The West is more than democracy and secularism

At the blog “Australia Tomorrow Drafts,” the blogger wrote:

“Should we be granting concessions to a religion [Islam] which still has questionable compatibility with secular democracy?”

I posted the below comment in which I say that we should not reduce the West to secularism and democracy.

Update: The blogger has posted a very interesting (if overlong) reply asking why I am invoking some kind of brotherhood with the European Christians of the past as our allies against Islam, and I have replied.

Is the main thing about the West that you want to defend from Islam its secularism and democracy? Suppose you were living in Europe in the 8th century when the Moslem armies invaded the present day France, seeking to Islamize all Europe. Would you not have sided with Charles Martel against the Moslems, because Europe at that time was not secular and democratic, but Christian and monarchical?

Or if you were living in Europe in the 17th century when the Ottoman Turks almost captured Vienna but were beaten back, saving Europe from Islamization. Europe at that time was not secular but Christian. Would you not have been on Europe’s side, because it wasn’t secular?

When you describe the West that you are defending as “secular and democratic,” it means that you are reducing the West to just one layer of itself, the most recent. It means you are not on the side of the European Christians who for a thousand years successfully strove to save Europe from Islam. It means you are being loyal only to secularism and democracy, not to the West as a whole.

Islam doesn’t just threaten secularism and democracy; it threatens everything we are, our total existence as a civilization. And that is what we need to defend.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2007 05:44 PM | Send