Really? Those are the questions you would ask Muslim refugees to determine if they should be let into the country? It seems you are more interested in determining the Muslim equivalent to the Nicene Creed, but the point at which you suggested the “questions that should be asked” was to determine if Muslims are willing to live in peace in a multi-cultural society that is not all Muslim. Let me suggest that the questions you outlined do little to advance that determination. Let me further suggest that the question of willingness to live in peace is more reliably answered by the actions of the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who are already living in all over the West. And if someone was “unpeaceful”, they could certainly fake the answers to your loyalty questions. So either way, your approach of “asking the questions that need to be asked” is an ineffective and counterproductive way to determine if Muslim refugees should be let into the country.
You don’t seem to understand the difference between direct and indirect, do you?
If someone is determined by deception to, well… deceive, then you can ask all the direct questions you want and it won’t get you anywhere. Sometimes, more can be gleaned from what someone is unwilling to say than from answers which are readily forthcoming.
Just as someone who plans to be – in your words – “unpeaceful,” could “certainly fake the answers to … loyalty questions,” someone who was planning to act “unpeacefully” when the time is ripe could very well fake living peacefully “all over the West” until such a time as the numbers permitted less peaceful activity.
The question isn’t so much what will happen when a small number of “peaceful Muslims” live in the west, the question is what will happen when larger numbers do. The Middle East seems to be in indicator which should not simply be ignored in your probability calculus.
Now you have made the point that we are here speaking about Muslims and not Islam. Perhaps that is correct, but the question remains regarding what is it that makes Muslims view themselves as “Muslim” in the first place. Why are Muslims adherents to Islam and not to some other belief system? And what are the essentials of that belief system that draw those claiming to be Muslim to it?
It may seem that I am being unnecessarily provocative and prying into what is none of my business, but, at the same time, this discussion needs to be had in order to build trust. We can go on and on ignoring the necessity of doing so to the extent that it needs to occur to resolve the fundamental issue, but that will continue to keep the fire smoldering until it erupts.
Either Muslims in whole or in part are fundamentally “peaceful” or they – in whole or in part – are not. That question still needs to be dealt with and not avoided in the end. This may, in fact, need to be dealt with first within the Muslim community before it can be properly moved outside that community, but it is clear that the issue MUST be properly resolved. We cannot continue to go on as if no problem exists or that it is just an imagined one.
