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Must Europeans debate with Muslims the truth of Islam?
The Somalian-born Dutch parliamentarian Hirsi Ali supports the Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of Muhammad and thereby enraged Muslims around the world. Even though the cartoons are of the most genial and harmless character (no “Piss Christ” or smeared elephant dung here), any image of Muhammad’s face, even the most anodyne, is forbidden by Islam. Of course the newspaper is right to take this stand, and the Danish prime minister is right in refusing to meet with ambassadors from Muslim countries to discuss the issue. It seems that, as George W. Bush has said, there really are some liberal values that are non-negotiable. At the same time, I have questions about Ali’s approach to this matter. She writes:
It’s necessary to taunt Muslims on their relationship with Mohammed, because otherwise we will never have the dialogue we need to establish with Muslims on the most central question: Do you really feel that the prophet Mohammed is completely infallible, and that every Muslim in Europe in 2005 should follow the way of life the prophet had 1400 years ago, as the Koran dictates? The provocation is necessary to spark the debate.Is there not something disturbing in Ali’s assumption that Europeans should debate with Muslims the essentials of the Islamic faith? Is this not a question that Muslims should be discussing with each other, rather than involving non-Muslims in the process? Why get us to the dirty work? Also, why didn’t Ali simply say that the lesson for Muslims in this affair is that they must accept the ways of a free society including newspaper cartoons, rather than saying that this is an opportunity to have a grand debate on the truth of Islam? The answer is that Ali has her own agenda, which is to reform and de-sacralize Islam. She knows that such an effort would get nowhere in the Muslim world, but she hopes it may meet with some success in Europe, because, for one thing, most Europeans don’t believe in Islam to begin with, and, for another thing, non-Muslims will not automatically be labeled apostates and sentenced to death (as Ali herself has been) for questioning the Islamic faith. And so, if I may bring my own chief concern into this discussion, as a result of Muslim immigration, not only does the West receive all these unassimilable and hostile Muslims plus a tiny handful of moderates and apostates such as Ali, but those moderates and apostates assign the West the task of being the healer and reformer of Islam! I do not blame Ali for wanting the West to do this. My point is that once the West admits lots of Muslims, the West perforce becomes responsible for fixing all the ills of Muslims which Muslims cannot fix themselves. For example, European countries now provide hiding places and refuges for Western Muslim girls and women fleeing forced marriages or honor killings. Islam is a vast cauldron of sacralized disorder, created by Muhammad and his followers between the 7th and 9th centuries, and unable to change. Yet we of the West are now supposed to change it.
I respect Hirsi Ali for her courage. But her expectation that Europeans should get in a big debate with Muslims about what is wrong with the Islamic religion, and even about whether the Islamic religion is true or not, is yet further proof that significant numbers of Muslims do not belong in any Western country, period. What we can and must do is defend ourselves from Islam, first, by publicly declaring, both to ourselves and to the Muslims, the real truth about Islam insofar as it affects us, namely that it is a mortal danger to us; second, by ceasing all Muslim immigration into the West; and, third, by initiating a steady out-migration of Muslims from the West. Email entry |