Hitler, Islam and Donald Trump

Whether it is the Philadelphia Daily News' dead-brain invocation of Adolf Hitler to attack Trump for calling for a moratorium on Islamic immigration, or former Vice President Cheney's no more astute reliance on religious freedom as a critique, overwhelming ignorance is the underlying theme.

Ignorance about what?

Ignorance about Islam, for starters. Ignorance also about the living, breathing and quite public expressions of fondness for Hitler in the Islamic world (only the first monkey wrench in the Daily News' quite obscene absurdism), and the prevalence of Holocaust denial and popularity of "Mein Kampf" to boot. There is ignorance, too, about Hitler's noted admiration for Islam.

For instance, take this Islamic-world-story-sampler from MEMRI.

1) "Hitler was a genius," says prominent Algerian writer and former presidential adviser, minister, ambassador, parliamentarian.

2) "Kuwaiti scholar/TV host relies on 'Mein Kampf' and 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' for anti-Semetic diatribe"

3) Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood former member of Parliament: "I still insist that the Holocaust is a great lie."

4) Saudi professor, cleric and member of Qaradawi's International Union of Muslim Scholars: "If only Hitler had finished them [Jews] off."

5) Egyptian international arbitration attorney: The Jews helped Hitler with the gas chambers and killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

6) Egypt/Muslim Brotherhood's Qaradawi; Allah imposed Hitler on Jews to punish them for their corruption.

7) Saudi columnist: Hitler was right about the Jews.

8) Qatari columnist: History has misjudged Hitler, whose war against Jews was based on the fact that they are a corrupt nation that needs to be eliminated.

9) Turkey: "Mein Kampf" high on best-seller lists, prominently displayed at bookstores.

Anti-Semitic bosom buddies for decades – read "The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Hussein"

From this deep, soft spot for Hitler rises a poisonous font of anti-Semitism – or, actually, vice-versa. That is, Islamic anti-Semitism has its long, twisted roots in a giant body of Islamic teachings, as documented in Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism." It is this sacralized hatred for Jews that quite naturally finds its expression in and inspiration from Nazism's fuehrer. Even scratching the surface, as Pew did in this 2010 poll, continues to yield results that are consistent:

dwest151210a

More to the Philadelphia Daily News' malicious point, however, Hitler deeply admired Islam. He mourned the fact that Germany was not Islamized, which he believed would have made Germans better warriors. Hitler said: "The Mohammedan religion … would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

Such linkage between Islam, anti-Semitism and Hitler, then, turns the very basis of the Trump=Hitler conceit into a small pile of mental rubble.

Alas, former Vice President Cheney is no more informed in his dismissal of Trump's call for a halt to the immigration polices that have permitted 680,000 Muslims to receive green cards in just the last five years.

Cheney said: "Well, I think this whole notion that we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history, and where we came from. A lot of people, my ancestors got here because they were Puritans. There wasn't anybody here when they came, but it's a mistaken notion."

Vice presidential non sequiturs aside, note for clarity's sake that Trump has not broached the subject of banning Islam, but rather halting Islamic immigration.

Cheney says that Trump's proposed ban "goes against everything we believe in," and cites "religious freedom" specifically, which, he notes, is a "very important part of our history."

It should be self-evident by now: Continued Islamic immigration will ensure that "religious freedom" is exactly that – "part of our history." Something in the past. Something we read about in books. It is a clear-cut matter, even if it seems to have escaped the vice president's ken (despite his waging two wars in the Islamic world): There is no religious freedom in Islam. Nada. Zilch. Rien. Geert Wilders isn't kidding when he says, the more Islam in society, the less freedom there is in society.

This central feature of Islamic law, this central feature of Islam, itself – namely, the absence of religious freedom – turns the vice president's appeal for Muslim immigration on the grounds of our history of "religious freedom" into so much emotionalism, so much puffery. In other words, it may puff up the old self-esteem – what a kindly, generous, benificent personage am I – but when the inner smile dies our republic and constitutional liberties are still imperiled by Islamic immigration waves that carry with them a transformative Shariah demographic.

Here is Pew's most recent polling of Muslims on Shariah. Notice the two highest percentages, Afghanistan (99 percent) and Iraq (91 percent), are where U.S. troops fought and died for many years to introduce "democracy."

dwest151210b

As for American Muslim attitudes, the Center for Security Policy recently compiled poll results, referenced by Donald Trump, showing, for example, that 51 percent of American Muslims believe they should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah. (More results here. These results are in line with previous polling, such as here.)

Donald Trump seems to grasp exactly what introducing Islam en masse to the United States portends, and, more important, has the courage to say so. Such frankness regarding national preservation has triggered convulsions across the political spectrum – hot eruptions of angry emotionalism from left to right, from the Daily News to Dick Cheney – but little in the way of logical, informed debate.

I am thinking there may be a corollary to Wilders' Law of Islam: The more political correctness, the less reason.