Dear Editor,
I am concerned about the growing rise of Islamism globally, and locally; the modern kind which takes on a socialist/communist “freedom fighter” slant, thus hiding its true, oppressive, and insidious motives and fruit.
Since the welcomed departure of our homegrown ISIS activist, jihadist, and recruiter – Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, I’ve often mulled over the growth of hardline Islamic fundamentalism within our local Muslim community – increasingly of the foreign variety. Considering modern events and the global climate of wars within Islamist societies, it is my hope and impassioned appeal to our local immigration and foreign policy regulators and policy makers that urgent steps be taken to prevent the export of foreign wars to Jamaica.
At the close of wars and religious conflict internationally, comes immigration of the involved populations to more peaceful pastures – often bringing with them the conflicts and worldviews that led to instability within their countries of origin.
It would do Jamaica well to avoid the mistakes of Europe and the USA, by implementing a thoughtful restrictive immigration policy which prioritizes the reception of individuals as lawful immigrants and/or refugees who share similar cultural and religious values of Jamaica. We should also monitor diligently the rhetoric and teachings within hardline Islamist and left-leaning institutions (be they mosques, madrassas, or universities). They sometimes hide in the Pro-Palestine/Anti-Israel crowd and shout “Death to the Jews and Christians!” or “Death to the Zionists!”
Jamaica is a small country founded on Judeo-Christian principles which have served us well (and to which we would do well to return to in earnest!). The negative experiences of countries/regions who experimented with multicultural immigration (largely because of the Arab Springs and post-ISIS years) owing to our sheer size, would be catastrophic.
We cannot afford to import the conflicts of other peoples to our region, or become, as Islamists have begun doing within our prisons and universities – a recruiting ground for jihad. This strategy sees lonely, gullible women, and our vulnerable, marginalized black men with a history of violence in particular, being sent to foreign countries to slaughter infidels, and die for a strange god under the guise of “anti-colonialism” and the establishing of a modern caliphate governed by sharia law. Or worse, trying to establish one here (another heads up – you are probably an “infidel”). All this whilst conveniently omitting the truth that the largest, longest and most brutal slave trade (that arguably introduced the concept of chattel slavery to the Western world, as well as the classification/ranking of peoples based on colour within slavery – with black and brown persons being at the utmost bottom), was the Arab-Islamic slave trade – which continues today (look up the stories of Sudanese Christian man, kidnapped into slavery in Islamic Arab countries in this modern era- Francis Bok’s “Escape from Slavery”; and former Hezbollah child-soldier and jihadist – Kamal Saleem who dreamt of killing “the Saturday people and then the Sunday” i.e. Jews and Christians).
As “developing” countries, we have the benefit of the hindsight of the “developed” world, and have the privilege of observing the pitfalls of our neighbours to the North and West with a view to avoiding similar mistakes. One of these gaping pitfalls is multiculturalism.
The hard truth is that multiculturalism, does not work. Having more than one contradicting macro-cultures and competing worldviews occupying a state or community, vying for dominance, whilst pretending that all cultures are equal leads to: the eventual erosion of agreement and unity within the host state/community. In short – a failed state. Jamaica is proof of the beauty of the fact that many ethnicities can, under the agreed umbrella of one overriding culture to which all subcultures submit create the result of our motto “out of many- one people”: if it is that we stick to it.
We have gone this far without a coup or bloody revolution. Please. Let’s not devolve into one.
Finally, revolutions, violent or otherwise, are not usually undertaken by the majority; but by a vocal, committed, persistent minority who hoodwink the majority culture into not taking them seriously.
In the words of esteemed black economist Thomas Sowell, “Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.
I am,
Jillian Forbes