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Pope: ‘Surrender Means Security’

Francis says the more Muslim refugees Europe welcomes, the safer it will be from terrorism. No, really, he said that
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Meanwhile, in news from outer space:

Pope Francis has encouraged Europeans to welcome refugees, calling authentic hospitality “our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism.”

Francis Saturday spoke to alumni of Jesuit schools in Europe who were in Rome for a conference on refugees.

What on earth is he talking about? It may be right for Europeans to welcome refugees — I don’t agree, but it’s a debatable point over whether or not charity requires Europeans to take that risk– but to say that welcoming over a million Muslims into Europe is “our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism” is at best absurd propaganda. Who can possibly believe this? The same people who believe that “diversity is our strength”?

We know about the bombings in New York and New Jersey this weekend, but we have no idea who might have done them, or why. We know much more about the shopping mall stabbing incident in Minnesota:

The attack in St. Cloud’s main shopping center that left nine people with stab wounds is being treated as an act of terror, federal authorities said Sunday.

In a media briefing after midnight Sunday, Police Chief William Blair Anderson said an off-duty officer from another jurisdiction confronted and fatally shot the suspect Saturday night inside Crossroads Center. He said the man — dressed in a private security uniform — reportedly asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim before assaulting them, and referred to Allah during the attacks.

“We are currently investigating this as a potential act of terrorism,” said the FBI’s Richard Thornton, speaking at a news conference at Police Department headquarters early Sunday afternoon. Thornton did not link the attack to a specific terror group.

Roughly 12 hours after the stabbings, a news agency said to speak for ISIL went to Twitter to claim credit for the mall violence. “The executor of the stabbing attacks in Minnesota yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition,” the posting by the AMAQ news agency read.

More about the attacker:

A short time earlier, St. Cloud Somali-American community members identified the deceased suspect as Dahir Adan.

Leaders of the Somali-American community in St. Cloud gathered Sunday with his family and issued a statement of sympathy for the family and the nine victims of the attack.

Community leader Abdul Kulane said as far as the family and community know, the suspect did not have any history of violence. He was known as a smart, accomplished student at Apollo High School. He was a junior at St. Cloud State University, Kulane said. Adan was also working part-time as a private security officer, leaders said.

The last time he was seen by family was about 6 or 6:30 p.m. Saturday when he said he was going to the mall to buy an iPhone 7. They don’t know what happened after that.

I believe it is likely that Adan’s family had no idea what he was up to. I suspect it will come out that he was self-radicalized via the Internet. If this kind of thing happens more often, it will put every Muslim in America under suspicion. We can be morally certain that the majority of Muslim-Americans do not approve of this. But if even the families of these radicalized killers don’t know what their grown children are up to, how are the rest of us supposed to know?

The more things like this happen, the more sense Trump’s idea to halt Muslim immigration for the time being makes. What a crazy year when Donald J. Trump makes more sense on anything than a Pope.

UPDATE: Hey, combox commenters, before you fall back into the “four legs good, two legs bad” “diversity is our strength” mantra, read this 2007 Boston Globe thinkpiece about Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s discovery. Excerpt:

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts.

“We can’t ignore the findings,” says Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. “The big question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next steps?”

When you are struggling mightily to integrate the Muslims you already have, as Europe is, it is not wise to import massive numbers of them. Not if you want to maintain a cohesive society.

UPDATE.2: Remember, #DiversityIsOurStrength.

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