IN YOUR DIARY -Michel Onfray at the French Institute - Thursday, May 10th

In the twenty-first century, religion is making a comeback, bringing in its wake extremism of all kinds. From Christian anti-abortion campaigns to suicide bombers claiming the righteousness of Islam, we are witnessing a resurgence of fundamentalism. Michel Onfray's response to the threat of a post-modern theocracy is to lay down the principles of an authentic atheism. 'A wonderful, invigorating blast of sanity delivered against the fog of high-toned mumbo-jumbo we have to endure everywhere today' (William Boyd).

Born in 1959 in Normandy, French philosopher Michel Onfray is the author of twenty books which map out a theory of hedonism.

He will discuss his best-selling essay, In Defense of Atheism (translated by Jeremy Leggatt, Serpent's Tail, 2007) with British philosopher Anthony C Grayling. Early reservation recommended thu 10 may at the Institut français In French & English £3, conc. £2

ON THE WEB - Marc Sidwell's review of Mark Steyn's America Alone for the Social Affairs Unit

Mark Steyn should not write off Europe just because she has a nasty temperature - Marc Sidwell explains why: America Alone - Mark Steyn

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
by Mark Steyn
Pp. 224. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006Hardback, $27.95

Is demography destiny? Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, certainly thinks so. In America Alone, he lays out a bleak future for European dhimmitude - fortunately brightened by Steyn's trademark wit. He points out our collapsing birth-rates, despite (and perhaps because of) generous welfare systems that rely on a successor generation to pick up the tab. He sets this alongside comparatively high birth-rates among Muslims and increased Muslim immigration to Europe as our politicians attempt to make up the welfare deficit. Shake it together with multiculti paralysis before twenty-first century Islamism and, suggests Steyn, you have a cocktail mixed by Molotov, the kind already being tossed around in the French banlieues.

However, Steyn's argument seems to have been given a remarkably easy ride up the bestseller charts. As his book starts to attract attention in the UK, where its predictions are a matter of vital interest rather a wry joke on a distant and reluctant ally, Steyn can expect a more searching reception. Johann Hari has already attempted a takedown of the book's thesis for the New Statesman, one of the few occasions I recall a critic engaging with Steyn on the data.

So how seriously should British conservatives take America Alone? Is it time to buy a one-way ticket to Colorado, or will Europe, the western motherland, refuse to be bundled into a burqa?

Read the whole article on the Social Affairs Unit's website, here
Also remember the interview Mark Steyn gave to The New Culture Forum last november,
Mark Steyn talks to The New Culture Forum

Charlie Hebdo : Yesterday's crucial verdict

Yesterday in Paris, a court’s decision cleared Philippe Val, the editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion” when it published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed a year ago. The case was brought by the Paris Grand Mosque, the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and the World Islamic League.

The judges were right in finding that the limits of free expression were not exceeded in this case. Their verdict accords with the French Republic’s values and is important for French society as a whole. Hopefully it will set a judicial precedent. Their ruling is in no way a defeat for one single community, rather it is a victory for press freedom, for the general principle of freedom of speech and furthermore for all those who remain determined not to appease Islamo-fascists and all religious fundamentalists in France and around the World.

The Paris Grand Mosque said it would not appeal, although not surprisingly the more radical UOIF announced that it would.

When he left the court yesterday, Philippe Val, who was facing a possible sentence of six months in prison and a fine of 22,500 euros, expressed his satisfaction and confidence in the French judicial system, commenting: “We have been vindicated by the court.”

It is also important to note that this verdict comes at a crucial time for France, just one month before the Presidential election. It was encouraging to see that many politicians, including UDF presidential candidate François Bayrou and French Socialist Party leader François Hollande, voiced their support for the magazine during the two-day trial on 7 and 8 February, and that Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP presidential candidate, also indicated his support, commenting that he preferred “an excess of cartoons to a lack of cartoons.” At the same, it is unfortunate that, during this Presidential campaign, these same candidates have been so cautious in not mentioning the rise of communities who increasingly aim to separate themselves, and the risks that this represents to France, the French Republic and its core idealistic values.

Franck Guillory


Postscript

The outcome of this key trial for the defence of press freedom follows a similar decision by Danish judges acquitting the editors of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the first newspaper to publish controversial cartoons of Mohammed.

The lawsuit concerned three of the six Mohammed cartoons which the weekly published on 8 February 2006. Two of the three had appeared in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. One of them showed Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb about to explode. The other showed him saying: “Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.” The third, which was on the cover, was by French cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut. It showed Mohammed with his head in his hands saying: “It is hard to be loved by idiots.”

'300' reviewed on Culture Clash

Based on Frank Millar’s graphic novel, which was itself inspired by the film The 300 Spartans, 300 tells the story of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, in which King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, leads his men in a stand for freedom against Xerxes and the mighty Persian army. The film, which like Millar’s Sin City, is shot as a kind of hybrid between real action and animation, has been accused by expatriate Iranians of being ‘irresponsible’, a distortion, and ‘an assault on its culture and tradition.’

With Peter Whittle to discuss these are Dolan Cummings of Spiked Online, Dawn French of the New Criterion magazine, Andrew Haydon, critic for Culturewars, and Marc Sidwell of the Henry Jackson Society.

Watch a clip


and the full programme here

18 Doughty Street interviews Mark Steyn

From over the pond, in Washington, 18 Doughty Street talks to Mark Steyn. Fascinating watch. That's here

And remember too the interview Mark gave us last november about his last book America Alone. (Re) read it here

Culture Clash on 18DoughtyStreet tonight at 9pm

Is Islamic Fundamentalism a threat to the Arts?

The issue of how the arts should respond to the problems posed by Islamic belief and Islamic fundamentalism, and whether or not they should fear censorship, or in fact exercise pre-emptive self-censorship, is something which is now exercising the minds of many in the cultural arena.
Arguably the biggest cultural issue facing us is also one which could be the most dangerous. Two years ago Theo Van Gogh was murdered because of his film ‘Submission’. Last year, the Berlin Opera was threatened because a production of Idomeneo featured a depiction of Mohammed. Here, a crucial part of Tamburlaine at the Barbican was cut. Filming of Monica Ali’s book was moved from Brick Lane due to protests.
Should the arts ignore protest from Muslims?
Or it is purely a question of exercising tact?
Furthermore, nowhere, it would seem, are the arts dealing with such issues as, say, Muslim treatment of women, or the position of gays. There is a deafening silence. Why is this?
Is it fair to say that, while Madonna provokes her usual faux outrage by getting up onto a crucifix in the full knowledge that they’ll be no consequences, it’s unlikely that we will ever again see a depiction of Mohammed in a cultural context? With me to discuss these issues are journalist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, award-winning author and playwright Shelley Silas, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin, and producer and former BAFTA chairman Michael Attwell.

Watch it HERE

Introduction to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace

Founded in 1998, the CMIP (Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace) examines the content of school textbooks used in the Middle East, to determine whether children are being taught to accept and recognize the right of the “other” to exist. They believe that education should be utilized to encourage an attitude of tolerance, pluralism, and democracy, and to promote peaceful means of solving conflicts.

As a non-profit, non-political organization, their purpose is to identify what is being taught in the schools with regard to recognition and acceptance of the “other” by drawing on the text itself, rather than the interpretation of it. Pioneers in the field of textbook analysis, CMIP endeavors to present a clear picture of how different countries instruct and educate their youth with regard to different religions, societies, cultures, democratic values and the “other”.

After Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, their latest report focuses on Iran and looks at the Attitude to the 'Other' and to Peace in Iranian School Textbooks and Teacher's Guides.

Overview

War Curriculum

The Iranian school system prepares its students for a global war against the West in the name of Islam. This is the main finding arrived at, following an overall research
conducted on 115 Iranian school textbooks and teacher's guides of all grades. Although all the books and the vast majority of the teacher's guides were published under the apparently moderate former president Mohammad Khatami, they all reflect the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Revolutionary Iran.

In Khomeini's vision, Iran is destined to lead that global struggle against the
oppressors in the name of Islam. This role is part and parcel of the Islamic Revolution, and the victory over the oppressors will also be Islam's victory in this world. Hence, Iranian education should be aimed at preparing the students for participation in that war.

The Attitude to America and the West

Numerous "others" are referred to in Iranian school textbooks – religious and ethnic,
inside and outside Iran, in historical and contemporary contexts. Yet, two specific
"others" – the United States and the West in general, and the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli
"other" – attract special attention.

America is the "Great Satan", the "World Devourer", the "Arrogant One", in short – a
target for hatred indoctrination. America is the arch-oppressor worldwide, leader and partner of other oppressive powers such as Britain and France.
The West, including Czarist Russia and the former Soviet Union, is responsible for
much suffering: Colonialism, exploitation and impoverishment of Third World nations,
encroachment on the world of Islam – including Iran – in history and at present,
cultural attack against Muslims and others, world hegemony, environmental abuse, etc.

The Attitude to Israel and the Jews

The Jews are mostly referred to in the context of their relations with the Prophet of
Islam in Arabia, where they are negatively portrayed: "…After some time, the Jews'
pretext-seeking, hostility and treachery were exposed…" (History of Iran and the
World, Grade 10 (2004) p. 109). Zionism is described as an idea "that is based on the
establishment of the Jews' greater homeland, and on this ethnic group's dominance over the world" (Social Studies [Humanities], Grade 12 (2004) p. 41) – which reminds us of anti-Semitic texts, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Israel, which is not recognized in any way and whose name does not appear on any of the maps, is portrayed as a danger to the whole world of Islam and as a tool in the
hands of its enemy – America.

To read the full report or earlier reports, http://www.edume.org

Full support for French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on the day of trial for publishing Mohammed cartoons

We ought to support the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo , which goes on trial in Paris today in a civil lawsuit by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organisations of France. This is an inconditional support for this leftist publication as it is accused of deliberately trying to hurt Muslims “in their collective attachment to their beliefs” by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a special issue a year ago.

Most of the cartoons were the ones which the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published in September 2005, sparking protests in many Muslim countries. The front page one was by French cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut.

Charlie Hebdo is committed to free expression and to the right to satire and we condemn the many different kinds of intimidation that have been targeted at this weekly. The public area must remain open not only to dialogue but also to controversy.

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to reprint the Danish cartoons was taken at an especially fraught moment. Some 10 news media had been banned or suspended in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia for reproducing the cartoons. Journalists has been arrested in countries such as Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.

By publishing the cartoons, Charlie Hebdo chose to resist the attempt to impose silence by means of threats. This is what counts. The public arena must remain free.

The trial that opens today is a test of freedom of expression in France and we hope that the courts will protect this principle, as the Danish judges did on 26 October 2006 when they acquitted Jyllands-Posten’s editors and ruled that its Mohammed cartoons were not offensive to Muslims.

Ever since the cartoons first appeared in Jyllands-Posten, there has been a never-ending debate as to whether it is permissible to publish opinion pieces or cartoons that could offend the religious sensibilities of part of the population. After the publication of Robert Redeker’s op-ed piece in Le Figaro last September, the French courts are now having to take a position on this issue.

In today’s trial, the plaintiffs are requesting 30,000 euros in damages and the publication of key passages from the court’s ruling. Charlie Hebdo published its special issue on the cartoons one week after they were published by the French daily France Soir on 1 February 2006, in a decision that led to the dismissal France Soir’s editor, Jacques Lefranc.

PS: One could imagine that this trial would give an opportunity for the French Presidential candidates to air their views on Islamo-fascism and religious fundamentalism. They don't and they won't - 'Leave Islam out of the Presidential campaign', requested Dalil Boubakeur, Head of the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman - the national Muslim council. Amen.

UPDATE: THIS AFTERNOON, NICOLAS SARKOZY EXPRESSED HIS SUPPORT TO CHARLIE HEBDO.

Michael Gove's New Culture Forum speech in The Spectator

In The Spectator this week, an edited extract from Michael Gove’s talk ‘Are we seeing the emergence of a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia?’ given to the New Culture Forum last monday.

The new anti-Islamist intelligentsia
Michael Gove

The durability of Conservatism has depended, to a great extent, on it being a disposition rather than a philosophy. What marks Conservatives out, across the generations, and whatever the environment they operate in, is an attitude of mind rather than an adherence to dogma. And that disposition — sceptical, cautious, pragmatic, sensitive to the local and the particular — has been politically successful because it has been in tune with human nature.

But Conservatism, as a disposition, has its limitations. British Conservatism in particular, even though it has been one of the most electorally successful varieties ever, has its own particular flaws. British, particularly English, conservatives tend to
be especially suspicious of intellectuals. Only in the British Conservative party could the nickname ‘Two-Brains’ be construed, however affectionately, as a put-down. And British Conservatives have, with honourable exceptions, tended to a particularly pessimistic view of human nature and the potential for progress. From Lord Salisbury to Iain Gilmour and even Chris Patten, the sense that the barbarians were at the gate has imbued thoughtful Tories with a gloomy view of
the future.

Both those Conservative characteristics, distrust of intellectualism and spiritual pessimism, may have led many Conservatives to miss one of the most significant trends of the past five years — the emergence of a new intellectual movement which gives grounds for optimism in one of the most difficult battles of our times.

Scarcely noticed by most on the Right, a new coalition of thinkers has been emerging from within the Left deliberately to challenge the Left’s greatest contemporary failure. It is perhaps understandable why many on the left might wish to belittle, or
drive to the margins, this new movement. But for those of us who are not tribally tied to the Left, this new turn in intellectual thinking deserves to be welcomed.

A distinguished array of thinkers and writers who have grown up attached to left-wing principles of equality, secularism, respect for universal human rights, opposition to religious obscurantism and support for liberal democracy have been finding their
voices in the last five years. Since the atrocities of 9/11 have focused the world’s attention on the murderous tactics and mediaeval ideology of Islamist terrorists, a number of figures on the left have felt moved to denounce what they see as the, at best, equivocal and, at worst, morally complicit treatment of extremism by many of their former comrades.

This week sees the publication of one of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way. Nick Cohen’s What’s Left? scrupulously anatomises the way in which anti-Americanism, and the doctrine that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, has driven people whose political inspiration was a belief in progress to make excuses for forces that are trying to use murder to propel us back into the Dark Ages. As he argues,

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal Left is against come from the liberal Left? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-Right?

Cohen’s is a brave voice, but not a lone one. In the upper reaches of the British press, Cohen’s outlook is shared, to a significant extent, by writers such as David Aaronovitch and John Lloyd as well as everyone’s favourite drink-soaked Trotskyist popinjay, Christopher Hitchens. Few writers have been as fiercely effective as Hitchens in skewering the moral frailty of those who marched to keep a torturer in power:

In the past decade or so had this ‘anti-war’ rabble had its way, we would have seen Kuwait stay part of Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo cleansed and annexed by ‘Greater’ Serbia and the Taleban retaining control of Afghanistan. You might think that such a record would lead its adherents to be dismissed as a silly and sinister fringe but instead it is they who pose as the principled radicals and their opponents who are treated with unconcealed disdain in the universities and on the BBC.

The positions taken by Hitchens, Cohen and others in the press have, more
recently, been reinforced by the bravery of other writers who have risked
placing themselves outside literary London’s comfort zone by being brave enough
to reject the moral relativism of so many on the left. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis
and, of course, Salman Rushdie have all argued, in different ways, that
Islamism is a totalitarian ideology, like fascism and communism before it,
which seeks to deny human freedom. McEwan has denounced the way in which the
Left is ‘morally selective’ in its outrage, denouncing America with greater
fervour than it can ever muster for criticising the record of Saddam or the
Taleban. Amis has been typically fearless in attacking those ‘people of
liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, who have become the apologists
for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist and
genocidal’.

What marks all these writers out, apart from their courage and their literary stature, is their heritage as authors of the broad Left. They are figures of intellectual weight
whom the Left cannot plausibly paint as blinkered reactionaries, and whose
critique, therefore, demands to be taken seriously.

But will it be? There are signs that the intellectual challenge to left-liberal appeasement of Islamism is gathering growing support. The range of voices who have signed up to the muscularly liberal Euston Manifesto is one indication that the
Pilger/Chomsky/Guardian comment pages consensus is much less representative of
progressive opinion than it pretends. And, more recently, both Gordon Brown and
Ed Balls have called for an intellectual response to the challenge of Islamism
which stands comparison with the cultural resistance to communism developed by
Western intellectuals during the Cold War.

But victory in the Cold War depended not just on the voices of Western intellectuals, crucially it depended on Western governments giving support to those dissident voices which were struggling to be heard in the Eastern bloc. Where are the political leaders now who will defend liberal and progressive voices in the Islamic world in
the way in which Reagan and Thatcher championed the Sharanskys and
Sakharovs? The real heroes of the anti-Islamist intelligentsia are Arab
thinkers like Shaker al-Nabulsi who are challenging totalitarianism within
the Islamic world. If the West is really serious about winning hearts and
minds in this generational struggle, then it needs to show its support for
those who, in the least propitious circumstances, still have the bravery to
cry freedom.

from The Spectator, January 25th 2007

Daniel Johnson reports on Michael Gove's speech

Extracts from Daniel Johnson's comments in Contention, the COMMENTARY's blog.

The New Anti-Islamist Intelligentsia by Daniel Johnson

Yesterday Michael Gove, a Tory member of Parliament and the author of Celsius 7/7, a hard-hitting study of the London subway
bombers, asked an audience of the New Culture Forum a highly pertinent question: “Are we seeing
the emergence of a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia?”
Gove answered his own
question emphatically in the affirmative, and provided chapter and verse, too.
What adds lustre to his thesis is the remarkable fact that the most prominent
voices now being heard in protest against the scandalous alliance of the Left
with Islamo-fascism are themselves for the most part intellectuals with
impeccable Left-liberal credentials. Gove singled out the journalists Nick Cohen
(whose book What’s Left? How the Liberals Lost Their Way chronicles the
Left’s great self-betrayal), David Aaronovich (who defected from the Guardian to
the Times of London), and Christopher Hitchens, who needs no introduction for
American readers. Nick Cohen is also a leading light among the group of liberal
academics and writers who last year signed the Euston Manifesto,
distancing themselves from the Leftist consensus.
Most remarkable of all,
three of the most celebrated British novelists—Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and
Martin Amis—have all come out strongly against Islamism. Amis even describes himself as an “Islamismophobe,” but the real objects
of his hatred are the “middle-class white demonstrators last August waddling
around under placards saying ‘We Are All Hizbollah Now.’” As he observes,
“People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the
apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic,
imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those
that want them dead.”
All of these prodigal sons are more than welcome in
their return to what those who have always defended it fondly persist in calling
Western civilization. Like many others, I have not forgotten Martin Amis’s essay
“Fear and Loathing,” published in the Guardian a week after
9/11, in which he wrote: “The message of September 11 ran as follows: America,
it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. . . . We would hope that
the response will be, above all, non-escalatory.” He and his intellectual
compatriots have come a long way since then—at least on seeing the threat of
radical Islam for what it is.

COMMENTARY is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal
voice in American intellectual life. Since its inception in 1945, and
increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s,
the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated
questions: the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened
by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the
future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States,
and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of
political correctness and the collapse of critical standards.

Michael Gove at The New Culture Forum

Michael Gove was the speaker last night at the New Culture Forum on the question of whether we are witnessing the emergence of an anti-Islamist intelligentsia. Held at Portcullis House, the event attracted over a hundred people; guests included Lord Trimble, Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch, Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin, Ramin Gray, Assoc. director of the Royal Court Theatre, Spectator TV critic and author James Delingpole, Conservative A-Lister Sayeeda Varsi, the National Theatre’s Chris Campbell, writer and commentator Douglas Murray, the distinguished Egyptian academic Bat Ye’or, and the editor of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie.

Gove’s speech was filmed by 18doughtystreet Talk TV, and ConservativeHome and The Croydonian today carry a detailed account of the evening. We’ll be returning to the event later in the week here at the NCF website.







Michael Gove, Sayeeda Varsi and Sir Andrew Green, Tim Montgomerie - 18doughtystreet Talk TV and ConservativeHome, Claire Fox - Institute of Ideas - and James Delingpole, Peter Whittle - director of The New Culture Forum.

A Hawk on Cameron's Shoulder - Jasper Gerard interviews Michael Gove for today's Observer

Journalist and author Michael Gove's hardline views on Islamic terrorism ignited fierce debate. Now he has unlikely allies, he tells Jasper Gerard

Sunday January 14, 2007 The Observer

Suddenly he touches my knee, leans forward and whispers: 'Look!' Michael Gove quivers, as if he has just seen through the mist one of the seven wonders of the world: he has sighted Baroness Thatcher gliding towards us.
But lately it has been Labour grandees beating a path to the Conservative frontbencher, following publication of his uncompromising book on Islamic terror, Celsius 7/7. Among them was Gordon Brown, who stopped to congratulate this key David Cameron adviser on his hawkish work - which will alarm Labour MPs hoping for a gentler foreign policy from Prime Minister Brown.
Gove's was the book that cabinet ministers read during Christmas. Even the Home Office, he discloses, has 'invited me in for a little chat' after he attacked ministers for funding Islamicist groups, which according to Gove merely legitimises terrorism. 'For a long time the Home Office has thought it has to work with these organisations, but I hope it has thought again as a result of this book.' Yet this rigorous intellectual - adopted and raised modestly in Scotland, prior to a stellar journalistic career - confesses the book has gone down less well with Conservative colleagues desperate to appear more 'huggable', including, he hints, Cameron.
Gove's contention is that a small but determined brigade of Muslims has developed 'transnational' loyalties superseding any attachment to Britain. Gove, tipped for high office in a Tory administration, argues that some have been breathtakingly frank; it is just that the government turned a deaf ear.
Understandably the extremist dream of ensnaring everywhere from Catford to California in a caliphate makes this politest of men bristle in his Savile Row suit; but equally striking is Gove's determination to impose a Western way of life on the Middle East. Isn't that hypocritical? 'I am not a relativist,' Gove, a Radio 4 Moral Maze regular, answers firmly. 'I believe multi-party democracy is a superior way to live.' Some Muslims might argue that of Sharia law. 'But then we are lost in a moral desert. We must be clear about what is worth defending.'
He points out that democracies are far less likely to go to war than totalitarian countries, which is what he thinks many Islamic states amount to. But how can we be sure our civilisation is the ideal? Even Western philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard have argued that civic society of the type Gove extols is merely a staging post to a higher, religious life. Is it right to 'force people to be free'?
'I accept, given some states' history, we cannot give them the American Declaration of Independence and a British parliament and expect them to have it running by Tuesday,' he concedes. 'Nevertheless, I say "these values are better". Rather than the Foreign Office idea of siding with the local sheikh, I am more in the tradition of Palmerston, who supported smaller countries breaking away from feudal empires. My views are closer to some on the left than to, say, Henry Kissinger.' Such are the curious bedfellows of the war on terror.
So his book hasn't gone down too well on the Tory benches? 'Some colleagues disagree, some more than others,' he smiles. 'David Cameron did say "I'm not a neo-con", whereas,' he pauses, 'I am.' He rattles off policies on which he and Cameron agree, but he has the grace to admit the Tory leader also criticised 'the Bush White House in terms of patience and humility'.
Will Gove endorse his leader's criticism? Gove is a sharp debater - he could convince you global warming is great or Coldplay cool - but for once he looks anxious. To buy time, he puts down his teacup and stoops to tie his lace. Eventually he says: 'I have a slightly warmer view of Tony Blair than other Conservatives. The vehemence of the criticism of Blair is so strong and misguided I thought I should defend him - not that it will do him any good.' When Gove sighs 'There are people who want Bush to fail, Iraq to fail,' you wonder if he means the Tory party, perhaps the Tory leader.
Some find Gove too strident; as housing spokesman he has had Tories hopping in their green wellies by suggesting that the market should be allowed to let rip and that houses should be built on farms. He is called, glibly, a 'moderniser'; but while he is liberal on issues such as gay rights, he is largely engaged in finding clever new ways to defend traditional values.
While most in the British establishment emphasise the importance of the Middle East road map, Gove makes only the most perfunctory admission that the failure to find a solution contributes to terrorism. Don't you, I ask, accept that, while Osama bin Laden would not be bought off with an Israel-Palestine peace accord, the situation might draw anger from many Arabs tempted towards violence?
'I see the logic,' he says, which is Gove-speak for 'no'; charm is his weapon, and his deadliest tactic is to sound sympathetic while tearing your argument to shreds. 'When Islamicists talk about occupation they are not referring to the West Bank or Gaza - they object to Israel per se, and any American soldiers on any Arab lands.' A nice point, but this is not the view of many Arabs. 'Indeed, but Islamicists will say, "The West is weakening: one more heave".'
If Islamism is engaged in a to-the-death struggle with the West, how does Gove answer bin Laden's point that al-Qaeda isn't giving a terribly hard time to Sweden? 'France was vocal in its opposition [to the Iraq war], but has uncovered a lot of terrorist plots. So has Spain after withdrawing from Iraq.'
Critics accuse Gove of finding facts to fit his preoccupations. As well as being massively pro-Israel, he is stridently opposed to the Good Friday agreement, which he claims Islamists have taken as Western weakness. Can he really claim that in the caves of Tora Bora they sagely study how Blair caved in on the Royal Ulster Constabulary? 'I think,' he says 'you underestimate their sophistication.'
Does he exaggerate the threat from Islamic forces? Perhaps, but that might be better than underestimating it. His heroine had a phrase for it: the resolute approach.

What we want to read...

This week in The Spectator, two of our favourite most recent reads get very interesting reviews. Graham Stewart on George Walden's Time to Emigrate and Michael Gove on Mark Steyn's America Alone - THE dream ticket for NCF's Team members.

Our Best of:

I know that for many of my fellow panty-waisted, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys being harangued about our propensity for cultural suicide by cheerleaders for Bush can grate a little. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the author of America Alone as simply a jester at the court of King George W.(...)

That many of Steyn's conclusions will be unpalatable to the European consensus only underlines how much a failure to face harsh truths has characterised the European response to the scale of the terrorist threat we face.(...)

One of the biggest questions in contemporary European politics is how our societies manage relations between Muslim citizens and others, and that’s been reflected in the debate over the veil, the agonised questioning which followed the death of Theo van Gogh, and the controversy over the Danish cartoons.(...)

Steyn’s specific contention is that the problem is not so much multiculturalism as biculturalism. The danger as he sees it is the inherent tension between an increasingly liberal and hedonistic, yet diffident and uncertain, de-Christianised civilisation and an increasingly religiously zealous and culturally assertive Islamist movement. (...)

And a mention to Melanie Phillips in Michael's conclusion, what a treat!

But Steyn, like Melanie Phillips in her very different way, has done us all a service by ensuring that questions some would prefer to pass over are posed in a way it is impossible to ignore.

The full text is available here

And of course, you can still register to hear Michael Gove at The New Culture Forum on January 22nd - Are we seeing the emergence of an Anti-islamist Intelligentsia?

FG

Mark Steyn on Oriana Fallaci in Atlantic Monthly

Thanks to Douglas Murray for passing this along. A beautiful piece - as usual. Please don't miss any opportunity to read Oriana's book of interviews from the 70's - Intervista con la Storia (Interview with History, the English version, is only available used - 115 GBP min. on Amazon)

SHE SAID WHAT SHE THOUGHT

Oriana Fallaci, 1929-2006

“You go fuck yourself,” said Oriana Fallaci to no one in particular in a recent New Yorker profile. “I say what I want.”

And she did. Latterly, she said what she wanted about Islam, on which subject most of us feel constrained to be more, ah, circumspect. And what she wanted to say to Islam boiled down pretty much to: go fuck yourself. She scorned Muslims for their habits of reproduction, of evacuation, of female genital mutilation. She developed obsessions both arcane – who really invented sherbet (the ancient Romans, not the “sons of Allah”) – and unhealthy, if not psychologically then certainly actuarially: what’s the deal with Mohammed’s nine-year old wife? who sodomized whom at Mehmet II’s big knees-up to mark the fall of Constantinople in 1453? These are areas in which more discreet scholars prefer to draw a veil if not the full burqa. In The Rage And The Pride she dwelt upon the hitherto neglected topic of micturition among Somali immigrants in Florence’s Cathedral Square, whom she accused of leaving “yellow streaks of urine that profaned the millenary marbles of the Baptistery”: “Good Heavens! They really take long shots, these sons of Allah! How could they succeed in hitting so well that target protected by a balcony and more than two yards distant from their urinary apparatus?”
Rendered in what she called “the oddities of Fallaci’s English”, this is splendidly offensive and gloriously rude. But it is also, as my colleague Christopher Hitchens dismissed Signora Fallaci in these pages, “a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam”. One sees his point. Long before the first Muslim convenience store opened in a British city, the “gents” in every rural pub had a streaked wall over the
urinals boasting unfeasibly high-tide marks crayoned on the plaster, at
impressive distance from the “urinary apparatus”. A few years back, during a
long bus trip for major-league baseball owners, the driver was obliged to make a
roadside stop for Gene Autry to relieve himself: as he reboarded, George W Bush
congratulated the old singing cowboy on his “great spray”. If anything, Muslim
men seem to be somewhat more fastidious in this area than your average beery
Brit or Frenchman: In his will, Mohammed Atta left instructions for any woman
examining his corpse in that particular neighborhood to wear gloves because he
didn’t want the old twig-and-berries to have been contaminated by unclean
infidel-whore morticians when he got to paradise and hit the old virgin jackpot.
The “long shots” of the sons of Allah is not the firmest ground on which to
defend western civilization.

Nevertheless, and with respect to Mr Hitchens, if there is a primer in how to write about Islam, that doesn’t seem to be getting us very far either. Who ya gonna believe? The President’s sappy “religion of peace” speeches or your lyin’ eyes? La Fallaci (as she styled herself) disdained what the French philosopher Alain Finkelkraut calls the west’s “penitential narcissism” and, in an age of absurd abasement, found many takers for her bravura rejection thereof. After all, if Muslims are so ready to take offence, you might as well give ’em some. The problem, after all, is not that the sons of Allah are “long shots” but that they’re certainties: every Continental under the age of 40 – okay, make that 60, if not 75 – is all but guaranteed to end his days living in an Islamified Eurabia. That being so, why not have some gleeful sport along the road to servitude?

Oriana Fallaci was, on the one hand, an unlikely Crusader. Petite physically if in no other sense, she was a feminist, a secularist, a leftist. On the other hand, who has most to lose? At a time when uncovered women are jeered at and intimidated when
they walk through certain suburbs of Continental cities, La Fallaci might have
expected the other divas to rally to the cause. Instead, such feminist warhorses
as Germaine Greer managed to give the impression they found Islam a bit of a
turn-on: here’s the patriarchal society they’ve been pining for all along. As
for the secular elites of the west, insofar as there is a theocratic menace,
it’s not the Wahhabis but Bush and the evangelicals with a bit of help from (as
Harold Pinter put it) “Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug”. So the lioness in
winter roused herself and sallied forth to save post-Christian Europe from
itself.

She was, like the book title says, full of rage and passion.
“Passion” is a diminished word these days, routinely appended by politicians to
dreary boilerplate about prescription drugs for seniors or some such. But La
Fallaci was bursting with it. Fiercely beautiful well into her cancer-ravaged
old age, she had that careless sensuality that anglophone womanhood can rarely
carry off. She didn’t subscribe to the old aphrodisiac-of-power clichés: on the
contrary, she often found alpha males one big zzzzzzzz, and great men had the
vague sensation their “apparatus” was withering under her gaze. Castro was
smelly and Arafat was a blowsy old queen – “a massive trunk, huge hips… red and
fleshy lips”. Still, she regarded an interview as “coitus”, and she didn’t
always mean it metaphorically. Two days after interviewing Alekos Panagoulis, a
briefly fashionable revolutionary who’d attempted to assassinate the Greek
leader Papadopoulos, Oriana became his lover. When their turbulent relationship
ended with his death in a car crash, rumored to have been politically
engineered, Oriana wrote a book – Un uomo (A man) – that few other credible
journalists could have gotten away with.

One would have been only mildly surprised had her interview with Ayatollah Khomeini followed the same trajectory. After traveling to Qom and kicking her heels for ten days waiting for him to agree to see her, she was ushered – barefoot and wearing a chador - into his presence and found what she subsequently described as the most handsome old man she’d ever met. In his own way, he must have dug the crazy Italian chick: The meeting was terminated when she tore off “this stupid medieval rag” and hurled her chador to the floor. But he agreed to return a day or two later to finish the interview.

It seems a fantastical encounter now: a man who’d just shoveled every female in supposedly the most modernized of Middle Eastern nations back into “medieval rags” versus the apotheosis of the ballbusting western career woman. The phrase “personality interviewer” is grossly devalued these days: look at Mike Wallace’s cringe-making oleaginous encounter with today’s Iranian must-get, President Ahmadinejad. Indeed, Wallace seems to have found Ahmadinejad more attractive (“very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way”) than Fallaci found Khomeini. She was by that stage “the greatest political interviewer of modern times” (Rolling Stone), and yet unlike so many of the bland bigshots jetting from foreign ministry to presidential palace she gravitated to power mainly for the
opportunities it afforded to knee it in the crotch. She asked the Ayatollah
indignant questions about the executions of prostitutes and homosexuals and he
sneered at women like her for going around uncovered “dragging behind them a
tail of men”. It wasn’t all rage and passion; she did brusque and off-hand
pretty lethally, too: “Don’t you find,” she asked Henry Kissinger during
Vietnam, fighting vainly the old ennui, “that it’s been a useless war?” “On
this, I can agree,” said the Secretary of State.

Her interviews and war reporting made her a wealthy woman, with homes in Florence, the Tuscan countryside and Manhattan. Not bad for a girl from a working-class family, a child of anti-Mussolini Communist partisans who turned to journalism at 16 only as a means of paying her way to medical school. By the time the cancer was diagnosed, the chain-smoking dynamo had done everything her profession could
offer. Then came September 11th. And Corriere Della Sera very deftly tempted her
out of semi-official retirement to unburden herself of her thoughts on the, er,
unfortunate events. Even then, even in those first weeks, the “cicadas” (as she
called them) of cultural relativism were chirruping their pneumatic songs of
eternal evasion. In her bestselling post-9/11 improvised aria, La Fallaci was
certainly shrill but perhaps not as shrill as those who in the face of a
mountain of evidence insist from every university, every interior ministry,
every Anglican pulpit that there’s nothing to see here, nothing to ask, nothing
to ponder, no great questions over Europe’s future.

She had never lacked bravery. Indeed, she was almost insanely brave. But this wasn’t like flipping the bird to some strutting generalissimo. She must have been surprised by how organized the Muslim opposition was: the Islamic Centre of Berne, the Somali Association of Geneva, the SOS Racism of Lausanne, and a group of Muslim immigrants in Neuchatel, just to name a random sampling of Swiss plaintiffs.
What would not have surprised her was the weirdly masochistic pleasure the
European judiciary derived from facilitating their attempts to silence her. The
Federal Office of Justice in Berne asked the Italian government to extradite her
so she could be charged under Article 261b of the Swiss Criminal Code – or, as
she called it, the “He-didn’t-chase-me-because-I’m-a-thief-but-because-I’m-a-Muslim” clause. She was sued in France, where suits against writers are routine now. An Italian magistrate indicted her and, because of the European Arrest Warrant, which includes charges of “xenophobia” as grounds for extradition from one EU nation to another, most of the Continent became unsafe for her to set foot in. Only in
the last ten days, when she knew she would not live to make her first court
date, did she return from political exile to die in a home town defiled less by
immigrant urine than by the watery emissions of incontinent fainthearts and
appeasers.

I never really thought cancer would get Oriana Fallaci. She seemed so full of fire in the last few years that one felt certain any tumor would shrivel to ash inside her. But the legal harassment from her enemies and their appeasers must have taken their toll. The books were huge sellers but old friends kept their distance. As for those on the left who acknowledged the threat, she parted company there, too. This year, a dozen intellectuals, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie, published a manifesto against Islamism and in defense of “secular values for all”. All are doughty warriors and important allies in Europe’s present struggle. But La Fallaci, a lifelong atheist, had come to the conclusion that secular humanism was an insufficient rallying cry, that it had in some sense led to the gaping nullity of contemporary European identity which Islam had simply steamrollered. By the end, she was if not a Christian then, as she formulated it, a “Christian atheist”. In 2005 she was granted a private audience with Pope Benedict on the understanding that she would never divulge what was discussed. It would be interesting to know, but it’s safe to say that for once it wasn’t “Go fuck yourself. I say what I want.”

At the height of her fame thirty years ago Oriana Fallaci seemed to embody the triumph of the post-Christian west. The apotheosis of the independent emancipated woman, she lived long enough to understand that its hyper-rationalism was, in point of fact, wholly irrational, and she was big enough to change her mind on that without changing her glorious voice. She was a beautiful writer. If her sin is that she went too far, in a craven culture that recoils even from first steps that is not the worst. Brava, la Fallaci.

The Atlantic Monthly, December 2006

Obsession

In his blog, Dizzy Thinks kindly alerted us to a story, featured in the New York Post, concerning the documentary film Obsession. Apparently a Jewish student group at the city’s Pace University has been warned by the college authorities not to show the critically-acclaimed film about radical Islam; if they do, they could implicate themselves as suspects in two recent hate crimes at the college involving the desecration of the Koran. The authorities have also told the group that if they go ahead and screen it, they will be reported to the police.

This sort of action is very worrying – although, given the make-up of most American campus authorities, regrettably hardly a surprise. The film was actually shown on Fox TV last November, but remains unseen in Britain. The New Culture Forum hopes to put that right this year.

PW.

Update on French Philosopher Robert Redeker

Four months ago, we mentioned here Robert Redeker, the French philosopher forced to go into hiding after Le Figaro published a column by him, labelled by the usual suspects as very islamically incorrect.

Adil al Hyanne was deported to Morocco from Libya, where he was hoping to join the Jihad in Iraq. This young man in his early twenties, who could very reasonably be described as an aspiring islamist, if not an islamist, has admitted to calling for Robert Redeker to be murdered. He posted on the Internet pictures of the philosopher, as well as his personal and professional addresses in Toulouse, including all his contact details, email addresses and phone numbers.

Adil al Hyanne was calling for the 'French Lions' to follow the example of the 'Dutch Lion', Mohammed al-Bouyeri, who butchered director Théo Van Gogh in November 2005.

Many websites had his incitement to murder republished, and so Robert Redeker will stay in hiding.

One reader left a comment on the website of the French daily newspaper Libération, saying that, actually, it had not been a Fatwa and that Robert Redeker was probably disappointed not to have become a French Salman Rushdie.

Perhaps it was not technically speaking a Fatwa, but what counts is the result. Some are already trying to reduce the responsibility of Adil al Hyanne; they are implying that it was some kind of joke and that he was not really an islamist. If this is true, then we don't share his sense of humour.

FG

Our January Event

You are invited to hear:

MICHAEL GOVE MP

Are We Seeing the Emergence of a New Anti-Islamist Intelligentsia?

Monday, 22nd January, 7 for 7.30pm

The Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, Westminster, London SW1A 2LW

(next to Westminster Tube)

The British intelligentsia has traditionally been characterised by its adherence to the doctrines of multiculturalism, cultural relativism and internationalism.

But as Western values face an onslaught from a hostile and increasingly emboldened Islam, and established political allegiances either fracture or make disturbing new alliances, are we witnessing a major new intellectual shift?

Some of the foremost literary figures of our time - Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie - have spoken about the threat which Islamism poses to Western culture. Prominent left-of-centre journalists and academics, disturbed by much of the left’s unthinking anti-Americanism and seeming fondness for dictators, have formed the Euston Manifesto Group. And amongst the left/liberal-leaning cultural and media establishment, attitudes are hardening as issues of cultural ‘sensitivity’ and self-censorship in relation to Islam come increasingly to the fore. Is a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia emerging?

Michael Gove, Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath and Shadow Minister for Housing, is one of Britain’s leading writers and thinkers on terrorism and foreign affairs. Michael was founding chairman of Policy Exchange, and is a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society. As well as being a columnist for The Times, he has been a frequent panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. His most recent book, Celsius 7/7, was published last year.

Do join us for what promises to be an important and fascinating talk. It will be followed by a Q & A session.

Please RSVP at events@newcultureforum.org.uk
We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening towards drinks.

Tonight on Culture Clash

Hello and welcome to Culture Clash.

The only shock delivered by the Turner Prize this year was that it was won by a painter. Tooma Abts, a 34-year-old German artist of contemporary abstract paintings won against competition from sculptural installations consisting of displays of found objects, a ‘live’ exhibit of a TV production office complete with live workers, a computer designed billboard and a film installation of former participants in reality TV.
When the winner was announced last week, art critics commented that the competition had inspired only indifference, and had failed to get people talking. Well we’re going to fill that gap today and ask whether this annual artistic bunfest means anything to anybody outside the art world.

It was 1993 when Channel 4 launched its so-called Alternative Christmas message, and since then Sharon Osbourne, Jesse Jackson and Ali G are among those you’ve gone head to head with Her Majesty. Often its been played simply for laughs, but this year the channel has chosen Khadija Ravat, a Muslim woman in a niqab, that’s a full veil, to deliver her perspective on the events of the past year. Ravat, a part time primary school teacher in Leicester, was born in Zimbabwe, is a convert to Islam and says that her 6 minute broadcast would celebrate British values and the multi-cultural society. We’ll be asking whether this is a timely celebration of our vibrant diversity, or whether it’s a simply a stunt too far.

My guest today are Michael Attwell, producer and former chairman of BAFTA, Dawn Steeves of The New Criterion Magazine, James Delingpole, TV critic of the Spectator, and journalist Franck Guillory.

Mark Steyn talks to The New Culture Forum

Version française

Mark Steyn’s exhilarating new book, America Alone – The End of the World as We Know It, is currently riding high in the New York Times’s bestseller list, and is top of the charts too in his native Canada. We were very pleased when Mark took some time out to talk to us.


NCF: Mark, when can we expect to see the book published in Britain?

MS: We hope to have the British edition out sometimes next year. I don’t want it to be the same experience poor old Melanie Phillips had. She was rejected by twenty publishers who basically didn’t want a controversy. So I’m being a little bit more careful than I would usually about some of these overseas rights. I want the publishers to be committed to it.

NCF: What do you think will be the reaction to it in Europe?

MS: I’m gratified in a way by the reaction so far. I’ve had really an incredible number of inquiries about overseas English rights, I’ve got many about foreign language rights from European countries where I wouldn’t have thought it was the kind of message they wanted to hear. So it seems that in the fullness of time, any language you want to read it, it will be available in. And I’m also glad of the number of sales you’ve had here to people in Denmark, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands and Spain, because I agree with Melanie, that if European populations get serious, there’s no need for them to lose their countries. If they don’t get serious, if they don’t correct force in the very near future, then I think it will be too late.

NCF: Speaking from the frontline here, what do you think the people who agree with you have to do here? I know you’re not a politician as such but it looks as if the way you describe it, it looks to be an absolutely hopeless situation here.

MS: I think that if you look at it historically, Islam is able to live in a kind of manageable situation with other cultures but that, generally, depends on how confident those other cultures are. At the extreme left for example, the Soviets had very little trouble with radical Islam when they ran central Asia. The minute Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan became independent, all the Iranian and Saudi money moved in and radicalised the population within a very short period of time. And I don’t think that becoming as aggressive as the Soviet Union is really an option that most British subjects would want to consider. But likewise, British India also very effectively managed Islam for a long time. So I think in a sense that if it is made clear to people that there is absolutely no possibility of living under Sharia, that it is just an absurd thing, the demand for Sharia and what is effectively a sort of creeping sharia where bit by bit the host nation effectively assimilates the Islamic law, by which I mean all these little things, eliminating pork from school and hospital menus - I think if you resist all those then there’s a possibility. But I think the danger is, unless it is clear that this is going to be resisted by society as a whole, then you get the kind of three way split where some people will do as the Dutch are already doing, and just sell up and look for a one-way ticket to Australia or Canada, or wherever will take them, and in a sense that’s easy for the British to do because there are more English-speaking countries. In a sense if you’re asking somebody whether they want to fight a battle with not terribly favourable odds or whether they’d rather spend the last half of their life in Australia, I think a lot of people would actually take the Australian option.

So I think there is a danger there, and there is also a danger that at the other extreme people will, as long as the political class maintains its sort of ostrich-like posture, be drawn to the kind of neo-nationalist, neo-fascist end of things, which I think honestly is very unlikely to offer any kind of long-term solution. So the trouble you might have, in so far as people want to do anything about it, is you might have this sort of three way split, which only accelerates the decline of the native European population.

NCF: There seems to be very little talk and discussion about these issues here. There is a new Conservative leader but there seems to be a kind of convergence of political parties in Britain, and these issues have been cast beyond the pale in terms of political discussion.

MS: My view of David Cameron is that he is a total disaster. The big difference between Britain and the principal English-speaking countries is that Canada, Australia and the United States all have conservative leaders and Britain doesn’t. And those conservative leaders didn’t get elected to the highest office by taking the David Cameron route which is mainly about the fact that he is the first Tory leader to look cool in jeans and an open-neck shirt, and the fact that he has embraced Al Gore’s movie…

NCF: That’s right, he went to the Arctic.

MS: This is rubbish. By the time the effect of the melting ice flows and the rising sea levels kick in, there will be no Britain and so no one is going to remember David Cameron having saved the Maldives islands when the rising sea level consumed them – which is on present trends going to be around the year 2500. All they will remember him as, so far as they do, will be this conservative leader who did not identify the real pressing threats to Britain’s national interest, as opposed to this modish piffle.

So I think he’s making no useful contribution to this cause, and I think that’s actually very disturbing. The fact of the matter is that the snob right in Britain, the Max Hastings crowd, who denounce American adventurism in Iraq and all this, the Michael Moore conservatives as they are sometimes known over here, basically their argument - that George W. Bush is engaged in a hopeless task in Iraq, that Islam and democracy is completely incompatible - that’s not a problem for Iraq, that’s a problem for Britain, and Belgium and the Netherlands and Scandinavia. And to airily make that statement about Iraq and not to see its implications for your own country is almost unbelievably crass.

NCF: Do you think that the penny has dropped in America about the truth about the actual situation in Europe?

MS: Yes, I do think so. You know there’s a theory in the media that the so-called realists, the stability fetishists as I call them in the book, are back in favour at Washington. In essence their complacency helped get us into the mess really. But I think if you do believe in stability and containment, then Europe is a very sobering lesson, because it is changing with bewildering speed.

NCF: One thing that has changed. If there’s still a kind of avoidance of the Islamic threat, at least multiculturalism is being discussed in a way you couldn’t have imagined even five years ago.

MS: I think that’s right. I was in Australia a few weeks ago and while I was there the Prime Minister – and I was very impressed by this man, I was very glad at the opportunity to congratulate him on this – because I think it’s an absolutely marvellous initiative where, they had this big education conference, in which they advocated teaching Australian history as a heroic national narrative. And I think that if your country has basically been on the right side on most of big clashes, you should be able to teach your history as an heroic national narrative. Britain has certainly got a better claim to that than almost any other country on the planet. Obviously it has his warts but there’s a difference between doing the painting warts and all, and doing it with just the warts, which I think is what a lot of British history has dwindled down to. I’m not surprised when they capture these fellows from the west Midlands on the battlefield in Afghanistan because if you’ve gone into the average English school in Pixton or West Bromwich, or whatever, in the last twenty five years it’s hardly surprising they were not exactly imbued with the love of country. That is actually where it starts, it starts in kindergarten where you’re raised not explicitly to hate your country but you’re raised just with that sort of vapid nullity, where effectively the tie that binds you to your national story should be.

NCF: What do you say to the argument that follows on that that if the population of a country shows very few sign of wanting to preserve its way of life then it’s not worth preserving?

MS: I certainly think in an electronic age it’s easier to live in the present tense as opposed to being aware of the seven eighths of the iceberg which is your accumulated inheritance. I think that if obviously you’re living in a kind of pre-mass culture society - you’re living, say, in a remote part of northern New England in 1850 - you’ve got much more sense of your part in a long epic story. If you’re in the year 2006, the new James Bond movie and the new Britney Spears CD and all the rest of it loom a lot larger because it’s much easier to live in the present tense. That’s all the more reason why government - I don’t much believe in big government, I believe in small government - but one of the critical things that a government ought to be there for is, instead of doing all this modish David Cameron piffle, is to connect people with the bigger story.

I think Britain is a real tragedy. Britain has been the single greatest force for good in the modern era, exporting its language, its legal system and its broader culture to every corner of the planet. I cannot understand it why the people who most disdain the Britannic inheritance is the mother country itself, the metropolis. It’s absurd.

NCF: We’re talking here about the culture wars. It’s a cliché that the right might have won the economic debate but that the left were victorious in the culture wars. Do you think that that is showing signs of changing? Or do we have to literally wait, to use your demographic analysis, for a generation – the so called sixty-eighters, the people who are now running the place – to, if you like, die out?

MS: Yes, I do think there is a huge problem with that generation. I think it’s almost impossible to get any sense out of them and, as you said, there are the generation which runs the Western world, which in part explains why Western civilization seems to have lost its confidence. I think that in Britain’s case there’s a danger of really appalling tragedy of a country that’s been hollowed out from within. I said the other day rather grimly that I thought it was in danger of turning into Somalia with chip shops, that’s to say a sort of husk of a state into which dangerous, malevolent, opportunist forces basically move in.

I think the scale of the problem should have been clearer to MI5 and the other authorities a lot sooner. Even today, there are far too many people at the highest level of the British State who think that it is an IRA kind of problem, that it will mean that every so often a bus will be blown up, a train will be blown up and a couple of dozen people will die but, as with the IRA, it will be manageable. And it is not, it is something far darker, more ambitious, and potentially far more transformative and I don’t see the point of spending huge sums of money on MI5 and other agencies if they can’t even get something that basic. And I think at heart reconstructing a British identity is critical to that – but you have to know what it is. But I think it’s very difficult to have any sense of tradition if basically you indicate all the time that you’re willing to put everything up for grabs. If you go to an Island Parliament in the Caribbean, if you go the parliament in Grenada, they’ve got their miniature Hansard, they’ve got their mace, they’ve got their wigs, and that is the kind of thing that Tony Blair wanted to abolish from the House of Commons at Westminster. The difference is that in Grenada, and St Kitts and St Lucia, they understand that all that stuff is what connects them to peaceful constitutional evolution across the centuries, and in that sense it is the difference between them and Cuba or Haiti, or these basket case states. They understand it but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown don’t, and David Cameron doesn’t.

NCF: Looking across now to France, with the Presidential election coming up. The Muslim population is actually far greater than in Britain. The country seems to believe that because it opposed the Iraq war, they will not be attacked. How do you see the situation there developing?

MS: I think the continental countries have particular problems. The idea that Mr Sarkozy can be France’s Reagan, or that Angela Merkel can be Germany’s Thatcher, I’ve never given much credence to, because the reality is that the German or French population are not yet in the situation that the British and the American electorates were at the end of the 70s. In other words, they have not yet accepted that the old way is kaput, and I think that, as far as the Germans and the French are concerned, yes it’s true that a lot of them think that there are far too many Muslims in their cities and they are getting pretty sick of the crime and all that, but they haven’t yet realised that one of the reason why they are in these situation is because of the unaffordable social programmes, welfare entitlements, the cradle-to-grave welfare, the paid vacations, the controlled job market and all the rest of it that’s created this situation.

If you are going to have immigration, at least you should have immigration from multiple sources. Once your immigration becomes overly dependent on a particular source then there’s a cultural component to it, effectively it becomes a demographic transformation. If your immigrants are drawn in equally from the two hundred countries on the planet, there is no cultural component to that issue. Once they become overwhelmingly drawn from one particular self-segregating demographic, there very much is.

It would seem odd that, let’s say, Latin Americans don’t emigrate to catholic Europe. They would seem on the face of it to fit in relatively easily. But one reason they don’t do it is because Europe is much less attractive to a skilled immigrant because it has higher taxes – and the taxes are likely to spread higher – and you will be going there and basically paying to keep Jacques and Gerhardt in their dotage. If you’re a skilled emigrant from Latin America or India or China that’s not very appealing. So while these immigrants go to North America and to Australia, Europe is left to take what it can get and what it can get is mainly Muslims. You cannot tackle the Islamic issue in isolation from the broader problems in the continental countries.

NCF: What’s your view on the idea that the Muslims coming into these countries are in a sense the foot soldiers of a much wider desire for caliphate? This is one view, isn’t it?

MS: I agree with that, it is no great secret. Imams in Europe say it and so do Muslim leaders in the Middle East, Colonel Gaddhafi said it, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran more or less signed on to the thesis. Basically, it is very hard to have a kind of Gates of Vienna scenario when the guys are already inside the gates. And I think that is the reality that when you poll western Muslims, a large number of them, effectively share the same goals as the September 11th ‘heroes’ – they don’t want to fly planes into skyscrapers but they support the basic idea of a western world under Islamic law, and in America that is still a very long shot, but in Europe it edges closer every day. We know from the people who are being arrested that the so-called War on Terror is not being waged against some fellow in some kind of smelly cave in Afghanistan, it is being waged against the educated groups of the most westernized Muslims. They are the one who carried on the Sept. 11th – it was a Hamburg cell -, the tube bombers were British subjects, so was the shoe bomber, Zacarias Moussaoui is a French citizen… It is a problem in the main that arises from the increasing alienation of western Muslim the longer they spend in western societies. So, when people say, well, another generation or two and these guys will be fully assimilated – a Dutch candidate Minister said to me what made him change his mind was when he realised that these young Muslims in the Netherlands today are far more radicalised, far more alienated than their parents when they came in 1970s. It’s reverse assimilation.

NCF: There is this Arab saying you quote in your book, that ‘a falling camel attracts many knives’.

MS: That’s a proverb that I came across – A falling camel attracts many knives. I kind of reformulated Donald Rumsfeld’s marvellous aphorism, Weakness is a provocation. I greatly regret the defenestration of Rumsfeld after the mid-term elections, because he was one of the few people who understood that in effect it is the perception that the West is weak that attracts these assaults. In other words, the more you try to accommodate and appease, the more they simple move on to the next alleged grievance. I saw the President a couple of weeks ago in the Oval Office, and the subject of these grievances and whether it is Iraq or Israel came up, and he was sort of riffing on the theme, and he said ‘oh, no, before Iraq, it was Israel’ and he listed various other things and eventually he wound up at the end of his great long laundry list by saying: ‘If it is not the Crusades, it is the cartoons’. That’s such a marvellous slogan, someone should print it up as bumper sticker, because it encapsulates perfectly not only the kind of total lack of proportion, in that on the kind of scale of grievances a bunch of cartoons in a Danish newspaper nobody reads can loom as large as the Crusades a millennium ago, but also it captures their readiness to take offence at every little itsy-bitsy thing, and if you can see that, as soon as you’ve started one week observing things – the Burger King removing the chocolate ice cream top looked a bit like the Arabic for Allah – as soon as you’ve done one of those, something else comes up. Or the Muslims objecting to the sex shops selling ‘Mustapha shag.’ If I lived in England that would really be a sobering thing – I mean, I’m not a great patron of the Ann Summer’s sex shops, or whatever, but it does tell you in a rather severe way where you headed, it shows that the whole comedy of English life is simply not possible once a confident Islam reaches a certain proportion. You’ll loose all the Phew-what-a-scorcher, red-top culture that English people love so much. I mean, I like it in very small doses, but that whole thing is not going to be possible once you’re in a semi-islamicised society.

NCF: Many thanks for that, Mark.

SteyOnLine, Mark Steyn's website

More from The New Culture Forum:
Douglas Murray on Intimidation, Censorship and Islam: Holland's experience, Britain's warning?
Melanie Phillips on Londonistan

Religious Fundamentalism

On Wednesday, Mark Steyn talks to The New Culture Forum

Mark Steyn’s exhilarating new book, America Alone – The End of the World as We Know it, is currently riding high in the New York Times’s bestseller list, and is top of the charts too in his native Canada. Culture Clash on 18 Doughty Street will be discussing this tonight at 8.30pm, but here at the New Culture Forum we’re very pleased to announce that we will be posting our interview with Mark Steyn about the issues raised in his book tomorrow.