The most recent issue of Time Magazine asks, “Is America Islamophobic?” I’m sure I could plumb the depths of this issue, but why bother when Mark Steyn fully exposes “Islamophobia” and all the other multi-cultural “phobias” that have emerged during this hyper-tolerant, PC, hate-crime era for what they really are in his classic tome America Alone?
As someone who’s called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, I can’t help marveling at the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I’d be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. “Homophobia” was always absurd: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phoney-baloney “phobia” was a way of casting opposition to the gay political agenda as a kind of mental illness: don’t worry, you’re not really against same-sex marriage; with a bit of treatment and some medication, you’ll soon be feeling okay.
On the other hand, “Islamophobia” is not phony or even psychological but very literal – if you’re a Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel whore, your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam’s appropriation of the gay lobby’s framing of the debate is very artful. It’s the most explicit example of how Islam uses politically correct self-indulgent victimology as a cover. You’ll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed. Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus “Islamophobia” – i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues – they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia – i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind’s invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers.
I finally bought my own copy of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. I read a library copy shortly after it was published in 2006, but enjoyed it so much that I knew I would re-read it and refer to it often. It is, in a word, brilliant.
If you’re a “progressive,” you probably won’t agree with its premise, which is basically that there are two populations going in opposite directions: one is shrinking and getting older (post-Christian, postmodern Western civilization) while the other is growing and decidedly younger (Islam).
What happens when the first is coddled by the state from cradle to grave and believes in nothing while the other is animated by a violent ideology that takes no prisoners? Then add the fact that the former are elderly and addled by pop culture and politcally-correct multiculturalism while the latter are youthful and angry? The end of the world as we know it, at least according to Steyn.
The edition delivered to my front door includes a new introduction. While almost every sentence in the book is quotable, here’s a tasty one I found in the intro:
“Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of cultural relativism, a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something primal and raging. Islam is an ideology. To claim it’s “race” is so breathtakingly stupid as to give the game away – and to confirm that “Racist!” is now no more than the cry of a western liberal who can’t stand his illusions being disturbed.”
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