Andrew McCarthy’s column on Syrian refugees and the broader topic of asylum is the read of the day.  With his characteristic knowledge and incisiveness, the former prosecutor of the Blind Sheikh for the first World Trade Center bombing gets to the heart of the issue.  Few excerpts will convey the importance of this work, which should be read in its whole.

What happens in France happens in Belgium. It happens in Sweden where much of Malmo, the third largest city, is controlled by Muslim immigrant gangs — emergency medical personnel attacked routinely enough that they will not respond to calls without police protection, and the police in turn unwilling to enter without back-up. Not long ago in Britain, a soldier was killed and nearly beheaded in broad daylight by jihadists known to the intelligence services; dozens of sharia courts now operate throughout the country, even as Muslim activists demand more accommodations. And it was in Germany, which green-lighted Europe’s ongoing influx of Muslim migrants, that Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed that pressuring Muslims to assimilate in their new Western countries is “a crime against humanity.”

So how many of us look across the ocean at Europe and say, “Yeah, let’s bring some of that here”?

None of us with any sense. Alas, “bring it here” is the order of the day in Washington, under the control of leftists bent on fundamentally transforming America (Muslims in America overwhelmingly support Democrats) and the progressive-lite GOP, which fears the “Islamophobia” smear nearly as much as the “racist” smear.

The American people are far ahead of their elites in seeing the problem, even though our media, like the French and other Euromeadia, generally ignores the problematic aspects of not just Islamic culture, but the scriptural religion itself.  Guided by a refugee policy begin by Jimmy Carter (of course!), the United States has been importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims as refugees and asylum-seekers.  And the vetting is worse than useless:

Washington, in its delusional Islamophilia, vets only for ties to terrorism, which it defines as “violent extremism” in purblind denial of modern terrorism’s Islamist ideological moorings. As the deteriorating situation in Europe manifests, our actual challenge is Islamic supremacism, of which jihadist terrorism is only a subset.

For nearly a quarter-century, our bipartisan governing class has labored mightily to suppress public discussion of the undeniable nexus between Islamic doctrine and terrorism. Consequently, many Americans are still in the dark about sharia, classical Islam’s societal framework and legal code. We should long ago have recognized sharia as the bright line that separates authentic Muslim moderates, hungry for the West’s culture of reason and individual liberty, from Islamic supremacists, resistant to Western assimilation and insistent on incremental accommodation of Muslim law and mores.

The promotion of constitutional principles and civic education has always been foundational to the American immigration and naturalization process. We fatally undermine this process by narrowly vetting for terrorism rather than sharia adherence.

Yes, I can already hear the slander: “You are betraying our commitment to religious liberty.” Please. Even if there were anything colorable to this claim, we are talking about inquiring into the beliefs of aliens who want to enter our country, not citizens entitled to constitutional protections.

As McCarthy notes, what Americans recognize as the religious sphere is far narrower than what Islam does.  Islam is a comprehensive political and social doctrine, one in utter conflict with our Constitution.  And the nations from which we are importing refugees have very large majorities in favor of sharia as the organizing principle of society.  Even of Muslims born in the U.S., support for sharia is alarmingly strong.

… since we are vetting for terrorism rather than sharia-adherence, and since we know a significant number of Muslims are sharia-adherent, we are missing the certainty that we are importing an ever-larger population hostile to our society and our Constitution — a population that has been encouraged by influential Islamist scholars and leaders to form Muslim enclaves throughout the West.

This leads seamlessly to the second reason why the influx of refugees is calamitous. Not only are we vetting for the wrong thing, we are ignoring the dynamics of jihadism. The question is not whether we are admitting Muslims who currently have ties to terrorist organizations; it is whether we are admitting Muslims who are apt to become violent jihadists after they settle here.

Adherence to Islam is what sociologists and criminologists like to call a “risk factor,” for accepting the doctrines of sharia leads one toward violence.  Not in every case.  And not right away.  But the very substance of the doctrine is such that we are justified in screening for it.  As McCarthy concludes:

...there is nothing obligatory about any immigration policy, including asylum. There is no global right to come here. American immigration policy is supposed to serve the national interests of the United States. Right now, American immigration policy is serving the interests of immigrants at the expense of American national security and the financial security of distressed American workers.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky