Issue #1, Summer 2006

Why is Paris Burning?

Two new books fan the flames of the European-Muslim conflict.

Islamic Imperialism: A History By Efraim Karsh • Yale University Press • 2006 • 288 pages • $30

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within By Bruce Bawer • HarperCollins • 2006 • 352 pages • $25.95

Walking down Wallensteinstrasse, a main artery of Vienna’s Twentieth Bezirk, or District, there are nearly as many women wearing hijabs as there are in jeans. The area is a magnet for immigrants. Sitting in the local branch of Aida, a coffee shop chain with blond waitresses in bright pink 1960s uniforms, German is just one of the languages spoken by patrons. At Koc, a local grocery store, the coffee, vegetables, and even cleaning supplies originate in Istanbul. So imagine the shock when, amid this multicultural mélange, you first encounter the tram-stop signs posted by the Freiheitliche Partei EeÅ“sterreichs (the Austrian Freedom Party, formerly headed by Nazi sympathizer Jörg Haider). The signs demand, among other things, that EeÅ“sterreich Bleib Frei! (“Austria stay free!”)–a message that entails keeping Turkey out of the European Union (EU), keeping immigrants out of the country, and disentangling Austria itself from the EU. Other advertisements, featuring a white woman wearing a full burka, ask “Should this be our future?” Equally surprising are the letters to the editor in the Kronen Zeitung, a popular newspaper, that warn against a coming “third Turkish siege of Vienna”–a reference to the Ottoman attempts to take the city in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, apparently, still a font of Austrian anxiety.

Austria is not alone. Across Western Europe, there is an uneasiness about Islam that ranges from the palpable xenophobia of the far-right Vlaams Belang party in Belgium and Jean Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France to the softer bigotry and bewildered rhetoric and policies of more mainstream political parties.

To be sure, post 9/11–as well as post-3/11 and 7/7–there is much to be bewildered about. The situation of Muslims in Europe is not the same as Muslims in the United States where, on the whole, they are better off economically and emotionally, aided by America’s embrace of pluralism and religion and buoyed by having arrived, for the most part, educated and with some means. Not so in Europe, where the first Muslim immigrants were mostly men from former colonies who sought jobs on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Families came later, as part of a policy of reunification, but just as the work dried up. The most recent are asylum seekers, fleeing with little. And few were offered the paths to citizenship and integration found in the United States.

A few years ago, when I first began exploring Islam in Europe, I met a 30-year-old French Tunisian woman named Najoua in Paris. Pretty and lightly made up, wearing jeans and a white crocheted top, we talked in her Seventh Arrondissement office (she ran the business side of a children’s magazine) about the dis-integration of her peers. Najoua called herself an “escapee” from the banlieue, the suburban rings of bleak public housing around Paris that erupted in rioting last year. She described how men and boys she had known growing up had turned from rootless unemployment to radical Islamism. “The young boys who don’t work, and they don’t see a future, they have no confidence,” said Najoua. “But someone comes to you and says you are good. But you have to pray.” Likewise, some of her old girlfriends had taken the veil and turned to Allah as a means of finding answers to the grinding poverty and village mentality of the cités, the high-rise blocks that housed immigrant workers who came from the former French colonies in the 1960s and early ’70s and stayed.

Given the stakes–economic and social–as well as how the issue of Muslims in Europe strikes at the heart of what it means to be “French,” “German,” “Dutch,” or even simply “European,” it is no surprise that the debate over the future of Islam and the West has produced its own lengthy shelf of literature. Written by academics, journalists, and politicians, the genre is an important part of the debate. But while some of these texts aim for an honest assessment of radicalism, Islam, and democracy–and raise difficult questions for those who hope to integrate Muslims into European society–others seek to fan anxiety and bolster a kind of aggressively ideological denunciation of Islam writ large, masked as scholarly research or muckraking journalism. Joining the crowd in this latter category are two new polemics: Efraim Karsh’s Islamic Imperialism: A History and Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. Both intend more to shock and alienate than to educate (and provide a slew of “I told you so” anecdotes for those who already hold that Islam is incompatible with the West). The authors, naturally, insist they are simply setting the record straight, illuminating a problem and reality that others have missed. But in doing so both assume a simplistic uniformity of Islamic experience that supersedes national identity, colonial history, and adopted country. Their tone–the academic and journalistic equivalents of a Molotov cocktail–is angry, a call for constructing barricades against an oncoming enemy. They highlight a small number of violently radical immigrants and claim they are representative of the entire population, as if Europe’s Muslim communities were masked intruders, stealing onto the continent in the dead of night and fanning out, ready to literally blow up its cities. What these authors do not do is consider the less fantastic, but far more difficult, task of reconciling two different and complex cultures. By misrepresenting the issue, they further the very “us versus them” positioning that honest analysis must avoid. Karsh and Bawer may boost book sales by declaiming Europe’s Muslim immigrants as an undifferentiated terrorist threat, but in doing so they make strife between Europe and Islam all the more likely.

Issue #1, Summer 2006
 
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another American:

Sarah Wildman appears to have a read a different edition of Prof. Karsh's "Islamic Imperialism: A History," than the one I recently read. For one thing, although Ms. Wildman calls Karsh's work "the newest salvo in a series that began in 1993 with Samuel Huntington's now-infamous 'clash of civilizations,'" and writes that Karsh "draw[s] on his [Huntington's] weltkulturkampf approach," Karsh actually, and expressly, disavows the Huntington thesis.



In this connection, a major element of "Islamic Imperialism" is Karsh's claim that the early Arab empires, beginning with Muhammad, showed much less interest in converting their new subjects than in exploiting them. According to Karsh, the bulk of the subject population only began to convert to Islam in the second and third Islamic centuries, and then often to escape economic and social discrimination, with the imperial ruling class trying to slow things down.



As I don't have "Islamic Imperialism" in front of me, this is the only example I can recall clearly enough to describe.



Nor is my point to vindicate Prof. Karsh. I do not have the expertise to say how much sense his reading of Islamic history makes. But I think I am an intelligent enough layperson to tell when a book reviewer is misrepresenting the contents of the work under review. Accordingly, readers in my position would be well-advised to look elsewhere for a trustworthy assessment of a very interesting, and especially in its more historical chapters, very readable book.



Finally, lest anyone think I am some uncritical supporter of Prof. Karsh, I should say that I had difficulty with some of his more contemporary chapters, particularly his discussion of Israel and the Palestinians. Not that he is necessarily wrong in what he does write, but that, from what I think I know at least, he seems to have provided a partial account. For example, I am quite prepared to believe that, in the late 1940s, Palestinian Arabs, to the extent they did not simply identify with clan and village, thought of themselves as southern Syrians, and not as a separate people. But it seems to me that, over the subsequent decades, a Palestinian consciousness has developed. At any rate, the presence or absence of that consciousness has no bearing, in my view, on such things as the folly of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and (until recently) the Gaza Strip.



As Ms. Wildman's (impressive) background seems to have been in journalism, perhaps the editors would have done better to have limited her assignment to the Bruce Bawer book, giving Prof. Karsh's book to a knowledgeable academic for review.

Jun 20, 2006, 1:04 PM
mingwong:

I hope I am not detracting from the generally smart-n-critical tone of the comments here by saying thanks for a good review and a reply to the arrogant and alienating "White Man's Burden" sentiments found worryingly often in discussions of Islam in Europe.

Jun 21, 2006, 10:31 AM
Ormond Otvos:

Was not impressed by the tenor of the review: after much reading on the subject, and looking at it from the interior of a firmly atheistic senior male, I find that the flaccid political correctness of the reviewer seems to make her unable to see reality, which is that economic riots aren't usually religious.



I'd suggest a rereading of a small collection of Eric Hoffer books, as well as an open-minded reading of the latest Dennett and Sam Harris books on the sociological perils of fundamentalism in an internet-connected world where capital is free to travel but labor isn't.



When people find out they're screwed for life, and the elite of rich societies are too blindered to share, the fertile soil of frustration raises the weeds of fundamentalism. Sarah Wildmon seems to have no concept of a sane garden.

Jun 21, 2006, 12:12 PM
onellion:

I have no opinion about Ms. Wildman's review of Prof. Karsh's book--I have not read it. On the other hand, having read Mr. Bawer's book carefully, I reject Ms. Wildman's analysis. Her argument, in essence, says that since there must be a way to talk and reach agreement between Europe and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Bawer's report must be--not just incorrect--but motivated by dishonorable feelings.



In Mr. Bawer's book, he uses the murder of Mr. van Gogh in the Netherlands to make a point. According to witnesses, Mr. van Gogh said something like "We can talk this over!" to his assailant. Little good it did him. Mr. Bawer's point, and a real one, is that no, it is not always possible to talk and reach agreement. Ms. Wildman refuses to even consider this as possibly valid. Given it is a central point of Mr. Bawer's book, her refusal to even discuss it is telling.



Implicit in Ms. Wildman's analysis is that Islam and Muslims are 'reasonable' if only we non-Muslims will try harder. There are certainly many reasonable Muslims. Unfortunately, having read the Koran and studied the writings of Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al Banna, and Ayatollah Khomeini, among recent religious theorists and Muslim theologians, there is nothing--nothing--in their writings and thinking to support Ms. Wildman's analysis. Nor does she actually provide evidence, or logical reasoning, to confirm her view--she merely asserts it, as if it is Newton's first law of motion. Alas, her view is not so well supported by the evidence.



In sum, Ms. Wildman is not without care in her analysis, but her thinking is irretreviably flawed by her premises, especially that in dealing with Islamists she is dealing with 'reasonable' people.

Jun 21, 2006, 10:20 PM
Richard Johnson:

Ms. Wildman's review demonstrates why our party does not appear capable of regaining power in Congress in 2006, despite the fact that the other party appears to be about as corrupt and incompetent an opponent as one could hope for, viz., the inability to face and offer solutions to our problems, combined with purely negative, adolescent accusations of bad will to those who have actually proposed a plan to defend us.



She refuses to see the glaring problem facing the West, namely, Arabist/Islamist aggression, and can only lamely cast aspersions at those who do see the threat and are proposing to do something about it.



Unlike her, I will not speculate as to the motives of her erroneous position, but I will just point out that her apparent thesis, that Pan-Arabist/Islamist terrorism is merely a product of the West's alleged mistreatment of, and failure to integrate, Muslims, is easily refuted. If her thesis were correct, we should expect to see the same sort of behavior from black African immigrants to Europe. But where are the black African terrorists? There are none, despite a history of colonialism, poverty, lack of integration and opportunity, etc., because the culture of black Africans is not the same sick, twisted, bloodthirsty, violent, aggressive, intolerant, supremacist, imperialist culture that is inculcated in Islamic, and particularly Arab Islamic, societies. And the sickness in their society is not a symptom of shame; to the contrary, it is a self-aggrandizing display of utterly shameless pride; it is a will to the power and domination that they believe is their rightful destiny.



The phenomenon that Arabists/Islamists characterize as discrimination against and oppression of Arabs and Muslims is nothing more than the fact that Arabs and Muslims no longer rule the world as they once tried to do and almost succeeded in doing. The Arabists/Islamists burn us in effigy and threaten to kill us because we will not let them control us; consider, for example, the Danish cartoon scandal and the Van Gogh murder -- they riot and kill because we are our own rulers and they are not.



Thanks be to God that Charles Martel and the other defenders of Christendom through the centuries did not have advisors like her polluting the dialogue with calls for understanding of the murderous barbarians who would even destroy themselves when it gives them a chance to actuate their hatred against us. Her proposed response is appeasement.



No understanding is due to that menace. The answer for Europe is the expulsion of the brutal thugs (and those who harbor them) now, before they kill anyone else. The fuse is burning, and needs to be cut off as fast as is possible. I would imagine that Ms. Wildman would dismiss such a program as extreme. I would fault her, and others of her caliber of denial, for failing to recognize the extremity of the situation we face.



If Islamic/Arabic socitey were tolerant, peaceful and healthy, terrorism would not be condoned and winked at as it is today. Those masses of terrorphiles celebrated, and passed out candies in the streets, when thousands of innocent men, women and children were slaughtered on 9/11. Now, they send their sons to blow up themselves, and scores of muslim children standing in line for candy, or to kidnap and behead hundreds of decent, law-abiding, hardworking muslims of good will, just in the hopes of killing Iraqi democracy in its cradle.



And it's not because Europe has failed to treat them right; it is because they do not treat themselves right; they laud, honor and glory in death and bloodshed. They do not merit any sympathy; they merit only destruction.



And here we have, in a purportedly new, reasonable Democratic media outlet, Ms. Wildman making the disgraceful point that we should understand, excuse, and ultimately reward the Arabist/Islamist muderers and their sick, sadistic fan base. To follow her soft-headed denial of the fact that Islam, particularly as understood and implemented by Arab-supremacists who appoint themselves the master race of Islamo-fascism, is sick and dangerous, would be suicide for the West. (Thank God that FDR and Churchill didn't have such sympathy for the NAZIs as Ms. Wildman urges for their moral heirs and equivalents.)



It would be much better for the Democratic Party, for America, for the West, and for Humanity in general, if this publication could offer readers, and if our party could offer voters, the considered views of someone who is ready and willing to face the crisis with courage and conviction, rather than simply to offer yet another aimless shamble of white guilt of the 'quality' of this book review.



The West is in a fight for its life, demographically, culturally, and militarily; those who cannot face that fact should stop getting in the way of those who can, for their own sake and everyone else's. It is a grave disappointment to me personally, as a life-long democrat and committed liberal, that the party of Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson cannot seem to find its sword and charge to the front-lines of this existential battle, in which not only our own physical well-being, but even the fate of democracy and liberalism themselves is at stake.



Wake up fellow Democrats!!!

Jun 22, 2006, 12:15 PM
hanseata:

Writing a book on this controversial subject while steering clear of uninformed simplistic xenophobia on one side and equally uninformed naive political correctness on the other is obviously difficult.

I highly recommend the Turkish/German sociologist Necla Keleks's book "The Foreign Bride (Die fremde Braut)". This study on how lack of immigration politics (denying a need for integration for "guest" workers) and lack of will to integrate (denying there's anything worth to integrate in the host country) led to regression into a parallel society with deeply undemocratic structures and growing religious fundamentalism.

Jun 28, 2006, 10:15 AM
ncm:

I find the comments to this article particularly virulent and one-sided. As an American who lived for four years in a Muslim country (though decades ago) and now lives in Paris, France, where the banlieues uprisings of last autumn took place, I find her article quite well-balanced.



First of all, the riots, despite the US press coverage, were not exclusively - though a majority - the undertakings of Muslim youth. Other immigrant minorites took part - youth from ex-French African and Caribbean colonies. The motivation was mainly economic, and with some reason, since it is a known fact that getting a job, given equal qualifications, is much more difficult for the (French citizen) child of a third-world immigrant than for a white French citizen. Discrimination exists. And as the author mentions, in the sixties the French made a big mistake in isolating their cheap imported labour from the ex-colonies to squalid housing in the suburbs and basically ignoring them. Out of sight, out of mind. But it backfired.



As regards the Islamic boogyman that is so pumped nowadays by the US and some European right-wing parties, well, I had no problems living in a Muslim society way back then, and simply don't believe that every Muslim is a raving maniac out for infidel blood. Sorry. It just ain't so. The problem is with fundamentalists, and that is true whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or anything else. These people think they have the ear of God and have the only Truth - and everybody who doesn't agree with them be damned.. Frankly, I don't see much to distinguish one sort from another. None of them are particularly forgiving or tolerant of other views. Religion isn't the problem per se, it is when it (or any ideology) gets out of hand. Moderation is the best way for humans to live together.







Jun 29, 2006, 12:54 PM
ncm:

I find the comments to this article particularly virulent and one-sided. As an American who lived for four years in a Muslim country (though decades ago) and now lives in Paris, France, where the banlieues uprisings of last autumn took place, I find her article quite well-balanced.



First of all, the riots, despite the US press coverage, were not exclusively - though a majority - the undertakings of Muslim youth. Other immigrant minorites took part - youth from ex-French African and Caribbean colonies. The motivation was mainly economic, and with some reason, since it is a known fact that getting a job, given equal qualifications, is much more difficult for the (French citizen) child of a third-world immigrant than for a white French citizen. Discrimination exists. And as the author mentions, in the sixties the French made a big mistake in isolating their cheap imported labour from the ex-colonies to squalid housing in the suburbs and basically ignoring them. Out of sight, out of mind. But it backfired.



As regards the Islamic boogyman that is so pumped nowadays by the US and some European right-wing parties, well, I had no problems living in a Muslim society way back then, and simply don't believe that every Muslim is a raving maniac out for infidel blood. Sorry. It just ain't so. The problem is with fundamentalists, and that is true whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or anything else. These people think they have the ear of God and have the only Truth - and everybody who doesn't agree with them be damned.. Frankly, I don't see much to distinguish one sort from another. None of them are particularly forgiving or tolerant of other views. I find the religious right in the US just as scary as any Muslim fundamentalist. Fully half of Americans don't believe in evolution. Christian fundamentalists want to abolish not only abortion, but also contraception. Next they'll be saying women shouldn't own property or vote. What they'd like to do is take us back to pilgrim times, with only white, land-owning men allowed to participate in the "democratic process". Religion isn't the problem per se, it is when it (or any ideology) gets out of hand. Moderation is the best way for humans to live together.







Jun 30, 2006, 12:48 PM
Joseph Libson:


Ms. Wildman makes the following comment:



"What these authors do not do is consider the less fantastic, but far more difficult, task of reconciling two different and complex cultures. By misrepresenting the issue, they further the very "us versus them" positioning that honest analysis must avoid."



Why is it to be assumed that both cultures *want* to reconcile? What is the basis for that assumption.



I certainly agree that many Muslim immigrants want to *live* in the West. But that is much more easily explained by their (reasonable) desire for material wealth.



I don't see that there is any "integration" movement in Muslim culture. I only see a large "apologist" movement in Western culture.



I ain't sorry. :)

Jul 2, 2006, 12:55 AM
RickH:

Having read both books, I believe that Wildman is more on target in her review of the Karsh book. I believe she wrongly condemns Bawer's narrative, which apparently varies from her own personal experience in Europe.



It does not take a majority to be radical for the radicals to set the tone for the community. As an American political moderate, I find it frustrating how silent the moderate majority is compared to activists on the left and the right. How much more so can extremists dominate when they are willing to intimidate moderates through physical violence? Unless moderates emerge who can "out muscle" the extremists within the Muslim community in Europe, the anti-integrationists are likely to dominate.



My recommendation: read Bawer's book, skip Karsh's.

Jul 6, 2006, 10:00 PM

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