The man who insists that the U.S. is currently fighting "World War IV" against "Islamofascism" (World War III was the Cold War) and who said, "the only prudent—indeed, the only responsible—course is to assume that Ahmadinejad may not be bluffing...and to strike at him as soon as it is logistically possible" also wrote this:

Looking at Europe today, we already see the unfolding of a process...[that] has been called, rightly, Islamization. ... In one recent illustration of this process, as reported in the British press, “schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils...." But why single out England? If anything, much more, and worse, has been going on in other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. All of these countries have large and growing Muslim populations demanding that their religious values and sensibilities be accommodated at the expense of the traditional values of the West.... Yet rather than insisting that, like all immigrant groups before them, they assimilate to Western norms, almost all European politicians have been cravenly giving in to the Muslims’ outrageous demands. ... Already some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.

Our friend Norman Podhoretz is more than a solitary crank, he is a founding father of neoconservatism and a key foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential frontrunner Rudolph Guiliani. I was wondering what he meant by "some observers," so I googled "Eurabia," a term I had never heard before, though it conjures for me the kind of racial paranoia that caused white supremacists of a century ago to go crazy about the Yellow Peril. I'm an innocent, I guess, because I wonder honestly, would it be so bad to live in a Europe full of Arabs, Turks and Pakistanis? to blend in marketplace or on the Metro with people wearing the traditional clothing of those lands, or hear the Islamic call to prayer in European streets? I guess I'm just a traitor to my race, because I could even imagine my own children belonging to such a "foreign" culture, only first I need to find the right partner, it's not something I can do alone. The fear-mongering is lost on me.

Anyway, the first thing that came up in my google search was the book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by "the world's preeminent historian of Islam," Bat Ye'or. (Never heard of her? Me neither.) She has coined the term "dhimmitude" to refer to the supposedly humiliating condition of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, a situation that she feels has already destroyed Europe, with the U.S. in danger of being next.

Eurabia cannot change direction; it can only use deception to mask its emergence, its bias and its inevitable trajectory. Eurabia's destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel. Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia, and its profound implications for the United States.... Americans should consider the despair and confusion of many Europeans, prisoners of a Eurabian totalitarianism that foments a culture of deadly lies about Western civilization. Americans should know that this self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly responsible people.

For those who want it, here is a collection of links to articles by and about Bat Ye'or, and the Eurabia concept. Here is the wikipedia article that defines Eurabia as "a scenario where Europe allies itself and eventually merges with the Arab world." Here is a profile from The New Yorker of Oriana Fallaci, another proponent of the Eurabia concept, who accused Muslims in The Force of Reason of "invading and conquering and subjugating” Europe. She called it "the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created."

I don't want to go any further with this for now, because I feel like I'm digging in a nest of maggots. It astonishes me that such views could exist at all, and even more so that they seem to be the dominant view in the West. In my view, it isn't an Islamic invasion that is destroying Western culture. Our culture of tolerance and enlightenment is being eroded from within by people like Podhoretz, Ye'or and Fallaci who refuse to adapt to the diversity of the global era.

Cross-posted on eatbees blog.