
share the same preference, though they may disagree with me on how to
implement that preference.  I'm also not nearly as sure as others that the
process of becoming American citizens will either change the immigrants'
views, or will assure that only those who support the positions that most of
us support will become citizens.  (One answer to "why would a person go
through the trouble of becoming a citizen if he/she did not want to be a
member of the community" is "because it's much safer and economically better
to live here as a citizen than to live here as a noncitizen or to live in
many other places as a
citizen.")

	Eugene