Douglas Murray on what to do about Islam

One of the speakers at the recent Pim Fortuyn Memorial conference held in the Hague was Douglas Murray. I don’t know anything about him except that he’s English, or, rather, British. Melanie Phillips discusses him here. The speech is a curious mixture of neoconservatism and (just when I was about to give up on him) a different kind of conservatism. I will go through the speech and provide my unfolding reactions to it as they come to me. The below comments should be seen as notes rather than as a finished article, though I hope the ideas I present are reasonably coherent.

Murray starts off with many points I don’t like because I’ve seen the same points turn to mush so many times. For example, he takes the stance of the hard-eyed realist looking at a reality most people want to evade. We’re in a war, an unprecedented kind of war, and most Westerners don’t want to face the fact. But then he describes his own position as neoconservative: the reform of the entire Muslim world!

My position—the neoconservative position—on the solution is rooted in the supposition that the answer to the problem of Islam and the West does not lie only at home. I—and neoconservatives in general—hold that the answer to the current crisis in Islamic-Western relations lies not only in a realistic tackling of our domestic crisis, but in a putting onto the right track of the fundamental problems of the Islamic world—the reasons, after all, why so many Muslims come to the West in the first place. Foremost among those reasons are the fact that (with the exceptions of the fledgling democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan) their own historical lands are presently run by despots, crackpots and crime-syndicate families. Until the Middle East and other Islamic lands have a greater measure of freedom, the West can barely be surprised that even fairly hardline Islamists will continue to be desperate to join the welfare-wagon in the West.

I mention this because I believe that to even begin addressing the problems of Islam and the West we must recognise that in today’s world it simply is not possible for countries to exist in a bubble. Let’s knock that fantasy on the head right away. Our fate—as we were reminded on September 11th—is fundamentally intertwined with that of failed states, tyrannical states and rogue states. When a single plane ride can take you from Amsterdam to Baghdad or a mobile telephone help you to arrange an event in a country you never visit, only the most foolish person could continue to believe in isolationism.

When he speaks of people living in a bubble, he’s speaking of course of the left. The irrational left that hates the West and so refuses to acknowledge that we have dangerous enemies. But simply being more rational and patriotic than the irrational and treasonous left does not mean that Murray’s position is correct or corresponds with reality.

Then there’s another strange element in Murray’s speech that one runs into over and over with neoconservatives and Bush supporters. He speaks of the “war” we’re in as though we were actually fighting a war:

I also mention this international angle because in talking about the battle we are currently in—the first stage of a war which the Pentagon and others are now looking at as a 30-year conflict.

But what war are we in? We’re in Iraq, trying to get out. We’re treading water in Afghanistan. Where is there a war? What is the goal of this war? Murray may want us to be in a war, but I don’t think we are in one. We’re in a vast confusion.

Just the other week I heard a talk by historian and U.S. Army Reservist Joseph Skelly, who similarly was very gung-ho about “the war,” but as he got further into his speech he more or less admitted that we’re not fighting a war. Our men in Iraq want to fight and defeat the enemy, he says; but their superiors won’t let them. So we’re not really in a war, are we? There is this schizoid quality in war supporters which is not their own fault but that of our leaders who use big rhetoric but don’t mean it.

Murray then segues into the usual attacks on the treasonous left, the left that doesn’t believe we even have the moral right to defend ourselves. Ok, every sentient person knows this. The left is treasonous. But good policy cannot be arrived at by merely reacting against the treasonous left, and that’s where “conservatives” have been for the last five years. Like Mark Steyn, Murray finds various examples of how the left weakens any attempt by the West to deal with domestic terror supporters and others. Fine. But the same question goes to Murray that goes to Steyn: Let’s say the treasonous and dhimmi left were not there. What would we then be doing about Islam? What would our “war” consist of? Even more demoralizing, Murray approvingly quotes the point from Steyn’s atrocious article, “It’s the demography, stupid,” that the Islam problem is merely a symptom of our own leftism.

“We’re losing this war,” Murray continues. Again, this implies that we’re in a war. But what war is that? This is the unreality that hangs over all neoconservative discussions. There’s this constant complaint about the weakness the left imposes on us, and a call to some unspecified strength. But let’s say we were strong. What we do with our strength?

Then he comes to the ultimate neocon truth of the universe:

The most public losses in this war are being created by people at home who are non-Muslims. And these are the people against whom we should be most on the attack—the people who are transforming the actions of minor jihadists into undreamed of successes. It is only because such people have made the body as a whole weak that radical Islam is having the effect that it is now having on Europe. [Italics added

The left is our real problem. Islam is only a secondary problem. Islam is just an “opportunistic infection,” as Steyn said and Murray quotes him. Murray continues:

So it is worth reminding ourselves of the basics of the problem. No European country’s Muslim population is currently higher than 10%—which ordinarily would be alright—not ideal, but alright. What makes it a problem is not only that native European birth-rates are falling, but that Western relativists are acting as a megaphone for the Muslim minority, making the volume of that minority exponentially greater and more threatening. This megaphone effect—the unequal power which Islam currently wields, and the power it will increasingly wield as it grows, courtesy of immigration and higher than average European Muslim birth-rates—is cause for great worry.

So, Murray is fine with a 10 percent Muslim population in Western countries. It’s only the left that makes this huge Muslim presence seem like a problem. So we don’t have to oppose Muslims. We just have to oppose the left.

That, at least is the logic of the article up to this point. As I’m reading it, I feel I know Murray inside out, because I’ve seen the same games being played so many times. But then Murray departs from the Steyn paradigm and surprises me:

It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. … [Italics added.] Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed. And of course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the West (not just the country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the West or Western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin.

He continues:

Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe—after all—no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don’t have a mosque to go to, then they’ll just have to realise that they aren’t owed one.

This is good. Ordinary neoconservatives have never said as much. Stopping immigration, kicking out terror supporters, and being unfriendly toward the Muslims who remain is a great start. But it’s not enough. The next step is to start pressuring the ones who remain to leave.

He ends like this:

And we must become absolutist—absolutist in defence of our societies, our traditions, our heritage, culture, freedoms and democracies. There is only one way to destroy relativism, and there is only one way to conquer the rise of Islamic militancy and that is to be uncompromising and absolutist. If people want certainty then let us give it to them here. Ignorant people will still say, “Ah, but I’m not sure what European culture is”. Well that’s their fault, not the fault of European culture.

Many people of an older generation tell me that Europe is lost, that there is nothing we can do to save it. I do not believe that, and I think this may be a generational thing. After all, it is people of my age who will have to put up with an Islamic or dhimmi Europe. We do not want that, and so we must come up with solutions to stop it coming about. If we do not do so now, some awful Le Pen like figure will try to deal with it badly and far more bloodily down the line. Let us act now so that that does not happen.

This is good. But it’s still ambiguous because of his mix of neoconservatism and realistic conservatism. He wants to put pressure on Muslims in Europe. Great. That’s realistic and tough. But at the same time he talks about reforming the entire Muslim world, which is simply an impossibility. Let me quote him again on that point:

I—and neoconservatives in general—hold that the answer to the current crisis in Islamic-Western relations lies not only in a realistic tackling of our domestic crisis, but in a putting onto the right track of the fundamental problems of the Islamic world—the reasons, after all, why so many Muslims come to the West in the first place. [Italics added.] Foremost among those reasons are the fact that … their own historical lands are presently run by despots, crackpots and crime-syndicate families. Until the Middle East and other Islamic lands have a greater measure of freedom, the West can barely be surprised that even fairly hardline Islamists will continue to be desperate to join the welfare-wagon in the West.

This means that for us to be safe, we must get involved in every Muslim hell-hole on earth and change it so that it can sustain consensual government. Can’t be done! Not as long as those countries are Islamic. But the fantasy that we can transform Muslim societies in this manner will lead us to dissipate all the tough-minded, absolutist energies Murray wants us to exercise against Muslims in the West. How can we totally exclude new Muslim immigrants and keep Muslims who are already in the West at arms length, as he urges, while we are simultaneously telling all the Muslims in the world that they are capable of becoming, and must become, liberal democrats like us, a process that treats the Muslims as our ideological brothers and immerses us in endless Panglossian illusions about the nature of Islam?

Murray is thus divided between mutually incompatible paradigms—he wants us to be tough-minded patriots and utopian liberals at the same time. But, unlike the neocons in whose company he puts himself, he is at least somewhat realistic about the need to hold a firm line against Muslims as Muslims, and, I think, is likely to become more so over time. After all, the key issue that separates non-liberals from liberals (and virtually all people in the modern West, including neoconservatives, are basically liberals) is the belief that distinct groups—particularly nations and civilizations—exist, that the differences between these groups matter, and that authoritative discriminations can be made on this basis. As long as a person, no matter how tough he tries to sound, is unwilling to oppose Islam as Islam (because to do so is to “discriminate”), he remains a liberal. But when someone says, “Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition,” he has ceased—to the extent he holds truly to that idea—to be a liberal.

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A reader from England (who sent me the Murray speech) writes:

Yes I agree with all your points about his incompatible paradigms and his support for the idiotic policy of transforming Muslim countries. However, his best points are his last and he has put these more forcibly publicly than anyone else except you. The issue of removing Moslems from the West and making life difficult for those who remain is crucial and it is good at least that he has had the guts to say that at a conference. Many commentators have complained about Moslems and yet not managed to discuss how their presence may be reduced. The point about mosque demolition is good and there are a few mosques in the UK which should be pulled down as a demonstration to the Moslem community that subversives and terrorists will not be tolerated. Locking up one Immam is just not enough (and only one has been prosecuted since 7/7).

The problem of course is the political class, which has no will to deal effectively with this problem. And time is running out. The policy of deportations would take too long. It may be that the solution to the Moslem problem will be the same one which defeated the IRA, i.e. the use of paramilitary organisations to eliminate the terrorist element and intimidate the rest of the Moslem population. It was the use of paramilitaries to assassinate targeted IRA/Sinn Fein members which finally brought the IRA to its knees and to the negotiating table. The Moslems need a similar shock.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Murray starts moving in the right direction, but never reaches his destination. Europe needs a Christian restoration. People who believe in something will always defeat those who believe in nothing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 06, 2006 10:23 PM | Send