Author: Diana West
Publication: Washington Times
Date: July 15, 2005
URL: http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/dwest.htm
Only one faith on earth may be more
messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it - without its fanatics
who believe all civilizations are the same - the engine that projects Islam
into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail.
It's as simple as that. To live among the believers - the multiculturalists
- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place, unrepulsed by our suicidal
societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager
to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of
drastic measures, is surely terminal.
I'm not talking about our soldiers,
policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors who bravely and
steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. I'm instead
thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage
of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders
who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying
the foe. Four years past September 11, we continue to shadow-box "terror,"
even as we go on about "an ideology of hate." It's a script that smacks
of sci-fi fantasy more than realpolitik. But our grim reality is no summer
blockbuster, and there's no special-effects-enhanced plot twist that is
going to thwart "terror" or "hate" in the London Underground, any more
than it did on the roof of the World Trade Center. Or in the Bali nightclub.
Or on the first day of school in Beslan. Or in any disco, city bus or shopping
mall in Israel.
Body bags, burn masks and prosthetics
are no better protections than make-believe. But these are our weapons,
according to the powers that be. These, and an array of high-tech scopes
and scanners designed to identify retinas and fingerprints, to detect explosives
and metals - ultimately, I presume, as we whisk through the automatic supermarket
door. How strange, though, that even as we devise new ways to see inside
ourselves to our most elemental components, we also prevent ourselves from
looking full face at the danger to our way of life posed by Islam.
Notice I didn't say "Islamists."
Or "Islamofascists." Or "fundamentalist extremists." I've tried out such
terms in the past, but I've come to find them artificial and confusing,
and maybe purposefully so, because in their imprecision I think they allow
us all to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility
of Islam - the religious force that shrinks freedom even as it "moderately"
enables, or "extremistly" advances jihad - with the West. Am I right? Who's
to say? The very topic of Islamization - for that is what is at hand, and
very soon in Europe - is verboten.
A leaked British report prepared
for Prime Minister Tony Blair last year warned even against "expressions
of concern about Islamic fundamentalism" (another one of those amorphous
terms) because "many perfectly moderate Muslims follow strict adherence
to traditional Islamic teachings and are likely to perceive such expressions
as a negative comment on their own approach to their faith." Much better
to watch subterranean tunnels fill with charred body parts in silence.
As the London Times' Simon Jenkins wrote, "The sane response to urban terrorism
is to regard it as an avoidable accident."
In not discussing the roots of terror
in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that
shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them.
This is key, because any serious action - stopping immigration from jiahd-sponsoring
nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence, expelling their imams,
just for starters - means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West,
that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death - as it
is for leaving Islam under Islamic law - the existential crisis is to be
avoided at all costs. Including extinction.
This is the lesson of the atrocities
in London. It's unlikely the 21st-century will remember that this new Western
crossroads for global jihad was once the home of Churchill, Piccadilly
and Sherlock Holmes. Then again, who will notice? The BBC has retroactively
purged its online bombing coverage of the word "terrorist;" the spokesman
for the London police commissioner has declared that "Islam and terrorism
simply don't go together," and within sight of a forensics team sifting
through rubble, an Anglican priest urged his flock, as the Guardian reported,
to "rejoice in the capital's rich diversity of cultures, traditions, ethnic
groups and faiths." Just don't, he said, "name them as Muslims."
Their faith renewed, Londoners soldier
on.
