I recently took a look at Walter Laqueur’s powerful new book, The Last Days of Europe. Here’s Theodore Dalrymple’s new and very nice review. Let’s move on to stunning news–that certainly seems to prove Walter Laqueur right. Apparently, the committee that recommended Salman Rushdie for a knighthood had no idea that Rushdie’s selection would be taken as an insult by vast sections of the Muslim world. On the contrary, they believed that honoring Rushdie would actually improve Britain’s relations with countries like Pakistan. Whether you think knighting Rushdie was a smart move or not, the fact that the decision was taken in colossal ignorance of its actual symbolic significance shows how profoundly clueless large sections of the European elite must be about the nature and extent of the challenge from the Muslim world.

That certainly casts European rejection of critics like Walter Laqueur and Mark Steyn in a new light. The picture here is of an utterly naive multiculturalism, incapable of perceiving even the most fundamental challenges posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants–and their home countries.

The authors of the Danish cartoons may have greatly underestimated the reaction they’d provoke, but at least they understood the inherently provocative nature of what they were doing. In fact, that’s why they did it. I’d assumed the folks who chose to honor Rushdie were attempting to make a point along the lines of the cartoons. Yet, incredibly, they were merely acting in ignorance.

Were the committee members atypical in this respect? It’s hard to imagine that they could be all that unrepresentative of the British elite. Supposedly, the committee considered literary merit alone. But that’s clearly not the case, since they also expected the selection would have a positive effect on relations with countries like Pakistan. These were largely literary-artistic types, to be sure, yet virtually any sentient Briton ought to have understood the symbolism–and the dangers–at play here.

Britons–perhaps especially the most “sophisticated” Britons–would appear to be living in a dream world. When they don’t take warnings about the fate of Europe seriously, it’s apparently not because they’ve attended to the problem and come out with a different point of view than folks like Laqueur and Steyn, but simply because they’re sleep-walking.

Ah, looks like recognition of committee’s cluelessness is beginning to bite. According to this story , the embarrassed Foreign Office is now claiming to have known all along that the move was provocative. I don’t buy it. The committee’s ignorance is what comes through here.

This piece comments on the “innocence” of those who proposed to award Rushdie, and asks why a lefty like Rushdie accepted a “K” to begin with. Most likely Rushdie accepted it because he wanted the statement of public support and vindication against his enemies in the Muslim world. Rushdie himself may have greatly underestimated the danger he was putting himself in by accepting, but at least he recognized the symbolism at stake.