FORUM
Europe
empowers Muslim reactionaries
The
West must find its confidence and insist newcomers fit into its core
consciousness.
(
…) “Two fundamental conditions need to be met for any chance of
peace or security to remain in our globalized century of mass
migrations. European and American societies have to regain confidence
in their deepest self (not merely in their free market or political
principles) and immigrants to the West need to recognize the flaws of
their own cultures. The first requires that Western societies
reaffirm their identity-forming traditions and insist that newcomers
incorporate them as a core consciousness. The second requires
newcomers to have the cultural humility to do so.”
By MELIK KAYLAN
4/1/16, 5:30 AM CET
As we struggle to
stem the wave of Islamist horror sweeping the world, we know that the
vast majority of Muslims in Western societies are not terrorists or
sympathizers. We know that alienating them will only create more
grievances for militants to exploit, and that an ideal democratic
society is one in which people of all faiths rub shoulders in peace.
These are
unexceptionable propositions, surely — self-evidently humane and
aligned with Western principles. They appeal to our better nature and
require that we ourselves remain decent and tolerant, unlike the
Trumps and Le Pens of this world.
But does anyone
truly believe that holding such a position will halt the onslaught of
jihadist violence abroad and at home? Those, like Tariq Ramadan, who
argue that the solution lies in the West — because the cause
apparently does too — have got the problem back-to-front.
As the violence
spreads across continents, what we are witnessing is a meltdown of
the Islamic universe. Populations in Africa are as much in the
cross-hairs as those of India, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. The
victims may be diverse but the culprits are of one affiliation. To
say that the West’s bloody missteps abroad, the slaughter of
Muslims in Iraq, and decades of support for dictators in Islamic
countries constitute the original sin is not entirely false — the
West certainly has a lot to answer for. But blaming the West
conclusively means believing in an alternate and very unlikely
scenario: that Islam was going to create stable democratic states on
its own.
* * *
The West introduced
democracy to Islam. Political enlightenment in the Islamic world
first became apparent in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat
(Reform) period of 1837 to 1878 under the tutelage, first, of
Frenchmen and the ideals of their revolution, and later of Western
powers. Minorities, including homosexuals, acquired rights during
that time. At every step, reformists were thwarted by the popular
will and by opportunistic populists who saw the changes, rightly, as
inspired from without.
Some 150 years
later, the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections in Egypt. Just
recently, President Erdoğan deplored the Western response to his
moves to silence the Turkish press. And just 10 years ago, Syria’s
Bashar Al-Assad funneled droves of jihadis into Iraq to thwart
President Bush’s forcible attempt to sow the seeds of stable
democracy in the region. Neither the West’s Gulf allies nor its
enemies wanted any such thing for obvious reasons: It threatened the
foundations of their absolutist power structures.
President
Bush’s ill-conceived, badly planned, badly executed nation-building
adventure in Iraq suffered above all from criminal ignorance.
So let’s be clear.
The West didn’t invent despots in the region. The tradition
predates Western influence, one strongman dynasty has replaced
another for centuries — and always with a great deal of popular
momentum backing its strong Islamic leaders. Now, the winds of
globalization blow those despotic spores everywhere.
President Bush’s
ill-conceived, badly planned, badly executed nation-building
adventure in Iraq suffered above all from the besetting American sin
of criminal ignorance abroad — ignorance of cultural conditions and
regional forces opposing liberal democracy on the ground.
Centuries of
despotism can evolve toward the light but not easily, not suddenly
and not without a wholesale change in ideas. Bush’s airy
Rousseau-esque notions — that everywhere man is born free and will
be free if you just inspire the urge — ignores the simple fact that
politics is rooted in culture and history.
The Western liberal
belief that, given a chance, all Muslim migrants will embrace Western
political ideals makes the same Panglossian error. Why do we expect
host countries to succeed in convincing them that women have a right
to equal treatment, especially when liberal thinking in Europe and
the U.S. urges immigrants to hold fast to their own cultures?
Citizens of Muslim
countries like Turkey who have fought the reactionary currents in
their societies for decades resent this delusional drift in the West.
They have been lectured and criticized de haut en bas by Europe for
their secular elitism. They feel abandoned.
Europe had the
chance to accept Turkey into the fold when its population still
espoused Kemalist pro-Western principles. It is too little too late
for today’s re-Islamicized Turkey to be grudgingly allowed open
visas into the EU. Some Europeans will feel their bias toward Turks
confirmed. Educated Turks will look at the Le Pens and Orbáns —
and feel their own prejudices vindicated. What did the EU expect,
when it can’t safeguard its values at home and fails to reward
supporters of those values abroad?
* * *
Molenbeek and other
Islamized neighborhoods in Europe have become fortresses of
separatism. And the influence of those neighborhoods is not easily
contained. There’s sufficient evidence to believe that the
lackadaisical approach to undigested multiculturalism backfires
repeatedly. It could all end catastrophically at any moment.
This is not alarmist
speech for the sake of inciting hostility between communities. This
is hard-headed survival thinking at the eleventh hour. If it takes
only a handful of perpetrators, a minority within a minority, to
obliterate the majority a large number of lives at a time, then our
calculations must change. And we must scale the political impasse
that keeps us from acting decisively.
Windy rhetoric has
lost all meaning after the Paris attacks, let alone after Brussels.
If the West wants to retain the liberal principles that attract so
many outsiders, it must vouchsafe its own existence first.
Once
the West starts taking itself — and its predicament —
seriously, others will too.
The tragedy of these
terrorist attacks is not only the death count of innocents, or the
divisions created between host and immigrant citizens. It is also the
derailing of the West’s sense of direction, of its history and
values. If that geography of tolerance and opportunity ceases to
exist, the West will resemble any other power bloc of dubious
stability or well-being. There’s a reason why migrants are not
making a beeline for Russia, China or Africa. Imagine the world
without the heartbeat of Western principles at its center: Immigrants
would find no safe haven.
Two fundamental
conditions need to be met for any chance of peace or security to
remain in our globalized century of mass migrations. European and
American societies have to regain confidence in their deepest self
(not merely in their free market or political principles) and
immigrants to the West need to recognize the flaws of their own
cultures. The first requires that Western societies reaffirm their
identity-forming traditions and insist that newcomers incorporate
them as a core consciousness. The second requires newcomers to have
the cultural humility to do so.
The
West’s deepest self — its sense of rooted history and
site-specific tradition, of intellectual achievement from Plato to
Orwell — must re-emerge vigorously if outsiders are to have
anything to which to assimilate.
Equally, followers
of Trump and Le Pen cannot expect immigrant communities to emulate
them if they merely embody rampant consumerism and yahoo gun-culture.
Placing Christian ideals at the center of the national tradition is
not the worst thing — Christian principles built the Western world
— but it must be the higher, broader Christianity of cathedrals and
poetry and science and Renaissance painters, not of reality shows or
that brand of cheap diversity that equates dead white men from
Shakespeare to Einstein with oppression and invites all newcomers to
keep their culture so long as they chase money and consume as
impartially as the next guy.
There is still, but
only just, such a thing as becoming American or European in the
deepest sense. Once the West starts taking itself — and its
predicament — seriously, others will too.
Melik Kaylan is a
foreign affairs columnist for Forbes.com and co-author of “The
Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War” (Encounter Books, 2014).
Authors:
Melik Kaylan
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