Times have changed. Now Newsweek is not only thin in size and coverage, it is very, very lacking in weight, particularly intellectual weight. It is, however, long, indeed, very, very long on politically correct opinions of dubious intellectual honesty or robust factual undergirding. As an example of this, one might consider the magazine's treatment of what it is pleased to call the "Myth of Eurabia." Written by William Underhill, a staff hack who has penned articles on such diverse subjects as mosquitoes, Prince Charles, the Labor Party's difficulties, and the race for the so called "god particle," the piece portrays any and all who have voiced alarm at developments in Europe, pointing to the Muslim minority gaining an undue influence on the region's political, social and cultural structures, as a crew of paranoic scaremongers.
Nothing in Mr Underhill's string book indicates that he has any special qualifications to write on the complex subject of the Muslim impact on European politics, society, and culture to say nothing of the longer term implications of their growing and increasingly strident numbers in the European states. This in no way deters him from pushing a multi-cultural agenda with the intent of both reassuring the reader and demonising all who have found cause for concern in the Muslim penetration of Europe from the UK to the depths of the former Warsaw Pact.
Mr Underhill starts off by branding those who warn of the emerging Islamist threat to ancient European cultural values, social norms, political institutions, and world view as being "far right." The use of the term "far right" as the broad tar brush is as common, intellectually bankrupt, and ethically objectionable as was the use of the phrase "red-baiter" against anyone who spoke against Soviet espionage and subversion efforts a half-century ago.
(Let the record show that during the long, dark days of the most frigid Cold War, Newsweek did not stoop to the loathsome practice of name calling. The editors in those days let such reprehensible practices reside with the minions of Luce-world.)
Let us grant that Mr Underhill is correct when he avers Muslims will not be a majority of the Western European population in the next half-century even though that is a debatable proposition. Let us further grant Mr Underhill's undocumented and undocumentable contention that most Muslims are quite happy with the extant European social norms, cultural values, and political processes and institutions.
Even with these concessions, Mr Underhill's main point--Muslims are dear, sweet, harmless and ever-so-likable, and somewhat exotic friends and neighbors--is subject to the Scots verdict, at the very best. His second major conclusion, that any who do not share his view of Muslims are members of a pointy-headed, bigoted, knuckle-dragging assemblages of racists, Islamophobes, and fascists is totally unproven.
Those who warned of the threat to Europe posed by Adolph Hitler and similar national socialists long before German re-armament and renunciation of the Verseilles Treaty made it patent were right. Those who saw a threat to Europe and the Western World in Stalin's ambitions were right no matter how often they were dismissed as "red baiting right wingers." Twice within living memory the accurate Cassandra's have been dismissed as the loonie fringe only to be proven right.
Mr Underhill has made a choice. On the basis of little evidence and much wishful thinking and politically correct celebration of multi-culturalism, he has concluded that the Islamic population of Europe is a pure blessing to that old, tired continent. He has determined on the same basis that there is nothing happening in Europe today or in the near future which should concern, let alone worry Americans. With a sweeping certainty he dismisses all who have seen a potential threat contained in the Muslims of Europe, not only to those states but the US as well, as being a bunch of myth-making scaremongers of the worst, most racist sort.
Mr Underhill has taken a dangerous position. He has taken one which is difficult, if not impossible to maintain in the face of the realities of Islam and Islamism.
While there are peaceful Muslims in numbers which defy counting, Islam qua Islam is not peaceful. It is a warrior's religion. It is a religion without limits either as to its territorial sway or the means employed to gain the fullest possible expansion of its domination.
Islam is a religion in which there is no firebreak between the sacred and the profane, between mosque and state, between public and the private. One of the major appeals of Islam to converts as well as those born to the faith is the emphasis on community, a global community which has only in the past thirty years become aware of its strength, numbers, and global reach. As a result, the ever more extensive demands of the Islamist has grown in stridency--and influence.
Mr Underhill fails to note that there have been no organised, large scale protests by Muslims in Europe (or anywhere) against the bloody excesses of the Islamist jihadists. This lack of public opposition to the most revolting tactics of the "martyrdom seekers" speaks volumes to the willingness of Muslims generally to accept and tacitly approve of any and all efforts by their more militant coreligionists to seize and hold power. As an alternative explanation of Muslim silence, it might be posited that the observant Muslim has been terrorised into submission by the threats and acts of his Islamist jihadist brethren.
In either case, Mr Underhill's argument that Muslims are so fractured and fragmented that they can not serve as an effective political force is vitiated. If Muslims resident in France, Germany, or the UK cannot and do not publicly express total, absolute disapprobation of Islamist actions, then there exists a de facto community coherence which protects and potentiates the activities of the most extreme within the Muslim community.
Even in the immediate aftermath of 7/7 and the Madrid bombings, the denunciations coming from what might best be termed "public Muslims" were strangely redolent of the pro forma, the formulaic. They were mere genuflections before the alter of outraged majority opinion of a purely and obviously self-protective nature. This is not to gainsay the contention that there were individual Muslims who were shocked by the attacks and reprobated their having occurred as well as those who carried them out, but rather to indicate the community as a community never disavowed the acts and the actors, the sin and the sinners, if you like.
Mr Underhill, as is the case with so many of the American and European intelligensia, the "useful idiots" as Lenin termed them, fails to parse properly between the attitudes of the European (and American) elite and the hoi polloi of both continents. Mr Underhill partakes fully of the typical elite disdain for the great unwashed of the general population, the people who do not write for major media outlets or pontificate at conferences of learned academics or rub elbows comfortably with the elect in the halls of power.
As elections including the recent one for members of the European Parliament indicate, there is a great and growing gulf between the world views of the elite and the hoi polloi. Increasingly, the hoi polloi are not content to keep their mouths shut in the presence of their "betters," to keep their place, keep their mouths shut, and follow the leaders.
In the minds of the elite (and Mr Underhill), nationalism is dead and should be buried. The age of multi-culturalism is upon the world and should be welcomed by all proper minded people. The hoi polloi obviously do not agree.
The voices from the bottom are being heard to the discomfort of Mr Underhill and the elite generally. There is an irony here. Back in the years right after World War II the French broke their arms patting themselves on the back for having suddenly discovered the voices of the heaving masses of the people previously unheard by historians.
The French and later the historians and intellectuals of all Europe and the US engaged in orgies of self-congratulations for giving long overdue credit to the perspicacity and sagacity of the working classes; the women of field, factory and kitchen; the privates huddling in the trenches. The true voice of the people these intellectuals assured each other and the rest of us were the valid source of history, of the collective wisdom of the folk.
Now, the voices are in the present, in the political and not the safe reaches of the past. Because the wisdom, the perspacacity, the sagacity of the hoi polloi does not meet the desires, expectations, or exhortations of the elite, the people are no longer fountainheads of understanding. Now they are the tools of the "far right." Now they are the misguided fools of nationalism and cultural stolditity.
The elite, Mr Underhill in specific, may sputter and pour soothing syrup but they may be the fools. Perhaps it would be best if the elite listened instead of tut-tutting. Heed instead of assuming it has both the capacity and right to lead.
