Welcome, Arriving Afghan Refugees. We Have a Taliban, Too
Like the Afghan Taliban, Wokeists Are Intolerant, Have Captured A Lot of "Territory," Divide People by Tribes, Despise America, and Also Want Your Guns.
Americans continue to reel at the speed of the Taliban’s largely unmolested march through most of Afghanistan (but not all). We recoil at the beheadings, rapes, murders, and other atrocities committed by Taliban fighters. Americans remain shell-shocked at the sheer incompetence of the Biden Administration’s handling of the entire matter since taking office. I won’t chronicle them here since so much has been written elsewhere. And we have much more to learn and digest.
Even though some 10,000 (some say as many as 15,000) American citizens remain trapped between the airport and violent Taliban checkpoints, some of the first Afghan refugees have begun to arrive at US airports.
The refugees we spoke to say they’ve been able to get in contact with some folks back in Afghanistan. Those back in their home country tell them the Taliban takeover has gotten worse and many are scared to even leave their homes.
"Afghanistan isn’t safe, they are not safe and we are here, we are safe," one refugee told FOX 5. "All relatives there are in danger in their life."
"They try to find anyway. [It] doesn’t matter...aircraft, land, they [are] dying. It doesn’t matter for them. They will try to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible," another refugee said. "I was lucky that I left Afghanistan because I work with Americans and I was worried about my situation and my family. When I left the people my family was happy because, they say, ‘if you’re safe we are safe at home.’"
Perhaps we’d better warn our new refugees that we have a Taliban here, too. Not exactly, of course, but our Taliban have been quietly (and, sometimes not) yet systematically marching through our institutions. Not with AK-47 and colorful tribal costumes (with exceptions, especially if you like black), but it isn’t hard to find similar behavior in many US cities, especially last summer. You remember those “mostly peaceful” protests. While the vast majority qualify as peaceful protests, some 500 incidents turned into violent riots in some 200 cities across the United States.
Suggesting that America has its own Taliban (other than this one) may sound alarmist, even unhinged and incendiary. Yet, the resemblances are noteworthy. Not according to me, but author and former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Now a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, her bio is worth quoting.
She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. As a young child, she was subjected to female genital mutilation. As she grew up, she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. But she began to question aspects of her faith. One day, while listening to a sermon on the many ways women should be obedient to their husbands, she couldn't resist asking, "Must our husbands obey us too?"
In 1992 Ayaan fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. There she was given asylum, and in time citizenship. She quickly learned Dutch and was able to study at the University of Leiden, earning her M.A. in political science. Working as a translator for Somali immigrants, she saw first hand the inconsistencies between liberal, Western society and tribal, Muslim cultures.
From 2003 to 2006, Ayaan served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament. While in parliament, she focused on furthering the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society, and on defending the rights of Muslim women.
In 2004 Ayaan gained international attention following the murder of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her short film Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The assassin, a radical Muslim, left a death threat for her pinned to Van Gogh's chest.
In 2006, Ayaan had to resign from parliament when the then Dutch minister for Immigration decided to revoke her citizenship, arguing that Ayaan had misled the authorities at the time of her asylum application. However, the Dutch courts confirmed that Ayaan was indeed a legitimate Dutch citizen, leading to the fall of the government. Disillusioned with the Netherlands, she subsequently moved to the United States.
Hirsi Ali last year, the day before the 19th anniversary of 9/11, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled, “What Islamists and ‘Wokeists’ Have In Common.” She outlined her experience being invited to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University in 2014, only to be “canceled.” She laments the erosion of free speech on college campuses. She outlines at least five other commonalities (emphasis added).
The adherents of each constantly pursue ideological purity, certain of their own rectitude. Neither Islamists nor the Woke will engage in debate; both prefer indoctrination of the submissive and damnation of those who resist.
The two ideologies have distinctive rituals: Islamists shout “Allahu Akbar” and “Death to America”; the Woke chant “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe.” Islamists pray to Mecca; the Woke take the knee. Both like burning the American flag.
Both believe that those who refuse conversion may be harassed, or worse. Both take offense at every opportunity and seek not just apologies but concessions. Islamism inveighs against “blasphemy”; Wokeism wants to outlaw “hate speech.” Islamists use the word “Islamophobia” to silence critics; the Woke do the same with “racism.”
Islamists despise Jews; the Woke say they just hate Israel, but the anti-Semitism is pervasive. The two share a fondness for iconoclasm: statues, beware.
Both ideologies aim to tear down the existing system and replace it with utopias that always turn out to be hellish anarchies: Islamic State in Raqqa, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. Both are collectivist: Group identity trumps the individual. Both tolerate—and often glorify—violence carried out by zealots.
There’s a sixth area of cultish commonality - gun confiscation. "We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians," a Taliban official told Reuters. That sounds familiar. Maybe that will help us better understand why we have a Second Amendment.
Some suggest that roughly 50-60,000 Afghan refugees (34,500 special immigrant visas have already been granted) will find their way to the United States (others in a country of 37 million will go elsewhere since Afghanistan was, in fact, a NATO mission since 2015. Other countries, especially Great Britain and Germany, both military and support personnel there; so does Italy. Turkey has been responsible for operating Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
That, of course, compares to the some 500,000 “refugees” that have made their way across our open southern border since Biden took office - over 200,000 in July alone -courtesy of Mexican drug cartels who benefit from diverting US border resources.
So, welcome to escapees from the stone-age cretins who now impose a strict form of Sharia Law on those who remain. Our Taliban is different, but despise your new country’s founding as much as the extremists you are escaping from.