The Muslim religious wars:

Even Israel is of just minor significance.

  To understand the so-called "War on Terror," a knowledge of the religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries is more than just a little useful. No one should be of the view that the West or any other outsiders are currently the primary targets of Muslim militants. Even Israel is of just minor significance, useful primarily for ideological propaganda.
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As soon as they were freed from colonial rule and European dominance, they rushed back to the important task of killing each other in the name of God.

  Muslim militants are today fighting for dominance within the Muslim world. They are fighting their religious wars against each other. Only if and when that is sorted out will outside targets become really significant.
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    It should not be expected that Muslims are now any smarter than Europeans were several centuries ago. It should thus not have been a surprise that as soon as they were freed from colonial rule and European dominance, they rushed back to the important task of killing each other in the name of God. Only, today, the Muslim religious wars take place in a world of modern weapons.
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When each religion - and each sect within each religion - is certain that it alone possesses God's ultimate truth - where is there any scope for the constant play of compromise and accommodation that alone can provide a basis for civil society, peace and prosperity? When clerics are given free rein to preach intolerance and hate as a means of keeping their flocks from considering alternative religious views, how can war fevers ever be quenched?

  Rule by consent of the governed is a rare virtue in the Middle East. In the Middle East, most governments rule by terror. They are theocratic or include important theocratic forces.
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  Wherever religion becomes an essential feature of politics, religion changes from a blessing to a curse. Clerics have taken part in the suppression of vast multitudes. Religious wars have been responsible for vast miseries throughout history.
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  After all, when each religion - and each sect within each religion - is certain that it alone possesses God's ultimate truth - where is there any scope for the constant play of compromise and accommodation that alone can provide a basis for civil society, peace and prosperity? When clerics are given free rein to preach intolerance and hate as a means of keeping their flocks from considering alternative religious views, how can war fevers ever be quenched?
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  Remember, during Europe's religious wars there was an 80 years war and a 30 years war. When peoples are stupid enough to consent to be directed politically by clerics, it can take decades, indeed whole generations, to end some particular period of slaughter, and the hatreds can and do last centuries after the killing is over. However, it is all done in the name of God, so the combatants are convinced that it is a righteous course of conduct.
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These  conflicts will ultimately have to be resolved by the Muslim peoples. However, the West can have a powerful influence on outcomes, and must remain actively engaged.

  The West cannot determine the outcome of this historic period of religious conflict in the Muslim world. These  conflicts will ultimately have to be resolved by the Muslim peoples themselves. However, the West can have a powerful influence on outcomes, and must remain actively engaged.
 ?
  All it takes for evil to succeed is that good men stand aside. The proof is again being demonstrated in failed state situations in the Middle East and Africa.
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The threat in Europe:

  Muslim religious wars are now enveloping Europe, Christopher Caldwell explains in "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West."
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This politically correct view is absurd and is being increasingly rejected. Recent events make it increasingly difficult to avoid serious consideration of Caldwell's views.

  Caldwell presents a very illiberal view of Muslim immigration in Europe.  The politically correct but clearly absurd alternative view of European political elites is that violence has no place in an essentially peaceful Muslim religion and is the product of a small militant minority trying to "hijack" the religion.
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  However, this politically correct view is absurd and is being increasingly rejected by European electorates. Recent events make it increasingly difficult to avoid serious consideration of Caldwell's views.
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  The relationship between the violent tendencies of Muslim militants and the Muslim religion are subject to a variety of views that Caldwell dedicates considerable space to. The various views of Western politicians and political spokesmen are generally mere rationalization and afflicted by ignorance of the subject matter. Using the term "Islamism" for Muslim militancy, Caldwell states:

  "How Islamism is related to Islam is beside the point. We can know that Islamism is a serious enemy of the modern liberal state before we have a clear sense of its religious logic, and before we know what, if anything, it has to do with 'real' Islam. Proving that Islamism is not the same thing as Islam will not make it less dangerous."

  The politically correct view is an obvious fiction that, among other things, obfuscates the role of large numbers of Muslim clerics as leaders and instigators of the violence. As Caldwell correctly concludes:

  "For now, the moderation of Islam is a hope, not a fact."

Moralizing elites and businessmen who need the labor welcome or find reasons for not blocking Muslim immigration. However, there is an intellectual chasm opening between them and  the bulk of a European population that increasingly recognizes the threat.

  The variety of immigration flows within and into Europe  is acknowledged by Caldwell. He carefully emphasizes that his outline of the problems is not adequate to fully cover the complexities, variances and nuances of the cultural problems with the Muslim immigrants from the many different nations, tribes, sects and cultures. He nevertheless emphasizes the threats posed by mass immigration of Muslim peoples.
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  Moralizing elites and businessmen who need the labor welcome or find reasons for not blocking Muslim immigration. However, there is an intellectual chasm opening between them and  the bulk of a European population that increasingly recognize the threat. Europeans increasingly resent and fear the risks involved in mass Muslim immigration and the inevitable changes this will bring to their world.
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  Each year there is a flood of peoples coming to Europe bringing strange, sometimes repulsive cultural characteristics. Worse, they are coming predominantly from Muslim lands with whom Europe has sporadically fought for 1400 years and among whom there has been little evidence of any desire to assimilate. And they are coming in the millions.
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More ominous is the growing need to maintain surveillance of radical imams and the congregations of their mosques, and the need to actively defend the rights of women (and Jews).

  A similar Latino immigration into the U.S. shows every sign of assimilation by the second generation. Latino immigrants fill in among the lower working class ranks just as previous flows of European immigrants.
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  However, Muslims are not assimilating. Instead, they create friction with European customs and laws. Prayer rooms in businesses and women-only hours at swimming pools, and the French prohibition of veils in schools are among the most prominent examples.
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  More ominous is the growing need to maintain surveillance of radical imams and the congregations of their mosques, and the need to actively defend the rights of women (and Jews and critics of Muslim practices).
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  The loyalty of Muslims to their adopted lands cannot be taken for granted, Caldwell presciently asserted as of 2009. British Muslims had made terrorist attacks in Britain, and Danish Muslims had traveled the world to stir up hatred for Denmark because of a cartoon. (These examples have since multiplied.)
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Muslim women often have higher fertility rates in Europe than in their native lands - well over 3 children per woman.

Muslim culture and religious instruction is full of the notion of ultimate triumph by procreation, and there is much about Western culture that prevents it from providing an attractive alternative.

The new immigrants bring crime and squalor and incomprehension as well as their vitality and labor.

  A population vacuum is drawing more immigrants into Europe. The native population of almost all European nations is in decline, and some are in rapid decline. Fertility in over half a dozen European nations is just 1.3 children per woman. These native populations will shrink by 50% by 2050, and already over 25% of Europeans are over 60 years of age.
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  It is the immigrant communities that are filled with young people. Foreign origin populations will comprise between 20% and 32% of the total in most major EU nations by 2050. Indeed, Muslim women often have higher fertility rates in Europe than in their native lands - well over 3 children per woman.
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  While other large immigrant communities, such as Indians who came from Africa, have shown the expected decline in fertility with rising prosperity, this has not occurred with long-time Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Muslim culture and religious instruction is full of the notion of ultimate triumph by procreation, and there is much about Western culture that prevents it from providing an attractive alternative.

  "Along the road of European modernization (literacy, empowerment, individualism, and so on) lie the shopping mall, the pierced navel, online gambling, a 50 percent divorce rate, and a high rate of anomie and self-loathing. What makes us so certain that that Europeanization is a road that immigrants will want to travel?"

  A strong Europe might well take pleasure in the cultural enrichment that immigrants bring. However, a weak Europe with a decadent culture will more likely find itself being supplanted - much like the Spanish in Texas when a few ambitious ranchers arrived there from the U.S. 180 years ago.

  "European countries are shrinking, aging, and short of workers. Their only obvious supply of rejuvenation and labor is in the Muslim cultures to the south and southeast, which have historically been Europe's enemies, its overlords, or its underlings. Europe is wagering that attitudes handed down over the centuries, on both sides, have disappeared, or can be made to disappear. That is probably not a wise wager."

  Meanwhile, the new immigrants bring crime and squalor and incomprehension as well as their vitality and labor. Nor is it a problem of some particular European nation. The problems are occurring in all of the European nations that have substantial Islamic populations.
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The fear that globalization might exacerbate the tensions among peoples rather than allaying them is not just an idea that Huntington dreamed up in the 1990s."

  Massive immigrant flows strain the welfare state, create friction within a still fragile European Union, introduce a Muslim culture that is scornful of European secularism and faces no spiritual resistance to assertive Islamic beliefs.

  "Why do European opinion leaders insist that there is a diversity of immigrations, a diversity of Islams? Perhaps to stave off discussing the possibility that the various, similar-looking immigrant problems in all Western European countries might be facets of a single larger clash. The "clash of civilizations" is associated with the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington's book of that name, But the fear that globalization might exacerbate the tensions among peoples rather than allaying them is not just an idea that Huntington dreamed up in the 1990s."

   In short, it is not the current War on Terror that Caldwell sees as the real threat. That is and will continue to kill many more Muslims than Westerners. It is the slow supplanting of Muslim culture for Western culture in a Europe in terminal decline that he is warning against.

Debunking support for Muslim immigration:

  Caldwell easily debunks assertions of the economic benefits of mass Muslim immigration. Such assertions are based on very simplistic static analysis and even as asserted come to remarkably little.
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  It omits a host of obvious costs, as is usual with such propaganda. It also omits the social, spiritual and political effects that are huge with such massive immigration flows. As many European nations respond by tightening immigration laws, there is no evidence that they are suffering any economic loss.
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Immigrants move out of such low-wage work as soon as possible, creating a requirement for new flows of immigrants. Nations can become addicted to immigrant flows.

  The assertion that immigrants do the work Europeans don't want to do is similarly weak. Often, the unattractiveness of the job is its low wage which would have to rise in the absence of immigrant labor. Moreover, immigrants move out of such low-wage work as soon as possible, creating a requirement for new flows of immigrants. Nations can become addicted to immigrant flows unless they permanently restrict economic possibilities for immigrant advancement.
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  Also weak is assertions that young immigrants support Europe's aging population and its unsustainably generous government benefits. The flows required for this purpose would have to be huge, and since the vast majority earn low unskilled labor wages, their tax contribution would be clearly insufficient. Their claims on the welfare state will probably exceed their contributions - and their eventual aging will be an unsupportable additional burden. Immigrants are hardly likely to go back to their native lands and leave their benefits behind.
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The vast majority of immigrants from third world countries come to Europe for reasons other than to find work. They seek asylum or family reunification or simply overstay visas.

  Most French and British imams were on welfare when Caldwell was writing his book. In the Netherlands, 40% of immigrants were already getting some form of government assistance. The vast majority of immigrants from third world countries come to Europe for reasons other than to find work. They seek asylum or family reunification or simply overstay visas.
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  White flight was increasingly evident in several nations, accelerating the decline of the native populations. Caldwell predicts that whites will soon be a minority in cities like Leicester and Birmingham and Amsterdam. Spain has responded by attracting most of her immigrants from Latin America and the Philippines rather than from nearby North Africa. These immigrants  may not be white, but at least they come from similar cultures.

  "The justifications keep shifting: now growth, now welfare, now the benefits to the host society, now the benefits to the immigrants themselves. Immigration is a fait accompli for which people are scrambling to find a rationale."

  Europe is paralyzed by its ambivalent spiritual and moral attitudes.

  "What Europe needed under the circumstances was a moral code that would give answers about what it owed these people. It does not have one. A vague idea that Europe needs labor coexists with a lack of curiosity about whether migrants are indeed coming to work; a vague idea  that migrants need to be cared for as refugees makes it seem impolite to count the cost of assuming responsibility for the world's poor. To roll out the welcome mat for all these people would be nuts; to turn them away would be racist. Unable to muster the will for either a heartfelt welcome or for earnest self-defense, they hope the world will mistake their paralysis for hospitality."

  Ironically, most of the industries that the immigrants were originally brought in to work in were on their last legs and are now gone. Linen mills and textile mills and coal mines were soon gone, while modern manufacturing has been increasingly automated. The suction of temporary economic problems left permanent demographic change. Now, masses of unemployed immigrants trouble many cities. This, of course, does not apply to skills-based immigration.
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Caldwell draws an analogy with 19th century China and the Ottoman Empire. Europeans were attracted to them because they were both rich and "too weak and disorganized to look out for themselves." Admiration was not part of the recipe.

  The morass of mores and laws that have confounded policy response is sketched by Caldwell. By 2000, the reuniting of families from various conflict zones brings millions of refugee migrants into Europe. As asylum laws are toughened, migrants quickly learn how to game the system and fit into favored categories. Enforcement is practically nonexistent. Perhaps as many as 80% of rejected asylum seekers simply stay on illegally.

  "The way that asylum is discussed in Europe does not calm but rather radicalizes the political debate. Since rights to asylum are based on universal values, on civilized norms, they are insulated from the democratic processes that have curtailed other kinds of immigration in recent years. It ensures that those who still object to Europe's level of immigration and wish to tighten asylum admissions further must now take aim at the civilized norms themselves. - - - The idea that democratic electorates are untrustworthy custodians of civilized norms is implicit in much political discussion of immigration, in Europe and elsewhere."

  Caldwell draws an analogy with 19th century China and the Ottoman Empire. Europeans were attracted to them because they were both rich and "too weak and disorganized to look out for themselves." Admiration was not part of the recipe.
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Virtue for the newcomers is precisely pride in and concern for the ethnic, religious and tribal or national loyalties from their native lands. Their faith includes intolerance and contempt for European values.

  Similarly, Muslim immigrants come because Europe is rich, not because it is admirable. They come because Europe is too weak and disorganized to keep them out.
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  After the horrors of two 20th century world wars, Europe was leaving behind nationalist, racial and religious loyalties in favor of vague universalism, moral relativism and multiculturalism. However, virtue for the newcomers is precisely pride in and concern for the ethnic, religious and tribal or national loyalties from their native lands. Their faith includes intolerance and contempt for European values.

  "They kept alive dreams of cultural, national, and even racial glory that were beyond the reach of Europeans' universalism because they were beyond the reach of Europeans' understanding. The misunderstanding was mutual."

The propaganda war:

There is a contradiction between the virtues of assimilation and  diversity.

  The intellectual contortions used to defend universalism in all its multifarious forms are often ludicrous. The epithet "political correctness" is being used but doesn't do justice to its vast incoherence. There is bumbling censorship of things like statues and animal pictures that might offend Muslims. There is an essential contradiction between the virtues of assimilation and those of diversity. Yet defenders of immigration had to assert both to sustain public support and calm public fears.
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Even worse is the sense of intimidation as Islamist factions make a virtue of violent reprisal against perceived offense.

  Freedom of expression is under assault not only by efforts to impose self censorship but periodically by more official efforts. Even worse is the sense of intimidation as Islamist factions make a virtue of violent reprisal against perceived offense. (Caldwell certainly hit the nail on the head with this observation.)
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  Use of criminal law to deal with atrocious claims such as denial of the Nazi holocaust was bound to generate broadening efforts to cover many other views - such as religious views on homosexual behavior, debate over global warming - or criticism of Islam or other religions. Denial that Armenians were subjected by Turkey to "genocide" is now a criminal offense. There predictably developed "an endless criminalization of opinion."

  "The episodes upon which grievance groups sought to impose an official truth --- the massacres of Armenians, the horrors of colonialism, the slave trade --- were every bit as real as the Holocaust."

  Even attacks against radical Islam can be subject to litigation under laws against incitement to racial hatred. Caldwell emphasizes an NGO suit targeting an "incendiary" attack against Islamist violence. Even though the suit was unsuccessful, "it opened the question of whether there was any language in which one could criticize Islamist violence without finding oneself in a courtroom."

  "Islamophobia was an accusation that could be --- and was --- leveled at those who expressed worry over suicide terrorism in the Middle East or anti-Semitic attacks by Arab youths in Paris. Europe's toleration laws were beginning to work to the advantage of the intolerant."

  The Muslim ghetto riots in 2005 are piously attributed to rebellion against social conditions. But the rioters themselves chanted slogans and explained their cause against France and Frenchness in ethno-religious terms that could have drawn outrage against "fascisim" if Germans in Germany had done the same.
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Europeans have abandoned their nationalistic past while accepting with "childish credulity" the "justice and nobility of exotic political causes."

The immigrants approach life with "aspirations," the European with "deference and restraint."

  Public discussion about immigration has thus been muffled if not yet muzzled. Euphemism is required, and participants in the dispute walk a minefield of social and even legal penalties. Thus, only foreigners were permitted to espouse national and religious claims. Europeans would be accused of nationalism, racism or xenophobia for the same conduct. Europeans have abandoned their nationalistic past while accepting with "childish credulity" the "justice and nobility of exotic political causes."

  "Immigrants could indulge certain comforting prejudices, myths, and traditions that natives would be disciplined, chastised, ostracized, or jailed for indulging. Effectively, diversity meant taking old hierarchies and inverting them."

  Europeans are becoming second class citizens in their own countries, Caldwell asserts. They are criticized for wearing the cross in places where the head scarf and hijab are welcomed. Cohesive minority groups were having disproportionate influence on local government. The immigrants approach life with "aspirations," the European with "deference and restraint."

  "Whites' relative pessimism about exercising their rights is supposed to strike us as puzzling, or surprising, but of course it is not. It reflects a belief that their aspirations are not the real subject matter of Britain's politics."

  Europeans are increasingly breaking with their elites. Since 9/11/01, the vast majority once again see Islam as a source of opposition, threat, and theocratic tyranny. The fact that their elites no longer speak for the people is a threat even to the very existence of the EU.

Not only are Muslims not assimilating, second and third generation Muslim immigrants are increasing their segregated status. They are creating self-governing settlements throughout Europe.

  It is true that immigrants, including Muslim immigrants, have moved into many rotting neighborhoods in major European cities and rescued them from decay. More often, however, Caldwell points out, Muslims have gathered into ghettoes apart from the Europeans, and have created a separate "parallel society" at variance with liberal European values and established culture. Their children do not always find European culture superior to that of their parents.
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  Indeed not only are they not assimilating, second and third generation Muslim immigrants are increasing their segregated status. They are creating self-governing settlements throughout Europe.

  "And thanks to television and airplanes, ancestral cultures are now, for the first time in the history of transcontinental migration, generally available for all immigrants and their descendants to fall back on. Half a century into the Turkish immigration to Germany, [one observer found that] Turkish was still the language of the cafés, mosques, and hairdressers of Neufeld, near Duisburg --- even for German-born young people. The men's establishments were sharply divided by political leanings --- and the politics that divided them was the politics of Turkey, not Germany."

  Muslim ghettos, as might be expected, are more violent and crime ridden than Europe is used to. Muslims increasingly fill European prisons. Intellectual apologists desperately seek ways to blame society for these events so as not to confront the problems.
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  Riots break out on the slightest pretext, and often without any pretext. There is a widespread expectation that violence will keep rising. Youths in the ghettoes are increasingly arming themselves in preparation for the next opportunity to riot. Europeans are regretfully coming to realize that entire immigrant populations "no longer feel they are part of this country."

  "There was a desire, verging on desperation, to explain the riots as being due to some misconduct of the majority society. Because if the riots could not be explained by the misconduct of the majority society, then they  could be explained only as part of the agenda of the rioters. And to raise the agenda of the rioters was to raise, once again, the subject of Islam."

Immigrant offspring seek their identity in their religion and forget the divisions of their parents' world. Television no longer assimilates them into the host nation culture. "It assimilates them into globalized Islam."

  However, those differences are what disappears in the offspring of Muslim immigrants. They seek their identity in their religion and forget the divisions of their parents' world. Television no longer assimilates them into the host nation culture. "It assimilates them into globalized Islam."

  "In Europe, formerly distinct communities' interests have started to converge into a larger Muslim culture. In most immigrant housing projects, satellite dishes run up the buildings like buttons, picking up the news from home This would seem to throw into reverse television's historic role as an engine of immigrant assimilation, keeping open lines of communication from the old country. But in other ways, television does indeed assimilate immigrants. It is just that it assimilates them into something other than traditional European culture. It assimilates them into globalized Islam."

Jihad:

Hundreds of European Muslims have traveled to the Middle East and Africa to join the fight, including fights against NATO and U.S. forces. 

  Large majorities of Muslim immigrants identify with Muslims involved in conflicts with non-Muslims all around the periphery of the Muslim world. Hundreds (now thousands) of European Muslims have traveled to the Middle East and Africa to join the fight, including fights against NATO and U.S. forces. 

  "As of this writing, Muslim countries or groups are either at war or in a hostile truce with every civilization that Islam abuts, from Nigeria to Xinjiang."

Many of the imams are anti-European - sometimes violently antagonistic. A wide variety of extremist groups with ties to militant groups in the Middle East thrive in Europe.

  Money from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states support mosques and imams in Europe. Many of the imams are anti-European - sometimes violently antagonistic. A wide variety of extremist groups with ties to militant groups in the Middle East thrive in Europe.

  It is absurd under these obvious circumstances to try to portray Islam as a religion of peace. It is absurd to contend that thousands of Muslim militant clerics and tens of thousands of militants and hundreds of thousands of supporters are just a rabid minority trying to "hijack Islam." Religious aggression is and has historically been too strong an arm of the Muslim religion to permit belief that it is not a real arm of the religion. Making believe that Islam is a peaceful religion will not make it so. It is more logically arguable that it is Western  interests that are trying to hijack Islam for peaceful purposes.
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  It is equally absurd to claim that the terrorist threat is a result of Middle East poverty and autocracy. Most of the Middle East terrorists as of the writing of this book were educated and middle class. However, poverty and the absence of economic opportunities in Europe are indeed contributing to the radicalization of Muslim immigrant offspring.
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  In the Muslim world, the conflicts are indeed religious wars of Muslim sect against Muslim sect. However, for second and third generation Muslim immigrants in Europe, it may indeed be transforming into a conflict between Muslim and Western religions and culture.

Europe's response:

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  Europe is meeting this increasingly violent rejection by extraordinary efforts to accommodate the immigrants. This policy appears to be a mistake.

  "The largesse, nonjudgmentalism, and leniency of European governments bred contempt, and a temptation - - - 'to milk the state.'"

Muslim immigrants and their poorly educated offspring lack the skills and cultural background to succeed in an economy that is increasingly service-oriented.

  It is not enough to avoid claims of European bias and "Islamophobia." High unemployment rates and  low wage jobs breed resentment in Muslim immigrant offspring. Their inability to fit comfortably in Europe leads inevitably to disappointment and then anger.
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  Muslim immigrants and their poorly educated offspring lack the skills and cultural background to succeed in an economy that is increasingly service-oriented. The economic promise that attracted most of the immigrants in the first place is disappointedly out of reach. (Europe's labor laws pose yet another obstacle to employment for Muslim offspring.)
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There is no reciprocity in inter-religious dialogue. It is always the Christian that accommodates the Muslim agenda.

  An "adversary culture" is increasingly being formed within Europe by Muslim immigrants. Their offspring are heavily - and successfully - indoctrinated in a Muslim identity that has an adversary relationship with Europe - and with every other culture all around Muslim world borders.
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  And now the internet ties Muslim militants together from all over the world as a "nation of believers," Caldwell presciently explains. Islam is resurgent in Europe. Christianity offers no counter to it. European Christianity lacks passion - which is something Islam has in abundance. There is no reciprocity in inter-religious dialogue. It is always the Christian that accommodates the Muslim agenda.

  However, Muslim terrorist atrocities are increasing passions - and indeed revulsion - among Europeans. And the conflicts in Iran and Syria are drawing Muslim immigrant offspring into the killing fields of an increasingly deadly conflict. It remains to be seen how Muslim militancy is affected by a conflict where the slaughter is increasingly of Muslim militants and where militant leadership repeatedly wastes many young jihadist lives in  conflicts that can have no end.
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  There is no accommodation possible between warring sects. It is war without end in the absence of some complete annihilation of opposing sects. It is led by clerics that consider young militants nothing more than expendable cannon fodder.

  Inevitably, it has been the most radical and religiously passionate people and groups that take control of Muslim organizations and "speak" for the Muslim communities. Caldwell provides an extensive review of the problems involved in dealing with Muslims through various organizations.

  "Universalistic secularism is grandiose in its conception, but in execution it has turned out to have no more authority than its traditional adversary, crusading Christianity. As a means of regulating Islam it has been inadequate. Rules designed for unworldy churches work less well when applied to organizations with the kind of worldly dynamism Islam has: networks, foreign financial backers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, a political agenda, a clear sense of who its friends and enemies are, and a willingness to play hardball with dissidents inside the faith and skeptics outside it."

The threat of violence and murder, made all too real by several prominent examples, broadly chills criticism. Social pressures. too, are applied when critics rather than rioters are blamed for riots.

  Militant Muslims are not waiting for legal protection.  Muslims increasingly demand legal protection against all overt opposition.
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  The threat of violence and murder, made all too real by several prominent examples, broadly chills criticism. Social pressures. too, are applied when critics rather than rioters are blamed for riots. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the murder of two people associated with publishing his book, the murder of a Dutch critic and death threats against others, the violent demonstrations touched off by a Danish cartoon and more have created a palpable climate of fear in European intellectual circles. (This impressive indictment of active Muslim intolerance and violence grows longer with each passing year.)

  "There is clearly a kind of standing fatwa against Islam's harshest and most pointed critics. It is sufficient to render discussion of Islam, as a practical matter, less than free at every level of society."

  European secularism triumphed after centuries of sometimes violent opposition to Christian clerisies and persistent criticism and ridicule of doctrine. There will be no violent secular opposition to Muslim clerics  and Europe is busy finding ways to squelch all criticism and ridicule of their doctrines. Criticism of Islam is being put on the same level as anti-Semitism as Europe scrambles to justify submission to Muslim demands for protection against criticism.

  "[The] protests  were not a demand for respect or fair treatment  or a rightful place for Islam among the cultures of the world. They were something new: a warning that non-Muslims, wherever they may be, cross Muslim religious taboos at their peril. The idea, widespread in Europe up to that point, that you can fully respect both free speech and the dignity of religion turned out to be an optical illusion. The two had seemed compatible only because no one in Europe had seen fit to press the case for the dignity of religion in any urgent way for about half a century. Once Muslim immigrants arrived and did so, the easy coexistence of religious and expressive freedoms was a thing of the past. A choice was now necessary."

As mainstream political parties lost ground, parties with anti-immigrant policies were already growing. They often also offer anti-EU policies as popular support for the EU itself withers, much to the dismay of the governing elites who are prone to ignore popular sentiments.

  Opposition to Muslim immigration comes in various forms and has its own militants. Of little political impact as of the writing of this book, it was however already a growing force. Immigration laws and practices were already being tightened throughout the EU. As mainstream political parties lost ground, parties with anti-immigrant policies were already growing. They often also include anti-EU policies as popular support for the EU itself withers, much to the dismay of the governing elites who are prone to ignore popular sentiments. Moreover, immigration issues roil national politics in a wide variety of ways.

  "The most important problem in Europe is the fallout from decades of mass immigration. The most important moral 'value' in Europe is democracy. There is sometimes a striking lack of confidence in the latter's capacity to address the former."

  Governing elites respond with the standard affirmative action plans to increase diversity and integrate minorities into society. These policies create new problems even as they respond to existing problems. The European immigration problem is much more than a mere problem of economic and political equality.

  "It is deeply held beliefs, not skin color, that present the main challenge. Europe's predicament involves population decline, aging, immigration, and the steady implantation of a foreign religion and culture in city after city. Europeans are not at all sure their minorities want the same things that they themselves do."

  The unintended consequence for Europeans is that increasingly powerful threats to cultural and democratic values are arriving with the immigrants.

  "Europeans fear their individual countries are slowly escaping their political control, and they are right, although they can seldom spell out precisely how. They sense that Europe is being taken over culturally -- whether by theocratic Islam or by a (market) liberalism that accords no particular value to Europe's most cherished traditions."

  Europe, coming out of the horrors of WW-II, is in "an age of public atonement and rhetorical squeamishness" that constrains its response to current massive immigration flows. 

  "But it is possible to say that Europe's decision to welcome millions of foreigners was made at a time when it was not of sound mind and body, in a political landscape drawn up by Hitler and Stalin, and as the ward of a country -- the United States -- whose interests coincide less with those of Europe now that the age of Hitler and Stalin has passed."

  With the current rise of the new caliphate and other threats in the Middle East and North Africa, and Putin's thugocracy in Russia, EU and U.S. interests are again increasingly coinciding.

  "Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers. For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest, in an obvious demographic way and in a less obvious philosophical way. In such circumstances, words like 'majority' and 'minority' mean little. When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter."

   The legal aspects of EU immigration problems are reviewed by Caldwell, along with the factors limiting the likelihood and degree of Muslim assimilation in the various European states. He speculates on the cultural and political responses likely among Europeans.
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  Caldwell parses the dubious impacts on the EU if an increasingly Islamist Turkey is ever admitted. He assesses the increasingly unpopular EU commitment to multiculturalism as applied to Muslim immigrants, and the Muslim rejection of multicultural practices in Europe.
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  The failure of assimilation:

&

  To control Muslim immigrant behavior, the rights of all are being compromised. To get rid of the Muslim veil and other religious feminine garb, France imposed restrictions on all obvious religious garb. The editor of a Danish publication put it bluntly: The price for managing Islam would be paid in rights.
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Muslim women are making headway in Western education and economic prospects while the men lag far behind - leading to a frustrating role reversal. There is the perception of the "gelding" of Muslim men.

  Subordination of Muslim women cannot be tolerated in Europe, but is nevertheless maintained in mosques and other spaces dominated by Muslim Europeans. However, Muslim women are making headway in Western education and economic prospects while the men lag far behind - leading to a frustrating role reversal. There is the perception of the "gelding" of Muslim men.
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  Genital mutilation, hymen restoration surgery, and even honor killings continue among some Muslim communities in Europe as a result of continuing efforts to control Muslim women. Despite legal and European intolerance and even considerable opposition within most Muslim communities, such practices nevertheless continue to terrorize women into submission.
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  Radical sects often offer women an escape from such practices by emphasizing that such practices were not originally a practice within the religion. Western hedonism is scorned by many Muslim radicals, "but a desire to escape traditional households and have more sex can in some cases be an incentive for young Muslims to radicalize."
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Most European Muslims from across the Middle East choose to take their spouses from abroad. This accelerates the growth of European Muslim communities and is evidence of "a collective choice against assimilation" even after several generations.

  Sharia law and marriage practices offer both elements that Europeans consider intolerable and others that can be accommodated at least on a contractual basis. Religious "courts" as arbitration entities subject to Western laws are commonplace and are generally acceptable to the extent they don't contradict European laws or predominant practices or reflect militant or violent tendencies.
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  Intermarriage is practically non-existent between Europeans and some Muslim groups. Most European Muslims from across the Middle East choose to take their spouses from abroad. This accelerates the growth of European Muslim communities and is evidence of "a collective choice against assimilation" even after several generations. The children of Muslim immigrants are even more opposed to assimilation than their parents.
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  The prevalence of arranged marriages has both beneficial and deplorable results. Some European states have responded by raising the minimum age for foreign-born spouses. As of the time this book was written, it was 18 in Germany, 21 in the Netherlands. Denmark had even stricter requirements that had cut the rate of such marriages in half.
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Political influence:

They vote as a block and could shift political concerns to Muslim issues. 

  Muslim immigrant numbers are now sufficient to have a political impact. Like many immigrant communities, they vote as a block and could shift political concerns to Muslim issues.
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  Caldwell compares this trend to the gradual increase in Irish influence until they dominated Boston politics. Muslim concerns already dominate politics in several British cities.
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Honor killings are used to control Muslim women, violence threatens free speech practices with respect to religious controversy and dominates competition for converts.

The line between legitimate dissent and active subversion of European policies is far from clear cut.

  Most Muslims participate peacefully in European politics and the economy, but a significant minority favor violent responses to perceived religious slights. High birth rates leading to a high percentage of young men in the population is a recognized cause of conflict that characterizes most Muslim populations.
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  Violence permits a minority to dominate an issue. Honor killings are used to control Muslim women, violence threatens free speech practices with respect to religious controversy and dominates competition for converts. Moreover, the author points out, violent minorities can take control of whole nations, as the Bolsheviks proved in Russia in 1917.
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  Europeans - both Muslim and non-Muslim - have become "subject to intimidation by Muslim clerics and their followers." Muslim dogma impacts not only public discourse but also literary life and even scholarly publications. Even non-Muslims now feel constrained by fear of violence with respect to criticism of Muslim laws and practices.
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  Large minorities of Muslims cheered the 9/11/01 attacks in the U.S. and are at least ambivalent on which side to back in the battle between the West and militant Islam. The line between legitimate dissent and active subversion of European policies is far from clear cut.
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Hundreds of anti-Semitic attacks by European Muslims occur each year.

Muslim doublespeak:

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  Many Muslim "moderates" offer peace from terrorism if Europe surrenders values. Like "land for peace," the demand is for a concrete sacrifice in exchange for something that is "vague, subjective, and revocable."
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Even when not threatening violence, the West is being warned that if it does not change "in accordance with Muslim wishes, violence will somehow befall it."

  Many Muslim clerics use deceptive language designed to sound moderate to Western ears but that has militant meanings for Muslims. Even when not threatening violence, the West is being warned that if it does not change "in accordance with Muslim wishes, violence will somehow befall it."

  "Let us be clear about what this means. As soon as the practice of Islam is constrained, the social contract is null and void. Muslims' acceptance of the European countries in which they live can only ever be provisional, contingent on Europe's willingness to give Islam free rein. The integration of Muslims into Europe will happen on Muslim terms. - - - Only when Europe's ways are understood as Islam's will Muslims obey them. And if not, not."

    This same attitude applies between the various Muslim sects and imposes far more violence between Muslims than against the West. However, Caldwell asserts that the offspring of Muslim immigrants leave much of this sectarian conflict behind them and unite in their antipathy against the West.

  Many Muslim clerics view the West as decadent and in inevitable decline, inevitably to be supplanted by Islam. Islam will adopt only the useful Western technological innovations, not its "values."

  This is a common trait of adversaries of Western values. Twentieth century fascists and communists made the same mistake. They mistake the inherent messiness of democracy and market capitalism for decadence and weakness, but those characteristics are in fact the source of innovation, resiliency and strength. Adam Smith noted the existence of declinist expectations a quarter of a millennium ago.

  Agitation by militant imams and other Muslim clerics is the core problem of the conflicts with Islamic militant groups and must be a target of the Western response if the conflict is ever to be brought to a successful conclusion. Militant imams preach in mosques throughout the Muslim world as well as in immigrant mosques elsewhere, and it is patently ridiculous to assert that they are not a significant aspect of the Muslim religion. They are financed and generally directed from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, have widespread public support among Muslim peoples, and are definitely a part of the Islamic tradition.
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  Ignoring these facts undermines Western strategy in dealing with the Muslim militants. Defeat of any particular group of Muslim militants is just a tactical victory. It is the radical imams and other clerics that must be recognized as the strategic target. Only successful confrontation and defeat of the radical imams can successfully end the conflict.
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  Islam has been a warrior  religion since its outset, as was Christianity for most of the last millennium. Christianity has been pacified by the horrors of the wars of the twentieth century, but the Muslim world was largely spared those horrors. European nations are increasingly deporting and closing their doors to militant Muslim preachers, but that does nothing for the problem in the Muslim world.
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  It is to be hoped that the rising death toll for young jihadists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, and other failed Muslim states will create and reinforce a sense of Muslim community skepticism and ultimately revulsion towards militant imams and other Muslim clerics who preach intolerance and hatred. Unfortunately, such wisdom seems to be beyond the capabilities of militant clerics and their flocks, and the ongoing atrocities of spreading conflict harden centuries-old hatreds.