In 1993 Samuel Huntington, then director of Harvard's Center
for International Affairs, wrote the seminal book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in which he predicted future conflicts along
the boundaries between major civilizations.
At the time many of the politically-correct progressive elitists in
Washington rejected his hypothesis, and a few even claimed he was racist or xenophobic.
Move forward to today and it is abundantly clear that he was right. We have a religious war spreading out from
the Middle East, China newly assertive, and the old Russian bear risen from the
ashes of the Soviet era to cause trouble again.
Huntington died in
2008, but his last book, published in 2004, is probably as important as his
1993 book. It is Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. The core argument is focused on the
danger to the nation of becoming divided into two (or more) distinct cultures,
fostering just the same kind of racial and nationalistic tensions that are
causing civil wars, ethnic cleansings and the like all over the world. It was
the Latino immigration that worried him then, but a massive influx of Middle
Easterners, as Europe is facing these days, would have the same consequences.
Once again, of course, the politically-correct internationalist crowd were outraged,
though Huntington probably reflected fairly accurately the worries of the average
American. In fact, he argues in this
book that the progressive ruling elite of the country have become completely disconnected
from the concerns of the average citizen, and the current political scene would
suggest he was right.
I bring all this up because this morning Newt Gingrich
proposed that all Muslims who adhere to Sharia Law should be deported, echoing
a similar proposal from Donald Trump some months ago. That of course produced the predictable unthinking
outrage from the liberal wing of Washington politics, but I think it deserves a
more thoughtful consideration.
Sharia Law is in fact incompatible with Western, and
especially America, values. It is incompatible
in many ways, such as the subservience of secular law to religious law and the inferior
position of women. But the single point
on which it is most incompatible is that, followed scrupulously, it requires endless
war on all non-Muslims until all are converted or killed. Moderate Muslims
simply ignore these parts, just as moderate Christians ignore some of the more
illiberal parts of their religion.
It won’t have escaped the open-minded that we already have
problems in America with some Christian believers wanting to impose their peculiar
religious views and values on the rest of us in issues like birth control,
divorce, gay marriage and abortion (and more lately, exactly where transgender
people can pee!). Nor that some
Christian religions still accord woman second-class citizenship. So this isn’t
just a Muslim issue.
America’s success has been due in large part to its ability
to absorb immigrants, who then within a generation or two adopt wholeheartedly
the “common America values” (whatever they are) and language, so that we remain
one nation with more-or-less one common culture and common language. Europe’s problem at the moment is that many
European nations have absorbed immigrants who have not adopted the culture of
their adopted country, and have ended up as foreign ethnic conclaves within their
new nations, hotbeds of dissention and dissatisfaction, ripe for exploitation
by groups like ISIS.
It seems to me not unreasonable to insist that anyone who
wants to come to live in America and become an America be required to adopt
both the American common language (English), and the essential American
cultural beliefs - things like the rule of law, the protection of property
rights, individual liberty, religious freedom, etc. etc. Not to require that as an essential prerequisite
to being made an America is foolish, and will lead in the long run to just the
sort of problems Europe now faces.
This doesn’t mean that immigrants can’t bring with them and
enrich all of us with their cultures, their languages (as a second language),
their foods, their traditions and their religions, to the extent that they don’t
violate American laws. But it does mean they can’t come here and then try to change
this nation back to what their old nation was.
If they want to do that, they ought to just stay back in their original
home in the first place.
Looked at in that light, Gingrich’s proposal isn’t off the
wall. In fact, it is simple common
sense. If Muslims want to live under
Sharia Law, they should live in a nation that is ruled by Sharia Law. If they want to live in America, they need to
accept America’s language and America’s laws, and American cultural norms (no
honor killings or child marriages or stoning adulterers or cutting off the hands of thieves or killing those who leave their religion, for example.). Is that so unreasonable?
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