The paralyzing dilemma of a liberal who sees that Islam is a problem

In Melanie Phillips’s 2007 speech on “Liberalism v Islamism,” which I analyzed at the time, we find perhaps the starkest example ever of a liberal intellectual simultaneously (a) embracing tolerance and inclusion as the highest of all political values, (b) noticing that tolerance and inclusion are leading to the Muslim takeover of the West, (c) remaining unable to break with the liberal principles of tolerance and inclusion that are leading to the Muslim takeover of the West, and thus (d) ensconcing herself in total intellectual incoherence.

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Adela G. writes:

You quote Phillips as saying,

“First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.”

Right out of the starting gate, the poor thing is crippled by her underlying liberal assumptions. She claims that the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam is a “theological argument,” rather than more accurately describing it as a “semantic argument.” By using the adjective Islamists themselves would no doubt prefer, since they only occasionally let slip that Islam is anything besides a religion or theology, she subconsciously allies herself with them. Before her discussion even begins, she’s put the West at a disadvantage by granting to Islam a small, but telling, point.

[LA replies: I don’t agree with Adela on this. By describing the argument, “there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam,” as a “theological argument,” Phillips does mean something. She means that the argument is obscure, indeterminate, or practically irrelevant. But of course it is none of those things. The issue of whether Islamism is the same as Islam is both knowable and of the utmost intellectual and practical importance for all critics of Islam. By airily refusing to engage with this issue, she not only declares her incompetence as a participant in the discussion, she indicates bad faith. Her position is dishonest, because, while she says she takes no position on whether Islamism is the same as Islam (and she has made this declaration repeatedly), in reality, throughout her writings, she insists that Islam itself is ok, that only the extreme forms of it are a problem, and that it’s wrong for Westerners to oppose the spread of Islam as such. (See her exchange with me at VFR in 2006.) Thus she HAS taken a position on the “theological” question of Islamism vs. Islam while denying that she has done so, which enables her to avoid defending and taking responsibility for the position she has actually taken.]

You then quote her as saying:

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle.

She’s hopelessly crippled—off to the knackers with her! Liberalism is not in danger of losing this fight (between itself and Islam) because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralyzed. On the contrary it is now paralyzed because it has remained so completely, so fully, so truly itself—the same self that she says has at its core “equal respect for all people.” Liberalism is the pacifist who will not raise his hand against his attacker even if such inaction means the forfeiture of his own life. It is not liberalism’s departure from its own core concepts but strict adherence to them that has paralyzed it. In its birth are the seeds of its destruction.

I cannot criticize her for failing to acknowledge her innate liberal bias since she is apparently too blind even to see it, much less recognize it for what it is. But I do not have to take seriously the maunderings of such a unperceptive person, even though I may well take into account any influence that she wields, God forbid.

I couldn’t bring myself to read her argument any further. From the start, it badly, even fatally, undermined itself by so consistently maintaining its underlying, if unacknowledged, core liberal principles.

March 28

Laura G. writes:

By the way, I have particularly appreciated your “take” on Melanie Phillips, and her inability to come to grips with the “what-to-do” consequences of the invasion of nations by Muslims. She just can’t get her head around the barriers of her basic liberal constraints. I have had an itchy feeling for about a decade when I read her. She produces excellent descriptions of the consequences of Muslim immigration, complete with portraits of the awful effects on English life, and then leaves the reader hanging in mid-air. No solution is offered that could ever be imagined that would actually help. Just usually some comments about education and protesting. Never about actual cessation of immigration, expulsion, and so forth.

LA replies:

Why not let her know how you feel? And since you’ve had the itchy feeling about her since way before I wrote about her or you read me, you could underscore that you’re not an Austerbot (bot = robot).

Not that such communication would do any good. She is absolutely hardened, not just in her refusal to deal with the issue, but even in her refusal to explain her refusal to deal with the issue. But she ought at least to be made aware that people are looking through her.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 27, 2009 08:24 AM | Send