The spectrum of opinions on what to do about Islam

Clark Coleman writes:

I have been looking back on the Islamic attacks upon freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as in the Danish cartoon controversy, trying to categorize the various responses of liberals and conservatives. It seem that there are five response categories to the worrisome behavior of Muslims in the West:

1. Recognize that Muslims can never assimilate Western values, because Western values are incompatible with Islam, and propose that we change our immigration quotas immediately to stop adding Muslims to the West, as well as taking other measures to make potential jihadists feel unwelcome and self-deport.

2. Bitch and moan and whine about growing Muslim power and friction in the West while proposing no solution.

3. Fantasize that we can “assimilate” Muslims so that they internalize Western values, which implies that we know how to take people who have never, in 1400 years, respected our ideas of freedom and transform them into people who no longer pay attention to the official sharia positions on such things as the Danish cartoons and ignore public expressions that they consider blasphemy.

4. Deny or ignore that there is really any problem in the first place, calling the cartoon riots “isolated incidents” that we should not “overreact” to, etc.

5. Realize that there is cultural incompatibility between Muslims and the West, but consciously choose openness liberalism [meaning, being open and inclusive to all people regardless of how different they are to you] over natural rights liberalism [meaning, admitting only people who subscribe to the rights of man], to refer back to Allan Bloom and previous VFR discussions, and accept all of the problems of having Muslims in our midst as simply the negative part of a trade-off. (Hence, no energy is spent whining about it, nor denying it.)

If (a huge “if”) conservatives and liberals respectively had a fundamental philosophical understanding of themselves, I would expect conservatives to choose position No. 1, and liberals/leftists to choose position No. 5. The sad truth is that most self-described conservatives and liberals fall across the spectrum of Nos. 2, 3, and 4, with the only thing distinguishing “conservatives” from “liberals” being that “conservatives” fall more towards No. 2 and “liberals” more towards No. 4.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 31, 2009 02:42 PM | Send