The Islamists, the Mafia, and the Future of the West

The purpose of this blog is promoting self-critical leftism, and this post is written in the spirit that any belief I hold should be subject to criticism, just as I would criticize someone else's views. Here goes.

Ever since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, I have felt fear for the West. Initially, that fear wasn’t very strong since that event turned out to be an outlier for its era, nor could I put into words exactly the fear I felt. But after 9/11 I couldn’t ignore the possibility that the West would fall to Islamists. Why would that happen? For the simple reason that my fellow leftists exhibited - and I now had the words to express my fear - no will whatsoever in dealing with a threat not just to the West, but to the left itself. As the left fell groveling to the floor in their desperate wish to appease the most disgusting of human beings, of people whose values were so far from leftist values, I became alarmed, especially since doing the simple thing – namely, telling leftists how sexist, homophobic, and anti-secular their new allies were - had no effect whatsoever.

Fortunately, the Internet had come along, and I could easily find people who agreed with me. Somewhere along the line I read a column by either Mark Steyn or Jonah Goldberg who pointed out that in a short war one should bet on the side with the better arms, but in a long war one should bet on the side with the greater will. This looked like it would be a long war, and it looked like we had no will while the other side had the strongest of wills. Oh, yes, there were plenty of us who had the will to preserve the West, but we felt dominated at every turn by the liberal leftist control of our media and educational institutions. Accordingly, I believed, and still believe, that the West will be controlled by Islamists by the end of this century. That is a projection and not a prediction, and many things could happen between now and then.

Still, I have to wonder if I haven’t gone a little too far in my pessimism. I want to compare the Islamists with the Mafia, who emerged from an earlier phase of massive immigration into our country. The Mafia made plenty of people (especially small businesspeople) unhappy, but they never took over any city (that I know of), much less the federal government.

Might the same thing happen with the Islamists? They might come to dominate certain regions, but for many Westerners they will simply be invisible, existing in some distant neighborhood, city, or region. I say this partly because of my five-week experience in York, England, earlier this summer. The dominant ethnic group, aside from the native English, was not Pakistanis or any other south Asians, nor was it anyone from the Middle East. No, it was east Asians. Since these were mostly young people, I suspect they were students at one of the local universities. I simply almost never saw anyone who struck me as Muslim. (I think I had been there at least a week before I first noticed a person who was obviously Muslim.) If that’s true in England, which I think of as vastly more Islamicized than America, then maybe we need to re-think my pessimistic projection. Yes, east London is bad, but how about the rest of London? Yes, Malmo in Sweden sounds bad, but how about Stockholm or cities further to the north? Yes, the banlieus of Paris are bad, but how about the city itself?

First, let me suggest the pessimistic projection might still be correct. There are some obvious differences between now and the time when the Mafia emerged in America. Back then, there was a heavy push for assimilation, which has of course disappeared in our own era. There was also no one demanding that we accept these new immigrants, even to the point that we accept the criminal ways of some of them, and the media had no interest in catering to them. Nor did the public schools push everyone to accept new immigrants; instead, the schools forced them to learn English and to listen to patriotic American stories. Today, it is all different, of course, and that is a good reason for pessimism. The will to preserve the West intact is left to the individual, who is given no help by the government, the media, or our schools. Furthermore, it seems rather likely that today’s young people, having heard so often about how wonderful Muslims are, will take that as a strong suggestion that they should convert, after which they won’t feel comfortable merely being moderate Muslims, but will convert all the way to the Islamist variety. The best one can hope for is that someday the elites crafting our policies will find themselves face-to-face with the people they have been championing for so long and will finally realize that they have been supporting the most vicious and most revolting people of our era.

Second, let’s say the Mafia parallel turns out to be the case. Is that any reason to abandon what I am calling the Resistance? Not at all. We simply don’t know which scenario will turn out to be the case, the pessimistic one I have long foreseen or the less abhorrent one of Islamists controlling limited areas only but not our society as a whole. In addition, even having them control some limited areas is abhorrent and should be fought against. We should fight against it in order to protect two groups. One group consists of non-Muslims who live in these areas and who find themselves having to convert or, if they are women, to cover up simply because the men around them are so dangerous that they cannot do otherwise. No one in the West should have to fear this kind of thing. The other group consists of moderate Muslims who don’t like the Islamist variety. There is a tendency among leftists to take only the Islamists as genuine Muslims, even though there are plenty who are quite moderate. (We saw this in Mali, where the Islamist invaders wanted to impose their harsh version on Muslims with much more moderate views.) We need to resist this. I recall that one Muslim woman who had migrated to the West (or had been brought with her family) declared that the Muslims in the West were harsher than the ones back home. The West should be a place of sanctuary for those who experience oppression in other parts of the world. There is just no reason to allow Islamist oppression to exist in the West.

Comments

[John McCrarey]

This pretty much captures my feelings on our lack of will to defend liberal values.

I'm not going to be overly pessimistic in that I hold hope for a great awakening by the American people to the threat we face from those who have made no secret of their intent to dominant the West. We are slow to be aroused to action perhaps, but will fight ferociously when sufficiently provoked.

Of course, I'm older so I doubt I'll be around to see which way it turns out.

[John Pepple]

I am older, too, so I doubt if I will see it. Still, it seems that since I posted this column, it does seem as if some who are left-of-center are waking up to Islam's potential for evil.