[TheMole]

I had to post this one because (a) Melanie Phillips hasn't appeared on FR too often lately and (2) I get excited whenever I read any expression of views that are so close to my own. This article was accompanied in The Spectator by a cartoon/sketch of an Islamic moon shining on a Christian graveyard. I also liked it, but the website's server is soooo sloooooow that I didn't include it. Anyone interested cantry to view it here.

[speedy]

Excellent thoughtful essay. No one on the left would have been capable of writing such a reasoned work. Thanks for posting.

[Niagara]

Saw the cartoon, a picture is worth a thousand words.

[liberallarry]

I think she underestimates Muslims fear and envy of the West as motivation for their hatred. I also thinks she overestimates the decline of the West. Remember that America was held in contempt by the tyrants of the '30s for exactly the same reasons Ms. Phillips enumerates. Remember that our society united and acted in a way others have found to be surprisingly forceful as a result of 9-11. It is our strength that we are so contentious, that our babble of political, religious, and moral dispute is so loud. Not our weakness. The Muslims fear it because their culture cannot survive it.

[Mike Darancette]

Melanie Phillips on how Pim Fortuyn and others hijacked liberal values and provoked a Muslim backlash against liberalism itself.

I cannot see any circumstance where Islam as it is practiced in most of the Islamic world can be other than anathema to Classic Western Liberalism.

However, today's liberalism is nothing but thinly guised socialism that seeks to create constituent groups of "outsiders" in order to gain votes. Groups are promised money and political power for their support against the entrenched powers which is usually white, Christian and perceived in control of ill gotten wealth.

Money and power given to Muslim nations is not used to better the lot of their residents but in the ongoing Islamization of the world through violence.

[Tom Jefferson]

"Even today, the West does not grasp the nature of the threat from militant Islam, the latest chapter in an age-old struggle. But as Samuel Huntington observes in his seminal The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Islam is again on the march; and the threat it poses is hugely enhanced by the decay of the West from within through moral decline, political disunity and cultural suicide."

A brilliant observation. I also don't think the West grasps the nature of the threat from militant Islam. I think the West has been permeated by the moral relevancy and confusion of the left, which will contribute ultimately to the conflict.

I don't have any doubts about the West prevailing in the conflict to come between the West and Islam. I just think that if the West doesn't become present to the seriousness of the threat, we will unnecessarily lose a lot of lives in the conflict.

[wretchard]

Having identified Liberalism as the root of the current catastrophe, Melanie Philips argues that we cleanse this potion of it's contamination and drink more of it. If only we could purge (there's that lovely concept) Liberalism of Libertinism, then the music would play again. She has not considered the alternative: the possibility that Liberalism's foundations may be tainted, and that Libertinism, drugs and moral decay, may be it's inevitable companion and not its avoidable misfortune.

The central postulate of American political thought is the existence of an external truth from which all things flow. Jefferson called it the Creator, leaving to the individual whether to interpret that vague word as God, Reality, or the Universe. Neither the Constitution nor Government granted rights; they merely acknowledged it's pre-existence. While we may not always know what it is, Americans believe, as Mulder puts it, that "the Truth is out there". That leads to a search for Rights and Wrongs and a quest for perfection. We seek El Dorado because we believe it exists.

Liberalism, on the other hand, has swept the stars from the heavens and left man alone on earth under a dark sky. Nothing is sacred to the Liberal, for literally that reason. Liberalism has no cogent argument to offer against Libertinism any more than it can against Islam. Once you have conceded that bestiality and pederasty is acceptable, then what is a flogging and veil, or two?

The struggle against Islam is inseparable from the fight against Liberalism. And necessary too; for if we fail to recover our immortal souls, then we are doomed to perish as animals. For Islam is right in this: that the sword of the West is sharp, but darkness has covered it's eyes. And yet it is wrong in this: that we have no souls and only the hearts of swine beat within our breasts.

They will discover, to their peril, that we have been endowed by our Creater with an immortal spark, which we will defend with grimness and with tears. They will discover, to their surprise, that at the end of it all, we shall show mercy, love and forgiveness. For this too, the Creator endows.

[Map Kernow]

There is a philosophical and spiritual void at the heart of modern Western liberalism called "tolerance." But since cultures as well as nature abhor a vacuum, some absolutist philosophy, like Islam, will eventually fill that void.

[hinckley buzzard]

Very interesting set of reflections. I believe she misses that Islam is less "a religion and culture" than a malignant ideology, and there remains a strong whiff of "see-no-evil" relativism. Good read though, thanks.

[AM2000]

This is really good... and it applies not only to the West, but other cultures where Islam exists as a sizable minority as well... except there the exact nature of the conflict differs, but the existence of a conflict remains the same...

[x]

In Faith and Power, the Muslim Yale academic Lamin Sanneh has written of the Muslim resolve to make Islam count in the public realm: in schools and universities, in marriage, divorce, property, inheritance, taxation, banking and trade — and in enforcing the blasphemy laws in defence of Islam.

Sanneh is actually an African convert from Islam to Christianity. He does bring an important point of view to such discussions, so it's good that Phillips cites him, but really, was it too much to expect that a writer properly identify her sources?

[PaulKersey]

>How the West was lost

Used to be a very funny movie with that title.

[AnalogReigns]

I believe the Western fetish with population control--having such small families, etc, contributes to the influx of immigration--in Europe the vast majority of which is from Islamic countries. Until Europeans (and Americans too) start having more kids... the economic demand will continue to be enourmous for immigration--large economies need workers, even in the lowest strata.

Its fascinating that the Planned Parenthood crowd--warning that our population is out of control--have accelerated the eventual destruction of the West, since really, we're not reproducing enough for our own economies...especially given the large social burden of the welfare state...