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Another baby step by Steyn
Here’s Mark Steyn, commenting tonight about the attempt by an axe-wielding Somali to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in his home:
To return to the theme of my post a couple of days back, a significant percentage of Muslims in the west do not understand concepts such as pluralism and freedom of expression. A further percentage understand them very well but reject them as loser fetishes incompatible with the requirements of Islamic supremacism—and have a shrewd sense that when, push comes to shove, a lot of these fine liberal concepts crumble to nothing. Is the percentage of Muslims who support Mr Westergaard’s right to free expression and the broader principles of intellectual liberty sufficient to make the importation of legions of “27-year old Somalians” a net benefit to Denmark?Steyn, the number one authority on the Islamization of Europe to legions of elite and grass roots conservatives don’t want to think about the problem themselves (meaning that they have elevated as their intellectual authority on the subject a person who doesn’t want to think seriously about the subject himself), actually raises for the first time the possibility that Muslim immigration into a Western country may not be a good idea. However, (1) he doesn’t speak of “immigration,” but of “importation”; and (2) he only makes the point in the form of a rhetorical question—a rhetorical question he doesn’t deign to answer. May we dare hope that by, say, January 1, 2020, when the Muslim population in Europe will have increased by several millions more and Muslims are exercising the power of sharia law throughout the continent and killing anyone who criticizes Islam, Steyn will gird his loins and state, in a declaratory sentence not a rhetorical question, that Muslim immigration has not been a benefit to Europe? I also note that the first time that Steyn did mention Muslim immigration into Europe and the first time he ever acknowledged that Muslims by their very presence are going to change Europe into something else (not by raising the point himself, but via his agreement with Christopher Caldwell in his review of Caldwell’s book in Maclean’s last summer), he not only instantly switched to his usual demographic determinism on the subject, but he didn’t actually say that the replacement of Europeans by Muslim immigrants would be a bad thing. Thus his entry tonight at the Corner appears to be the first time he has ever raised the question whether the immigration (“importation”) of Muslims into Europe might not be, on balance, beneficial. To repeat, prior to his article in Maclean’s last summer, he had, in his dozens of articles and his book about the Islamization of Europe, strictly avoided the subject of Muslim immigration, a failure he himself confessed in that piece.
Edward writes:
Islam is a sadomasochistic philosophy of life. You either force them into submission or they will eventually force you into submission. I place before you life and death. Choose life. The struggle between the West and the East has been going on for 2500 years since Persia’s attack against Athens and ancient Greece. We are repeating an age old cycle. Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 02, 2010 01:45 AM | Send Email entry |