Monday, February 07, 2011

Their Finest Hour?

Mark Steyn has written a lot about how creeping Islamization of Europe, coupled with the demographics of unassimilated Moslems compared to low-fertility native Europeans and that latter demographic's failure to defend their Western society, will lead to "Eurabia." The trends he highlights are distressingly true, but I've always held that Europeans would wake up to the threat and reverse it--brutally if they confronted it late in the game.

There are signs that Europeans are waking up. Britain provides the latest hopeful sign:

London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; "Islamophobic" to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm.

David Cameron seems to be prepared to stand up for elementary principles. He was almost pitch-perfect in his speech in Germany as he rejected with the required scorn the right's argument that a clash of civilisations made Muslims and democracy incompatible and the double-standard of the multi-culturalists, who hold that one can oppose fascistic doctrines when they are held by white-skinned demagogues but not when they are propagated by brown-skinned reactionaries.

The earlier this problem is confronted, the better (and less bloody) it will be. But one speech--even by the prime minister--is just a battle in the war. The ability of the multi-cultis to defend whatever outrage the Islamists inflict on us or their most vulnerable co-religionists is appalling to me:

Our multi-cultis are capable of excusing any offense by our enemies and magnifying any flaw on our side to excuse beheadings and honor killings and whatever else our jihadi enemies decide we deserve. When some on our side decide to be nonjudgmental, the sky's the limit for our enemies.

Still, if this speech turns back the tide of misplaced Western toleration of the intolerant, and represents the inflexible resolve of the British to defeat this foe, people may look back and say that this was their finest hour.

UPDATE: Thanks to An American Housewife in London for the link.