Salman Rushdie

 

Salman Rushdie has at last been gotten to by the Muslim terrorists. 

The perpetrator has been caught, and will no doubt face stiff punishment. 

And nothing will change, more broadly. Someone else will be next.

Muslim terrorism keeps resurfacing, and is growing. Nations with longstanding Muslim minorities, like the Philippines, can attest that Muslim violence has been a fact of life there for centuries. It is growing now simply because there are more points of contact between Islam and the rest of the world. 

Nobody has yet found a way to stop it; although there is the legend that General Pershing, or some other American or British worthy, when informed that it was simply the local Muslim custom to every now and then run amok and behead random citizens, and nothing could be done about it, explained that it was the American custom, when such events occurred, to open fire.

I expect this is apocryphal. The conventional protections and punishments do not work, because we are dealing, broadly, with “suicide bombers.” The assailant does not care about dying. They get a big reward in the hereafter. So what can we possibly do to stop or to discourage them? Execute them? To their minds, and those of their supporters, that just makes them an immortal martyr.

Here’s the way to discourage Muslim terrorism. Each attack, very publicly seize or destroy a mosque. A mosque of commensurate value. If, for example, there was a $5 million fatwa on Rushdie’s head, seize American mosques of equivalent book value. If the target is something like the World Trade Centre, a cruise missile hitting the Ka’aba.

Some, of course, will immediately protest. This is unjust to average Muslims, who have nothing to do with the assaults. This is Islamophobia. This is religious persecution.

Yet, for fair comparison, we have no problem with seizing Catholic Church funds and property to punish the crimes of individual priests and bishops. Obviously, ordinary Catholics did not endorse these sex crimes, had nothing to do with them, and are their primary victims. Yet they are being punished for them.

Surely it is fairer to seize mosques in response to religious terrorism. A pity for individual Muslims; yet after all, unlike the sexual sins of priests, the terrorists are motivated by the explicit idea of advancing Islam. Unlike seizing Catholic Church property, which looks only like religious persecution, seizing mosques might deter future crimes. A prospective terrorist would have to think twice: is he advancing Islam, or harming it? Can he risk the chance of being condemned in the next life instead of rewarded?

Terrorism Insurance

Does this make me look fat?

On the Manchester bombing, I still like my idea of commemorative pig statues named Mohammed, but the barbarity seems to have escalated: killing children at a concert! No more. Here’s something else we can do.

It involves no government expense, and might end terrorism pretty quickly.

I speak of terrorism insurance.

Insurance companies would, for a fee covering the risk undertaken, as with any other insurance, guarantee against a given person committing a terrorist act. If he or she did, the policy would pay double the entire medical expenses of victims, say, plus a fixed amount in “blood money,” say $500,000, or $1,000,000 to the estate of anyone killed.

Then just stand back and let the actuarial tables do their magic. If it turns out that Muslims are more prone to terrorism than others, fine; such insurance will cost them more. No need to ban Muslims as such. No need to “discriminate” against anybody.

Governments should then require a terrorism insurance policy, valid for ten years, before allowing any immigrant or refugee into the country. Such policies are going to be cheaper for the better immigrants, more expensive for the riskier ones, doing our work of immigrant selection for us. 

Such insurance policies should also then be required, the same as accident insurance, for anyone applying for a driver’s license, or a gun license, or a plane ticket. 

Anyone holding a large event as in Manchester might also wish to require such a live insurance policy from all attendees. True, it might limit the audience, but it would also reassure many that attending was safe. On balance, perhaps an advantage, perhaps a wash. Given the odds, it would probably not be an onerous burden on fifteen-year-old Christian girls.

This could be a source of revenue for religious organizations. On obvious way to cut the odds, for the underwriting organization, would be to ask for certification of good character from a minister of religion. For which service they might reasonably request some compensation. If, in turn, this or that Muslim minister’s guarantee turned out to be unreliable, they would lose this revenue source, giving them an incentive to encourage peace instead of violence. And it would give any Muslim groups an incentive to shun and disassociate themselves from anyone with violent aims.

It would also drain much of the propaganda value from such attacks. Would the killers have accomplished anything, by their own lights? The blood money is paid automatically. Set the blood money high enough, and it becomes automatic revenge. Nor would the perpetrator escape this any longer by committing suicide in the act.

I wager the fashion for jihadi suicide bombings would soon disappear.