Continueing on the theme of Francis Fukuyama’s essay I posted yesterday, there is quite an interesting ongoing debate on the issue of Multiculturalism and Muslim integration (or lack thereof) in Europe on signandsight.com (a site that “gathers voices from across Europe on a variety of topics, aiming to foster trans-European debates and the creation of a European public space”):

Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Are the rights of the group higher than those of the individual? With a fiery polemic against Ian Buruma’s “Murder in Amsterdam” and Timothy Garton Ash’s review of this book in the New York Review of Books, Pascal Bruckner has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek and Paul Cliteur have all stepped into the ring.

The departure point for the debate is the book “Murder in Amsterdam” by Ian Buruma about the murder of Theo Van Gogh and a review of it by “English journalist and academic” Timothy Garton Ash. In the book Ian Buruma voices his disagreement with Ayaan Hirsi Ali over her persistant criticism of Islam and Garton Ash, who Bruckner calls “the apostle of multiculturalism” and Bruce Bawer recently termed “official-expert-on-Europe”, then goes on to call her an Enlightenment fundamentalist.

The first installment by Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the subject of much debate and media attention this week, as her new book “Infidel” was released on Tuesday, concluding:

It is astonishing that 62 years after the fall of the Third Reich and 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment Europe’s intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy. They maintain it is best to cede and retreat, and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet we are a long way off the dramatic circumstances of the 1930s, when the best minds threw themselves into the arms of Berlin or Moscow in the name of race, class or the Revolution. Today the threat is more diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing that resembles the formidable peril of the Third Reich. Even the government of Mullahs in Tehran is a paper tiger that could be brought to its knees with a minimum dose of rigour. Nevertheless the preachers of panic abound. Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today’s directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!

Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash fire back with weak replies about “tolerance for cultural diversity” (Ash), because “a free-spirited citizen does not tolerate different customs or cultures because he thinks they are wonderful, but because he believes in freedom.” (Buruma).

After that comes the good part. First comes the Turkish German author Necla Kelek’s excellent response to Buruma, then Paul Cliteur takes on multiculturalism and relativism:

[..] Think of the principle of free speech. The answer of postmodern cultural relativism is: refrain from criticism. Be reticent to comment on unfamiliar religions. Let reform come from within and avoid provocation and polarization.

[..] What remains a mystery is why many intelligent people stick to the postmodern frame of mind, even though so many intelligent writers - Terry Eagleton and John Searle, to name just two - have thoroughly deconstructed its tenets. I think this has to do with the postmodernist conviction that an attitude that they see as relativistic and pragmatic would help in the struggle against religious terrorism. They hope that, if we abstain from radical criticism of the terrorist mindset, we can pacify the most radical elements.

[..] Buruma thinks he knows why terrorists hate Van Gogh, Ellian, and Hirsi Ali: because religious terrorists have a conflict with “radical Enlightenment.” Buruma and many other postmodernists labor under the delusion that once we reject radical Enlightenment, and thereby radical critique of religion and provocation, we can pacify the terrorists.

There is a final reply from Buruma, which is barely worth mentioning, following by some links to further articles relating to the discussion, including Fukuyama’s article and reviews of Hirsi Ali’s book.

I’d add to this collection Bruce Bawers review of Tony Judt’s (the other “official-expert-on-Europe”) book “Postwar”, a history of Europe after world war II from the Winter 2007 issue of the Hudson Review:

Judt knows a great deal about how Europe renewed itself after being devastated by one totalitarian ideology and how it survived the nearly half-century-long domination of its eastern half by another totalitarian ideology. Today Europe confronts a third totalitarian ideology. In two world wars, it committed suicide; now it’s doing so again—and this time it may not rise from the ashes. Yet Judt either can’t accept it or won’t admit it. He’s not alone, of course: most of today’s academic “Europe experts” are utterly useless on this subject. Some don’t even dare mention the elephant in the room. Predictably, Judt concludes that the real problem here is “Islamophobia” (this is one word he doesn’t put in scare quotes) and the rise of “far-right,” “anti-immigrant” parties.4 For all his flagrant denial of reality, however, one is still astonished to see him conclude on a note of sheer fantasy, insisting, in his closing sentences,
on Europe’s right “to offer the world some modest advice” on how to live and suggesting that “the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe.” More likely, Europe will by the end of the century belong, in whole or in part, to the Islamic world, and will be governed, in whole or in part, according to sharia law. Yes, this disaster may yet be averted; but only if people like Judt—that is to say, the teachers, professors, politicians, writers, artists, and journalists who shape government agendas and public attitudes—summon the courage to face difficult challenges and speak uncomfortable truths before it’s too late.

I’ll round the post of with one more article that draws on material from both Bruce Bawer and Ayaan Hirsi Al - “Appeasement takes hold again in Europe”, by Paul Sheehan, from Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Faced with the rising tide of bomb attacks, plots, threats, demands and belligerent victimology from a violent, ignorant and sexually repressive subculture, the centre of European civilisation appears to be doing exactly what it did the last time blackshirts were on the march in Europe - appeasing, denying and capitulating.