Let Refugees Remain in Their Own Culture Zones

Daniel Pipes

9/25/2013 12:01:00 AM - Daniel Pipes


About one-tenth of Syria's 22 million residents have fled across an international border, mostly to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Unable to cope, their governments are restricting entry, prompting international concern about the Syrians' plight. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, suggests that his agency (as the Guardian paraphrases him) "look to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in countries better able to afford to host them," recalling the post-2003 Iraqi resettlement program, when 100,000 Iraqis resettled in the West. Others also look instinctively to the West for a solution; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, has called on Western states "to do more" for Syrian refugees.


But these numbers pale beside a population numbering in the millions, meaning that the West alone cannot solve the Syrian refugee problem. Further, many in Western countries (especially European ones such as the Netherlands and Switzerland) have wearied of taking in Muslim peoples who do not assimilate but instead seek to replace Western mores with the Islamic law code, the Shari'a. Both German chancellor Angela Merkel and British prime minister David Cameron have deemed multiculturalism, with its insistence on the equal value of all civilizations, a failure. Worse, fascist movements such as the Golden Dawn in Greece are growing.


Happily, a solution lies at hand.


More importantly, Muslims of Arabia share deep religious ties with their Syrian brothers and sisters, so settling there avoids the strains of life in the West. Consider some of the haram (forbidden) elements that Muslim refugees avoid by living in Arabia:

• Pet dogs (61 million of them alone in the United States).

• A pork-infused cuisine and an alcohol-soaked social life.

• State-sponsored lotteries and Las Vegas-style gambling emporia.


• Lesbian bars, pride parades, and gay marriage.

• A lax attitude toward hallucinogens, with some drugs legal in certain jurisdictions.


Instead, Muslims living in Arabia can rejoice in a law code that (unlike Ireland) permits polygamy and (unlike Britain) allows child marriages. Unlike France, Arabia allows the advocacy of wife-beating and goes easy on female genital mutilation. Unlike the United States, slaveholding does not entail imprisonment and male relatives can honor kill their women-folk without fear of the death penalty.


UN take note: Focus less on the West, more on the rest.

Saudis: Time to welcome Muslim coreligionists under stress with open arms.