An impressive industry seems to have formed around the topic of Islam in the West. Write any incendiary propaganda and you're almost guaranteed publication. Christopher Caldwell in his recent book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (positively reviewed here in The New York times By Fouad Ajami and critiqued here by Eboo Patel), is hell-bent on the idea that Islam has always been and will always be the archenemy of Europe, and by extension the West. Brushing all other explanations aside, he's convinced the 2005 French suburban riots were orchestrated by a group of Muslims who “simply aspire to burn to ground a society they despised.” Imagine using such insidious language to describe the L.A. race riots of 1992 or or the Detroit race riots of 1967. Caldwell, a leading political journalist (senior editor at The Weekly Standard), believes Muslim immigration to Europe is a "rupture in its history" because Muslims are not there to enrich European culture but to supplant it. There are things in Caldwell's book I agree with and I do believe some Muslims cherish the thought of conquering Europe and changing its culture, but speaking of large-scale parallel societies in European countries as if they were all conspiring to take over with their mosques, their names, their food, and their dress codes is largely exaggerated.



Caldwell says that it's time we talked about these issues without fear of being called a racist or an Islamophobe, but it's one thing to open an intelligent and genuine dialogue about Muslim immigration and a completely another thing to use scare tactics to fan already inflamed passions about the topic. This kind of irresponsible reporting bolsters those who've made a career warning the West against the Islamic threat but whose propaganda has been heretofore limited to conservative platforms. Now there's little difference between the likes of Caldwell and Daniel Pipes and more of this incendiary language will soon permeate the most moderate of discussions about Islam. Caldwell's doomsday warnings that Muslims will slowly but surely annihilate Western culture, we're told, are more sophisticated that those usually made by right-wing pundits. We should read him carefully and heed his advice because this is not the typical vitriolic comments made by the radically-opinionated talk radio host. The mainstreaming of this kind of language, however, is setting a dangerous precedent that sanctions people across the political spectrum using hefty words to portray Muslims in the West as disloyal and conspiracist.



Since Cadlwell's book came out, bloggers, columnists and talk radio hosts freely and cheaply speak of "reverse colonialism" in Europe, of Muslims in the West dropping militant tactics to adopt a softer "honey Jihad" by overwhelming Western societies with faith-based requests in dress codes and school programs. James Delingpole, a British journalist writing here for the Daily Telegraph warns against this new assault campaign on "our" culture. He writes, "...as any extremist Imam could tell you, there are at least two ways in which a good Muslim can further the ongoing struggle to convert the whole world from the House of War (that’s the non-Muslim world) to the House of Islam (ie global submission to the will of Allah): one is by poison or the sword; the other is by honey." The Burqini (a full-length swimming suit created by an Australian woman) is now the symbol of "honey Islam" and how Muslims will seep destructively into European culture. Just like Caldwell, many also bemoan the popularity of Muslim names in Europe. There are too many Mohammeds in Britain and the Netherlands, they say, and in just a while there will be more Hassans, Mohammeds and Ahmeds in Belgium than Christian names. For these "very concerned" Europeans, this "baby boom intifada" is the Muslim caliphate marching on European soil all over again. And to think that this paranoia is caused by a Muslim population that makes up a meager 3% of the entire EU population! There is a fine line between responsible discussion and debate whose sole purpose is to spread panic and stoke anger.