It’s assumed by most western liberals that it’s only fundamentalist Muslims who lash out at western culture or get angry about criticism of Islam, and that mainstream Muslims are fine with cartoons of Allah or women in short skirts.
Both right and left liberals believe that Muslims can be successfully assimilated into western culture and that this is the best way of protecting western society from Muslim militancy.
The two sides only differ in approach.
Left liberals pursue a softly-softly diplomatic strategy which seeks to appease older Muslims through a pro-Muslim foreign policy while slowing enticing young Muslims into western liberal ways through the power of consumerism and liberal education. They believe that if right liberal “hot-heads” like Dutchman Geert Wilders can be shut up then eventually the fundamentalist Muslims will mellow out and turn into semi-western moderates who’ll respect women and homosexuals and support western values like freedom of speech.
Conversely, right liberals want a more overt approach which forces Muslims to swear allegiance to western values, and puts pressure on nationalistic Islamic regimes such as Iran and Libya to desist from anti-western policies.
However, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to support the idea that “moderate” Muslims are a lot more tolerant of western values than fundamentalists, so moderating fundamentalist Muslims probably won’t turn them pro-western liberals
For a long time in the West we’ve had fundamentalist Christian minorities, like the Brethren and Mormons that are clearly more tolerant of mainstream western values than many so-called moderate Muslims.
If western religious fundamentalists acted the same way Muslim fundamentalists did, we’d see Mennonites burning cars in Washington and Exclusive Brethren burning effigies of liberal leaders in Canberra and Wellington.
Furthermore, as Samuel Huntington pointed out, the Iranian Muslims seen on television burning effigies of Salmon Rushdie or US presidents aren’t necessarily backward, fundamentalist Muslims – many are educated, moderate Muslims who don’t wish to live alongside western liberalism, but want to replace it with a modern, internationalist Islam.
While modern, “moderate” Islam may be less extreme than the Islamic fundamentalism of radical traditionalists like the Taleban, it’s still strongly anti-Western. Islamic moderates may be more progressive and egalitarian than fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Sudan, but they still support religious interference in politics, commerce, law and scientific research and have little respect for western notions of free speech (if they did they wouldn’t be so touchy about a few cartoons in a Danish newspaper).
The most worrying aspect of modern Islam though, isn’t so much it’s cultural incompatibility with western values as its aggressive internationalism.
Echoing the dangerous “grow or die’” ideology of radical-liberal communism, modern Islam seeks to spread itself around the globe, undermine long established cultures and knock over rival ideologies.
If moderate Muslims were particularists, with little interest in spreading Islamic views to non-Islamic countries, than you wouldn’t see so many Muslims around the globe protesting about ‘anti-Islamic’ events in far-off countries like Israel and Denmark. Since the native Danes for example, aren’t Muslims, they have no obligation to respect Allah in there own country. Only if Danes travel to Muslim countries and insult Allah do Muslims have a right to complain.
Modern liberalism is also an aggressive, internationalist ideology and there’s a danger that further liberal attempts to integrate Muslims into western society will only make Muslims more globalist and therefore more determined to undermine their host nations and network with Muslims in other countries to oppose western interests.
As a globalist ideology Islam also has the potential to be much more dangerous than communism, since communism was a secular ideology that fell out of favour when it was unable to provide inspiring real-world examples of its over-hyped potential.
Rather than ambitiously attempting to assimilate Muslims in a liberal manner, some European New Right thinkers believe Muslim immigrants should actually be supported in their efforts to remain culturally distinct. In their view, Muslims should be encouraged to built their own mosques, live in distinct areas if they chose to, set up there own schools and follow their own customs where practical.
That way the host populace doesn’t need to seriously compromise it’s own culture to appease the Muslims, and the Muslims immigrants are taught to appreciate the thinking behind particularist polices such as immigration restrictionism.
Since liberalism also preaches equality and materialism, and reduces traditional religion to a mere lifestyle accessory, semi-westernised immigrants who are unable to compete economically are likely to blame their hosts for their NAM (non-economically assimilated minority) status and seek solace in a globalist ideology/religion. Conversely, immigrants who are able to remain culturally distinct will be less inclined to directly compare themselves with their hosts in narrowly material terms and so will have less reason to want to undermine the host culture.
Instead of seeing a war between liberalism and Islam, the European New Right sees a war between particularism and globalism in which modern Islam and post-war western liberalism are both threats that need to be contained by strengthening sovereign states and opposing globalist NGOs.
There are however a couple of areas where it is difficult to argue with the assertive assimilation approach of right liberals like Wilders. These are language and freedom of speech.
Without freedom of speech particularists will not be able to get there message across, and there will be no way to contain either Islam or liberalism’s excesses.
If Muslims living in western countries find such free speech offensive then too bad.
Similarly, all immigrants, Muslim or otherwise, should have to learn to speak the language of their host nation. It simply isn’t possible for a modern nation to function if a significant percentage of the population is unable to speech the dominant language.
People who can’t speak English in English-Speaking countries for example, can’t understand the law and culture of the country in which they live, and can only work in a limited range of jobs within there own ethnic clique. This makes them a liability to both themselves and their host country.
Posted by mikecourtman 