In Eurabian Nights Daniel Pipes explores three possible eventual outcomes that may result from the disproportionate increase in the Muslim population of Europe:

THE MOST critical issue facing Europe is the long-term relationship between the continent’s natives and its burgeoning Muslim minority. There are but three outcomes—Islamic takeover, Muslim expulsion or harmonious integration—and the end result has profound implications not only for Europe but for humanity as a whole.
[..]

The rest at The National Interest.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips, who spoke in Sydney on Wednesday, has an editorial in The Australian today – “Do not appease hatred”:

It is only if we act against the ideology that is spreading falsehood and hatred, and stop its advance under the umbrella of minority rights, that we have any chance of defending the free world. That means – while showing respect to Muslims who derive only spiritual sustenance from their faith – reasserting Western values and resisting any attempt to subvert them. It also means facing down in public the lies spread about the West.

Only if we stop deluding ourselves and take such action necessary for our survival will we stop sleepwalking to defeat.

Drug and human trafficking in Kosovo and Albania:

[..]
As far as Albania is concerned “We do not talk in kilos any more but in tonnes of drugs,” a senior Western diplomat in Tirana told Irish Times in July of 2006.

“Albania is like a big drugs warehouse,” the diplomat concluded.

Statistics speak for themselves: 19,500 Kosovo Albanians are clogging German jails for selling drugs; 2,500 Kosovo Albanians are in Swiss jail for selling drugs; Hungarian anti-mafia chief Djerd Hološi says Albanians control 80% of Hungarian drugs; Czech’s attribute 70% of drug distribution to Kosovo Albanians… the Azuri coast in Spain is controlled by Kosovo Albanian Mafia…

The Franchises

The village of Veliki Trnovac was once all Christian when a family of Muslim Albanians were sold a Serb property to and by now, the village has no recollection of ever being Christian, other then dilapidated church stones no Muslim Albanian pays any attention to.

With an armed Muslim Albanian force of 15,000, Veliki Trnovac is a fortress, impossible to enter unless a sustained military campaign is organized in order to bust the drug warehouses that are spread across the village. Serbian military is under orders not to enter the village to take down the Albanian drug lords because the West will interpret this law enforcement action as an ethnic attack against Albanians.

Some say that Veliki Trnovac is protected by Western political correctness, but whatever the case, the Muslim drug entrepreneurs of Veliki Trnovac have, in the true spirit of capitalist labor division, split their activities along the clan lines: the Fis, or Muslim Albanian clans that run the heroin trade are Osmani, Halili and Bunjako while human traffic, especially the lucrative sex slavery of women, is run by Albanian Muslim fis of Morina and Keljemendi.
[..]
“Albanian mafia is essentially what we can loosely call the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) although it now goes by various names,” writes Gregory Copley from the Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis. “KLA exists, and is able to access much of its narcotic product, because of its close interrelationship with jihadist movements and foreign state sponsors,” writes Copley.

Europol Annual Report for 2005 similarly states that the Albanian organized crime is related to the Islamic terrorism where the Brussells based “Bureau also cooperated in other operations, investigating the dismantling of OC groups that are known for suspicious financial transactions, Albanian organised crime, producing synthetic drugs and related to Islamic terrorism.”
[..]

And lets not forget the weapons. The rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy by leftist nutjobs in Greece in January arrived in Greece via Kosovo:

Kosovo link to embassy strike

The missile fired at the US Embassy by Revolutionary Struggle last month reached Greece via Kosovo, police sources told Kathimerini yesterday in what authorities believe is a breakthrough in their investigation.

Greek and US security agents have discovered that the rocket-propelled grenade was removed from an army warehouse in Albania in 1994 and taken to Kosovo, where it came into the possession of an arms smuggler.

Authorities believe that the arms trader held on to the weapon until 2001 and they are investigating his contacts and dealings in the hope they will find out who smuggled the rocket into Greece.

A high-ranking police source said that officers had contacted foreign security services to obtain more information and they hope their investigation will develop further this week.

No member of Revolutionary Struggle, the leftist group which claimed the embassy attack, has been caught since the organization became active in 2003.

A new paper published today, by the now infamous Raphael Israeli:

• The aftermath of World War II brought about an acute shortage of manpower in Europe. Former colonies, where manpower was available that required relatively limited cultural adaptation, became the plentiful sources for unskilled laborers who would replenish the dwindling pool of workers in Europe.
• These workers constructed Muslim communities in certain localities throughout Europe, where their numbers created local majorities that no candidate for elective office could ignore. The growth of these communities required the construction of mosques and Muslim cultural centers, some of which grew into secret lodges of subversion, incitement, and recruitment of radical youth.
• Muslim communities have imported the Middle Eastern conflict into their host countries, with attending acts of violence and unbridled anti-Semitism toward local Jewish communities which had otherwise lived peacefully except during the Holocaust interregnum.
• Some European Muslim leaders make no secret of their intent to change Europe to their tune, not to adapt to it. They demand their own school systems, in their own native languages, financed by the host state and, in the long run, to its own detriment.
• European countries have adopted multiculturalism, and increasingly multilingualism, as an imposed reality whereby they have abdicated their role to absorb the newcomers and integrate them into the existing systems, and instead let the immigrants dictate their own visions of “integration,” which means in effect separatism, secession, or an eventual takeover when demography had run its course.
• There are already areas in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain where Muslim children constitute the majority of the school population. In addition, there are a growing numbers of converts to Islam in major European countries such as France and Britain – 50,000 in each in the past decade.

Read the whole thing.

‘Secular Muslims’ in the US are holding a “Secular Islam Summit”, with guests from around the world:

NEW YORK, Feb 27 (KUNA) – The first ever “Secular Islam Summit,” to be convened in St. Petersburg, Florida, on March 4-5, will bring together hundreds of thinkers and activists worldwide to counter the voices of reactionary Islam which have been speaking on behalf of all Muslims, the organizers of the event said late Monday.

About 500 people from all over the world are expected to attend, including speakers and government guests from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Europe, Canada and the US. Iranian Banafsheh Zand, one of the organizers, told KUNA that people in Islamic countries were taken into the “dark ages by the politicization of Islam.” “An age of reformation is upon us that needs desperately to be responded to by people who embrace not only the faith as a personal and private matter, but who also wish to see their countries and nations move forward in a progressive and prosperous way to catch up with the 21st century,” she added.

[..]

Another organizer Austin Dacey also told KUNA that the most important thing for participants is the hope that this Summit will be the “beginning of a coherent cross-culture movement for secularism in Islamic societies.” “There are countless individuals who are standing up for critical reasoning and freedom of conscience and secular values, but until now there really hasn’t been a global movement that brings them together as a force for change, ” he argued.

He explained that the “forces of reactionary Islam have their own global networks, which are very well established and well funded. These secular Muslims hope to do the same.” “We do think it is important that these alternative voices from the Muslim World are heard by policy makers and government officials in the US,” he stressed.

In Germany ex-Muslims have formed a “Central Council of ex-Muslims in Germany”:

An Iranian human rights activist living in Germany has formed a “Central Council of ex-Muslims in Germany” with 40 others and has received anonymous death threats after declaring she wants to help people to leave the religion if they so desire.

Iranian-born Mina Ahadi, 50, said she set up the group to highlight the difficulties of renouncing the Islamic faith which she believes to be misogynist. She wants the group to form a counterweight to Muslim organisations that she says don’t adequately represent Germany’s secular-minded Muslim immigrants.

[..]

SPIEGEL: Together with 29 other immigrants from Muslim countries you have declared that you have renounced Islam. The campaign is similar to one launched in the 1970s by women who declared publicly that they had had abortions. What is your purpose?

Ahadi: I haven’t been a Muslim for 30 years. I’m also critical of Islam in Germany and of the way the German government deals with the issue of Islam. Many Muslim organisations like the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD) or Milli Görüs engage in politics or interfere in people’s everyday lives. They were invited to the conference on Islam (hosted by the government in Berlin last year). But their aims are hostile to women and to people in general.”

[..]

SPIEGEL: Won’t your campaign just harden the battle lines?

Ahadi: I don’t think it’s possible to modernize Islam. We want to form a counterweight to the Muslim organisations. The fact that we’re doing this under police protection shows how necessary our initiative is.

Seems like the first lot believe that you can modernise Islam. Guess we’ll wait and see who’s right. At the moment there is place and a need for both movements.

UPDATE (1/2): Sugiero has more on the new German movement. (via LGF)

Mark Stein seems to think he knows what the Norwegians are doing in Afghanistan:

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means “fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don’t have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones”. That’s to say, Norway is “participating” in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are “not sufficiently trained to take part in combat”, they’ve been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their “soldiers” be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there’s no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any.

No, Mark. Their mission is something far more sinister. Oh, they are trained alright. Here’s the real reason why the Norwegians are stationed two provinces away from the Americans:

“We never really know what happens after we go. Tough luck for Kosovo.
Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania. Its Euro and Nato, why the hell did we go…
We’ll kick their ass and then we’ll see how it goes… and then, we really don’t know – that sucks for Kosovo.”

Or Creating Ghettos for Dummies.

Pure comedy gold this article is, start to finish:

[..] But the country’s real building boom began in the 60s. The year was 1964 and a general election was looming. Housing remained a hot topic; the economy was good, people were moving from the countryside to the city and local authorities desperately wanted more homes to attract new industry.

In their manifesto, the Social Democrats vowed to build 100,000 new homes every year for ten years – the foundations for the Million Homes Programme were laid.

“In 1962 and 1963, almost 100,000 apartments were built each year,” [Lisbeth Söderqvist, a Stockholm University researcher and expert on the Million Homes Programme.] says. [..] new towns were being manufactured across the country, with concentrations largely in big city outskirts. New, modern living for good democratic citizens was the message. “These homes were built for everyone, not just poor people,” says Söderqvist.

“There were apartments, family dwellings and terraced houses and the idea was to blend different people from different backgrounds. By doing so you would have a society that was stable and a society without conflict.”

Integration was key, and this was to be achieved by including a good range of local services in the planning – transport, schools, nurseries, community centres, libraries and public space.

“People started to move and everyone was happy,” Söderqvist says. “It was an expression of the welfare state that people had a modern functional home, with three rooms and a kitchen.”

But the bubble soon burst when academics unexpectedly started to point to the problems they saw. The press and politicians soon jumped on the bandwagon. A big new shopping centre in Skärholmen in 1968 caused unprecedented uprising.

“For the left-wing commentators, this kind of commercialism was a disaster,” Söderqvist says. “It was said there was nothing to do in Skärholmen but shopping.”

Hey, I can imagine their horror. Good democratic citizens should be busy integrating, not shopping. What kind of a monster have you created here?!

Oh, it gets better:

The end of the honeymoon

The Skärholmen debate opened the floodgates for further criticism of the Million Homes Programme. In the seventies, liberal thinkers poured their scorn and the right-wing press took up the campaign, portraying the areas with disturbing images of social deprivation. The suburbs’ reputations declined as a result and residents started packing their boxes. [Leaving Paradise on account of a right-wing smeer campaign? Must be a social status thing.]

But the political and media crusades weren’t the only cause of decline, Söderqvist says:

“In the early 70s there was a change in the tax system, making it much cheaper to buy a house.” Private developers were rubbing their hands and the exodus began. [Hey, I could have warned you - the way towards a Socialist utopia does not lie through the Valley of Low Taxes. ]

“At the same time there was an influx of immigrants coming here,” Söderqvist adds. “They moved into the newly-emptied apartments and even more Swedes started to move out.”
[The "good democratic citizens" lost their zest for integration after their descent into bourgeois shopping mall hell, no doubt.]

Nowadays, these places are largely viewed as immigrant ghettos. “What is tragic is they are used as a symbol in the segregation debate in Sweden,” Söderqvist says. Ironically, it seems, the once celebrated housing project, which aimed to integrate the nation, has only served to fuel a divided society.

The extent of the decline in these areas became a political embarrassment during the 90s, with employment rates going down and criminality and drug use on the up. It was time for the Social Democrats to renew their promises.

The answer was to pour more money into areas in bad repair, with the intention of improving not just the physical but also the social fabric of the estates. The two billion kronor Metropolitan Development Initiative (Storstadssatsningen) began in 1998, aiming to improve educational standards and reduce unemployment among immigrants. By doing so, the state believed social segregation could be better fought.

[..]

Can you possibly guess whatever happened next?

Many of the programme’s successes turned out to be double-edged swords: the majority of those who did manage to gain employment moved out, only to be replaced by a new wave of immigrants.

Let me guess – another right-wing smeer compaign to damage the reputation of this Glorious Oasis of the Proletariat? And just when you thought that this couldn’t get any better:

Another of the programme’s aims was to make these urban concrete jungles more aesthetically pleasing with a lick of paint, new plants and playgrounds. Planners also made some interesting architectural modifications, says Lisbeth Söderqvist.

“Instead of having a straight path, they made it curvy,” she says. “It looks nice of course but it won’t break segregation. No Swedish family will move in just because there’s a curvy path.”

Yep, its one of “dont-know-whether-to-laugh-or-to-cry” articles. And on and on it goes, in complete Pleasantville seriousness, thick with unintended irony.

Absolutely oblivious to reality and in complete denial of what is going on in their country the Swedes march on down the path towards extinction. But hey, at least the path is curvy!

From the Persian Journal:

Time and again we are told by the politically correct “experts” not to worry about Islam posing a threat to our way of life. We are repeatedly lectured that only a very small minority of Muslims are troublemakers who are giving the peaceful masses of Muslims a bad name. We are also informed that the terrorists, who happened to be Muslims, are the disaffected and the young. And not to worry, since as the fire of youth turns to ashes of old age the rebellious will mellow, as they always have.

With heavy assurances like this, coming from so many know-it-all authoritative figures, we can sleep soundly without the aid of sleeping pills. After all, people reason that these pundits are “experts” whose job is to know and tell it like it is. Those who voice contrary views must be a bunch of racist, alarmist hate mongers. Who is right?

[..]

Read the rest.

From the Manilla Times last week:

When nations stop breeding
by Dan Mariano

HERBERT MEYER was the first senior official of the US government to predict the disintegration of the Soviet Union. For this feat he was awarded the US National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the highest honor in the American intelligence community. Under President Ronald Reagan, Meyer served as special assistant of the Director of Central Intelligence and vice-chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Meyer later parlayed his record as one of America’s top intelligence analysts into a career as a consultant and writer. He has authored several books; his views are highly regarded by conservative American businessmen. He was also an associate editor of Fortune magazine.

In a recent article—titled “What in the world is going on? A global intelligence briefing for CEO’s,”—Meyer tackles four major transformations that, taken individually or in combination, will produce radical changes on how to do business worldwide. These transformations arise from the war in Iraq, the emergence of China, shifting demographics of Western civilization and the restructuring of American business.

Each of these developments will give rise to monumental changes, but it is Meyer’s discussion of shifting demographic patterns in the US, Europe, Japan and elsewhere that drew this column’s keenest interest. His forecasts in the area of population seem to have the greatest relevance to countries like the Philippines.

[..]

Meyer’s discussion of “shifting demographic pattern” drew the keenest interest around here also. I haven’t been able to find the original source where Meyer’s essay appeared, although you can find a few articles by him on American Thinker (“An open letter to Europe” is good for a laugh!). On the blogs where the essay has appeared in the last couple of weeks, people mentioned getting it by email, so it seems to have gone viral. Herbert Meyer has also been briefing CEOs about “What in the world is going on?” at least since August 2005 and a number of things in the essay hint at a mid-2005 writing date. For example the statement that other than the US only China is putting money into its military ignores developments in Russia (and a number of small players) and the assertion that Lebanon is moving in the right direction does not match current reality, although it would have matched the apparent reality post Cedar Revolution in March 2005. The section on demographics has not lost any relevance however. You can read the whole essay here, I’ll post just the sections from Meyer’s essay that relate to demographics:

FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS

A GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING FOR CEOS

HERBERT MEYER

Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business owners, our culture and our way of life.

1. The War in Iraq
[..]
2. The Emergence of China
[..]
3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization

Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy.

When you don’t have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them. The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don’t support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.

The huge design flaw in the post-modern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don’t wish to have children, so they are dying.

In Japan, the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe, they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.

Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world’s major economic engines, aren’t merely in recession, they’re shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is economic. When the birth rate drops below replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regards to having families and raising children.

The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the “elder dependency” ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe, but still represents the same kind of trend.

Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That’s how a society works, but the post-modern secular state seems to h.ave forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same. as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.

The world’s most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the work force, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids, which was a huge consumer market that turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today’s dollars would cost $12,000 per child.

China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, many families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When left alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.

The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen [TOD: Yemen's population is now about 21 million, but the birthrate is 7 children per woman. Interestingly the population is evenly split between Sunni and Shia. The projection for Russia in 2050 is 100 million]. Russia has one-sixth of the earth’s land surface and much of its oil. You can’t control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, you have China with 70 million unmarried men – a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.

4. Restructuring of American Business
[..]

IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS

3. Demographics

Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.

In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer. Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies.

The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them.

This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society. When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.

The European economy is beginning to fracture. The Euro is down. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe, they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti- Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down.

In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts:

• Possible massive sell-off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.

• An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures.

• An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.

Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.

Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.

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.

An extract from Francis Fukuyama’s essay on identity and integration in the European context, from this month’s Prospect magazine:

Modern liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation. But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are

[..] Whatever its exact causes, Europe’s failure to better integrate its Muslims is a ticking time bomb that has already contributed to terrorism. It is bound to provoke a sharper backlash from populist groups, and may even threaten European democracy itself. Resolution of this problem will require a two-pronged approach, involving changes in behaviour by immigrant minorities and their descendants as well as by members of the dominant national communities.

The first prong of the solution is to recognise that the old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, and that it needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences—and in some cases out of imperial guilt—it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members. Liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral, since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives.

Multiculturalism, as it was originally conceived in Canada, the US and Europe, was in some sense a “game at the end of history.” That is, cultural diversity was seen as a kind of ornament to liberal pluralism that would provide ethnic food, colourful dress and traces of distinctive historical traditions to societies often seen as numbingly conformist and homogeneous. Cultural diversity was something to be practised largely in the private sphere, where it would not lead to any serious violations of individual rights or otherwise challenge the essentially liberal social order. Where it did intrude into the public sphere, as in the case of language policy in Quebec, the deviation from liberal principle was seen by the dominant community more as an irritant than as a fundamental threat to liberal democracy itself.

By contrast, some contemporary Muslim communities are making demands for group rights that simply cannot be squared with liberal principles of individual equality. These demands include special exemptions from the family law that applies to everyone else in the society, the right to exclude non-Muslims from certain types of public events, or the right to challenge free speech in the name of religious offence (as with the Danish cartoons incident). In some more extreme cases, Muslim communities have even expressed ambitions to challenge the secular character of the political order as a whole. These types of group rights clearly intrude on the rights of other individuals in the society and push cultural autonomy well beyond the private sphere.

[..]The other prong of the solution to the problem of Muslim integration concerns the expectations and behaviour of the majority communities in Europe. National identity continues to be understood and experienced in ways that sometimes make it a barrier for newcomers who do not share the ethnicity and religious background of the native-born. National identity has always been socially constructed; it revolves around history, symbols, heroes and the stories that a community tells about itself. This sense of attachment to a place and a history should not be rubbed out, but it should be made as open as possible to new citizens. In some countries, notably Germany, 20th-century history has made it awkward to discuss national identity, but this is a dialogue that needs to be reopened in the light of Europe’s new diversity—for if existing citizens do not sufficiently value their national citizenship, then European countries can scarcely expect newcomers to value it either.

And that dialogue is being reopened. A few years ago, Germany’s Christian Democrats gingerly floated the idea of Leitkultur—the notion that German citizenship entails certain obligations to observe standards of tolerance and equal respect. The term Leitkultur—which can be translated as a “guiding” or “reference culture”—was invented in 1998 by Bassam Tibi, a German academic of Syrian origin, precisely as a non-ethnic, universalist conception of citizenship that would open up national identity to non-ethnic Germans. Despite these origins, the idea was immediately denounced by the left as racist and a throwback to Germany’s unhappy past, and the Christian Democrats quickly distanced themselves from it. But in the past few years, even Germany has had a much more robust public debate about national identity and mass immigration. During last year’s successful soccer World Cup, the widespread expression of moderate national feeling became completely normal, and was even welcomed by Germany’s neighbours.

Despite its very different starting point, America may have something to teach Europeans here as they attempt to construct post-ethnic forms of national citizenship and belonging. American life is full of quasi-religious ceremonies and rituals meant to celebrate the country’s democratic political institutions: flag-raising ceremonies, the naturalisation oath, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. Europeans, by contrast, have largely deritualised their political lives. Europeans tend to be cynical or dismissive of American displays of patriotism. But such ceremonies are important in the assimilation of new immigrants.

[..] Britain has recently been borrowing from both American and French traditions as it seeks to raise the visibility of national citizenship. The Labour government has introduced citizenship ceremonies for new citizens as well as compulsory citizenship and language tests. It has also started citizenship classes in schools for all young citizens. Britain has experienced a sharp rise in immigration in recent years, much of it from the new member states of the EU such as Poland, and—in imitation of the US—the government sees immigration as a key part of its relative economic dynamism. Immigrants are welcome so long as they work rather than draw welfare and, thanks to US-style flexible labour markets, there are plenty of low-skill jobs to take. But in much of the rest of Europe, a combination of inflexible work rules and generous benefits means that immigrants come in search not of work but of welfare. Many Europeans claim that the less generous welfare state in the US robs the poor of dignity. But the opposite is true: dignity comes through work and the contributions one makes through one’s labour to the larger society. In several Muslim communities in Europe, as much as half the population subsists on welfare, directly contributing to the sense of alienation and hopelessness.

[..] The dilemma of immigration and identity ultimately converges with the larger problem of the valuelessness of postmodernity. The rise of relativism has made it harder for postmodern people to assert positive values and therefore the kinds of shared beliefs that they demand of migrants as a condition for citizenship. Postmodern elites, particularly those in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation and have arrived at a superior place. But aside from their celebration of endless diversity and tolerance, postmodern people find it difficult to agree on the substance of the good life to which they aspire in common.

Immigration forces upon us in a particularly acute way discussion of the question “Who are we?”, posed by Samuel Huntington. If postmodern societies are to move towards a more serious discussion of identity, they will need to uncover those positive virtues that define what it means to be a member of the wider society. If they do not, they may be overwhelmed by people who are more sure about who they are.