The bestselling
French novel Soumission (Submission in translation), by the
always-provocative nihilist Michel Houellebecq, features a literature professor
at the Sorbonne named François who is the very embodiment of Europe’s
secularized decadence. After an alliance between the Socialist Party and the
Muslim Brotherhood Party results in a fundamental transformation of the
country’s political landscape, François finds himself living in an Islamic patriarchy in which polygamy is legal, all teachers
are required to be Muslim, and his university is renamed the Islamic
University of Paris-Sorbonne.
“The facts were
plain,” François
observed. “Europe had reached a point of such putrid decomposition that it
could not longer save itself, any more than fifth-century Rome could have done.
This wave of new immigrants, with their traditional culture – of natural
hierarchies, the submission of women, and respect for elders – offered a
historic opportunity for the moral and familial rearmament of Europe.” The
fight “to establish a new organic phase of civilization could no longer be
waged in the name of Christianity. Islam, its sister faith… had taken up the
torch.”
With no moral or
spiritual center to ground him, François is easily seduced by the new order
and converts to Islam in order to gain a more prestigious position at the
university and to indulge in arranged marriages with sexually compliant young
wives. He
chooses the path of least resistance to the “foregone conclusion” of Muslim domination. His
submission, symbolic of Europe’s ongoing capitulation to an ascendant Islamic
fundamentalism, is every bit as chilling as Winston Smith’s embrace of Big
Brother at the conclusion of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Many books have
been written identifying the causes of Europe’s slow-motion cultural suicide, among
them a tsunami of Muslim immigration, the corrosive effects of political
correctness and multiculturalism, willfully blind political elites, and perhaps most
significantly, the decline of Christianity. What Matthew Arnold called “the melancholy, long
withdrawing roar” of Christianity’s retreat from the continent is leaving a
vacuum of moral and spiritual conviction which a virile, unconflicted Islam is
filling. Christianity, as François notes, “had renounced its temporal powers,
and so had sealed its own doom.”
The result, as we
are all painfully aware, is that an enervated Europe now is riddled with Muslim
no-go zones and sharia courts. Calls to prayer are blasted publicly from
loudspeakers and streets blocked by praying believers. Polygamy and female
genital mutilation abound. Sexual assaults and anti-Semitic hate crimes are
skyrocketing. The push for blasphemy laws is finding increasing support. And of
course, the continent experiences periodic bursts of violent jihad ranging from
“lone wolf” attacks to coordinated assaults on concert crowds and commuter
trains.
One day while out
and about in Paris, I wore a black t-shirt with a large red Templar cross on
it. I was curious to see what kind of reaction I might trigger wearing a
Crusader cross in the most Islamized country in Europe. I threw a blazer on
over it, but the cross was still very visible. In truth, however, I expected I
might get a dirty look at worst, possibly a verbal challenge.
I got neither, but
the cross did inspire an unexpected reaction. At one point a white Frenchman,
perhaps in his thirties, approached me excitedly, pointed to the cross rather
surreptitiously, and said to me sotto voce, “Je comprends le
significance, monsieur!” – “I understand the significance!” He gave me a big
smile and a thumbs-up and went on his way. The encounter felt almost covert, as
if he and I had to be careful about openly declaring our Christian faith in a Christian
country, a Christian continent, surrendering to Islam.
But there is more
to the Islamization of the West than Christianity’s capitulation. A related but
often overlooked cause is the emasculation of the West.
Cultural Marxists
have been waging a decades-long assault on the nuclear family through the
feminist eradication of gender distinctions. Deconstructing traditional
masculinity is the tip of the spear of that campaign, because once society
accepts that “male” and “female” are false social constructions rather than
biological truths, and that masculinity is nothing more than an oppressive and
toxic mask, then the State can finally become our father, and there will be no
force left to defend our civilization from threats both internal and external. The
result of this war on masculinity is that boys and young men in the West are in
crisis today in a variety of ways which have often been enumerated by myself
and others, foremost of which is a crippling self-doubt about a man’s duties to
his loved ones, his country, and his civilization.
Here is one
jaw-dropping example of the degree to which Western men have succumbed to a
lack of confidence about their masculine nature: you will recall that upwards
of 1200 sexual assaults took place in various German cities on New Year’s Eve
2015, committed by Muslim migrants from a true rape culture which the European
elites had imported into the continent through unchecked immigration. After
that horrific night, a few hundred outraged Dutch men in Amsterdam decided to
march for the victims. To show their solidarity with the assaulted women, the
men marched wearing short skirts.
It is impossible
to imagine such a toothless, effeminate gesture striking fear into the heart of
men from the hyper-masculinized Muslim culture metastasizing in Europe. Even
the official response from law enforcement reeked of timidity. Their answer to
the rapes was not to take aggressive action to punish the perpetrators and
prevent future gang assaults, but to urge European women to change their own
behavior to avoid further victimization: travel in groups, avoid going out at
night, dress more modestly, and most absurdly, wear temporary tattoos that read
“No!” – as if this would deter gangs of rapists.
A civilization whose
men will not or cannot rise to the defense of its women and children is
signaling to the wolves beyond the gates – or in this case, inside the gates –
that it is ripe for conquest. It is a doomed civilization.
Christianity has
suffered since the Middle Ages from the perception that it is a feminine
religion, which stems partly from its veneration of the Virgin Mary and partly
from its emphasis on peace, love, and forgiveness. Church congregations today
are dominated by women. Fundamentalist Islam, on the other hand – the ideology
of a warlord – offers young men a seductive vision of male dominance and
aggression, not to mention an afterlife teeming with virgins. Houellebecq’s
François admires this appeal; he refers approvingly to a quote from Nietzsche’s
The Anti-Christ: “If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold
right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.”
A report from
Egypt several years ago noted that Muslims there were stickering their cars with
shark symbols as taunting response to the Christian "fish" sticker which
some members of the Coptic minority pasted on their own cars. When asked
about it, one young Muslim laughed and said, “The Christians had the fish so we
responded with the shark. If they want to portray themselves as weak fishes,
OK. We are the strongest.” There could not be a more starkly-stated
crystallization of how many Muslims perceive the cultural conflict.
Another example. A
few months ago I saw a video online of a couple of Christians who had set up a
little table on a street corner in Dearborn, Michigan and were trying to share
pamphlets and proselytize politely to passersby. Right on that same corner, two
young Muslim males set up a loudspeaker, aimed it at the Christians, and
blasted the Islamic call to prayer at them. It was a clear gesture of
intimidation and supremacism. The Christians looked frustrated and helpless.
What could they do? Perhaps they might have met the challenge by bringing their
own loudspeaker and blasting “Onward Christian Soldiers” right back at the
Muslim men.
That martial hymn
that has all but vanished from church services these days, unfortunately. Instead
of “marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before,” the Christian
community now too often turns the other cheek. The position of too many Christians
toward Islam today, most notably Pope Francis himself, is a combination of naïve
denial and appeasement through interfaith outreach. Last July, the Grand
Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar University even thanked the
Pope for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and
terrorism.”
In terms of
building bridges between Islam and the West, however, Islamic supremacists view
interfaith dialogue as more of a monologue. Muslim Brotherhood founder Sayyid
Qutb argued that interfaith dialogue with the West should be undertaken only to
draw infidels over to Islam, bringing concessions with them. Although jihad is
on the march worldwide, the expectation always seems to be that it is the
Christian West that must overcome its “Islamophobic” bigotry and offer the
olive branch. As an interfaith gesture of goodwill, we welcome the prayers of
imams in our churches and synagogues, yet Muslims are never expected to
reciprocate.
Christians are
suffering unprecedented persecution worldwide. According to the most recent reports,
some 215 million Christians worldwide face severe persecution, mostly in Muslim-majority
countries. Yet a recent poll of U.S. Catholics reveals that they are more
concerned about climate change than the attacks on their brothers and sisters
in Christ. Given a list of five global concerns, Catholics put Christian
persecution at the bottom of the list. This is unconscionable. Christians in
the Western world need to wake up. Perhaps the Pope should do less
whitewashing of Islam and more speaking out in defense of its Christian victims.
The persecution is
not limited to the Middle East or Africa. In 2016 an 86-yr-old priest in
Normandy, France was beheaded at the very altar of his church by two jihadists.
Another priest was forced to film it; he was stabbed and seriously wounded. How
did the French religious community respond to this outrageous act of
aggression? French bishops called on Catholics for a day of fasting and prayer.
They also asked Muslims living in France to
come to church to "share the grief of Christians." I understand that
a message of forgiveness and brotherhood is consistent with the Christian
spirit; but to ignore that the assassins acted in the name of Islam, intentionally
targeted a Catholic church, and slaughtered an aging priest at the very altar is
cowardly denial, perhaps even a resigned acceptance.
Islamists view
this as weakness and it emboldens them. They see the West is clearly crumbling.
“A falling camel attracts many knives,” goes an Arab saying Osama bin Laden himself
used. He also said that “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they
naturally gravitate toward the strong horse.” Today, a patriarchal, supremacist
Islam is that strong horse.
Many say that it is
too late for Europe to reverse course, that the continent is finished. Others,
myself included, are more optimistic, or at least refuse to go down without a
fight. But what must be done? How do we become the strong horse again?
Writing for PJ
Media several years ago in “Christianity: First Line of Defense for the West,”
Abraham Miller, himself not a Christian, wrote that the “one solid, inescapable
organizing principle that has stood as the bulwark against radical Islam is Christianity.”
Not the egocentric “prosperity gospel” of many mainstream churches and
megachurch pastors, but a Christianity that strengthens us for spiritual
warfare. A Christianity that is less the church of Jesus the Lamb of God, and
more the church of Jesus, the Lion of Judah. The church of the Jesus who
righteously drove the moneychangers from the temple. The “muscular
Christianity” of Victorian England. The Christianity that roused itself to push
back against 500 hundred years of Islamic supremacism by embarking on the
Crusades. The masculine spirit of Christian chivalry.
Chivalry
originated in France in the Middle Ages as a code of warrior ethics among the
knightly class, a code which included such values as martial prowess, honor,
loyalty, and generosity. The church began to channel the unconstrained violence
of knights toward more moral ends that benefitted all of society. This led to
the formation of an entire order of warrior monks, the legendary Knights
Templar, devoted to the defense of the church, the protection of Christian pilgrims,
and the retaking of the Holy Land from Muslim occupation. St. Bernard of
Clairvaux described them as a new kind of knight, engaged in “a twofold war
both against flesh and blood and against a spiritual army of evil in the
heavens.” They appeared “gentler than lambs,” yet were “fiercer than lions.”
What it will take
for us to reverse the West’s demise is to recover the militant spirit of Christian
chivalry. Pushing back against both cultural Marxism and the Islamic tide to
preserve our civilization requires such men to step up once again, cut through all
our cultural gender confusion, and embrace a chivalric masculinity. C.S. Lewis
wrote that the “practical and vital” tradition of chivalry “offers the only
possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and
sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.”
Christian pacifists
may insist, as evangelical Bible scholar Ben Witherington has said, that for the
Christian “there are plenty of things worth dying for and giving your life for,
but nothing worth killing for, for life is of sacred worth.” But the hard truth
is that the West is locked in an epic historical struggle for survival against
an existential opponent that believes there is plenty worth killing for.
Christians wrestling with this would do well to remember the example of Archangel
Michael, the patron saint of chivalry, who is usually pictured in art wielding
a spear or sword “from the Armorie of God,” as Milton put it in Paradise
Lost. Michael had no pacifist qualms about leading the other angels to war
with Satan and his rebel angels and throwing them out of Heaven.
This is not to say
that non-Christians have nothing to contribute in this conflict; my friend
Bosch Fawstin, for example, the anti-Islam cartoonist who won the Draw Muhammad
day contest in Texas two years ago, is an ex-Muslim atheist and as fearless a
critic of Islam as they come. But the primary force necessary to repel the
Islamization of the West is a reinvigorated, masculinized Christianity led by
those willing to engage in that twofold war Bernard of Clairvaux mentioned against
flesh and blood and against spiritual evil.
In 1999, to mark
the 900th anniversary of the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, hundreds
of devout Christians took part in a reconciliation walk that began in Germany and
ended in the Holy Land. Along the way the walkers wore t-shirts bearing the message
“I apologize” in Arabic script. The time for such self-flagellating apologies
is over. We must reverse our apathetic mindset, let Archangel Michael be our
inspiration, and begin fighting – in a literal sense when necessary – for our freedom,
our families, our country, and our civilization.
The alternative is
submission.
From New English Review, 12/1/18
