Freedom and its Foes

At the end of his dissection and critique of Islam as a form of religious fascism, Why I Am Not A Muslim, Ibn Warraq returns to the theme of the "betrayal of the intellectuals" with which the book begins. Concentrating on what he sees as the undermining of confidence in Western secular values by certain Western intellectuals, he discusses the problem of the self-denigration that is so widespread in the Western world. The left in particular tends to be unpatriotic, and Ibn Warraq quotes Richard Rorty, who distinguishes between a pluralism that aims to create a "community of communities", and a left-inspired multiculturalism that "is turning into the attempt to keep these communities at odds with one another." "At any rate," Ibn Warraq writes, I am convinced that despite all the shortcomings of Western liberal democracy, it is far more preferable to the authoritarian, mind-numbing certitudes of Islamic theocracy." He quotes Karl Popper:

One must fight those who make so many young people unhappy by telling them that we live in a terrible world, in a kind of capitalist hell. The truth is that we live in a wonderful world, in a beautiful world, and in an astonishingly free and open society. Of course it is fashionable, it is expected, and it is almost demanded from a Western intellectual to say the opposite.

And Judith Miller:

Islamic militancy presents the West with a paradox. While liberals speak of the need for diversity with equality, Islamists see this as a sign of weakness. Liberalism tends not to teach its proponents to fight effectively. What is needed, rather, is almost a contradiction in terms: a liberal militancy, or a militant liberalism that is unapologetic and unabashed.

And Ibn Warraq concludes his book with a paragraph which I believe is worthy of sustained reflection at the present time:

The West needs to be serious about democracy, and should eschew policies that compromise principles for short-term gains at home and abroad. The rise of fascism and racism in the West is proof that not everyone in the West is enamored of democracy. Therefore, the final battle will not necessarily be between Islam and the West, but between those who value freedom and those who do not (my emphasis).

I have dwelt on these excerpts from Ibn Warraq's thought-provoking book because they seem to me to have a direct relevance to discussions and debates that are taking place right now in many parts of the West, in both online and offline media and forums, on the subject of the West and its position in the war on terror. For some time now, the author Robert Spencer has been maintaining a website called Dhimmi Watch, where he most laudably seeks to expose the workings of "dhimmitude" -- the denial of equality of rights and dignity which remains part of the Sharia and is "part of the legal superstructure that global jihadists are laboring to restore everywhere in the Islamic world, and wish ultimately to impose on the entire human race." While Spencer offers valuable insights into the structure and dynamics of Islamic society, showing how tenets of the Islamic religion are translated into actual practical policy by jihadists and other extreme right-wing forces in the Muslim world, he also considers it his duty to draw attention to the ways in which militant Islam impacts on the societies of the West, as it seeks to influence and erode their legal and constitutional basis. He is particularly at pains to illustrate, chronicle and document the folly of many Western liberal and left wing publications, commentators and political figures in their dealings with Islam and its presence in their countries, and the area of his concern stretches beyond North America to the continent of Europe, where he perceives the most blatant forms of and expressions of dhimmitude.

Spencer is certainly not alone in pointing to Europe as the theatre in which the forces of militant Islam perform the most acute enactment of their hostility to the ideas, values and practices of Western civilisation, and where the contradictions of the liberal-left wing policies of multiculturalism reach their most glaring intensity. The Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci grew up in Fascist Italy during Mussolini's dictatorship, developed an interest in power and the ways in which it is abused, and largely because of her father (an underground resistance leader) and her activities in the resistance movement, she also gained the sense that abuses of power can be challenged and resisted and even overcome. For a long time she was a part of the political Left in Italy, but after the events of September 11 2001 she wrote a powerful book, The Rage And The Pride, in which she examined the threat posed to the West by Islam. The book's publication caused her to be ostracized by many of the left, who accused her of intolerance, hatred and religious racism, among other things. Yet Fallaci has stuck to her position, which is really that in the twenty-first century the West faces a threat from Islam analogous to that which in the twentieth century it faced from Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Bravely, she has recently published a second book on this subject, La Forza Della Ragione (The Force of Reason), where the West's - and especially Western Europe's - failure to prevent its own liberal and democratic principles and institutions from being hijacked by an intolerant and despotic religious ideology is excoriated even further.

However, Fallaci writes above all as a European. When she lashes out at the governments of France or Britain, at the liberal left's anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, she does so as someone who has a deep and personal knowledge of what it means to be a European - she is acutely conscious of the traumas of Europe's past, and her passionate denunciation of so much of Europe's social and cultural failure is inspired by an equivalent love of the societies and cultures of Europe. It is her pain in the face of the moral and political confusion of "Eurabia" - the term she borrows from the renowned historian of Islam Bat Ye'Or, but which first appeared in public view as the title of a journal founded to promote European-Arab relations in the mid 1970s - that impels her, and the foundation of her post 9/11 writing is not hatred, but love.

I wish it were possible to say the same about some of the writing that is published on Robert Spencer's website. What tends to happen there is that a deep tension is created between America and Europe. One often has the feeling that the extensive and severely harsh criticism of Europeans and their governments is inspired by a hatred, not a love, of Europe. Most recently an article has appeared, written by Hugh Fitzgerald, called Douce France, which paints an almost universally negative and denunciatory picture of modern French society and culture. I've already commented on this article at Eurabian Times, but I would like to draw readers' attention to it once again here, and particularly to the way in which, under the pretext of criticizing the French "elite", it apparently damns a whole culture and a whole people - even children - in a mocking tone, as though it represented some kind of Other: in Buber's terms, not a "Thou" but an "It":

At the end of the school day, chic mothers still congregate in little towns, or small cities, outside the school – this or that Ecole Jules Ferry -- waiting to pick up their children. Here come the littlest ones, from Maternelle, running up now -- just look at how small they are. And here are the CE1 group, with those huge cartables on their tiny backs. Run, run, run, to Mommy. Oop-la. And then the years of study, study, study marked by ever-larger cahiers -- "cahier" and "cartable" are the words that identify French DNA better than Piaf or gauloises, isn't that true? And now we will read the books, and study the subjects, set down so completely and precisely by the Ministry of Education. And now we are up to the final year, preparing for the Bac, with copies of blue-backed BALISES, guides to Les Châtiments and La Peau de Chagrin. And just look at the results listed in the newspaper: Claire-Alix has a mention très bien. Fantastic. Everything is fine, everything will always stay the same, whole countries cannot change. It’s not possible.

I would submit that this kind of "criticism" does more harm than good, as it is directed not against mistaken ideas or policies, but against human beings themselves. It attacks the very notion of human solidarity in the face of evil.

While it's true that there are many in Europe who even refuse to admit that there is a war to be fought, it's no by no means all who think this way. And America needs to work with the forces in Europe that do see the true situation. As Oriana Fallaci points out in La Forza Della Ragione, in order to win this war, America needs Europe -it is ultimately European values that are under threat, not - per se - American ones. Europe is indeed "Eurabianized", just as Europe was once heavily infiltrated by Communism, but that doesn't mean that there aren't forces in Europe - and especially in "enlightened", "rational" Europe - that can rise to the counterattack. But this is a cultural and ideological standoff - and it's ultimately ideas and values, not political propaganda, that will win the day.