My attention was drawn to a couple of recent posts by the generally anti-Islamic Israel-booster Martin Peretz of The New Republic, in his blog The Spine. The first related how Muslim cabbies in Minnesota are refusing to carry passengers who might be carrying alcohol; the second talks about how Muslim policemen in London are refusing to guard the Israeli Embassy. To my knowledge, the former is illegal (taxis being a form of public transportation and alcohol being legal), and the second probably should be.
But incidents like this are merely indications of how eager Muslims are to engage in a "clash of civilizations" with the West. That's a hackneyed phrase, but an accurate one. The Koran wasn't any different 5 years ago, but it's only now that Muslims throughout the West are pushing to replace Western culture with Islamic puritanism. The successes of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, rises in oil prices, and increased Islamic immigration to the West are all emboldening this movement.
The tolerant, peaceful people of Europe are finally starting to get a bit uneasy. In France, the police recently claimed that Muslims are waging a low-level civil war against them. And now we have the results of an eye-opening new poll in Britain, in which 53% of Britons see Islam - not puritan Islam, or terrorism, or jihadism, but all Islam - as a threat to Western values and democracy.
Among the other findings of the poll:
The proportion of those who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now...This is almost unbelievable, considering that Britain has always been the European country that is most tolerant of Islam. But it looks like more and more Brits are subscribing to the idea that they've given Muslims an inch, and now Muslims are trying to take a mile. There may be something to that theory, too - the other "most tolerant" European country is The Netherlands.
The number who believe that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as any- one else" has fallen from 23 per cent in July last year to 16 per cent...
Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat.
The time is past to speak of "preventing a clash of civilizations." That clash is already happening. The only question now is how violent that confrontation will get.
It occurs to me that, to Muslims from (or in) the Middle East and North Africa, Europe probably appears terminally weak. Falling fertility rates and graying populations, secularism, peaceful cultures, shrinking militaries, and a long-standing commitment to tolerance, diversity, negotiation, conflict avoidance, and turning the other cheek all make Europe seem like, as anthropologists refer to it, Wimp Central.
And when Wimp Central insults your religion with cartoons, supports your sworn enemy (Israel), and then invites you to come and live there...well, what are you going to do? This is my guess at how a substantial number of Muslim immigrants to Europe are thinking.
But it seems to me that Muslims in general (not to mention American conservatives) have greatly misestimated the European civilization.
A little historical background on why I think this is the case. In the early 8th century AD, Europe was a real backwater. The common view is that Muslims, a dynamic, aggressive, and advanced civilization, were barely prevented from overrunning Europe by against-the-odds European victories at the Battle of Tours and the Siege of Constantinople...but my guess is that the Muslims just weren't all that interested in conquering the cold, rainy, barbarian boondoggle. They took Spain and were satisfied.
But the Europeans didn't forget those Islamic attacks. Hundreds of years later, when Europe had organized itself around Catholicism and (mostly) united around the Pope, the Crusades began, followed by the Spanish Reconquista. The Muslim civilization woke up to find itself threatened by a semi-barbarian European Christian menace every bit as fanatical and violently uncivilized as al-Qaeda's modern-day jihadists.
One could certainly see Old Europe's rabid religious violence as an expression of pure Christian zealotry. After all, the Spanish Inquisition and the brutal Catholic-supervised destruction of Native American civilizations are well-documented. But my theory is that this violence was a (misguided, overreactive) response to Islam. Perceiving Islam as a religion that motivated its followers to relentless world-conquering violence, Europeans said "we need to copy that if we're going to survive." Torquemada and the Conquistadors were the result. It's no accident that Spain's spasm of Catholic violence came on the heels of its war to expel the Muslims.
But that's all - literally - ancient history. Centuries of warfare have since taught Europeans the value of peace...right? Well, right...except that centuries of highly organized collective violence may leave imprints on a culture that don't go away in a few decades of tranquility. Every culture has its own way of conducting violence Europeans seem to me the type of people who do their violence all together, suddenly and dramatically. Thinking of this, I was reminded of a spine-chilling quote from "War Nerd" columnist Gary Brecher:
And here it is: the people who do genocide best are law-abiding, decent, stand-up folks. Strange but true. Take the Germans: wouldn't hurt a fly...unless someone in uniform told them to. Then they would fry every fly on the planet.That has a ring of truth.
The signs of a hardening of the European civilization are, so far, few and far between. For most Europeans, life is still a pleasant, lighthearted affair, full of good food and vacations and electronic music and guaranteed employment, where the biggest daily struggle is deciding whether or not to cheat on their spouses, or grimacing at that dreadful George Bush on the evening news.
But look at the Pope's recent comments about Islam. The Conventional Wisdom sees those comments as a blunder, but others - including me - see it as something much more. The Pope is a smart man - he didn't get where he is today by being careless or stupid - and chose his quote carefully. He read the stories about the Danish cartoons, and he knew what the Muslim reaction would be.
No, the Pope was laying the groundwork for something much more important - the gradual steering of Catholicism back toward the militant anti-Islamic defensive posture that, arguably, was its original reason for existence.
This should worry Muslims. I know it worries me. Europe is not America, which, if you hit it, will hit you back and then buy you a beer. Europe is not like Israel, which will compromise because of its fundamental weakness. Europe will turn the other cheek for a long time, and just when you think it'll turn the other cheek forever, Europe will jump up and kill you (and kill your family, and reduce your cities to rubble, and plow salt into your land, etc.). They are law-abiding, decent, stand-up folks, like Gary Brecher said. And if Europe does turn back to its militant Christian past, the "clash of civilizations" could start to look a lot uglier, since the Europeans still have a lot more and better guns than the Muslims.
So to any Muslims who think that maybe Sharia is the future of the Netherlands, or that it's ok to kill liberal filmmakers, or that it's only a matter of time before Europe becomes an Islamic state, I would issue some words of caution.
If you sow jihad, be prepared to reap the crusade. It won't be coming from America or Israel.
PS - As long as we're on the topic of political Islam, I might as well link to this amazing speech by Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American psychologist. Looks like a few Muslims are finally starting to say what many of us infidels have realized for years - that Islam needs to adapt itself to the 21st Century and modern notions of human rights.
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