DANIEL PIPES
April 26, 2013
What will be the long-term impact of the Apr. 15-19 Boston
Marathon attack and the ensuing action-movie-style chase, killing a
total of four and wounding 265?
Let's start with what its impact will not be. It will not bring
American opinion together; if the "United We Stand" slogan lasted brief
months after 9/11,
consensus after Boston will be even more elusive. The violence will not lead to Israeli-like
security measures in the United States. Nor will it lead to a greater preparedness to handle deadly
sudden jihad syndrome
violence. It will not end the dispute over the motives behind
indiscriminate Muslim violence against non-Muslims. And it certainly
will not help resolve current debates over
immigration or guns.
What it will do is very important: it will prompt some Westerners to
conclude that Islamism is a threat to their way of life. Indeed, every
act of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims, be it violent or cultural,
recruits more activists to the anti-jihad cause, more voters to
insurgent parties, more demonstrators to anti-immigrant street efforts,
and more donors to anti-Islamist causes.
Education by murder
is the name I gave this process in 2002; we who live in democracies
learn best about Islamism when blood flows in the streets. Muslims began
with an enormous stock of good will because the Western DNA includes
sympathy for foreigners, minorities, the poor, and people of color.
Islamists then dissipate this good will by engaging in atrocities or
displaying supremacist attitudes. High profile terrorism in the West -
9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, London - moves opinion more than anything
else.
I know because I went through this process first hand. Sitting in a
restaurant in Switzerland in 1990, Bat Ye'or sketched out for me her
fears concerning Islamist ambitions in Europe but I thought she was
alarmist. Steven Emerson called me in 1994 to tell me about the Council
on American-Islamic Relations but I initially gave CAIR the benefit of
the doubt. Like others, I needed time to wake to the full extent of the
Islamist threat in the West.
Westerners are indeed waking up to this threat. One can get a vivid
sense of trends by looking at developments in Europe, which on the
topics of immigration, Islam, Muslims, Islamism, and Shari'a (Islamic
law) is ahead of North America and Australia by about twenty years. One
sign of change is the growth of political parties focused on these
issues, including the U.K. Independence Party, the National Front in
France, the People's Party in Switzerland, Geert Wilder's Party for
Freedom in the Netherlands, the Progress Party in Norway, and the
Swedish Democrats. In a much-noted recent
by-election,
UKIP came in second, increasing its share of the vote from 4 percent to
28 percent, thereby creating a crisis in the Conservative party.
Swiss voters endorsed a referendum in 2009
banning minarets
by at 58-42 margin, a vote more significant for its ratio than its
policy implications, which were roughly nil. Public opinion polling at
that time found that other Europeans shared these views roughly in these
same proportions. Polling also shows a marked hardening of views over
the years on these topics. Here (with thanks to Maxime Lépante) are some
recent surveys from France:
As Soeren Kern notes, similar views on Islam appear in Germany. A recent report from the
Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach asked what qualities Germans associate with Islam:
- 56 percent: striving for political influence
- 60 percent: revenge and retaliation
- 64 percent: violence
- 68 percent: intolerance toward other faiths
- 70 percent: fanaticism and radicalism
- 83 percent: discrimination against women
In contrast, only 7 percent of Germans associate Islam with openness, tolerance, or respect for human rights.
These commanding majorities are higher than in earlier years,
suggesting that opinion in Europe is hardening and will grow yet more
hostile to Islamism over time. In this way, Islamist aggression assures
that anti-Islamism in the West is winning its race with Islamism.
High-profile Muslim attacks like the ones in Boston exacerbate this
trend. That is its strategic significance. That explains my cautious
optimism about repulsing the Islamist threat.
Daniel
Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, Taube distinguished
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a
contributor to FrontPageMagazine.com.
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