Spengler treats a single, welcome event as a new stage of history

The Italian moderate Muslim journalist Magdi Allam was baptized by Pope Benedict during the Easter Vigil service at the Vatican this past Saturday night; his baptismal name is Magdi Cristiano Allam. Commenting on the event, “Spengler” not only sounds like a Christian enthusiast (which seems like a new note for him), he dismisses the idea that moderate Islam is the answer to the Islam problem. The answer, he says, is the conversion of Muslims to Christianity:

A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man…. Magdi Allam presents an existential threat to Muslim life, whereas other prominent dissidents, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offer only an annoyance. Much as I admire Hirsi Ali, she will persuade few Muslims to reconsider their religion….

Since September 2001, the would-be wizards of Western strategy have tried to conjure an “Islamic reformation,” or a “moderate Islam,” or “Islamic democracy.” None of this matters now, for as Magdi Allam tells us, the matter on the agenda is not to persuade Muslims to act like liberal Westerners, but instead to convince them to cease to be Muslims.

Spengler’s rejection of the moderate Islam myth is welcome. A steady conversion of Muslims to Christ would be a great thing, a miraculous thing. And I support the idea of a more active Christian outreach to convert Muslims (while we must recognize how difficult and dangerous that is), which according to Spengler the Vatican is only just coming now to endorse. (However, we must give Ann Coulter the credit, as she had the, uh, spark boldly to propose the idea in the first place.).

Unfortunately, in approvingly adopting Allam’s description of his conversion as a “revolution in world affairs,” a description not found in Allam’s own article, Spengler is getting carried away with himself and showing his usual lack of sound understanding. Magdi Allam is hardly a typical Muslim, and cannot be seen as a bellwether of some mass transformation within the Muslim community. A prominent Italian journalist born in Egypt, he is only nominally Muslim, he has never been a Muslim believer, and he came to Christianity not through evangelization but through a long interior personal growth process, which included his response to the Pope’s ill-fated Regensburg speech (hey—I’m glad something of lasting benefit came from that fiasco). There is no basis for concluding that the conversion to Christianity of an Italian journalist who has never been a believing Muslim heralds some across-the-board departure of Muslims to Christianity. For Spengler to suggest otherwise shows that he is getting swept away by his latest brainstorm.

Poor Spengler, always overreaching and getting things wrong. Instead of simply trying to understand what is, he always has to be scoping out the next Revolutionary Stage in the Historical Process. He should have called himself Hegel.

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Here is Allam’s account of his conversion, which began in his childhood in Egypt when his devout Muslim mother (his father was an entirely secular, Western-oriented Muslim) put him in the care of Catholic nuns.

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Alan Roebuck writes:

Here’s one that would send Spengler into orbit: An NRO piece on Coptic priest Zakaria Botros who is arguing successfully against Islam.

I submit this not in order to suggest that your policy of Separationism needs to be rethought. It is still entirely valid. I just want to point to a couple of hopeful signs. “Hopeful,” not decisive.

The article asserts:

Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry.

As an evangelical, I hear rumors of mass conversions to Christianity within the Dar-al-Islam. Of course, private beliefs make no difference to the ordering of a society if that society is controlled ruthlessly by Islamic principles. But this is the first independent verification I have seen that Islam is, in a manner of speaking, on the defensive even within its domain. And if enough Muslims doubt the status quo, some sort of fundamental change becomes possible.

The article also says:

Incapable of rebutting Botros, the only strategy left to the ulema (aside from a rumored $5-million bounty on his head) is to ignore him. When his name is brought up, they dismiss him as a troublemaking liar who is backed by—who else?—international “Jewry.” They could easily refute his points, they insist, but will not deign to do so. That strategy may satisfy some Muslims, but others are demanding straightforward responses from the ulema.

Even Islam is vulnerable to a fact-based critique. Like every false worldview, Islam cannot compete in a fair marketplace of ideas.

LA replies:

I was just thinking about this before: if I support evangelization of Muslims, doesn’t that contradict separationism?

And the answer is no. The separation—meaning the quarantining of the Muslim world—comes first. Once Islam has been quarantined and can no longer wage jihad on us, which is the purpose of the quarantine, then that opens further possibilities I’ve discussed before, such as Kemalization, mass apostasy, or, in this instance, evangelization.

The fact that Christians might go to to the Muslim world to preach Christ, doesn’t contradict the idea that we’re keeping Muslims out of our world. Separationism doesn’t mean that we isolate ourselves; it means that we isolate the Muslims.

Alan Roebuck replies:

Exactly. It’s analogous to covert action behind enemy lines during a war. It supplements, but does not remove the necessity for, fighting the enemy’s armed forces.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 26, 2008 02:07 PM | Send