The introduction to Mark Alexander's easy to read reality check, The Dawning of a New Dark Age
September 11, 2001, a day that will go down in history as a ‘day of infamy', marks a watershed in our dealings with the Muslim world. Until this date, it had become accepted and assumed wisdom that we live in a multicultural world – in a world that would become ever more multicultural, in the so-called ‘global village'. To question this has been, and still is, to commit a cardinal sin. IN some people's minds, it lays oneself open to being considered backward thinking and even, perhaps, ‘racist'. But is this the case and, if it is, should it be so?
Political correctness sits well with the Zeitgeist. Political correctness has attempted to bully the electorate into submission. And to a great extent it has succeeded. People have generally become palpably uncomfortable in the presence of anyone who dares to question the wisdom of this multicultural, global village. To question whether such a state is, in fact, at all achievable is to commit a double sin.
President George W Bush and Prime Minister Blair were in agreement on the need to squeeze Saddam Hussein into a very tight corner: to force him into acquiescence militarily if he was unwilling to comply with their wishes that Iraq be prepared to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was seen a the bête noir of the Western world, not only because Saddam Hussein was a known tyrant willing and able to tyrannize his own people, but also because he would certainly have been prepared to tyrannize the Western world if he could have. Naturally, the US and Britain wished not only to forestall such a scenario, but also to ensure that such a scenario would never become a reality. Saddam Hussein, it was believed, would have had no compunction at all in using biological, chemical, or atomic weapons.
In addition to the challenge that Saddam Hussein posed to the West, we had, and still have, another struggle: to vanquish Al-Qaeda, the worldwide terrorist network of radical Muslims hell-bent on undermining the West and Western values – the organization known to be behind the 9/11 bombings in the US.
Threats such as these were and are threats to our liberal way of life: the way of life that we, in the West, have come to know, love and expect. In actual fact, however, if we look beyond some of these more immediate threats to our free and liberal existence, there is a third threat, and possibly, in the long-term, a more important and dangerous one – one that will threaten the very existence of the West! It is the threat of increasing Islamicisation! The power and influence of Islam is growing apace. No longer can we afford to ignore the peril that it poses.
In recent decades, we have allowed an influx of immigrants from the Muslim world into the West. In and of itself, this should not be a problem; but it is, and will become an even greater one. Immigrants to countries such as the US have traditionally entered the country in the hope of achieving a higher standard of living, and in the expectation of having to assimilate into Western culture. Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Mexican, French, British, in fact people of all cultures and religious backgrounds, have gone to the US with essentially two goals in mind: that of improving their quality of life, and in search of more freedom of expression.
So you might well ask how things differ when we think of Muslims entering the West. Well, there's a big difference! Muslims have a different view of the world – a different Weltanschauung. This way of viewing the world makes it very difficult for them to assimilate, as we would like them to do. By and large, they come to the West, the US, Britain, Europe, and Australia, hoping to spread their values and influence in those countries and continents.