Moslems, medieval Christendom, and us

Robert Spencer chose an interesting though deeply depressing topic to write about for a Memorial Day article: the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, one of the worst days in the history of the world. His main idea is that just as disunity and realpolitik in Christendom allowed the Ottomans to conquer Constantinople then, the same factors are weakening the West against Islam now. But Carl Simpson raises the questions: What is the West and who is a part of it? When Spencer allies himself with Hirsi Ali, is he maintaining Western unity against Islam, as he himself advises, or is he doing the opposite, welcoming the very forces that are weakening the West in the face of Islam? I’m not sure myself whether Mr. Simpson’s analogy holds up, but it’s thought-provoking. Also, let us remember that Spencer, unlike many conservatives, warns against Muslim immigration. Mr. Simpson writes:

While Spencer’s criticism of the behavior of the Christendom of 1453 has some validity, the comparison with today’s situation falls flat on its face for the most part. How can we possibly show unity with those who actively betray us at every turn? It’s true that a number of Christian rulers of that era made a fatal error in allying themselves with Muslims, just as all but very few of today’s liberals do. That’s the only point of similarity, though.

This, in my opinion, is what lies at the heart of the split between traditionalists like you and liberals like Spencer over Hirsi Ali. The all-important point that Spencer fails to comprehend is that Ali is not merely a liberal with whom conservatives have some “disagreements,” as Spencer has put it, but a full-blown totalitarian leftist who desires to destroy the real West—the physical, concrete civilization that exists in remnants and pockets (like the small Dutch party she voted to outlaw)—every bit as much as the jihadis do. Moreover, Ali is a doctrinaire disciple of feminism, which is arguably the single most poisonous dogma to infect our civilization. It is entirely plausible that we can thank feminism, working in consort with the sexual revolution, for the disastrous decline in Western birthrates more than any other single dogma of liberalism’s multi-headed hydra. Yet Spencer—supposedly a pro-life Catholic—continues to argue that we should stand by Hirsi Ali because she makes an unprincipled exception to her liberalism in Islam’s case. That’s a remarkable parallel to the “Realpolitik” of Western monarchs from the mid-15th century Spencer is advocating.

Ali and Spencer, despite their unprincipled exception about Islam, continue to subscribe to other aspects of the very ideology that brought the Muslims within our gates to begin with. The enemies of our enemies are not necessarily our friends!

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In response to my defense of Spencer for supporting restrictions on Muslim immigration, a reader writes:

Spencer is hedging. The qualifiers “without limit” and “without any attempt to determine how many” fatally undermine his proposed solutions.

Let’s go to the videotape. Here’s what Spencer said about immigration:

Meanwhile, the world … persists in the fantasy that … Muslims can be admitted without limit into Western countries without any attempt to determine how many would like ultimately to subjugate and Islamize their new countries …

I have to agree with the reader: that is serious hedging. Is it only unlimited Muslim immigration that Spencer opposes? Does he envision some process by which the West continues to admit large (but not “unlimited”) numbers of Muslims, so long as they can “prove” that they have no present desire to Islamize their new countries?

This shows that Spencer has still not bitten the bullet on the immigration issue as it relates to Muslims. He’s not reached the point where he can say that Muslims in significant numbers do not belong in the West, period. He evokes the traditions of medieval Christendom. Yet medieval Christendom did not allow Muslims to settle in Europe. So this would appear to be an example of the very thing I’ve been criticizing about Spencer, a syndrome I describe as “neoconservative” (though, since Spencer differs from neocons on key issues such as democratization, perhaps “faux conservative” or “weak conservative” would be better). And the syndrome is, that while Spencer repeatedly appeals to traditionalist and non-liberal ideals (such as Christendom), the actual content of his argument remains substantially liberal.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2006 01:30 AM | Send