The excruciating facts keep on coming in. Twenty-two are dead, many of them children. About five dozen others are wounded, such that the death-toll may climb. The Islamic State jihadist network, having exhorted its willing Western-based recruits to attack in place, has claimed responsibility. And now comes the revelation that the suicide-terrorist, Salman Abedi, is yet another known-wolf—a young Muslim man in Britain who was on the radar screen of security services as a potential threat.
The 22-year-old bomber was a British-born son of Libyan refugees, who grew up in the Whalley Range neighborhood outside Manchester—an area that became notorious when two girls, honor students at the local high school, moved to Syria to live under Islamic State rule. Abedi carried out the atrocious bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester with an improvised explosive device that sprayed high-speed nails at his victims. The bomb type is commonplace in what Muslim terrorists like to call “the fields of jihad”—Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and so on. It is too soon to tell what kind of paramilitary training Abedi may have had. What we do know is that he roamed free because he was judged by the British government not to pose an “immediate” peril.
Once a Western society is infiltrated by a critical mass of sharia supremacists, there are barely enough investigative resources to cover the immediate perils—especially when inquiries into their ideology are condemned as racist “Islamophobia.”
Sharia supremacism, which demands that societies be governed by classical, repressive Islamic law (sharia), is a totalitarian political ideology under a religious veneer. It should not be regarded as a merely religious belief system as that concept is understood in our law.
It was to confront head-on that self-defeating approach that, following the San Bernardino jihadist attack that killed 14 Americans, candidate Donald Trump announced his much-derided intention to impose a temporary ban on Muslim immigration. As night follows day, Trump was branded an Islamophobe―a classic demagogic slur developed by the Muslim Brotherhood precisely to thwart examination of sharia-supremacist ideology. But the candidate’s intention was never to bar all Muslims from entering the United States; what he had in mind was a temporary measure until a workable policy solution could be devised (“until our elected representatives can figure out what is going on,” as he put it).
The policy solution Trump arrived at was enhanced vetting (which he at times calls “extreme vetting”). I know this not just from the now-president’s plethora of statements on the matter; I served on the commission (put together by Trump campaign adviser Rudy Giuliani) that counseled Trump. The point was never to ban Muslims, as has been misrepresented in press coverage and legal arguments over Trump’s so-called “travel ban” orders. The point was to ban those beholden to what Trump has called “radical Islamic” ideology (I prefer the more precise description “sharia supremacism”).
The strategy is based on what should be a widely known fact but, after a generation of willful blindness, remains obscure: Sharia supremacism, which demands that societies be governed by classical, repressive Islamic law (sharia), is a totalitarian political ideology under a religious veneer. It should not be regarded as a merely religious belief system as that concept is understood in our law.
Once this core premise is accepted, the legality of heightened vetting is plain to see. The United States has a long history of barring admission to political radicals who seek to overthrow our constitutional system. Indeed, to this day the oath taken by naturalized citizens requires a pledge of loyalty to our Constitution.
