Is Islam the real problem, or liberalism?

Shrewsbury, a long-time VFR reader, writes:

Dear Mr. Auster:

Re: “BRINGING HOPE TO THE FRENCH.” Oui, très jolie, but as you have pointed out so often in the past, though apparently a voice crying in the wilderness, the crux of the matter is the poison of liberalism. Islam by itself is as a flea desperately gnawing at our ankle. If Islam seems strong, it is only because we allow it to be strong—indeed, we go out of our way to strengthen it ourselves. Conversely, were the rotten and worm-eaten edifice of liberalism to be leveled, the Islamic threat, and mass third-world immigration (in my opinion, a far greater peril), even African criminality, would all largely vanish, just as the Nazgûl and orcs and all the rest mysteriously faded away when Sauron was overthrown….

Les mentalités évoluent lentement mais sûrement, tout n’est pas perdu, courage les Américains!

Regards,
Shrewsbury

Dear Shrewsbury,

You seem to be suggesting that we don’t need to focus on opposing Islam, but on opposing liberalism, since it is only liberalism that has permitted the Islamic threat (and the other threats facing us) to come into existence. In fact it is the West’s necessary confrontation with Islam, more than any other factor, that will discredit liberalism, by demonstrating the utter incapacity of liberalism to meet this challenge. That’s what I mean when I say that since 9/11, we are in the apocalypse of liberalism.

Liberalism is so deeply imbued in modern Westerners—it’s not merely imbued in them, it literally is WHAT THEY ARE—that they must be melted down, as it were, in order to cease to be liberal. Only the real threat of civilizational extinction, brought by the Muslims, may be sufficient to do this melting down.

Yes, it was liberalism that allowed Islam to enter and become strong in the West. And now it is only the pressing threat of Islam, brought on by liberalism, that can destroy liberalism. Islam, our ultimate Other and adversary, comes to save the West from its own liberalism. The West is so far gone that nothing else can do it.

Larry Auster

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 15, 2005 01:17 PM | Send