The reason is that the Left sees Islam as a de facto ally—as Marxists would say, an “objective ally”—in the destruction of the vestiges of the traditional society based upon Christianity and its moral code, and traditional cultural patterns. So what they are doing is using Islam as the battering ram and as a would-be fellow-traveler, in their grand anti-Christian, Christophobic design. They hope that once they create their brave, new multiculturalist Utopia, Islam can be tamed, that soft porn and state education will convert the Muslims’ offspring to the general multiculturalist melange.

We know they’re wrong because we know that second and third-generation Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in France and Britain, are far more radical and far more Islamic-minded than their parents and grandparents. The explanation is very simple: the tepid, non-descript multiculturalist pap that is being offered by the dominant elites cannot inspire these young men and women. They need something that gives meaning to their lives, and so they fall back upon the religion of their forefathers—and once they do that, they cannot do otherwise but turn against the multiculturalist host-society. So the Leftists are making a colossal miscalculation. Far from being the clients of their future global welfare state, the Muslims—in the Western world in particular—will be the agents of revolutionary change not only against the remnants of Christianity today, but also against the secularist, multicultural Utopia of tomorrow. ~Srdja Trifkovic

This used to seem strange to me, until I began to think on it more. You see this sort of sneaky admiration for Islam or Islamic societies already creeping in among some intellectuals during the Enlightenment, where Voltaire’s praise for the “enlightened” despotism of the Sultan is probably best known: “The great Turk is governing in peace twenty nations of different religions. Turks have taught to Christians how to be moderate in peace and gentle in victory.” (As a side note, as we approach the annual day of commemorating the Armenian genocide on April 24, it is worth noting that this quote seems to be frequently pulled out of its context in Candide by Turkish nationalists and the current Turkish government to deny the slaughters of 1915-23 in a way similar to pro-Israel pundits’ uses of Mark Twain’s diary to justify the expulsion of the Palestinians by claiming erroneously that the Palestinians were the relative newcomers.)

That Ottoman “moderation” and “gentleness” were somewhat different in reality, but Voltaire’s fantasy about the Ottoman world has frequently become the Western view of the Ottoman treatment of its Christian subjects. Bat Ye’or’s study of the fate of the dhimmis in The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam has helped to correct this imbalance, but hers is by no means anything close to the consensus view in scholarship. It is essential to understanding the left’s attempts at tactical alliances with Islam against Christians. The real attraction of Islam to Western radicals is in its historic opposition to Christianity and its capacity to weaken severely or eliminate entirely Christianity in the lands where it takes hold.

We saw this on a policy level most recently and most clearly in the joint liberal and neoconservative enthusiasm for “helping” poor, victimised Muslims in choice places during the 1990s (thus the Chechens, Bosnian Muslims and Albanians in Kosovo are oppressed and in need of our aid, because they are fighting Christian nations). The fights of Muslims elsewhere seem to attract less interest, because they lack the potential to strike at places and peoples associated with Christianity (neocons shed no tears for the people of Kashmir). When the interests of Muslims and Christians conflict, it is typically the response of those on the left, including the neocons, to instinctively side with the Muslims (which they may even phrase in terms of “winning” Muslim gratitude, which has so far had a miserable track record).

The Azeris enjoy the benefits of being an oil-rich nation while also being locked in a stalemated war with Christian Armenia over Karabagh, which guarantees that Washington will continue to favour Baku as part of its general anti-Russian and anti-Iranian policy in the Caucasus. The present Islamist Turkish government (it is fashionable to call it “Islamist-based,” which is a meaningless attempt at evading what it is) receives Washington’s blessings as it seeks entry into the EU even as it engages in a weird cultural neo-Ottomanism that creates places such as this (one of the more striking symbols invoked at this consciously Ottomanist display is the bridge of Mostar in Bosnia, to affirm that the Balkans were and, by extension, should be Islamic and Turkish) and works to make the life of its few remaining Christian minorities more and more difficult. Unleashing the Islamist firestorm in Iraq and destroying the ancient Christian communities there may not have been, for some of the architects of the war, an all together unfortunate result or unexpected side-effect. Desiring to achieve the same result in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, whether by invasion or “democracy,” seems to be a priority in the current center-left government (given the way it governs, what else can one call it?). But along with the Christians, the next to go in any new Islamic order will be the minority of secularists and leftists in those countries, just as the Euro-left will follow them into oblivion as the Islamicisation of Europe advances.

Cross-posted at Enchiridion Militis