Speaking of the Pope and religious values, Daniel Pipes gave a speech in Australia last night (actually it’s tonight, Monday, but it’s already tomorrow over there, if you follow, so it’s the morning after the speaking engagement the night before) discussing what he sees as the three options for Europe – in his words, “Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.”
The first is basically the Steyn America Alone option.
The second is Ralph Peters’ contrarian view: Relax, there’ll never be a Muslim Europe. The old fascist tendencies will reassert themselves and there’ll be blood in the streets, mass murder, etc. Or, as The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto deftly summarized this optimistic view: “The Glass Is One-Sixteenth Full.” The fascist resurgence – the strong man on a horse – is appealing to a certain segment but delusional: Jean-Marie Le Pen is in his eighties; the strong man is too old to get on the horse; Continental geriatro-neo-Nazis tottering on walkers aren’t going to be ethnically cleansing cities full of 19 year old Muslims.
But the gloomiest part of the Pipes speech deals with the third option – “harmonious integration”:
Yes, indigenous Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, make more babies and again cherish their heritage. Yes, they could encourage non-Muslim immigration and acculturate Muslims already living in Europe. Yes, Muslim could accept historic Europe. But not only are such developments not under way, their prospects are dim. In particular, young Muslims are cultivating grievances and nursing ambitions at odds with their neighbours.
One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it.
That’s a bleak assessment – especially when ”harmonious integration” is the option to which the European political class remains (officially) committed. Daniel Pipes concludes:
Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent’s evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape.
The unprecedented nature of Europe’s situation also renders a forecast exceedingly difficult. Never in history has a civilisation peaceably dissolved, nor has a people risen to reclaim its patrimony. Europe’s unique circumstances make the outcome difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook and virtually impossible to predict. With Europe, we all enter into terra incognita.
[UPDATE: This is an interesting post on what “harmonious integration” would mean:
Pipes is clearly talking about a revival of Europe’s Christian roots. But I would suspect that Europe’s political class is committed to a secularist post-Christian, relativist notion that they hope will secularize Islam and make its now problematic Muslim populations as post-Muslim as they are post-Christian.
Good luck with that. Post-Christian Euro-secularism is the vacuum into which radical Islam has poured, not the solution to it.]