Harem of PC Eunuchs

Someone has finally succinctly nailed the pusillanimous western apologists for Islam. Not surprisingly, it was Mark Steyn. Steyn’s felicitous “harem of PC eunuchs” phrase appears in response to Joe Klein of Time, who accused Steyn a crude religious bigotry for contrasting the Muslim world with the “developed” world. Klein contends that “the jihadi tide is ebbing” and cites progress in Iraq as Exhibit A.

Progress in Iraq? Yes, it’s a “Great Awakening,” according to Klein, for the Sunnis. Of course, Time is a little late to the party in recognizing progress in Iraq, and there is no mention of the U.S. contribution to changing circumstances there. Perhaps Klein believes this Great Awakening would have occurred under Saddam.

And what did Steyn say that would justify a charge of crude religious bigotry?

Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won’t even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the “developed world” will itself be Muslim: in Bradford as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels and almost every other western European city from Malmo to Marseilles the principal population growth comes from Islam.

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It’s not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline – in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England – and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

In addition to the new Iraqi Enlightenment, Klein cites the rise of moderates in Indonesia and India. (India, of course, is not a Muslim country.)

Klein has his own list of instances where Islamic extremism rules, but he avoids his own charge of religious bigotry with the penultimate sentence (emphasis mine):

Pakistan is a real problem, demanding a real response before the jihadis get any closer to Islamabad. There are other fruitless but compelling manifestations of Islamic extremism in the world–Hamas, Hizballah. And there are places, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where Muslim Brotherhood groups are strengthened by the brutal autocracy of the dominant governments. But make no mistake: wherever they’ve been given the free choice, Muslims have rejected extremism more often than not in the past few years. Which is excellent news, indeed.

It would be excellent news, indeed, if it were true. But democracy has yet to spring forth in a Muslim country unaided by a heavy dose of Western sensibilities. And where Islam has planted itself in the capitals of the West – e.g. London, Amsterdam, and Paris – the trends are all in the other direction.