Bill Cox’s letter about Muslim immigration (“Ignore the Muslim bashing,” April 15) exhibits historical ignorance. He writes, “Muslims constitute about 1 percent of the U.S. population … The idea that such a tiny minority aims to replace our legal structure with shariah law is wildly unrealistic. Belief that it would uproot our culture or institute a Muslim tyranny in the United States is preposterous. These charges are outrageous, and anyone impressed by them must be very gullible.”

But directed immigration (the “hijra”) has been one of the principal techniques of Islamic conquest (the other being the sword) ever since Muhammad led his initial band of followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D.

And regarding that “tiny minority,” recall 1989’s uproar among Muslims when Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” was published in Britain. Rushdie had to live in hiding for years, bookstores in the U.S. and Britain were bombed, and in the U.S. the novel “was unavailable in about one-third of bookstores. In many others that carried the book, it was kept under the counter,” according to Wikipedia. At the time, Muslims were a tiny 1.9 percent of Britain’s population and a much smaller percentage here.

In 2006, a dozen Danish cartoons picturing Mohammed provoked similar outrage among Muslims worldwide (including riots and about 200 deaths in Muslim countries). U.S. media covered the controversy but mostly avoided reprinting the cartoons. Why? Probably for the same reason a 2009 scholarly book on the episode from Yale University Press, amazingly, was published without the cartoons — fear for the safety of the press’s staff.

And in 2010, Seattle Weekly cartoonist Molly Norris casually broadcast her suggestion for an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” reasoning that there would be safety in numbers. Within a week, the incoming death threats had provoked Norris, at the FBI’s suggestion, to go underground and change her name, essentially abandoning her prior life.

So Muslims’ tiny presence already notably curtails Americans’ freedoms.

Cox opened his letter with, “The unbroken torrent of letters in the Inter Lake from virulent Islamophobes suggests an orchestrated campaign of propaganda to demonize Muslims.” Actually, Muslims have earned demonization by their own behavior worldwide, what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington referred to as Islam’s “bloody borders.” Further, the real danger to our civilization would be the ascendance of smug Islamo-gullibles, such as Bill Cox.

—Paul Nachman, Bozeman