The Three-way War Between Modernity, Post-Modernity, and Islam, by Charles Hill. We are in a worldwide, three-way, cultural war between:
- Modernity — The Enlightenment, universal human rights, open trade, open expression, consent of the governed, an international system of states with restraints on the worst horrors of war, a determination that religions should not be inserted into political, military, and diplomatic world affairs, the doctrine of “the equality of states,” etc.
- Post-modernism/PC — The EU is a new form of trans-national entity that eschews war, abolishes sovereign borders, exalts diplomacy, and supersedes the Westphalian system (the idea that countries do not interfere in each other’s domestic affairs). The EU has a new flag bearing no hint of national identity and a new currency depicting unidentifiable architecture of no discernible origin. It avoids any reference to Europe’s Christian heritage.
- Islam — A meme designed to conquer the world, from seventh century Arabia. An implacable adversary of modernity and post-modernity. It cannot change, fundamentally, because the Qur’an is the unchallengeable word of God, dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel and not open to later re-interpretation.
The main battleground is Europe.
If Europe is where the siege is to take place, the drawbridge already is up:
- Islamism abhors the state; the EU has emasculated it.
- Islamism recognizes only one border: between itself and regions yet to become Muslim; Europe has opened its borders to the point of abolishing the concept altogether.
- Islamism regards democracy as un-Islamic because it enacts laws other than Sharia; the EU from its inception has acted assiduously to prevent people from governing themselves democratically.
- Islamists, like Machiavelli, know that armed prophets are victorious and unarmed prophets are destroyed; the EU has deliberately diminished its capacities to defend itself or to back its diplomacy with strength.
- And while Islamists declare religion to be the answer the EU has seen religion as the problem. As Pierre Manent has pointed out, had Europeans maintained their identity as sovereign states with a Christian heritage, the assimilation of Muslims could have been possible on the basis of comity whereas now it lacks an answer to “assimilation to what?”
Americans need to understand that the Modern Age with its pluralistic structures, societies, and beliefs is under assault and that the enemies of modernity are … unwilling to accept others on an equal basis.
The postmodern PC crew are so focused on defeating modernity (basically the native western populations) that they are willfully blind to their greater enemy, Islam, and indeed assist it (the enemy of our enemy…).
Islam, of course, has no respect for political correctness and postmodernism, and detests it. However Islam respects modernity, having been dominated and beaten by modernism for hundreds of years. Seeing post-modernism emerge as a real threat to modernism, Islam can hardly believe its luck and has been quick to exploit post-modernism.
