Nothing To Fear
Misreading Muslim immigration in EuropeIf you want to read a European book decrying Islam and Muslims, you have many to choose from. The dominant style on the continent is memoir, recounting the horrific experiences of a Muslim (or formerly Muslim) woman in her Islamic milieu. Infidel and The Caged Virgin, by former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are the most familiar in this genre. The best-selling French titles speak for themselves: Dishonored; Mutilated; The Sold Ones and The Fatiha (both on forced marriages); Disfigured; Souad, Burned Alive; and Latya, Her Face Stolen.
Europe’s anti-Islam sentiment may be expressed most visibly in memoirs because Europeans have been reticent to condemn Islam—or religion more generally—outright. Americans, however, seem to prefer a less subtle approach. In the United States, alongside the autobiographies, we find two kinds of direct attack on Islam: as a “gutter religion” (as Louis Farrakhan once described Judaism) and as a threat to our fundamental values—a threat that has already overrun Europe and is now heading this way.
Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran illustrates the first style of attack. I am interested in the second style. They’re asleep; we’re next—so we are warned in Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. We hear a similar message in his Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom; in Brigitte Gabriel’s They Must Be Stopped; and Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
Perhaps these books are innocent, less about an animus against Islam than an expression of Americans’ secret delight in knocking weak-kneed French and English politicians. Or maybe we simply prefer displacing our anxiety about Islam from the nice Pakistani surgeon next-door onto jihadists invading European cities.
But these cheerful readings do not do justice to the books’ somber tone or their striking thematic consistency (shared with many like-minded Web sites). Islam, they argue, has shocked Europeans, the shock comes from Islamic values, and the clash is unlikely to subside. These three themes—Islamic shock, value conflict, and unending struggle—evoke Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” but with added urgency: Muslims are now on the wrong side of the Huntingtonian line.
We need to take this argument seriously and understand what is wrong with it. And—to cut right to the chase—it is wrong on every detail that matters.
• • •
Consider first the idea of an Islamic shock, that Islamic immigrants have disrupted European life in ways completely unlike previous waves of immigrants. On its face, the argument is valid: before World War II, most workers migrating into a Western European country were European Christians (usually Catholics), who looked more or less like the natives. By contrast, the new workers coming into Germany, Britain, France, and elsewhere after 1945 included more non-Europeans than ever before, and most were rural Muslims from Africa or Asia. Post-1970s we have been witnessing a third wave of people from Africa and Asia trying to make their way into Europe’s supranational regime of immigration, the Schengen Area, a zone comprising 25 countries. For many securely inside the Area, Europe may seem a fortress with its Maginot line at Calais (confusingly, Britain is outside the Area) and its porous points on the shores of Mayotte and the walls around the Spanish North African enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Storming the walls, swimming the seas, or trekking across borders are refugees and asylum seekers, people claiming family-reunification rights, people working without proper papers, people on the way, perhaps, to having proper papers—all immigrants less welcome but pressing to get a toehold on the Old Continent.
For those not on the far right, complaining of too many ‘immigrants’ has been a relatively safe way of complaining of too much Islam.
There are real differences among these three historical streams of immigrants. And the Islamic character of much of the second and third waves has indeed bothered many Europeans. Mayors refusing to allow the construction of—and, a few times, razing—mosques; landlords refusing to rent to Muslims; controversies over headscarves; and now, in Switzerland, minarets, singled out as signs of “Islamism.” All these recurrent actions testify to the Islamic shock felt by many, not to mention the rhetoric of far-right political parties. For those not on the far right, complaining of too many “immigrants” has been a common and relatively safe way of complaining of too much Islam.
But Islamic shock is not simply a description of differences in flows of people. The claim is that the new wave of immigration has been uniquely disruptive of a European “way of life.” This narrative of pre-Islamic immigration by white Europeans sharing the same values, going to the same churches, and welcoming new immigrants with their good hearts, it turns out, is baloney. Yet even the most knowledgeable of the European-Islamic-threat writers, the journalist Christopher Caldwell in his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009), describes an undifferentiated Europe now besieged by Muslims. Conveniently forgotten are centuries of religious wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions, attacks on Belgian and Italian immigrants to France, and, of course, the events of the early 1940s, in which good French and Dutch people joined good Germans in denouncing and arresting Jews and transporting them to death camps.
Lest we relegate those events to a distant past, we should ask how much serious reflection on 1940s culpability one hears from the Netherlands, say, or Norway (or Poland or . . .), or why it remains so difficult to extradite war criminals from Germany, or why old-style anti-Semitism (by hooligans, not Moroccans) remains so firmly-entrenched in the European landscape.
The pertinence of these objections comes from the Burkean core of Caldwell’s complaints, highlighted by his title. People, he argues, should not have to radically change their ways of life. But the massive arrival of Muslims has forced such changes, wrested quiet Europeans from their peaceful ways, and forced them to look at minarets next to their steeples. Yet when about one-third of French people freely admit to being racist, and some Britons on camera casually compare Muslims to cockroaches, the conservative argument loses some of its bite. Perhaps some Europeans need a good jolt to confront the persistent racism that plagues the continent. It was not by calming troubled souls that the United States moved from centuries of slavery and Jim Crow to electing a black President. Confronting the American dilemma required a long fight for civil rights. Most of us think that we are a better society for it. Perhaps Europeans would take a comparable and proper pride in confronting the European dilemma, making good on their own premises and promises of social equality.
Caldwell’s Burkean argument does not involve new policy. Burke himself championed the gradual, English way of change over the abrupt French one (forgetting how much violence accompanied the Glorious Revolution). What then are the practical conclusions to be drawn from anti-Islamic Burkean sentiments? Europe is already a plural society. Do we send Muslim European citizens “back”? More common are calls to reverse the misguided “multiculturalist” policies that engendered large Muslim populations in the first place.
This is an odd argument, given that neither culture nor its multi-ness had anything to do with the arrival of the workers and their families. Workers came out of mutual economic self-interest. After World War II, European governments recruited workers (who happened to be mainly Muslims) to rebuild Europe. The governments placed these workers in lodgings away from the rest of the population. The schools taught immigrant children in Arabic or Turkish not out of multicultural correctness but on the theory that they would one day leave with their families. When the immigrants did not leave, and the recession of the 1970s made their presence less desirable, family reunification became the main argument for allowing new immigrants to settle legally in Europe; this remains the case today. Muslim migration after the years of labor recruitment is not the product of a theory of cultural diversity. It is almost entirely due to Europeans obeying international legal requirements that people be allowed to lead a “normal family life.”
In Europe and elsewhere, there is a widespread assumption that all Muslims think one way and all non-Muslims another.
Indeed, current laws and policies in most of Western Europe do not promote immigration, but mainly guarantee residents’ legal rights. In Britain this means the right to wear religiously motivated dress to school and eat religiously required foods in the school canteen. In the Netherlands and France it means the right to have state support for religious schools that open their doors to anyone. These rights were won by earlier generations of Catholics and Protestants; they have nothing to do with naïve multiculturalist Islamophilia. While these legal rights are often challenged—by onerous language requirements in the Netherlands, or severe restrictions on family reunification in Italy—in principle, they are assured.
• • •
The second thesis, about a conflict over values, is similarly shaky. The central idea is that Muslim culture or religion (or both) have been disruptive not because of local prejudice but because Muslims do not share European commitments to universal values. The argument has nation-specific inflections: in the Netherlands, it often crystallizes around the Dutch tolerance for gay men versus Islamic intolerance of same; in Norway, around cases of forced marriage; in France, Belgium, and, most recently, Italy around the oppression of women symbolized by a few hundred niqabs or burqas.
These arguments suffer from two defects: shallow historical memory and “block thinking.” As Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn remind us in their When Ways of Life Collide (2007), a generation ago those Dutch people who today vaunt their egalitarianism and their toleration of all lifestyles were authoritarian in family life and homophobic in public and in private. A recent study found a rising number of young Dutch men who espouse attitudes of tolerance, but then attack gay men. Nor have Europeans always been gender-equal. Two generations ago, French women were not able to vote and did not have the same rights to property as men, and Muslim women in much of the world had more avenues to gaining divorce than did most European women. Europeans, Africans, and Asians all have been moving gradually toward greater legal recognition of equal rights for women and men, and everywhere it has been a struggle.
Perhaps more insidious is block thinking, whereby the diversity of perspectives within a social group is collapsed into a single caricature. Today, in Europe and elsewhere, there is a widespread assumption that all Muslims think one way and all non-Muslims another. True, polls show that in relatively non-religious Europe, Muslims are more likely than non-Muslims to be opposed to abortion, homosexuality, and suicide. According to a 2009 Gallup survey, in France 78 percent of the general public finds homosexuality morally acceptable, compared to 35 percent of French Muslims. We could also, however, compare Europeans with Americans on this question. A 2009 Pew study reported that 49 percent of Americans find homosexuality to be “morally wrong,” that regular church-going means a greater likelihood of disapproval, and that American Protestants and American Muslims disapprove of homosexuality in equal measure—60 percent. The gap is not between Islam and the West, but between more religious and less religious people.
• • •
What about the idea of an unending struggle? Some Islamophobes claim that differences in civilization and religion between Islam and Europe will last because a fast-growing Muslim population is poised to take over European cities and establish political control in the name of a global ummah. This argument disputes the notion that Muslim immigrants (and, a fortiori, their children) will do what most immigrants do: adapt. To the contrary, the argument says, multiculturalist—as opposed to assimilationist—policies isolated Muslims just as ummah TV was reaching youth with calls for jihad, and the new generations will continue to be motivated by radical Islam in all areas of their lives: as they plan families, build schools, and riot, all with Islamic political victory as their goal.
Proponents of this argument can point to the greater Islam-mindedness of Muslims growing up in Europe from the late 1980s on. That generation began to organize—using the opportunities and political styles characteristic of each host country—to achieve equal social, political, and religious rights. British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis organized local action committees and sharia councils; French North Africans formed national confederations of mosques; rival factions of German Turks tried to reach the level of agreement required to form a public corporation and receive state aid (they still have not done that).
In creating sharia councils, British Muslims began to look “separatist,” and some do call for greater authority for sharia mediation. Against that British institutional background, a good number of younger Muslims call for governance “by sharia,” whatever that might mean. French Muslims began to look “corporatist,” as national organizations sought control over local mosque financing; everyone—Muslims included—calls for laïcité (secularity) to be applied equally. Throughout Europe, some Muslims developed ties with transnational groups: intellectual ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual ones with West African Sufi orders, financial ones with Gulf sheikhs.
In other words, these Islamic political actors have adapted to national opportunity structures with more or less success: more in the cases of British, French, and Belgian Muslims, less in the cases of German, Dutch, and Swedish ones. The organizing that ostensibly proves Islamism is on the rise in fact shows that these immigrants are following the examples of their predecessors. Like Catholics and Jews before them, Muslims build religious schools and associations—usually with external financial aid—and get involved in elections. In Britain, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are more likely to vote than others. This might look to some like evidence of Muslims trying to take political control, but political engagement seems to be accompanied by trust in government. The 2009 Gallup poll on Islam and integration found that Muslims in Germany and Britain had more confidence in the courts and the national governments than did the general German and British publics. (French Muslims had slightly less confidence in each.) In France, half of all Muslims supported the law most often cited there as anti-Islamic: the 2004 ban of Islamic headscarves from public schools. Muslims are adapting like everyone else and are divided like everyone else.
Since European Muslims are working through national political structures, some of them become frustrated when those structures fail to make good on the promise of equal treatment. The most extreme response to this frustration is France’s urban strife, from the riots that began in late 2005 in some poor areas to rising everyday violence ever since. France’s FBI, the Renseignements Généraux, analyzed the 2005 violence as “popular revolts” fueled by joblessness, family breakdown, and discrimination—an analysis with which the not-terribly-liberal Economist concurred. If one assumes that Islam governs all antisocial acts committed by people with Arabic or Turkish last names, then the French authorities cannot be right. Thus Caldwell’s surprising and unsupported conclusion that although the rioters may not have said they were rioting for religious reasons, in fact they were all fundamentalists who believed in Team Islam.
European Muslims are increasingly acting like other Europeans in the polling place and in the bedroom.
Attempting to refute arguments about assimilation, anti-Muslim writers also assert that Muslims will continue to have high birthrates because the Prophet told them to and because it serves the Islamist strategy to conquer Europe. Anti-Muslim Web sites predict that in 2050 Europe will be half Muslim. The German government is supposed to have said this; though, in reality, it said the opposite. Conservative pundits from Patrick Buchanan and Bernard Lewis to the commentators at the partisan Population Research Institute warn that Europe and Christianity will succumb to Islam because of differential birth rates. The now-viral “Muslim Demographics” video on YouTube tells viewers that France has 1.8 children per family but “Muslims, 8.1 children per family” and that “in just 39 years, France will be an Islamic Republic.” Both the BBC and the skeptic Web site Tiny Frog have assembled detailed rebuttals.
Putting aside the faulty data—France does not even collect demographic data by religion—these arguments have two deficiencies. First, total fertility rates (TFR) are falling in many of the Muslim-majority countries sending people to Europe. During the period 1985-2003, the TFR fell from 3.3 to 2.2 in Turkey and from 4.5 to 2.5 in Morocco, thus approaching European rates—France has a TFR of 2.1. Second, Muslim women born in European countries are doing precisely what demographers predicted: having fewer children. Fertility rates for Muslim women born in European countries are declining quickly, heading toward rates for natives.
But even if European Muslims are increasingly acting like other Europeans in the polling place and the bedroom, don’t Islamic institutions—mosques and schools—feed the ranks of al Qaeda? A number of jihadists have come from Europe’s cities, but as the counterterrorism expert Marc Sageman argues in Leaderless Jihad (2008), they were woefully uneducated in Islam and thus incapable of evaluating the jihadist arguments. “It follows,” he writes, “that more religious education for these young men might have been beneficial.” Developing centers of religious learning and teaching—as the governments of many European countries are committed to doing—will help spread more sophisticated understandings of Islam.
• • •
Europe will survive its changing composition, as it has before. But the political shape of the Europe that emerges will depend on how European leaders frame the matter of citizenship. Europeans have some experience, not particularly rosy, of dividing people by religious affiliation and of making one group the scapegoat for all that ails them. A sequel probably will not lead to a happier end. Most European leaders—on the right and left—know this and are seeking ways to build and broaden national institutions to include, on equal grounds, their Muslim citizens. They are supporting the creation of schools and mosques, debating the hard questions of sociability and religious freedom, and developing new ways of enforcing anti-discrimination laws. To be sure, some European political figures are rekindling old fires. Those of us on the other side of the Atlantic would do well to understand the constructive efforts rather than fanning the flames.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article might be read as misattributing a statement to Robert Spencer. We appreciate that the phrasing caused confusion about this sensitive issue and are sorry for the misimpression that resulted for some readers.
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About the Author
John R.Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is author of Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves and Can Islam Be French? He was a 2005 Carnegie Scholar.
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Yet there is great need of time to ward off_ the ongoing differences being created between the Muslim world and the West- by bringing the two sides closer via an intellectual discourse.
The rhetoric over Muslim immigration takes on an especially pernicious cast because the West has decided that it is at war with Islam (sorry—"terrorists"), but this is ultimately a species of xenophobia as it has existed from time immemorial. The "natives" always fear the immigrants without recognizing that immigrants have a strong urge to assimilate.
The first generation of immigrants seems very different, but their children work their way into existing social norms. Those norms may change a bit in the process, but the idea that immigrants from predominately Muslim countries will wreak havoc on European institutions and ways of life is preposterous for all the reasons Bowen provides.
And Americans have nothing to worry about. We've killed so many innocent Arabs and Muslims and so demonized and insulted their traditions that we'll soon enough see a net emigration, I suspect. Islam may be growing as a religion in the U.S., but it's largely due to black nationalism, not Arab immigration.
Bowen needs to put up a retraction and an apology to Spencer on this website.
I think you're referring to Louis Farrakhan's description of Judaism as a "gutter religion".
Research, Mr. Bowen.
With Spencer's preference to reason rather than litigate I suppose it is a very safe way of attacking someone the author disagrees with and does not want us to hear.
There is nothing wrong with Europe wanting to ban the burka or the minaret given what societies that have burkas and minarets look like in terms of free speech, minority religions and gay tolerance.
As for th fisrst comment, my personal experience is the more I have read about Islam and its texts the more I am concerned with the issues skirted by this author.
If only your research was as credible and as thorough as Spencer's, you would have NEVER falsely quoted him as you did.
Shame on you - you owe him an apology (assuming you have the integrity to do so when you should...)
As for European muslims acting like the Europeans, do you even watch the news? Can you say 'car burnings' in french? Or white rape in England & Germany? If there's one thing they have time and again shown is that they DO NOT integrate. That's not our fault - its theirs.
Islam is not compatible with Western culture or values, on the contrary, they are diametrically opposed.
Islam is a totalitarian ideology whose inventor Mohamed mandated that Islam be the only "religion" on earth and that Islam along with its Sharia, rule the world.
Islam is what Islam does. If the author is interested in just how Muslims behave in Dar al Islam take a good look at Saudi Arabia or Iran.
How many Christian churches are there? Do Christians practice their religion freely and without fear in Dar al Islam? Ask the Christian Copts in Egypt just how things are going there since Muslims invaded Egypt 1200 years ago.
The author needs to stop regurgitating apologist propaganda defending Islam from legitimate criticism and do some real investigating and learning about Islam for himself.
Like I said start at its heart Saudi Arabia.
(2)Bernard Lewis is no "conservative pundit". For decades, working out of Princeton, he was the foremost expert on Islam in the U.S.
(3)The quiet Muslims in infidel lands are "unperfected Muslims". Soon to be, when the demographics and politics are right, outflanked by their righteous brothers and brought into the fold. Not my idea. Simply read what Muslim religious leaders say.
(4)Christ died for his beliefs. Muhammed made everyone else die for his. From these beginnings, with many twists and turns,we have the two civilizations, Western and Muslim, which they spawned, with all the inherent contradictions.
(5)There is no Golden Rule in Islam. Which undermines the whole humanist mind set the author uses as his drawing board.
(6)Bowen should throw out his keyboard and find some other venue by which to pursue his amateur interests.
But it would be good to discuss the Qur'an's evident plagiarism, numerous inconsistencies, bad grammar and a host of other issues that clearly undermine Islam's claim to possessing the immutable word of God in the form of the Qur'an.
Anytime you are ready Syed.
"...we find two kinds of direct attack on Islam: as a “gutter religion” (Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran)..."
Robert Spencer pointed out on his blog, Jihad Watch, that he never used the phrase "gutter religion" to describe Islam in his book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, nor in any of his other books, for that matter.
If Bowen meant to say that Spencer *implies* this epithet, then Bowen is a poor writer, for his locution rather connotes that the phrase is to be found in that book.
I love the comments here. Notice how you're all just reinforcing Bowen's argument about "block thinking." I suppose you all came here from Spencer's blog in order to protect his "intellectual" integrity. Rakiba's comment is particularly amusing: let's ban burkas because we need free speech! Does it not occur to you that freedom of expression involves the freedom to express things you don't agree with?
How about you defenders of Christendom engage the points this author, who actually knows something about religion and politics, is making. Or not. You can just keep spewing invective and abuse.
"...let's ban burkas because we need free speech!:
And added the rhetorical question:
"Does it not occur to you that freedom of expression involves the freedom to express things you don't agree with?"
However, Rakiba's actual point was:
"There is nothing wrong with Europe wanting to ban the burka or the minaret given what societies that have burkas and minarets look like in terms of free speech, minority religions and gay tolerance."
Rakiba is pointing to a much larger issue than mere free expression. In the U.S.A., we do have a tradition of allowing even pernicious groups to express themselves fairly freely -- as for example allowing the K.K.K. to march and publicize their credo in public. Europe, however, has developed certain severe limitations on this in response to the horrors of Hitler and the convulsions of war his madness caused. Thus Holland, for example, bans the publication, sale and distribution of Mein Kampf, the infamous book by Hitler. European countries that have these kinds of legal limitations based in the "Never Again" resolve (i.e., never "another Holocaust") are not merely restricting free expression of "things they don't agree with", as Julian puts it so blandly. They are restricting what they feel to be ideas that promote, and have the potential to galvanize, an ideology that was horrifically dangerous to society, and thus could be again.
It is in this spirit that Rakiba and others wish to delimit the influence of Islam.
As for Maxwell, he wrote:
"The rhetoric over Muslim immigration takes on an especially pernicious cast because the West has decided that it is at war with Islam..."
I don't know what planet Maxwell is currently residing on, but on planet Earth, the West is nowhere near deciding that it is at war with Islam. Alas, the West is light years away from that decision. It never ceases to amuse me how Leftists, who currently enjoy massive support for their attitudes about life by virtue of the fact that PC MC is dominant and mainstream throughout the West -- such that, for example, even the majority of conservatives throughout the West believe that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that most Muslims are "decent moms and pops like the rest of us" -- continue to indulge the paranoid view that the West is somehow against them.
The question remains in my mind, "What or who is motivating you to make up lies to discredit Islams critics?" It's well known that the Saudi Arabians sponsor groups and individuals who will be critical of opponents of Islam. Are you on the take?
1. Bowen does not cite police, security, or intelligence experts who state that the increased Muslim population in Europe is not associated with increased probability of terrorist threats and attacks. Nor does he cite statistics showing this to be the case.
2. Bowen does not deny that the proportion of Muslim population in Europe is increasing. He does however cite some irrelevant statistics pertaining to Turks and Moroccans who have not immigrated into Europe, and other statistics that do not even distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims, that might suggest that the increase is slowing somewhat in the past few years. Even if it were true that the increase in Muslim population in Europe is decreasing somewhat, there is no evidence that it will stop increasing, and there is no evidence that the non-Muslim population in Europe will stop decreasing.
3. Polls and surveys indicate that the vast majority of Muslims in the largest Muslim countries want strict sharia law, and that large minorities of Muslims in countries such as the U.K. and Canada want sharia (and that only a small minority indicates opposition to sharia), and that the vast majority Muslims in Europe and North America want tight sharia restrictions on all statements about Islam that are deemed (by Muslims) to be critical of Islam (while only a tiny minority actually supports free expression in the sense of allowing criticism of Islam in public).
Also note that a distinction needs to be made here as to whether Bowen should have “nothing to fear,” and whether Europeans in the countries in question should have “nothing to fear.” From his article, I get the impression that Bowen himself is not in the least troubled by any aspect of the increasing Muslim population in Europe (except for the presumably “Islamophobic” among some Europeans, whom, incidentally, Bowen treats as a block) and that there is nothing about Islam that troubles him either. Indeed, he seems to argue that the increase of Islam and sharia in Europe is inherently good and that it will make Europeans more tolerant. What Bowen seems to overlook is that most Europeans do not want sharia. Unfortunately, Bowen has made a case for himself as to why he shouldn’t fear increasing Islamization of Europe. And why would Bowen fear Islamization and sharia, which he seems to consider to be good for Europe? He has not made a case as to why most Europeans should not have reasonable and healthy concerns (i.e., “fears” in Bowen’s characterization) about Islam.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this article, which is heavily critical of both European and American non-Muslims, is that Bowen has not one critical word about Islam. Most interestingly of all, he seems to thing sharia is a good thing.
Bowen: "…American Protestants and American Muslims disapprove of homosexuality in equal measure—60 percent. The gap is not between Islam and the West, but between more religious and less religious people."
I agree that there is a difference between more versus less devoutly religious people generally on such issues. But another important difference, suggested by a British poll, was that 62% of Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal. What percentage of American Protestants want homosexuality to be illegal?
Bowen: “The 2009 Gallup poll on Islam and integration found that Muslims in Germany and Britain had more confidence in the courts and the national governments than did the general German and British publics.”
Perhaps because the U.K. has allowed sharia courts, judges in Germany have appealed to the Quran in rendering their rulings, and the governments of both countries are strongly pro-Islam in their public rhetoric.
Bowen: “In France, half of all Muslims supported the law most often cited there as anti-Islamic: the 2004 ban of Islamic headscarves from public schools.”
I’ve never thought that the headscarf issue was all that important, except when women are being forced or strongly pressured to wear it. I think burqas should be banned in some public and commercial places for security and safety reasons (and health reasons for those who have to wear them), but headscarves which still show the whole face aren’t a real problem. (The strongly secularist French ban all religious symbols in some public places, the headscarf being only one such symbol. Crosses, etc., are also banned in such places). Secondly, does the “half” who support the ban of the headscarves happen to consist mostly of Muslim women by any chance? And is Bowen aware that the headscarf may not be merely a free choice for the woman in all cases, but rather something imposed on her in some cases by zealous fathers, brothers, husbands?
Bowen: “Attempting to refute arguments about assimilation, anti-Muslim writers also assert that Muslims will continue to have high birthrates because the Prophet told them to and because it serves the Islamist strategy to conquer Europe.”
First, there are Muslims who say this, not just critics of Islam (all of whom Bowen tars with the “anti-Muslim” brush). Second, according to Islamic Hadith, Muhammad did tell Muslims to have high birth rates in order to outnumber other peoples.
Bowen: “The now-viral “Muslim Demographics” video on YouTube tells viewers that France has 1.8 children per family but “Muslims, 8.1 children per family” and that “in just 39 years, France will be an Islamic Republic.” Both the BBC and the skeptic Web site Tiny Frog have assembled detailed rebuttals.”
Sure, it’s easy to rebut hyberbole and hysteria. But how about showing, as Bowen's argument suggests, that the proportion of Muslim population in Europe will likely stop increasing or possibly decrease?
P.S., as to the argument above about the attribution to Spencer, generally quotation marks are used to attribute an exact quotation to someone, and Bowen has cited not only the author but also the book in which the quote is supposed to be contained. The most likely reading is that Bowen wants readers to understand that Spencer made this quote in the cited book.
Ask Parisiennes, ask Londoners, ask the Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, dutch, germans, spanish and italians.
WAKE UP YOU MORON. Sharia is coming to YOU soon. Will you stick to your line when it does?
Jim,
Bowen wouldn't need to be literally bribed by Saudis or anyone else to have a bias against Islam critics that leads him to mischaracterize their views. Bowen is an anthropologist who works with Muslim communities. If he wants those relationships to continue smoothly, he can't criticize Islam (if he has any such criticisms to make). If he did, his work with Muslims would be finished; the vast majority of them would have nothing to do with him. Moreover, in working with Muslim communities for so long, he seems to have adopted many of their views. Hence, we see Bowen being sharply and freely critical of (non-Muslim) Europeans and Americans--to the point of committing all the sins of bigotry he accuses Islam critics of committing--yet he has no criticisms whatsoever of any aspect of Islam or sharia. He loves sharia and Islam, at least insofar as they are intrinsically interesting areas of anthropological investigation for him. The increase in Muslim presence, Islamization, and sharia, is a boon to Bowen; he loves to study Islam and sharia in all its wondrous diversity and variety. More research projects, more grants, more adventure. He has perhaps become a de facto member of the Muslim community; an advocate, activist, and participant, not just a reporter. One also has to wonder just how much Bowen and hundreds of others like him, have, deliberately or not, actually contributed to the advance of sharia in Europe.
By attacking Islam critics, he is no doubt scoring major points socially with the Muslim communities with which he works. I do get the strong impression that he is saying what he genuinely believes.
What is the writer trying to accomplish? That is really the most important question about this article. What is its purpose?
If you don't subscribe to the notion that you are your brother's keeper, then a lot of what has been written here doesn't make much sense.
Take Saudi Arabia and how they treat guest workers. No hope of citizenship, sent home when the Saudi's are done with them.
Why shouldn't Europe do the same with Muslim immigrants?
Or take America?
Why even go through the emo associated with having immigrants like these? No matter how you slice it, there is still overhead associated with assimilating immigrants.
My question is why bother?
John R.Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University
Hmmm. Probably a pretty predictable individual. In outlook and worldview.
I'll venture to guess he isn't a fan of Dobson or Pat Robertson or that bunch.
So why is he so gung-ho about getting a new batch of fundies? They've "assimilated" really well over the past say 300 years of American history.
Care to give me odds on this new set assimilating his values? It could happen.
Or it might not. 100 years from now...
Anyway, I don't have the slightest idea what "Burkean" means in this context. I've heard the name John Burke before, but let's face it, there have been 36, 39, 40 billion humans who have ever lived. Lots of real smart guys who wrote a lot of stuff.
Got knowledge overload, and I'm not even going to bother to google it.
But I'll throw out a couple of names. The Reverend Malthus, whom I'm sure everyone is familiar with. And Garret Hardin.
Lots of people in the world don't buy into the "I'm my brother's keeper" mindset.
Why should Europe or America? You see Japan or Korea welcoming immigrants? China?
Let those guys start, then we'll talk.
Do any of you have a passport? Have any of you been outside your home state?
Dear god, there's no clown like an American clown.
Presumably this is because a worker at the Holocaust museum in a major European capital was recently murdered by an avowed Nazi.
Oh, wait. That actually happened in Washington.
Or maybe it's because a European movie star said that the Jews were behind all the wars - and has continued his movie career without impediment.
Oh, wait. That was Mel Gibson.
Or that callers to a European phone-in network have been spouting anti-Semitic bigotry uninterrupted by the presenters.
Oh, wait. That's CSPAN.
His argument that the various European nations have not seen eye-to-eye forever shows only that people generally prefer to associate with those they are closest related to, rather than make a case for hypocrisy.
And even if it were hypocritical, others have a right to their own hypocrisy, just as he does.
People have a natural tendency to wish to live, work and be among others of their own kind. It's called freedom of association, and is practiced even by liberals who preach "tolerance" to the rest of us.
(Especially revealing are the many, many who point out that Spencer did not use the phrase "gutter religion", even though Spencer obviously believes it to be true, even if he will not admit it. It is revealing because all those people clearly agree with Spencer on this very point.)
Sid, you have good points. Americans of all stripes (conservatives like George Will and Anne Applebaum, and liberals like Bowen) obsess about European anti-semitism. And in fairness there is no shortage of it in Europe. But anti-semitism is also alive and well in the good old US of A.
And, finally, here's an interesting tidbit to add to your examples--though this will be less pithy than your fine efforts. There is in my view not a lot of space between Pat Buchanan in the US and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France (he is a well known conservative and nativist, just like Pat). The difference is that Le Pen, though reasonably popular in the polls, is treated by the political classes in France as if he were radioactive. Pat, by contrast, was a keynote speaker for the Republicans and is a prominent TV "pundit".
Speaks volumes to me.
Well, Bowen you can believe anything you want. You can even say anything you want (at least here in the West). But your arguments are unpersuasive at best and dangerous at worse. Your shoddy thinking and willful ignorance of the facts are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
My parents are Mexican and Salvadorean immigrants to the united states.
They came here for a reason. they are an effect not a cause. you are treating these things like a cause. they are an effect. in my case they are an effect of fucked up political and economic policies that the us has always implemented against latin american countries. read steinbeck.
so lets just do ourselves a favor and think a little. and try to make the entire human civilization better for everyone.
For the average Yank journo, "anti-Semitic" equals "daring to occasionally question the policies of the Israeli government".
Yes, us Euros are guilty as charged - unlike America's pussy-whipped politicians and journos.
The fact is that Islamic values are not Western values. They do not believe in freedom of speech, equality and separation between religion and state. They will deny this but I see no reason to believe the average Muslim in the West is any different from his brother in any Islamic country.
Contrary to Mr. Bowen's silly theory, it is obvious that Muslim populations are becoming more radical and aggressive, and it is only a matter of time until major clashes occur. Blood will flow. Innocent people will be hurt. Of course, intellectuals, academia, the media and people like Mr. Bowen will blame everything on us (the West, for not being tolerant enough).
Remember, Muslims love and respect Mohammed, a man that murdered, attacked, lied, plundered, enslaved men women and children, let his men rape captives and even beat his wife. Muslims also consider him to be a great moral example. Well, that is what Islam's hadith say. Figure out, if you can, what that means.
Kactuz
By the way: the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was essentially bloodless - Bowen must be conflating it with the Civil War. Just another little example of sloppy scholarship.
Re the alleged Spencer quotation, will Boston Review print a retraction and correction to Bowen's misleading attribution? While I disagree with Robert Spencer on a number of issues, I do know that Spencer has never characterized Islam, even indirectly, as "a gutter religion." Spencer has claimed that he "loves Muslims." Spencer has been asked directly if he condemns Islam in its entirety, and he has answered this by noting* that he does not condemn all of Islam, but rather critiques and draws attention to those elements of Islam that are used by jihadists and sharia supremacists to promote hatred, intolerance, violence, supremacism, gender inequality. *[I am paraphrasing what I recall of Spencer's answers]. Spencer has pointed out that there is a spectrum of belief among Muslims, just as there is a spectrum of belief among Christians.
Not only does Bowen not seem to know of what he writes when he attempts to characterize Spencer's views, he also doesn't seem to be familiar with the contents of the book to which he attributes the alleged quote of Spencer. Bowen does not seem to be aware that Spencer's approach is to present mainstream Muslim scholarly commentary on the Islamic texts. If this seems to present Islam in a negative light in some spots, surely Bowen should not blame the messenger, who is quoting Islamic scholars' and jurists' views of the Quran.
Yet Bowen's article above seems to leave no room for grey area, nuance, or middle-ground positions. Either you are with Bowen as a cheerleader of the advance of sharia in Europe, or you are against him and sharia as an "anti-Muslim" "Islamophobe" partisan. Are there no knowledgeable, reasonable, qualified people on planet Earth who have some critical things to say about Islam and sharia? Are the no knowledgeable, qualified, reasonable individuals who can cite relevant empirical evidence that supports the argument that sharia and Islamic legal standards in Europe do not present a problem for European values such as freedom expression, gender equality, freedom to change religions or to have no religion, and so on? Bowen's article, which resorts to the kinds of internet cliches that are cited in back-and-forth flame wars on the partisan blogs, leaves me wondering if Boston Review is aware of any more knowledgeable, and less partisan, individuals who might want to write a properly-researched article on Islamization and sharia in Europe, based on relevant evidence.
That may be so. But the 'more religious Muslim' has shown violent tendencies when not getting his/her way. This may have escaped mr. Bowen's attention.
Historically, European religions have clashed ferociously and viciously. I trust mr.Bowen doesn't really think it therefore normal and perhaps even historically appropriate if these conflicts would be repeated--this time involving the Islam.
As for "block thinking: no other group leads more readily with its religious affiliation and ideas and identifies itself more nonreflectively with its dogmas than Muslims do with the Islam.
Islam seems indeed incompatible with democracy and its (hard-won)rights, duties and freedoms. It only needs the "national opportunity structures" of democratic societies to establish its own set of laws, rules, customs and principles--which are in essence not democratic, but rather dogmatic/theocratic.
That's what I find in the comments from lloyd and the other defenders of Bowen.
A) It is not a defense of Islam or Bowen, or a valid means of addressing the criticisms presented in most of these posts, to say "Oh, but look how bad America is!"
B) The comments consisting of pointing out how bad America is are based on the aforementioned "sloppy generalizations" and "sleazy stereotyping". Not only do they in no way address the criticisms of Islam and sharia law presented, but they betray the kind of contempt for group that the posters hypocritically condemn when directed at Muslims.
C) The simplistic, binary approach by which some try to conflate Islam and conservative Christians is either stupid or disingenuous. Yes, conservative Christians disapprove of homosexuality. This is not the same as advocating a punishment of death for it. Yet some attempt to make a "logical" point based on this low-truth-value observation. This is the same kind of Nuspeak duplicity that claims equivalence for interrogation by waterboarding and the sawing off of heads and conflates criticism of Islam with "The Crusades". A bogus, logically invalid, and morally questionable approach.
I could go on, but why bother? No argument, however carefully presented, however qualified, nuanced and reasonable, that Islam is a real problem for the West, will meet anything but rebuttal-by-trump-card: "Racist!", "Bigoted!", "Ignorant!".
Those whose hatred of their fellow citizens and their own culture justifies (to them) such abuse of the truth must be beyond redemption, and certainly beyond any reasoned effort to get them to reconsider the desperately-held conviction that their contempt for Western Civilization in general, and Christianity in particular, makes them moral and superior.
In short, "lloyd", I am unimpressed with your snotty little "argument".
But then I saw a British TV crew interviewing Muslims on the streets of London about the Ayatollah's fatwa. There was a seemingly endless stream of invective directed at Rushdie by commentators, but finally a suave looking man in a three piece suit came before the camera. When asked about Rushdie, the man said in perfect Oxford English, "Absolutely..." Immediately, I thought, aha, now a fully integrated British Muslim is going to let those fanatics have it.
Imagine my shock and disappointment, then, when the man went on to say, "Absolutely... he must die!"
If that was the opinion of a middle class "integrated" and successful British Muslim, what hope was there for any Muslim to understand the meaning of free speech and liberty. Over the past twenty years, nothing has changed my mind that Muslims are fundamentally unable to assimilate themselves into accepting fundamental Western values. They seem only interested in living in the West on their own terms (meaning they want to turn the West into a clone of the oppressed societies from which they came).
Whenever you have fanatics ranting and spilling blood because they are upset to see freedom of speech in the West, where are the so-called Muslim moderates to condemn, chastise or restrain them? These people, who Mr. Bowen seems to think are the main element of Islamic diasporic communities, are almost completely silent whenever an outrage like the killing of the Dutch film maker, or the bombing of an airliner, occurs.
But Islam (as e.g. the Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out some years back) has made no contribution to progress for at least the past four hundred years.
It is hard to see then how the Islam could be considered an enrichment of any kind. And one does not have to be an Islamophobe to see it that way.
Hence this reviewer has no use for it. A fraudulent effort with suspect motives, choosing only the obviously paranoid books to review.
The only problem we have in Europe is with governments that are becoming increasingly militaristic and destroying the rights of the population. Having a few kebap shops and people who don't eat pork hasn't really destroyed our civilization. Sending our soldiers to kill civilians thousands of miles away, on the other hand, might just do that.
Oh, and a small history lesson: what we call "Western" values (i.e. freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the pursuit of science, democracy, etc.) are NOT Christian values. These values were developed against great opposition from the various Christian churches; that's what we call the Enlightenment. As nice as Christ was, Christianity as an organization gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.
But we're still not banning Christianity - because of our democratic values, because we know that there is more to any religion and philosophy than a list of historical crimes. Christianity also gave us G.K. Chesterton and William Blake.
If you have any "Western" values, you will not buy into this racist paranoia.
Islam is not a race, sharia law is not a race. While some criticism of Islam may be ignorant and motivated out of xenophobia, most criticism of Islam coming from the majority of ordinary Europeans and scholars is not of this type.
Christianity isn't banned, but medieval Christian laws are for the most part no longer in existence. In contrast, Islamic sharia law is implemented and enforced today in many areas of the world, including in Islamic communities in Europe. (Just ask Bowen; this is what he studies). Do you think sharia law should be banned in Europe? Should Europeans be subject to sharia penalties for expressing critical thoughts about Islam, Muhammad, sharia, etc.?
Spencer watch,
Are there any Islam critics who you do not consider to be Islamophobic? If so, please provide their names (or pen names).
Are there any aspects of Islam or sharia that you would criticize? If so, please briefly state them.
If so, did you have your eyes open?
Well, I did!
And I saw a Europe sliding back into the middle ages.