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Secular Humanism Hasn’t a Chance in Hell Against Radical Islamism. A Warning from Eurabia.
Last week, three Irish citizens, several Germans, one Portuguese, one Russian, a Belgian and nearly thirty Brits were murdered on the beaches of Tunisia. In France, an Islamic nutcase murdered and beheaded his former boss. In Kuwait, Islamic extremists bombed and killed more than two dozen people and injured many hundreds more. In the Syrian border town of Kobane, ISIS massacred at least 146 civilians. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people (the majority of them Muslims) have died at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Every week, across the globe, exponents of Islamic supremacy murder and maim hundreds. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen; from Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank to ISIS in Northern Syria and Iraq – Islamic extremism is on the march.
The West is in theory fundamentally opposed to this deadly human virus, but in practice frighteningly paralyzed in the face of the greatest threat it’s faced since the end of the Cold War. As religion in the West declined in the latter half of the 20th century, it became impossible for secularized opinion-formers to take religion seriously. Religious belief and its power had little impact on their own hearts and minds, they seemed to think, so why should it matter to others? Their apostasy left them unable to deal with reality: For many people around the world (a growing number, too), religion is not merely for ceremony or funerals, but everything in life — and for some worth taking lives, too.
To their credit, some Western secularists have woken up to this deadly threat, with some calling for a unique response. They have called on Europeans and Americans to create a new Enlightenment, one that espouses secular values alone, to destroy Islamic and religious fundamentalism. The highest-circulation daily paper in Ireland recently featured a letter arguing that the key to defeating ISIS was not bombs but Europeans who espoused the secular values of the Enlightenment: freedom, tolerance, equality, and secularism. That’s my summary in my own words, but note: no religion allowed. It almost made me laugh, it was so naive.
The most famous female apostate from Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled Somalia for tolerant Holland. She lost her faith and became infatuated with Enlightenment philosophers and values. In her book Infidel, she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.” But her views soon got her into trouble in enlightened, secular Holland. For you see, the Dutch elite portray themselves as freedom-lovers, but Ali discovered that when she used her to freedom to criticize Islam, the liberal elite in the Netherlands didn’t want to know. She found out to her cost that they would not protect her, either. This is not a problem of course unique to the Netherlands.
She wasn’t the first in Europe, and sadly she will not be the last. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Geert Wilders, Oriana Fallaci, Kurt Westergaard also discovered that “enlightened” post-Christian Europe wasn’t nearly as friendly to freedom of speech or expression as advertised. Hate-speech laws and the threat of violence now pose an ever-present danger to those who challenge the status quo. Why?
William Kilpatricks, author of the great book, Christianity, Islam and Atheism, suggests a plausible answer:
Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.
This history teacher cannot but agree. The belief that every person has a value and dignity of his/her own, separate from his membership in a tribe or a society or his or her sex, originates in the Judeo-Christian biblical declaration that man is made in the image of God. As many historians familiar with this cultural fact know – this belief does not come from the thinkers of the Enlightenment, which stole this idea and stripped from it its religious foundation. These values too, which entered the world through Christians and Jews, are objectively true no matter how poorly Christians and Jews have failed to live up to them.
William Kilpatrick goes on to say:
“Secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights. Now some secular thinkers today realise this, but some more believe this doesn’t matter. They hold that Enlightenment humanism emerged ex nihilo, or perhaps from spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. Thus, they say, Enlightenment values have no need of God. Yet when confronted, these people can never explain why these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those countries that are most thoroughly post-Christian.”
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America (even if it is weakening, perhaps, by the day) than they are in post-Christian France or Holland or Britain or Germany or Italy or Denmark or Austria or Ireland. Ask Geert Wilders, who is regularly arrested and threatened with jail for speaking his mind and criticizing Islam. He praises the United States for its First Amendment, which Holland and the EU do not have. His countrywoman Hirsi Ali likewise fled to America in fear of her life. Fallaci was driven out of Italy and to the US by Italy’s hate speech laws. The irony of fleeing to a country that many enlightened Europeans regard as backward is not lost on them.
Ironically, Europeans will find more freedom of speech in the Bible-belt of America — loathed by sophisticated, wife-swapping secular Europeans as a land of imbeciles — than in your average European university or public sphere. With their speech codes, hate-speech rules, and habit of banning “controversial” speakers or groups (pro-life, anti-Islam, pro-Israel, conservative, Catholic), European and American universities are among the least free institutions in Western society. In fact rather than being simply post Christian in some cases, they can appear and are anti-Christian.
In the same article, Kilpatricks states, profoundly:
What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith … and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.
So what does that mean for Europe? For its secular values? For its very survival as a centre of freedom and democracy?
It’s becoming increasingly clear to serious believers, as well as to agnostics and atheists capable of serious thought, that it is unlikely a secular Europe – even one that ascribes to a humanistic and enlightened form of secularism — can defeat radical Islam. It’s precisely this secular ideology that produced the spiritual, hedonistic, nihilistic and population vacuum in Europe. In many respects secularism is the cause of its own undoing. By focusing on solely this life and neglecting any possibility of the next, pleasure ultimately becomes the dominant life narrative and avoidance of that which causes he/she to reduce it. Atheists and agnostics have fewer children as they are expensive and time consuming. Europe as a result has to import people to sustain its entitlement-funded economies and do the jobs it will not. The population vacuum is now being filled slowly by Islam and its members across European countries who in no way share these “enlightenment values” but rather their own values.
In a wonderful piece for the Spectator last year (http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8932301/atheism-has-failed-only-religion-can-fight-the-barbarians) the ex Chief Rabbi of the UK – Dr. Jonathon Sacks argued sharply that Post Christian Britain and Europe is facing a tremendous crisis in the making which atheism has little answers too. He pointed out something which this article has tried to say – no society lasts long term without a cohesive religious viewpoint, that without it in the long term societies will wither, decline and waste away. He also whacked at the idea that secularism by itself could defeat the barbarian values of fundamentalism. He then issued this warning line that should people not rediscover their religious values and self confidence that history has shown the other side will not have same qua mes. – “The barbarians win. They always do.”
Having lost their religion, many Europeans are discovering that the very values they once thought precious are being undermined and that there is an unwillingness to fight and die for the protection of post-Christian values. But one religion at present and its followers are more than willing to fight and die for theirs. Europe is heading for a new Dark Ages. Christianity, much-maligned and mocked, will not be there to help us this time. But I hope and pray that we will see sense long before this nightmare scenario takes place.
Published in General
It’s been too long since I was last in France. Amends must be made.
P.S. The exchange rate looks quite good at the moment ;-)
Could Sweden defend itself from a full-on attack by Russia? Of course not. That’s why (for the first time) public support for joining NATO is rising in Sweden.
I believe (but don’t hold me to this) that military spending throughout Europe has dropped more than 10 percent in real terms since 2008. The exception is France, which is (only, but still significantly) down about 4 percent. I can’t see any kind of real commitment to military spending absent economic growth.
Makes you wonder how Hannibal, Julius Caesar, King David, George Washington and Jack Johnson summoned their fighting spirit without siring rugrats. And somehow Howard Hughes, the Wright Brothers, Oprah, and Barry Diller had the fortitude to stir up the marketplace without doing diaper duty.
Do you then see why I doubt Europeans commitment to a long war? Military spending would have to rise and cut into European comfortable welfare state if even only slightly. If I see the will to make that small sacrifice then I could at least start to believe that the people would fight to defend themselves. If they can’t do even that and they were threatened with a real terrorist war in Europe sponsored by States they could not invade I would think that the Europeans would seek to accommodate the enemy buying ten year truces to preserve their comfort and not actually fight to the finish to make sure their culture survived for future generations to enjoy. That is my fear anyway.
American liberals (libertarians, and conservatives) are, however, smart enough to invent technology which will enable us to replace not all but most future land, sea, and air fighters with MechWarriors and other advanced weapons systems.
Liberals (especially Europeans who are still understandably war weary after the 20th century) don’t actually want a cause to die for, they want a cause to live for.
“No dumb bast’*d ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bast’*d die for his country.” — General George S. Patton
What Kind David are you talking about? The two famous king Davids that leap to my mind both had children. George Washington believed in a cause, a glorious cause, and wanted to see it through to the end. Julius Caesar also cared deeply about the cause of his family, over all, and his city Rome. Hannibal had family in mind during his entire war as he sought to avenge his father. Also the people that George Washington led were some of the fertile people on the planet at the time.
I think secular liberals can very much bestir themselves to get rich why do think I wrote or think otherwise? The topic here never even brought up the idea that the liberals we had in view didn’t have what it takes to be rich. We doubt their willingness to really fight when their primary cause is comfort. If you want to be comfortable making money can be important to that. However if you doubt your ability to make a lot of money parasitic welfare states look very attractive to you. As we also see in many, many rich liberals who think that the best way to buy off the masses is through generous welfare benefits. The average man must be made of stern stuff to resist such bribes. I think you have a very hard time reducing the welfare state when comfort and economic security are some of the highest or simply the highest value.
I might argue that those two societies merely traded the religion of “god” with the religion of “state” and thus gave the people in those societies the same intangible thing in which to kill and die for. I think the author here is talking about rabid–if I may use that word–secularism buttressed by nihilism. In our current state, the West has rejected the idea that there is anything worth fighting for or to defend in our society, and that is mostly because of the virulent rejection of Christianity as a bedrock for our culture. Practiced Christianity has become a bigger threat to the secular humanists in the West than Islamism, whether in our own countries or in the form of ISIL, will ever be.
You may be right, but I think we should be cautious about conflating too many variables. Don’t forget that social spending (i.e., the comfortable welfare state) has also been slashed. Defense spending has been cut, but so has spending on health care — by 40 percent in Greece, for example.
Austerity has just been given a rather resounding “Oxi” in Greece. So who knows what will happen next in the rest of the Entity Formerly Known as the Eurozone. We may well see the rise of governments that follow suit in declaring their independence from the so-called austerity straightjacket (or from responsibly paying your debts, depending how you look at it).
Depending what kinds of parties come to power and the degree to which they decide to toss the idea of balancing budgets out the window, we could well see rising defense spending.
But I’d be a fool to venture predictions — we’re now in officially uncharted territory.
Is that phrase under trademark?
It could have been — under the System Formerly Known as The Community Trade Mark. I could have registered it with the Entity Formerly Known as the EU’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market.
Back in the mists of time, when I studied 19thC European history, Greece and the Mediterranean countries were little more than a joke. Somewhere to die, if a poet. Plus ça change…
Heh.
I don’t know why, but right now the idea of Balkan tinderboxes just isn’t bringing on the full-throated chuckles. Anyone else noting that every lunatic in the world has just been shaken loose on social media?
I’m not sure that anyone here is on social media.
I’m not sure what the argument is here.
First off, Europe didn’t have freedom of speech, as we define it, or freedom to “blaspheme” even when it was mostly practicing Christians. Especially when it was mostly practicing Christians!
You’re imposing a uniquely American idea on a continent which never had it to begin with, and claiming that it “lost it” due to secularism. There was never such a thing there (other than to some degree in UK).
Second, I don’t know what this has to do with ISIS or Kuwait or Boko Haram etc. Europe’s problems with Islam stem from immigrants from Arab countries. The solution is to kick them out (I’m not necessarily advocating it). What does Europe have to do with terrorism in Kuwait?
Third, I don’t see what’s the argument for a solution here? Become more Christian? Ok. Go for it. I don’t see how that will change the minds of terrorists in Kuwait, however.
As you point out, Islamic terrorism is a much bigger problem for Islamic countries. Yet their religiosity doesn’t seem to have stopped radical religious fanatics.
If you’re arguing that Christianity is better than Islam, no one will argue against that. But short of trying to convert Islamic countries to Christianity, what’s the argument here?
Terrorism in Africa and the Middle East is “someone else’s problem”. Historically, democracies don’t act until it’s almost too late. The voters generally won’t have it any other way.
Paddy – As someone who constantly re-edits, don’t apologize – excellent post ! As a former liberal “Progressive”, I thought, in a new age sense, all paths lead to the same place. I was turned off by conservative or traditional anything, especially spiritually speaking. I was wrong, about a lot of things. I went kicking and screaming – I was comfortable where I was. I came to realize that God means what He says, and will take the blinders off, but the picture is disconcerting.
We have not learned from history – we are about to repeat. I don’t want to gird my loins – I’m female- do I have loins? I don’t want to believe the teachings of my Christian faith could be coming to pass? We all want more time to ponder.
The mood of each post lately has been serious – alarm bells ringing – in fact the only light story and comments were from: “As If The Last Couple Weeks Haven’t Been Rough Enough” by Robinson – hilarious!
No matter your background, education, or religious persuasion, everyone senses the “other shoe is about to fall”, and is looking through a political, economical, or historical lens trying to make sense. Viewed together, it makes sense where we are morally, economically, spiritually, and militarily since we dumped God’s wisdom for arrogance and greed. Didn’t work for Greece….If you are on the fence, now is the time to seek direction and strength, not through a human lens, but divine.
And that’s generally the right way.
It’s their problem. Let them kill each other all they want.
Claire, an ISIS gunman — not ISIS-inspired — just slaughtered 30 Britons in Tunisia. Last February, having completed sawing-off the heads of 21 Copts on a Libyan beach, these same murderers announced in stentorian terms that they are coming for Rome. Perhaps it’s a matter of time before a dirty bomb or something similarly catastrophic is visited upon Rome, specifically the Vatican.
And a significant percentage of the Muslim world would be jubilant.
Claire I think you underestimate the dissipation in Europe. I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe as well. Most crucially, these are countries whose body politic has almost completely lost any martial virtues. Most especially Germany. Western European societies are effeminate — “I’d rather be red than dead” carries right over to the threat of Islamism (okay, not so much in France). They’re saturated with simple-minded hedonism.
Moreover, I don’t fully buy your analysis from last Januar regarding no-go zones in France. I’ve witnessed enough in Marseilles and elsewhere — way post 2005 — to convince me otherwise. Soeren Kern, your colleague at Gatestone, also marshals copious evidence, much drawn from liberal-left sources, of the reality of Islam dominated zones that police are reluctant to enforce.
Also Manuel Valls has announced that nothing must slow down the growth of Islam in France.
Yeah, unlike us, they don’t go invading countries on a hunch. Seems to me we’re forgetting a little bit about what set this chain of events in motion. Something about some country called Iraq back in 2003. Long time ago. Too long to remember.
Well if you risk your life for journalism and go anyway, you still got to eat, so: voila.
Well it worked out well for some. Why always with the negativism?
That’s possible. Remember that I started from a position of describing the total dissipation of Europe (to use your phrase). After leaving France for ten years and then returning, I felt that any kind of intellectual honestly obliged me to change my opinions about France’s trajectory. France began to take this issue extremely seriously in the early 2000s, and since then, it has very visibly changed course. But I haven’t been back to many of the places I described in that book since then, and wouldn’t want to comment until I had. (I’ve been back to Belgium, although only for a day, and while one day is not enough to form a judgment, my gut said that it was in bad shape.)
That’s fine. No one ever wants to see a Germany enamored of the martial virtues again. Ever.
I’d be very cautious of lumping them all together.
Well, I invite you to come on a tour with them with me. I took Daniel Pipes on a tour directly after the January attacks. The phrase originated with him. After I showed him some of the ZUS areas (the French term for “Sensitive Urban Zones”), he decided that the terminology was incorrect. Seeing these areas might give you a better sense of what they are and aren’t. But we can definitely go to them together (now’s the time to do it, while the euro is low! — or you can wait until the euro’s nonexistent, but no promised about what the franc will do.) Odds are extremely high that we’ll come back alive — which is why I wouldn’t call them “no-go” zones.
That Europe has a cohort of poorly integrated and easily radicalized (or radicalized) Muslims is beyond doubt. No sane person can deny it. But it’s not at all clear that they’re confined to certain geographic areas (in France, at least, not speaking for other countries). The reason that’s important is that to believe this suggests the wrong policy remedies. It’s certainly not true that any law but French law is applied anywhere in territorial in France (again, won’t speak for other countries). But it is true that in some neighborhoods, the police have been severely lax about applying any law at all — the policy for some time was to just let those neighborhoods rot; after all, they didn’t have money and they didn’t vote. This is changing, now, and quickly.
Another thing that’s certainly true is that speech codes and laws, and ambient political correctness, have made it difficult for reporters and the police to do their jobs correctly in many parts of Europe. Each country is quite different (all talk to European unity to the contrary), so both the nature of the problem and the solutions required vary from country to country. My impression from news reports — not from doing my own reporting — is that this has had the most pernicious effect in northern Europe and Britain. In Southern Europe, I don’t think there’s much of a culture of political correctness at all; Italians, for example, just flat-out hate Muslims and say so all the time. Spanish attitudes seem quite different, which may have to do with its history.
But France has changed a lot since I last lived here. For example, it’s banned all face veiling, which in my view was a regrettably necessary measure. That’s changed things. One no longer sees signs of “visible Islamization.” It also began razing foreign-funded and radical mosques, which was a not-regretable and essential measure. What it hasn’t yet done to the degree required is to increase prison terms for those convicted of association with known extremist groups, nor has it augmented its police and domestic surveillance capacity to conduct adequate surveillance of those suspected of association with them. (This is soon to be addressed with new legislation, however.) Part of this is a matter of resource constriction rather than political will — see my earlier comments about austerity budgets.
I think you’re misunderstanding Valls comments: These were made in the context of the policy of stripping all non-French influence from French Islam — in other words, deporting or imprisoning foreign preachers and taking state control of the mosques. Valls is in fact trying to undercut the FN swing-vote with a tough-on-Islam policy. Valls is a pretty sensible politician (he’s the one who said, “I refuse to use the word ‘Islamophobia,” it’s just a term used to invalidate critics of Islamist ideology.”) The politicians who worry me are the gauchistes who are trying to court the swing vote from the other side with a “There’s no problem” policy. But I strongly suspect the PS (Parti Socialiste) is toast in the next election, so I’m not worried about them.
An interesting point is that policies designed to crack down on, lock up, or expel extremist/terrorist/militant Muslims in France are (according to surveys) most popular among Muslims. Many French Muslims, especially refugees from Algeria, are for obvious reasons far more sensitive to the reality that these are exceptionally dangerous people, and not at all inhibited about saying so. The RPR has been quite stupid in failing to court their vote as assiduously as it could, although that’s changing, now, as they see that they’re actually losing their vote not to the socialists but to the National Front.
(Another interesting thing is that many people view the National Front as “anti-Muslim.” Not so. It has two wings, one of which is newly pro-gay-rights, pro-Jew, and very tough in its rhetoric about immigration. The old wing, which may still be larger, is anti-Jew, pro-Muslim, and not-so-tough about immigration — but this is because it finds the concept confusing: It still thinks northern Africa is France.)
Hope that’s helpful. People are right to be worried, and because they’re right, I think it’s important to get the details right.
Marseille is a totally atypical city, although when I wrote about it ten years ago, it was atypical in a good way. The cities that cause me the most concern are ones like Lyon. I’ve been to Perpignan a few times and it’s emphatically not a no-go zone or anything like it (it’s beautiful, in fact, and the food is great), although that’s the region that most worries me.
I’m not kidding when I say, “Come to France and see for yourself.” I don’t know whether that’s something you have the time or budget to do, but there’s so much rhetoric about this issue — a good deal of it based on rumor and some of it in bad faith — that it can be very hard to sort out what’s true and what isn’t. I’d be very happy to visit some of these neighborhoods with you so you can get a sense of what they’re really like.
I am not sure even high technology can replace confidence in your civilization and a will to fight. You might be able to fly a drone from your safe room on campus but if the enemy makes you up your game so that you have to leave your safe room will we summon the courage to do so?
They use those laws against lots of speech in Europe. And lets be honest here, the anti-radical Islam crowd in Europe isn’t exactly likable characters who don’t go looking for provocations. And they get it.
Maybe, pick better spokespersons than Geert Wilder or the neo-Fascists.
I don’t buy that argument for a second.
This is all far from reality. Go look at the numbers of immigrants, and types in European countries. Muslims are a tiny minority, most of whom have integrated quite well.
Sure there’s obvious problems with some, but there’s too much fantasy on this topic floating around the internet.
Much of it blatant lies and fear-mongering (and American audiences who don’t know any better, will swallow it).
What is your specific beef with Geert Wilder? He takes on Islam for what it is.
Every now and again, I come across a piece of writing I want to make sure the whole world reads.
This is one of those columns. Just brilliant. I’m in awe of you Paddy.
I can’t wait to share this.
Points very well taken, Claire. And you’ve allayed some of my concerns and misapprehensions. I’ll gladly take you up on the offer to visit one of those areas. I’m currently living in the Czech Republic and had been planning a visit to Paris sometime in September.
And for whatever it’s worth “dissipation” is Philip Rieff’s phrase/term — whose books I’ve been dipping into every now and then. But perhaps I shouldn’t be reading such pessimistic stuff…
Thank you Tommy although I am not that fond of it myself actually. Way too clunky and not well linked together – I always try to do that. The overall theme gets across but I probably in latter half relied on too much quoting and not enough linking. But thank you again.
We are all our own worst critics. I ran into no potholes here – captivating from start to finish.