Islam versus Europe

On his daily blog, Dan "Dhimmi" Hannan usually keeps quiet about his pro-Muslim and pro-Turkish inclinations, because he knows they don't sit too well with his readership. Every now and then, though, he plucks up his courage, steps into the fray and shows us his true colours. Today is such a day.

The article is essentially a spin-piece arguing that we shouldn't think badly of Muslims because they all voted for religious wackos after the Arab Spring gave them the right to choose their leaders. Back when the Arab Spring revolutions were first breaking, the western Establishment hailed them as proof that Muslims were just like us. On the Counterjihad blogs, even in the comments underneath the articles in the mainstream press, people knew better. I remember one person commenting that maybe the Arab Spring might ultimately be a good thing because when, in the end, Muslims exercised their freedom by choosing Islamic bondage, it would finally cure western elites of their delusion that Muslims were just like us. But as we can see from Hannan's article, the illusions of western elites are almost infinitely resilient. Because their illusions are not fact-based findings. They, too, spring from religious dogma: the Religion of Equality (with its anti-god Hitler) and the ideology of human rights that underlies it. They are no more able to shake off these convictions than Muslims are able to admit that Mohammed was a paedophile if he even existed at all.

Hanna's spin is essentially that the overwhelming support for Islam-based parties is a distortion caused by the years of dictatorship when Islamic organisations were the only opposition. He compares it to Eastern Europe, where, he says, bizarre movements briefly flourished when the dictatorship ended, only to disappear later.

It must never be forgotten that Daniel Hannan is a founder member of the Conservative Friends of Turkey Association, which campaigns to get Turkey's 80 million Muslims into the EU. That becomes clear in the next paragraph.

I can think of only two parties that, while having an Islamic foundation, uncomplicatedly support secular, liberal democracy. They are at opposite ends of the region, one in Morocco and the other in Turkey. Both are called Justice and Development (PJD in Morocco, AK in Turkey), and both are running successful governments.

The Turkish AKP party "uncomplicatedly" supports liberal democracy by jailing more journalists than any other country in the world, by banning the construction of Christian churches and by earning more unfavourable ECHR judgements than any other member state.

Hannan's article culminates in a spectacular display of appeasement.

You can be certain that the comment thread which follows will be filled with furious screeds to the effect that there is no such thing as democratic Islam, and that I want to bring the Janissaries back to the gates of Vienna. A surprising number of people spend their days searching the web for articles containing the word ‘Muslim’ so that they can start trolling.

Paradoxically, those who take the line that Islam is incompatible with pluralist democracy are reinforcing the arguments of the jihadi loons. Nothing is more likely to push some Muslims towards extremism than being repeatedly told that they want to overthrow society. These statements, as I say, have a tendency to be partly self-fulfilling.

This is the classic cry of the appeaser throughout history. Don't talk about the bad things other people do or they're likely to do even more bad things.

How crazy is it for Hannan to say that Islam-critics pointing out that Muslims suppress freedom wherever they have the power to do so will make Muslims more likely to suppress freedom wherever they have the power to do so?

If someone told Hannan that appeasement-minded "Conservatives" who campaign to get Britain out of the EU and Turkey into it have a high statistical likelihood of becoming serial killers, would that make him feel more inclined to go out and become a serial killer? No. No statement could awaken that impulse unless it was already there.