Europe is already lost to a Muslim takeover and America has started down that same path. That’s the proposition persuasively made by Mark Steyn in his book “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.”
Mr. Steyn notes that America and Australia “grew the institutions of their democracy with relatively homogeneous populations and then evolved into successful ‘multicultural’ societies. But the continent isn’t multicultural so much as bicultural. You have hitherto homogeneous Scandinavian societies whose cities have become 40 percent Muslim in the space of a generation. Imagine colonial New England when it was still the Mayflower crowd and one day they woke up and noticed that all the Aldens and Standishes, Cookes and Winslows were in their 50s and 60s and all the young guys were called Ahmed and Mohammed.
That’s what happened in Rotterdam and Malmo. There are aging native populations and young Muslim populations — If there’s three, four, or more cultures, you can all hold hands and sing “We Are the World.” But if there’s just two — you and the Other — that’s generally more fractious. Bicultural societies are among the least stable in the world, especially once it’s no longer quite clear who’s the majority and who’s the minority — a situation much of Europe is fast approaching, as you can see by visiting any French, Austrian, Belgian, or Dutch maternity ward.”
Europe is losing the demographic war to an Islamic takeover and it is also surrendering bit by bit. Again, Mr. Steyn summarizes perfectly:
“And sometimes, as in the United Kingdom, they talk about defiance and the old Blitz spirit, but they make a thousand trivial concessions day by day. That’s how great nation’s die — not by war or conquest, but bit by bit, until one day you wake up and you don’t need to sign a for mal surrender because you did it piecemeal over the last ten years.” Here’s an example of that bit-by-bit surrender of a culture and of national values. Anne Owens, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, banned the flying of the English national flag in prisons because the Cross of St. George, in that flag, was also used by the crusaders, and hence might be offensive to Muslims. The same ban went into force at Heathrow Airport and in the offices of the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Agency.
Mr. Steyn has a whole book chock full of examples like that, which added together make the case that Europe is already gone, defeated by Islamic imperialism, and America better watch its step as it may not be far behind.
But it is not just Islamic imperialism that has taken Europe down the drain and that is threatening similar problems in America. We may be in the midst of a cultural transformation that may be changing America, as we know it. That broader analysis appears in a piece titled “The Ghost of America Yet to Come” by Craig L. Parsh all that appears in Israel My Glory (January-February 2009), a publication of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.
Mr. Parshall went to Europe to promote some of his books that had been translated into the Dutch language by a publisher there. But he also found that the Netherlands might be the ghost of an America to come if the present trends continue. Mr. Parshall said he went to Europe knowing the Netherlands sanctions homosexual marriage; euthanasia; hate-crime laws that threaten to intimidate the church into silence on such subjects as homosexuality and criticism of Islam; and legalized prostitution and “soft drugs.”
In the “red light” district of Amsterdam, prostitutes openly display themselves in front of plate-glass windows. Coffee shops dot the streets in most cities where coffee is not the main attraction but what in America would be illegal drugs. The Netherlands fostered mercy killings for years and finally became the first nation to legalize euthanasia. It is also the land of same-sex marriages. In addition, surprisingly, the Netherlands and much of Europe have porous borders if not quite an open-borders policy.
This is all paradoxical because at the same time what Mr. Parshall calls “an innately repressive religion” is becoming an increasing demographic reality. Six percent of the population is now Muslim. This has all fueled the application of hate-crime laws.
While Mr. Parshall was there, a Dutch cartoonist who drew some cartoons critical of Islam was under government investigation. Police raided his home and seized his computer. If convicted of a hate-mongering, he could get a sentence of a year in prison … for what a free society would classify as an exercise in the fundamental right of free speech. Another example involved a Christian who criticized homosexuality during a news interview, and was therefore subjected to a government investigation.
Mr. Parshall attaches importance to the timing of some of the new laws. Prostitution was legalized in 2000. Homosexual marriage was approved in 2001. Euthanasia was approved in 2002. These laws were passed during a period when for the first time in a century Christian Democrats were not in the coalition government. That party was mainly populated by Christians from the Dutch Reformed Church. Mr. Parshall concludes, “Admittedly, the Netherlands had been facing an onslaught of liberal legislation and cultural decay for some time. But the dam broke, so to speak, when Christians were silenced.”
Dutch Christians told Mr. Parshall that they lost their voice when they became embroiled in disputes over worship styles and even had disputes over which hymns to sing during Sunday services.
Then Mr. Parshall suggests the Netherlands may be signaling the church of America yet to come: “The parallels between the Netherlands and America are obvious. Both nations are Democratic republics based historically on strong Christian foundations and heritages. The Netherlands housed the Pilgrims in Leiden until they finally set sail for Plymouth to the New World. When America fought for its independence, the Dutch extended us essential economic credit. Our histories, in many ways, are inexorably connected.”
Mr. Parshall argues that the devastating cultural and spiritual state of the Netherlands ought to be a wake up call to America. He likens it to Dickens’ famous Christmas story and its ghost of Christmas yet-to-come. We already have the emergence of homosexual marriage and proposals for hate-crime legislation.
Congress came close to passing hate-crime laws that some critics feared would muzzle any criticism of Islam or homosexuality. There is also a beachhead of euthanasia laws and proposals and laws to legalize some drugs now illegal. In addition, we have porous borders and the newly empowered far left-wing of the Democratic Party is pushing for open borders. A further drag on our culture is the media’s glorification of the single mother rather than the traditional two-parent families.
Mr. Parshall concludes:
“The only real hope for America is a vibrant church of Christian believers who will be both ‘salt and light.’ But at the same time, the only hope for the church is an absolute commitment to God himself in a radical, transformational way and a total commitment to the absolute inerrancy, inspiration, and authority of the Word of God. Only then will Christian believers be able to resist the cultural and theological lies of our age — the ‘savage wolves’ that are increasingly being loosed upon us.”
I’d put a broader perspective on Mr. Parshall’s analysis. First, I think it is important to recognize that America still has a strong religious foundation and a religious people. In contrast, religion in Europe is fading away as is the power, importance and will of Europe. It is in the process of surrendering its values and culture to Islam. Perhaps Europe tells us to avoid their problems we should be sure and maintain our strong religious life.
Second, an even broader perspective may be in order. If America is to survive and maintain its glorious values and its historical strengths, its citizens have to remember who they are and what they stand for. Mr. Steyn says it’s a question of will and confidence in our own culture and values. Mr. Steyn writes,
“This book isn’t an argument for more war, more bombing, or more killing, but for more will. In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of ‘suttee’ — the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: ‘You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
We need the same confidence in our culture that Gen.Napier had in his. We are losing that confidence. Part of the problem is multiculturalism, which says all cultures are of equal value. Mr. Steyn asks would you really want to live in a neighborhood where 48 percent of the people believed in suttee?
Mr. Steyn answers: “The rest of us — the ones who think you can make judgments about competing cultures on liberty, religious freedom, the rule of law — need to recover the cultural cool that General Napier demonstrated.”
As Mr. Steyn observes, suicide bombers are a weak weapon, but not if used against a suicide culture, one that doesn’t value and defend its own values.
Mr. Steyn says, “If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seem psychologically less damaging than the Western elites’ loathing of their own.”
You would think that the answer would be easy. Any rational observers would be forced to conclude America is a great nation, perhaps the greatest in the history of the world. It’s not too much to ask that we recognize that truism, and end the almost psychotic hating of America that now infects so many of our colleges and our universities and our media. If we don’t believe in ourselves and our values who will? If we don’t defend our culture and our values who will?