A “modest proposal” about Islam

A writer named Robert Klein Engler has a plan for dealing with the Islamic threat that exactly matches the “contain and isolate” strategy I’ve been pushing for the last couple of years, plus additional points about demanding cultural parity in our relations with Islamic states that are also welcome. It is very heartening to see other writers pick up the banner of what I’ve called civilizationism (a name that was suggested by Ron Lewenberg). Here’s the key passage:

In light of the mischief caused by an Islamic faction in Western democracies, let me make a modest proposal: instead of tolerating Islam, we should build a fence around it. This fence makes no judgment about the religion of Islam. Instead, it respects the uniqueness of Islam. A fence simply recognizes that two worldviews are incompatible. A fence around Islam is necessary because liberal governments cannot protect us from Islamic terrorist attacks.

As long as a liberal ideology of tolerance prevails in the West, Islamic terrorist will strike at will. It is a simple matter of Islam taking the liberal ideology of the West and turning this ideology against itself. It is the great irony of liberalism that by being tolerant it undermines its own existence. Liberalism now goes out of its way to encourage those who want to overthrow it. When confronted with an aggressive and intolerant force like Islam, tolerance ends with its own extinction.

A fence around Islam may include the removal of Muslims from Western societies, the outlawing of Islamic practices, cultural parity with Muslim states, new sources of oil, and the postponement of economic and technical development in the Muslim world until the military and cultural threat of Islam is diminished.

I disagree only on one minor point, that Engler calls this a “modest proposal.” When Swift made his famously monstrous “modest proposal,” he meant it as a satire. I, and I assume Engler, are entirely serious about the “contain and isolate Islam” strategy. Recent events, and the utter Western befuddlement in reaction to them, make it more and more clear that the liberal West is going over a cliff and can’t stop itself. Only a radically different approach can save the West, and, along with the West, those modified and restrained elements of liberalism that are both desirable in themselves and compatible with the West’s continued existence. In order to contain Islam, we must contain liberalism as well.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 18, 2005 03:02 PM | Send