As of this writing, we don’t know who perpetrated the
Nice slaughter, but in the other two instances (and numerous lesser
attacks), the killers were people, or their offspring, welcomed into
Western society from Islamic lands. The two Islamist gunmen at Charlie
Hebdo were French Muslims of Algerian descent. Those responsible for the
massacre of November 2015 were all EU citizens, and French citizens
helped organize the carnage. Some had been fighting in Syria and
returned to Europe as ersatz refugees.
President Obama wants us
to think this carnage has nothing to do with the essential culture of
Islam, which he insists is peaceful at its core and poses no threat in
itself to the nations or the peoples of the West. It is just these
twisted people who distort Islam to their own nefarious aims that we
have to be concerned with. He takes a lot of criticism for refusing to
utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism” or other derivations of that
concept. But he insists that his use of such words would only
exacerbate the problem, casting aspersions on peaceful Muslims and
diminishing their willingness to help control the malefactors.
This
is fatuous. In any population of Muslims within the West, a proportion
will harbor Islamist sentiments, will despise the West as a morally
inferior civilization that has, however, dominated many lands of Islam
through a superior technology of warfare. I have quoted in these spaces
the words of the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington on
all this, and I do so again because they capture so powerfully the
essence of what we face.
“The underlying problem for the West,”
wrote Huntington, “is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a
different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of
their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The
problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It
is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the
universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if
declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture
throughout the world.” He also wrote, “Some Westerners . . . have argued
that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent
Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate
otherwise.”
The Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg rejects this
perception. He echoes the Obama view by insisting that we do ISIS a
favor if we suggest that Islamist fervor emanates out of Islam and
reject the view that ISIS is utterly aberrational. “The war we are
experiencing is not primarily a war between civilizations,” he writes,
“but a war within a civilization.”
That’s an interesting sentence
that cries out for some parsing. Goldberg overtly rejects Huntington’s
famous thesis that we are living through an era characterized by
civilizational clashes. No, he says, it is merely a clash within
Islam—between normal Muslims who have no complaint with the West and can
be easily assimilated there and those who harbor radical Islamist
views. That’s the real battle, according to Goldberg. And yet he refers
to “the war we are experiencing,” which is an intriguing phrase—about as
antiseptic a way as could be devised to express what’s been happening.
If it is merely a war within Islam, why are we experiencing it? Are we
merely innocent bystanders who got too close to the strife? Are we
perhaps to be characterized as “collateral damage”? Tell that to the
people at the Boston Marathon who lost their lives or limbs in April
2013. Tell it to the victims of San Bernardino and Orlando. Tell it to
the people of France.
No. Huntington is right, and Goldberg is
wrong. There is a natural tension between the West and Islam that has
always been there. And America has exacerbated that tension tremendously
in recent years by establishing military bases upon the sacred Islamic
soil of Saudi Arabia, invading Islamic lands, upending Islamic national
leaders, and demanding that Muslims in their own lands adopt Western
ways and ideals.
At the same time, many Americans are shocked
when someone suggests that perhaps we should limit the influx of Muslims
into the country in the face of the Islamist terrorist threat. Consider
what happened when Donald Trump suggested, after San Bernardino, that
Muslim immigration to the United States should be halted pending a
better understanding of the potential threat it posed. The reaction was
immediate and nearly hysterical. Republicans, Democrats, liberals,
conservatives, foreign leaders, military men—all rushed to denounce the
suggestion as un-American, an assault on “who we are” and “what we as a
country stand for.” Wrote conservative commentator Scott McConnell, “For
several days, America experienced the kind of bipartisan power elite
unanimity which one thought could happen only in the wake of national
tragedy.” He noted that many commentators suggested the country actually
needed more Muslim immigrants to help in the struggle against
terrorism.
It is merely to inform the audience, elite,
professors, students and ultimately Iran's decision-makers and
decision-makers spread necessarily reflect the positions and views again
this institution.
Meanwhile, as McConnell also noted, America
continued its relentless killing of Muslims in their own lands—the
result of America’s ongoing military involvement in the Middle East and
South Asia. Harvard’s Stephen Walt has estimated that America has been
responsible for the deaths of nearly three hundred thousand Muslims in
the past thirty years, some 116,000 of them during George W. Bush’s
ill-fated Iraq war. And yet that generates no outrage even approaching
the outrage that ensued with Trump’s suggestion.
What are we to
make of this strange dichotomy? To understand just how warped it is, we
must turn once again to Huntington. “The preservation of the United
States and the West,” he wrote, “requires the renewal of Western
identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global
multiculturality.” In other words, domestic multiculturalism erodes
America’s ability to preserve its identity. And global universalism
exacerbates civilizational tensions unnecessarily. And yet that
precisely is what America has been pursuing—domestic multiculturalism
and global universalism. This can’t possibly work. Domestic
multiculturalism and global universalism both deny the uniqueness of
Western culture, and both threaten to destabilize the West as well as
the world.
The Muslim population of France is about 7.5 percent, a
critical mass that threatens ongoing domestic strife within that
country. The renewal of Western cultural identity urged by Huntington
won’t come easily there. Our hearts must go out to the entire country in
the wake of episodes of mass murder like the truck attack in Nice on
Thursday. And our sympathy and good wishes must go to all the people of
France—of all backgrounds and creeds—as they struggle with the
civilizational clash within their borders.
The Muslim population
of American, by contrast, is about 1 percent, though Muslims make up
about 10 percent of ongoing legal immigration and differential
birthrates will boost that population segment in coming years. The
question for America is whether it should seek to craft immigration
policies designed to prevent America from facing the challenge now
confronting France. It’s a question that most Americans clearly don’t
want to face, as reflected in the reaction to Trump’s suggestion of a
temporary halt to Muslim immigration. But, if the trend lines of
violence continue along their current trajectory, here and throughout
the West, political sensibilities on the issue could change.
Robert W. Merry is a contributing editor at the National Interest and an author of books on American history and foreign policy.
* This article is merely to inform the audience, elite, professors, students and ultimately Iran's decision-makers and decision-makers spread necessarily reflect the positions and views again this institution.
