Anti-anti-Islamic radicalism is growing among Western elites. In the aftermath of the Fort Hood Islamist terror attack on our troops by United States Army Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, and the Christmas Day airline Islamist terror attack attempt, it is becoming ever more obvious that there is a widening gap between public common sense and governing class idiocy when it comes to spotting Islamist danger in our midst - and doing something about it.
Against all evidence, it has become an idee fixe in the collective mind of European and American governments, academe, journalism and foreign policy establishments that radical Muslims in the West are the victims of Western bigotry and cultural hostility - rather than, primarily, the other way round. Dangerously, these attitudes continue to shape both the premises and procedures of government policies even after nine years of post-September 11 evidence to the contrary. The slaughtered American troops at Fort Hood are just among the early few in what will surely become whole legions of the dead victims of political correctness - if the public does not soon succeed at overruling the Western governing elite's unconscionable moral blindness to the malign danger in our midst.
This willful refusal to look Islamist/Western reality straight on is epitomized by a series of recent articles that mostly sneer at even a discussion of the threat. As one of the constantly named authors of recent books (along with Mark Steyn, Oriana Fallaci, Bernard Lewis, Bruce Bawer, Bat Ye'or and Christopher Caldwell) that are alleged to be guilty of seeing evidence of an Islamist cultural (as well as terrorist) threat to the West, I thought it might be time to respond.
Among other articles that criticize me and the other named authors are: "A Eurabian Civil War," by British Independent columnist Johann Hari; "Why Fears of a Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong" in Newsweek by William Underhill; "Eurabian Follies" in Foreign Policy magazine by former French Foreign Ministry official Justin Vaisse; and "Eurabia Debunked" in Commentary magazine online, by (the always polite and thoughtful - an exception to the rule) Max Boot.
My contribution to the oeuvre of radical Islamist alarmism was my 2005 book, The West's Last Chance, which, by the way, predicted the terrorist attack in London, Muslim riots in Paris, worldwide violent Muslim reaction to blasphemous Western artistic representations and the emergence of growing acquiescence to Shariah law in the West.
It is hard to know whether the authors (and the majority elite opinion they represent) don't get it, or don't want to get it. For example, on the question of whether Europe could become increasingly culturally dominated by Islam as the 21st century unfolds, all the articles question the demographic projections (which, in my and some other books, are official United Nations data). The authors make the triumphant case that it will be generations, if then, before Islam is a majority in Europe (which is also what I conclude in my book).
What they choose to ignore is the already obviously powerful impact of even very small numbers of determined people in a host country riddled with guilt and political correctness. The dead at Fort Hood are a testament to radical Islam's success already at inducing the U.S. Army to treat an obviously dangerous Muslim officer preferentially. His conduct - if by a Christian, Jew or atheist - surely would have been stopped well before the slaughter started.
More dangerous is the (simplistic and obvious) self-satisfied assertion that we are unduly alarmed of a danger from radical Muslims in the West because it is a "myth [that there exists] a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action. The truth is that there are no powerful Muslim political movements in Europe, either continent-wide or at the national level, and the divisions that separate Muslims world wide, most obviously between Sunnis and Shi'ites, are apparent in Europe as well." (Newsweek, July 11, 2009, William Underhill.)
Neither I, nor to the best of my knowledge any of the other criticized authors, have asserted that a caliphate, or anything like it, was likely to reemerge. The already present danger - which will only expand if not checked - is a constant cultural intrusion that will change adversely the very nature of our way of life.
Radical Islam doesn't have to win elections (or even win street riots) if they win by intimidation the policies and conduct they seek. For example, as I warned in my book (and came about in the Danish cartoon event a few years ago), the threat of radical Muslim violence succeeded in coercing all but two American newspapers, and most European newspapers from exercising their free speech and press right to publish the Danish cartoons.
In fact just a few weeks ago, the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard was attacked in his home by a Somali Muslim aroused by the alleged blasphemy. Shockingly, most European journalistic commentary argued that western writers and artists should, for prudence sake, abstain from such expression.
But it is worse than imprudent for Americans (or Europeans) to give up freedoms and ways of life that have been defended for centuries by the martial sacrifice of our ancestors (and current warriors) - and by the intellectual courage of our writers and artists - just because our morally feeble, self-proclaimed "educated class" and elites have lost the will to defend our civilization.
As the American people arise to take back our government and our property this November, we should also seek out candidates who are not afraid to oppose such threats to our way of life.
Tony Blankley is the author of American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington.