Honderd jaar geleden dreven de waarden van een Amerikaanse president met een grote mond en botte omgangsvormen moslims ook al tot razernij.

Uit een wat ouder stukje van Sultan Knish, pseudoniem van de Amerikaanse journalist Daniël Greenfield:

The anti-immigration bill offended the Ottoman Empire, the rotting Caliphate of Islam soon to be defeated at the hands of America and the West, by banning the entry of “all polygamists, or persons who admit their belief in the practice of polygamy.”

This, as was pointed out at the time, would prohibit the entry of the “entire Mohammedan world” into the United States.

And indeed it would.

(..)

Despite these protests, Muslims continued to face deportations over polygamy charges even under President Woodrow Wilson. And polygamy, though not belief in it, remains a basis for deportation.

Though the law today is seldom enforced.

(..)

A New York Times story from 1897 records that, “the first-polygamists excluded under the existing immigration laws were six Mohammedans arrived on the steamship California.”

To their misfortune, the Mohammedans encountered not President Obama, but President Herman Stump of the immigration board of inquiry. Stump, an eccentric irascible figure, had known Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and had been a wanted Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War.

In the twilight of his term, Stump had little patience and tolerance for either Islam or polygamy.

The Times story relates the laconic exchange between Stump and the Muslim migrants.

“You believe in the Koran?” asked President Stump.

“Thank Allah, yes,” responded the men in chorus.

“The Koran teaches polygamy?” continued the Inspector through an interpreter.

“Blessed be Allah, it does!”

“Then you believe in polygamy?” asked Captain George Ellis.

“We do. We do! Blessed be Allah, we do,” chorused the Arabs, salaaming toward the setting sun.

“That settles it,” said President Stump. “You won’t do.”

Ik vind dit verhaal interessant omdat het zo helder laat zien dat de strijd tegen de moslims een strijd om waarden is. Het Westen heeft zichzelf ontdaan van een onnoemelijk aantal van zijn eigen waarden. Dat is wat je noemt the heart of the matter.