Boiling down Pipes on Europe and Eurabia
(I have added to this post an alternative and more sympathetic
interpretation of Pipes’s article.)
In his recent talk in Australia published today in the Australian and at his website, entitled “Europe or Eurabia?”, Daniel Pipes says there are three possibilities for Europe: “Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.”
He then clearly states his own preference:
The ideal outcome has indigenous Europeans and immigrant Muslims finding a way to live together harmoniously and create a new synthesis.
Got that? America’s best known critic of “radical Islam” regards a
synthesis of Islam and the West as the IDEAL outcome. He WANTS the West to be somehow half-Islamized, so long as the process is, you know, peaceful.
Unfortunately, he continues, there is “little basis in fact” for this hope: “One can virtually dismiss from consideration the prospect of Muslims accepting historic Europe and integrating within it.” By this he apparently means that both a successful Islamic assimilation in Europe and a successful Islamic “synthesis” with Europe are impossible.
The question then becomes: “Which of those two remaining paths will the continent take?” Meaning, will the Muslims take over Europe, or will Europe reject the Muslims?
Pipes says it’s impossible to predict what the outcome will be. Furthermore, he himself expresses no preference between Europe saving itself from Islam and Europe being taken over by Islam:
Within a decade, perhaps, the continent’s evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape…. 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.
Isn’t that soul-stirring? Can you imagine Churchill saying in June 1940:
Within a decade, perhaps, the continent’s evolution will become clear as the British-Nazi relationship takes shape…. Britain’s unique circumstances make the outcome difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook and virtually impossible to predict. We are all entering into terra incognita.
A clue to the sources of Pipes’s lack of expressed commitment to the survival of Europe is seen when he says:
The answer [as to the future of Europe] has vast importance. Europe may constitute a mere 7 per cent of the world’s landmass but for 500 years, 1450-1950, for good and ill, it was the global engine of change.
Pipes, whom the entire world considers a “conservative,” even a “harsh, right-wing” conservative, thus displays his liberalism. He doesn’t describe or cherish Europe as the birthplace and historic home of Western civilization and the Western peoples. No. For Pipes Europe is important as a “global engine of change.”
And you can’t exactly feel loyalty to a global engine of change, can you? In fact, Europe is at this moment serving as a huge global engine of change—by changing itself into Eurabia. So, on the basis that “global change” is a good thing, Pipes ought to like the Islamization of Europe
Based on previous statements by Pipes, it seems to me that the ultimate source of his lack of any expressed loyalty to the civilization of Europe is his loyalty to his Jewishness. He is unable wholeheartedly (or even half heartedly) to support Europe against Islam, because, in his oft-stated view, Europe was historically harsher on the Jews than the Muslims were.
If my remark about the roots of Pipes’s lack of commitment to the survival of Europe is incorrect, let him say so. And let him also state that the home of our civilization is something that must be defended and preserved at all costs—and not in some dreamed-of, half-Islamized form, but in its Christian, Western, liberal form.
* * *
However, under a more favorable reading of the article, Pipes could be understood as giving some support, albeit indirectly, to the Europeans against their Muslim (and Western) enemies.
He writes:
US author Ralph Peters sketches a scenario in which “US Navy ships are at anchor and US marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe’s Muslims”.
Peters concludes that because of Europeans’ “ineradicable viciousness”, the continent’s Muslims “are living on borrowed time”. As Europeans have “perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing”, Muslims, he predicts, “will be lucky just to be deported” rather than being killed.
Of course the person who shows viciousness here is Peters, a rabid anti-European bigot (in other words, someone who today is called a “conservative”) who sees all Europeans as Nazis and who has expressed the desire that Europe be harmed and punished. Pipes does not condemn Peters’s evil view of Europe, but, in his quiet indirect way, he states his disagreement with Peters, commenting:
Indeed, Muslims worry about just such a fate; since the 1980s they have spoken overtly about Muslims being sent to gas chambers. European violence cannot be precluded, but nationalist efforts will more likely take place less violently; if anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims.
Thus Pipes is implying a scenario in which Europeans rid their continent of Muslims, not by brutalizing and killing them (he says the Muslims will likely be more violent than the Europeans), but by “[less violent] nationalist efforts,” i.e., by presumably civilized though firm steps encouraging or requiring the Muslims to leave. And here Pipes’s detached approach to the problem helps our side. Though he stands back as a spectator and never expresses any positive allegiance to Europe in this coming mortal conflict, he also declines to judge the Europeans for any strong measures they may have to take to defend themselves. And perhaps that is the strongest pro-European position that Pipes is capable of. But didn’t Jesus say, he who is not against us is for us?
* * *
Here is the whole article, followed by further comments:
Europe or Eurabia?
Daniel Pipes | April 15, 2008
THE future of Europe is in play. Will it turn into “Eurabia”, a part of the Muslim world? Will it remain the distinct cultural unit it has been for the past millennium? Or might there be some creative synthesis of the two?
The answer has vast importance. Europe may constitute a mere 7 per cent of the world’s landmass but for 500 years, 1450-1950, for good and ill, it was the global engine of change.
How it develops in the future will affect all humanity, especially daughter countries such as Australia that still retain close and important ties to the old continent. I foresee potentially one of three paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.
* Muslim domination strikes some analysts as inevitable. Oriana Fallaci found that “Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam”. Mark Steyn argues that much of the Western world “will not survive the 21st century and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries”.
Such authors point to three factors leading to Europe’s Islamisation: faith, demography and a sense of heritage.
The secularism that predominates in Europe, especially among its elites, leads to alienation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, empty church pews and a fascination with Islam. In complete contrast, Muslims display a religious fervour that translates into jihadi sensibility, a supremacism towards non-Muslims and an expectation that Europe is waiting for conversion to Islam.
The contrast in faith also has demographic implications, with Christians having on average 1.4 children a woman, or about one-third less than the number needed to maintain their population, and Muslims enjoying a dramatically higher, if falling, fertility rate. Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in about 2015, are expected to be the first large majority-Muslim cities.
Russia could become a Muslim-majority country in 2050. To employ enough workers to fund existing pension plans, Europe needs millions of immigrants, and these tend to be disproportionately Muslim due to reasons of proximity, colonial ties and the turmoil in majority-Muslim countries.
In addition, many Europeans no longer cherish their history, mores and customs. Guilt about fascism, racism and imperialism leaves many with a sense that their own culture has less value than that of immigrants.
Such self-disdain has direct implications for Muslim immigrants, for if Europeans shun their own ways, why should immigrants adopt them? When added to the existing Muslim hesitations over much that is Western, especially concerns about sexuality, the result is Muslim populations who strongly resist assimilation.
The logic of this first path leads to Europe ultimately becoming an extension of North Africa.
* But the first path is not inevitable. Indigenous Europeans could resist it and, as they make up 95per cent of the continent’s population, they can at any time reassert control should they see Muslims posing a threat to a valued way of life.
This impulse can be seen at work in the French anti-hijab legislation or in Geert Wilders’s film, Fitna. Anti-immigrant parties gain in strength; a potential nativist movement is taking shape across Europe as political parties opposed to immigration focus increasingly on Islam and Muslims. These parties include the British National Party, Belgium’s Vlaamse Belang, France’s National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands and the Danish People’s Party.
They are likely to continue to grow as immigration surges ever higher, with mainstream parties paying and expropriating their anti-Islamic message. Should nationalist parties gain power, they will reject multiculturalism, cut back on immigration, encourage repatriation of immigrants, support Christian institutions, increase indigenous European birthrates and broadly attempt to re-establish traditional ways.
Muslim alarm is likely to follow. US author Ralph Peters sketches a scenario in which “US Navy ships are at anchor and US marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe’s Muslims”.
Peters concludes that because of Europeans’ “ineradicable viciousness”, the continent’s Muslims “are living on borrowed time”. As Europeans have “perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing”, Muslims, he predicts, “will be lucky just to be deported” rather than being killed.
Indeed, Muslims worry about just such a fate; since the 1980s they have spoken overtly about Muslims being sent to gas chambers. European violence cannot be precluded, but nationalist efforts will more likely take place less violently; if anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims.
They have already engaged in many acts of violence and seem to be spoiling for more. Surveys indicate, for instance, that about 5 per cent of British Muslims endorse the 7/7 transport bombings. In brief, a European reassertion will likely lead to ongoing civil strife, perhaps a more lethal version of the 2005 riots in France.
* The ideal outcome has indigenous Europeans and immigrant Muslims finding a way to live together harmoniously and create a new synthesis. A 1991 study, La France, une chance pour l’Islam (France, an Opportunity for Islam), by Jeanne-Helene Kaltenbach and Pierre Patrick Kaltenbach, promoted this idealistic approach. Despite all, this optimism remains the conventional wisdom, as suggested by an Economist leader in 2006 that dismissed, for the moment at least, the prospect of Eurabia as scaremongering. This is the view of most politicians, journalists, and academics, but it has little basis in fact.
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. American columnist Dennis Prager agrees: “It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for western Europe than its becoming Islamicised or having a civil war.” But which of those two remaining paths will the continent take?
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.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is in Australia for the Intelligence Squared debate to take place this evening in Sydney. This article derives from a talk he delivered yesterday to a Quadrant dinner.
- end of Pipes article, end of initial entry -
Steve D. writes:
Regarding your analysis of Daniel Pipes: it may indeed be true that his Jewishness plays a large part in his attitude toward Europe and Islam. But his Jewishness doesn’t explain the wide spread of his particular viewpoint.
I attribute it to something else: that he represents what might be called the Vichy wing of conservatism. That is, he believes he has seen the future, and is busy making what accommodation he can, as far enough in advance as possible.
LA replies:
Steve D. makes a valid point. Obviously the main impulses driving the West’s lack of will to defend itself from Islam do not come from Jewishness, and I did not mean to suggest that they do. Yet with self-consciously Jewish intellectuals, the dhimmi psychology does take on distinctively Jewish forms, and it is legitimate to talk about these. For many Jews, Christendom and Europe are fixed in their minds as the ancient enemy and oppressor. And it is difficult or impossible for such people to identify themselves, in a simple, instinctive way, with Europe, which means, among other things, to feel threatened when Europe is threatened, and to want to defend her.
I think that many Jews are not fully aware of this factor in themselves and its effects, and it leads them into a doublethink. On one hand, they fear Islam. On the other hand, they are unable or unwilling to oppose Islam in a serious way because that would mean siding with the once-Christian West, their historic oppressor, against Islam. So they end up in this weird, impotent, in-between state, passionately complaining that the end of the world is at hand, and refusing to support a single realistic measure to stop it. With minor variations, the same psychology is at work in non-Jews as well. It’s at work in the entire conservatives establishment.
If the West is to have a chance to save itself, the influence of such confused “conservative” intellectuals must be pushed aside by a new leadership willing to talk about reality.
Ron L. writes:
Wow. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had to read Daniel Pipe’s own words, because I could not believe what you said he had written. Reading the original, I am still stunned. Pipes’s ideal is a synthesis of the obviously dying European cultures and a liberalized Islam, which is a tiny position among Muslims. He doesn’t want to see a vibrant Europe, or a liberal Islamic world, but a Eurabia without Dhimmitude.
This is the equivalent of Daniel Pipes’s father the Soviet historian Richard Pipes calling for a Finlandized Social-Democrat Europe, which would magically not be a pawn of the USSR, instead of calling for an end of Communism.
Daniel Pipes is so wed to the theory of liberal Islam that he is willing to give up Europe in some experiment. And yet, he ignores all current data because this is not real position but an atavaistic but intellectual “screw you” to Christendom.
Seeing Angela Merkel dressed like a trollop caused nausea, but this causes despair. Daniel Pipes was supposedly the right-wing consort to the Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Instead we find that Pipes is an alienist. He is another Jew, so alienated by perceived and real past abuses by Christendom, that he wishes to see the Nazi Islamicization plot succeed. Many Nazis were Islamophiles and Nazi Germany was allied to Islamic groups. The influx of militant Muslims into Europe was started by former Nazi allies seeking refuge after WW2. Today we have antifascists on the left supporting the Nazi-plants, seeing them not as members of the Ummah, but as Third Worlders. Pipes does the same, but dreams of a non-Islamist Islam with Europe magically separate from the Ummah. At least leftists can claim ignorance. With Pipes, we are just left with ideological and cultural idiocy.
Has there ever been a stable multi-cultural society with Muslims as a large percentage of the population? For that matter, has this benign cultural mixing happened anywhere? Pipes is trying to write the overused “American Exceptionalism” onto Europe, just at a time when Multiculturalism has killed the melting pot. This is false nostalgia parading as policy.
LA replies:
Did you see my revised post? I added a more favorable interpretation of Pipes’s article.
Remember also, he’s saying definitely that the liberal synthesis dream he prefers is not going to happen. He says it’s either Muslim conquest, or European reconquista. If we look at it from that angle, this article actually represents a huge step forward for him. If he stays with what he said here (unlikely, as he contradicts himself every day), then he has explicitly given up the hope of assimilation, given up the hope of moderate Islam, at least in Europe. He’s seeing now the truth that he rejected at the time of my article on him in January 2005: that we must oppose Islam, or by subdued by it.
Ron L. replies:
Perhaps I misunderstood the article. However, “synthesis” is his preferred option. It is Pipe’s pipe dream and he may actually know it. Yet he views cultural defense with alarm. He brings up Muslims paranoia about an anti-Muslim holocaust without dismissing it.
He has no solution, or, at least, refuses to endorse the only possibly solution.
LA replies:
Good points.
Gintas writes:
Children as they grow up usually end up rooting for the home team. Where are you from, Daniel Pipes, that you won’t root for your home team?
James P. writes
“… it seems to me that the ultimate source of his lack of any expressed loyalty to the civilization of Europe is his loyalty to his Jewishness. He is unable wholeheartedly (or even half heartedly) to support Europe against Islam, because, in his oft-stated view, Europe was historically harsher on the Jews than the Muslims were.”
If he had half a brain, his Jewishness ought to lead him to oppose the Islamization of Europe with the utmost vigor, inasmuch as Muslim immigrants are the source of essentially all the anti-Semitic violence in Europe today, and the future of Europe’s Jews in an Islamic Europe would be a grim one, indeed. Europe’s (and especially Germany’s) consciousness of its past crimes against the Jews makes it highly unlikely that those crimes could be repeated—unless Europe comes under Islamic control, in which case all “tolerance” bets are off.
George L. writes:
The Pipes article strengthens my belief that McCain must lose in order for America to survive. Obviously, McCain is running on an Uber-Bush policy platform: Invade the World, Import the World, and, in Debt to Communist China—and all this to the nth power.
In addition to the above, neocon influence in Washington makes it impossible to have a rational discussion of U.S.-Islam foreign policy because the neocons keep shutting down anyone who criticizes Islam as Islam.
We are trapped in a burning building and the neocons are intentionally yelling “FLOOD!”—and completely confusing everyone in the process.
A McCain victory would simply entrench the neocons inside the bowels of D.C. foreign policy making. Neoconservatives will then surely take victory as a confirmation of their lunatic philosophy and go hog wild on the international scene: We will get more Islamic terrorist strengthening “Democratic” elections in Islamic cesspools, more humanitarian interventions, more Third World immigrants, and, perhaps, a nuclear war with China and Russia to top it all off.
The only hope we have of getting a logical Islam policy (Or ANY logical government policy) in the long term is to dethrone the neocons this November so their insane ideology is politically discredited in the eyes of the public, and more sensible Republican politicians forever.
Obama is struggling right now. Still, the environment and mood surrounding the election are heavily stacked in favor of the Democrats. We have to hope and pray that, as bad as Obama looks to the public right now, McCain can be made to look even worse by Obama’s political attack dogs.
LA replies:
This is very well put. In fact, if you see my reply to Steve D. above which I just posted, you’ll see I made a similar point, though not nearly as well as you have done here.
My position is still that between Obama and McCain, I prefer that Obama win, as horrible and nightmarish as that is. But that is not going to stop me from going after Obama. I oppose BOTH of them, and whichever is elected, I will continue to oppose him.
I would not go so far as to support Obama. In my view, that would put us on the side of evil. My view is, we stand apart from both and oppose both, while also stating that we prefer that McCain lose and the reasons why, remembering that the outcome is not in our hands. We should take no positive steps to support Obama, only to oppose McCain.
LA continues:
I want to reiterate the self-evident point that the outcome of the election is not in our hands For example, as much as we may feel it imperative that McCain lose, if Obama becomes a discredited radical in the eyes of the public, which may already be happening, then McCain will win, regardless of how we feel about it. The urgency and correctness of one’s feeling that McCain must lose, does not translate into the reality that McCain will lose. McCain may very well win, in which case resistance to the insane neocon ideology must continue.
George L. writes:
“The urgency and correctness of one’s feeling that McCain must lose, does not translate into the reality that McCain will lose. McCain may very well win, in which case resistance to the insane neocon ideology must continue.”
Unfortunately, you are right, the election outcome is not in our hands. I just find it so depressing to think of having to oppose the neocons again for another four years that I don’t like to think about having to deal with a McCain presidency until and unless he actually wins the election.
LA replies:
I know what you mean.
But we could look at this way. If it ends up that we don’t have the anti-American anti-white President Obama to oppose, and to build up true conservatism in the process, we’ll have the anti-white anti-American President McCain to oppose, and build up true conservatism in the process. Yes, it will be harder with McCain, because people think he’s a conservative and his alienism is not as open as Obama’s and the conservative establishment will be supporting him. But there is a lot of overlap between them.
Also, and this may seem to contradict what I just said, Obama in the White House would be a continual trauma that we would be reacting to and pre-occupied with constantly; look at how his various outrageous statements and the revelation of his real character have been the focus of so much consuming attention in recent weeks A McCain presidency, while terrible and requiring constant vigilence, would nevertheless probably be less urgently threatening and alarming, leaving conservatives with more mental energy to turn away from mainstream politics and build up a true conservative movement for the future.
LA writes:
Reader Sam H. criticizes me for posting Gintas’s comment, which he considers anti-Semitic. Sam H.’s comments, and my responses, are posted in a new entry.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 14, 2008 04:12 PM | Send