Unforeseen Contingencies

Donald Trump has just called for a temporary ban on immigration into the U.S. by Muslims, a ban that would be maintained until we better understand how to deal with Islamism.  Practically everyone in media and politics is attacking Trump over this (its seems there's more outrage over Trump's proposal than over the actual San Bernardino massacre by Muslim jihadis).   I'm not a supporter of Trump for president, and I am not so sure Trump's proposal is a good idea, but the criticism of Trump strikes me as largely nonsensical.  Here's why.  (Caveat: Trump has subsequently extended his proposal to include American citizens who are Muslims -- I am not writing about that, only about immigration by non-citizens.  Stopping free travel for citizens based on their religion certainly violates the First Amendment prohibition on restrictions of free exercise of religion.)

The criticisms of Trump largely claim his idea is unConstitutional. (If that is criterion for outrage, why does Barack Obama get a pass for legislating via executive orders, picking and choosing the laws he'll enforce, and the like?)  I think they are wrong.  The Constitutional arguments I've heard hinge on Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

It supposedly follows, then, that there can be no religious test for citizenship, or for immigration.  I'm somewhat skeptical, but perhaps this is so.  But here's my question: is sharia a part of Islam?

Sharia is the Islamic legal system, so that might seem a stupid question.  But sharia is a set of legal and hence political doctrines, and not simply theology; in fact, it's more than that -- it's an entire institutional framework, something like a constitutional order.  If sharia is a necessary part of Islam, then Islam isn't simply a religion, it's a political ideology.  And it is certainly not unConstitutional to ban immigration by those who support political ideologies that are incompatible with or even hostile to American principles.  During the Second World War, Nazis were excluded from immigrating to America.  During the cold war, so were communists (I think this is still enshrined in law, although am uncertain).  Certainly adherence to political Islam could be -- and should be -- grounds to block immigrants.

Not all Muslims support sharia, I'm fairly sure.  But this might be a minority.  Certainly among the "Syrian" immigrants, it must be a minority.  The bulk of these immigrants (fewer than 50% are from Syria, according to Eurostat) come from countries where the vast majority of Muslims believe sharia should be the law of the land.  According to Pew Research, 99% of Afghanistan Muslims, 91% of Iraqi Muslims, and 84% of Pakistani Muslims believe sharia should be the basis of national law.  Sharia includes blasphemy laws, criminalization of homosexuality, oppression of women, and many other anti-liberal doctrines.  If Islam is inseparable from sharia, then banning immigration by adherents isn't banning them on the basis of a religious test, but a political one.  And that is certainly legitimate, particularly when the U.S. government appears to have no ability at all to vet immigrants.

This isn't an endorsement of Trump -- he's a wild man.  He seems to have no political principles -- I don't mean that he's unprincipled -- I mean that he seems unfamiliar with the concept of political principles.  If he does have any, he's a Democrat (I still wouldn't entirely discount the theory that he's a Clinton operative, working to sabotage the Republicans -- I just heard a gentleman from Commentary magazine suggest on the John Batchelor show that Trump's most outrageous/least politically correct statements regularly come at times that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are facing their own damning revelations or gaffes, and the effect is to rescue them from scrutiny.  Interesting.  (You can read Rothman's argument here.)  Of course, damning moments for Clinton and Obama, and outrageous statements from Trump, are so regular that discerning a regular pattern is a problem in advanced time series (Granger causality, anyone?) so the argument isn't exactly convincing, and even Rothman didn't seem convinced in the interview.

Regardless, Trump strikes a chord with many people because his "outrageous" arguments usually have a measure of sense in them, as well as a refreshing refusal to be intimidated.  It is certainly sensible to be worried about "Syrian" immigrants.  I don't want neighbors who think that it's important to establish sharia as the law of the land.