A Note on Culture

A NOTE ON CULTURE 


It's a fight about culture.

The cultural fight between Islam and the West has been going on for some time.

Istanbul was once Constantinople.

Islamic Culture undergoes a fundamentalist awakening today while Western Culture morphs from a Judeo Christian to a globalist/secular paradigm.

Western Culture, in its erstwhile Christian incarnation, resisted, with varying degrees of success, Islamic attempts at expanding cultural hegemony. Charles Martel, turned back the Saracens at the gates of Tours in the eighth century.

Arguing that the best "defense" was a good "offence," Western Culture took it to the Muslim world during the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. Through the 18th century, the boundaries between Christian Europe and the Islamic World reached into the Balkans, southern Russia and Spain.

Unlike days of yore, Western Culture pace setters of today do not view Islam as a threat to ongoing globalist progress. Globalism implies less stringent borders, freer movement of capital, freer flows of immigrants and a politically correct moral equivalency of the world's cultures.

Globalism embraces technology, educated work forces, increased worker productivity, all refereed by cooperative global entities (UN, WTO, Global Trade Agreements) as a means to bettering the human condition on a world scale. When Muslims benefit economically, so the globalist theory goes, they will subordinate age old, nationalistic, tribal antipathies to opportunities to improve the lives of their families. Muslims will be encouraged to migrate to better job opportunities in labor markets now peaked out by slowing population growth. Capital will be fungible as nationalistic capital controls are discarded. The Islamic terror threat is a short-term aberration, and not indicative of Islam as a whole. Islamic terror is controllable can be dealt with through police actions.

Though nationalistic impulses have been suppressed in the West, they haven't disappeared altogether. Pam Gelber and Ayaan Hirsan Ali are authors and activists who warn of the cultural risks of Islamic immigration. Politicians, Nigel Farage, Marine LePen, Frauke Petry, Sebastian Kurz and Gert Wilders are all key figures in a movement to resist the forces of secular globalism as they call for more controls on borders and immigration. Poland, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia are European nations resorting to more nationalistic and culturally affirming immigration policies. Of course, Russia has rejected the globalist model and has pursued a Russia first cultural model.

In his best seller (in France) book "Beyond Radical Secularism," Pierre Manent throws a spanner into the works of the globalist hypothesis that economic uplift will suppress unwanted tribal conflicts. "The French Muslims," he says, "aren't buying into - assimilating into - the globalist vision of the world." Rather, they work to keep Muslim culture fully intact in distinct cultural enclaves in France.

Paraphrasing Manent: "Since the Directorate, secular movements have virtually stripped most of what made France unique out of the culture (the church, the monarchy, traditional hierarchies etc. The only thing that the French government stands for today, according to Manent, is securing the rights of the individual to unlimited - but for violence - expression. So, French Muslims say, 'why should we sign up for a culture that stands for nothing but protecting license? We like our own culture and its internal mechanisms regulating family and society, better. We'll keep Islam as our dominant culture, even while we continue living here in France.'"

Manent argues, that globalist/secular culture is a dispiriting force in France, there is no French hope for the future, no aspirant qualities in the people typically associated with French cultural purpose. Consequently, though French family formation and birth rates are higher than in most of Europe, French birth rates are still well below replacement rates.

On the other hand, French Muslims show spirited cultural togetherness and high birth rates. Manent sees the end of French culture. He believes that radical secularism and globalism are unsatisfactory substitutes which ultimately will not provide the liberty, safety, and economic benefit as promised, and that it is only a matter of time before Islamic culture becomes the dominant culture of France.

The discussion about today's Islamic awakening, its impact on Western Culture, freedom and prosperity is a valid one, even if some of the criticisms against Islam are seen by the globalists as offensive. The forces of nationalism (anti-globalism/secularism) are on the rise. Avatars of nationalism can be ridiculed and marginalized but, as in all growing movements, they draw strength and meaning from resisting their opposition. The globalist forces have been set back by Trump's election, Brexit, Putin, growing support for nationalism in Europe, and Islam. Trump's election is ground zero for the cultural battle underway. The unhinged resistance to his election and hate for his supporters coming from the left is indicative of more sparks to come as this cultural battle plays itself out.