Readers of this website will know that there are few people more passionate than I in support of America's defence of the west against the war of terror being waged against it. Nevertheless, there are deep flaws in America's position, of which perhaps the most important is its reluctance properly to confront the threat that it actually faces. Like Tony Blair, President Bush is desperate to avoid the idea that the world is currently convulsed by a 'clash of civilisations' between Islam and the west. Instead, those Islamists pledged to restore the Caliphate and destroy the hegemony of the west are said to be merely marginal fringe elements who have hijacked and corrupted a religion of peace. As a result, both leaders downplay the full extent of Islamist resurgence and hold out the prospect of reconciliation and rapprochement between Islam and the west. Hence President Bush's call the other day for Turkey to be admitted into the European Union:

' "Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the 'clash of civilisations' as a passing myth of history," Mr Bush said. He heaped praise on Turkey as a model for the cohabitation of democracy and Islam and said America believed that "as a European power, Turkey belongs in the European Union". He added: "Your membership would also be a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the West because you are part of both. Fifteen years ago an artificial line that divided Europe - drawn at Yalta - was erased. Now this continent has the opportunity to erase another artificial division by fully including Turkey in the future of Europe." Tony Blair underlined Britain's support for Turkish membership. He did not directly refer to Mr Chirac's outburst but made a point of saying: "All of us have been impressed by the changes that have happened in Turkey. I look forward to Turkey taking its rightful place if this progress continues."'

This intervention was greeted with fury by France, which is resisting Turkey's accession to the EU. But France -- despite its utterly reprehensible role as chief weasel in the defence against terror -- is not necessarily wrong on this one. It is worth reading this sobering assessment by one of the world's foremost academic authorities on the Islamic world, Professor Raphael Israeli. He says Turkey's secularism furnishes only a 'thin veneer' under which Muslim sentiment is in ferment. Turkey's commitment to the west, he points out, is cracking. Its Islamist government not only refused to assist the coalition in last year's Iraq war, but has made overtures to Syria and Iran and sided with the Palestinians. Israeli writes:

'This is the context in which one has to see the revived debate about the entrance of Turkey into the European Union. Right are those heads of the Union, like Kohl, Giscard, and Berlusconi, who shun this union of Middle Eastern Muslims with Europe which is still essentially Western, if not practically Christian. Their fears are well-founded: if to their 400 million basically Europeans, Westerners, and Christians they add another 60 million Muslims, part of whom do not seek adaptation to the West but transformation thereof, then we are in for a great clash of cultures and friction between traditions, rather than a harmony that multi-ethnic societies could ideally produce, but unfortunately seldom do.

'The recent Bosnia and Kosovo wars and the tremendous hazards that the 25 millions Muslims already in Europe present to the local peace, ought to be more than a warning. Obviously, that threat is not universal, for many of the Muslims who settled in Europe went either to seek asylum from the tyrannies in their home countries or to look for better job opportunities. But not a few of them have aligned with the fundamentalists among them, who seem to hold the leadership in many localities, notably France and Belgium.

'Thus, whatever the official ''pretexts'' of certain European members of the European Union in their rejection of accepting Turkey in their midst, the truth is that they fear the effect of close to 20% Muslim population in Europe, should Turkey join. Due to their rapid demographic growth, they may double their percentage within the population within a few decades, and if they insist like the Muslim fundamentalists now already established on altering Europe, this may spell out trouble.'

One suspects that Bush's cosy view of Turkey owes much to the influence of our syncretic Prime Minister. For Blair is animated by the utopian fantasy that all religions are pretty much the same, really, and if we could only emphasise what we all have in common, guys, instead of dwelling on the rubbish that divides us like, er... well, beliefs, history and tradition and irrelevant things like that, all division and war will be ended.

Bush depends on Blair for obvious reasons. They both despise France and the EU, for obvious reasons. But the Bush administration should realise that Blair's ahistorical, ignorant 'one world' idealism amounts to a soup of soggy thinking in which the west will surely drown.

Posted by melanie at July 1, 2004