BREXIT

The results are in. The Leaves have carried the day. The deal isn’t done, of course. A referendum in the United Kingdom is only advisory. Final action, if any, to extirpate their nation from the European Union will only come when Parliament has voted.

Still, a referendum in a nation like the UK with an ancient democratic tradition, means a lot.

How did it happen? For the United Kingdom to exit the European Union is about like Texas and California walking out of the United States. What made them do it?

Whatever the economic and political advantages enjoyed as a member of the European Union, there were a couple of disadvantages that weighed heavily on the British people. Bureaucracy and immigration. They didn’t like the multiplicity of regulations that were coming out of Brussels. And they really didn’t like the swelling mass of immigrants disembarking from every train that arrived through the Chunnel.

Those immigrants were almost exclusively Muslims. Whatever the humanitarian motivation for receiving and harboring homeless, rootless, needy human beings, the fact has been that the Muslim birth rate in England has out paced native reproduction by a ratio of more than five to one.

Adding offspring to the surge of Muslim immigrants, the followers of Islam now represent the second largest religious minority in the nation.

Not only is the ratio of Muslims growing exponentially, but their disposition to settle in racially hospitable neighborhoods, has begun to create the phenomenon known as “no go” communities, where Sharia law is observed and enforced, so common in France and other countries.

The proportion of Muslims to the general population in the UK is just five percent, but there are three towns in which their ratio exceeds 40% and two more where the ratio is more than 25%.

Whether retreat from the EU will extricate the Brits from the influx of Muslims only time will tell. But the fact is that a united and explicit public policy will be needed to stem the tide.

Donald Trump, of course, has jumped on the Brexit vote as evidence that his restrictive immigration policies resonate with the working class. No doubt they do. Still, the Muslim population in the United States is only one percent, just a fifth of Britain’s.

But the herd instinct of Muslims has generated some very identifiable communities in our country. Among the most widely known is Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit with a 40% Muslim population in a town of just less than 100,000.

Less noticed, but more dramatic, is the Detroit enclave of Hamtramck, a town of 22,000 with a Muslim majority, both in population and on the city council.

The two square mile residential community, once an almost exclusively Polish town, is now dominated by four Mosques whose bells call the faithful to prayers just before dawn, at midday, afternoon, sunset and nighttime.

I first noticed the Hamtramck metamorphous when I read that Hamtramck High School found it necessary to host an all-girl’s senior prom, in deference to the fact that Muslim girls are not permitted to dance with boys.

Whether the Muslim majority on the Hamtramck city council will be disposed to enact Sharia inspired regulations, only time will tell. I suspect that Hamtramck will not be a friendly place to open a gay bar, an abortion clinic or a liquor store.

What concerns me more is whether Hamtramck will become a hotbed of Jihadist recruiting. rivaling Minneapolis and Saint Paul as an American center of ISIS harvesting. 

I came to maturity campaigning in Detroit. I learned a few Polish phrases to endear myself to the voters in Saint Hedwig’s and Saint Cunagunda parishes. I showed them my Kelly green vest and told them that after voting for Judge Stanczyk they should vote for the Irishman, because we are Catholics, too.

I have no doubt that Muslims vote for Muslims. The important question is whether, being elected, they will put their duty to the Constitution of the United States ahead of the arcane mandates of the Quran.