A Muslim-Dominated Conservative Europe?

Bonald writes:

One big issue is how Christianity and Islam relate. Is any alliance between the two as intellectually incoherent as Frank Meier’s fusionism or Tu Weiming’s Enlightenment-friendly Confuciansim? I don’t think so; I would say that Christianity and Islam are rivals but not opposites. Libertarianism and social conservatism, and Confucianism and the Enlightenment are movements in opposite directions. There’s no coherent way one can push both at the same time. One can advance Christianity and Islam at the same time. Their morals and ours are mostly compatible (far more so than are Christian and liberal morals), and in a broad sense, Christians and Muslims would like to push Europe in the same direction (less public blasphemy, less pornography, less usury). The particularities of our own traditions can be pursued at the local level, since Christians and Muslims usually live in different places, so a robust localism can serve us both. What’s more, this is the means of coexistence endorsed by both our traditions. Muhammad himself said that Christians should be unmolested in our own enclaves, while we Christians are obliged to promote subsidiarity when possible. Both Christians and Muslims accommodated religious minorities through ghetto arrangements in the Middle Ages; it’s the sensible thing to do. The liberals, by contrast, think they have a right to indoctrinate other people’s children.

Let’s also not loose sight of the contemporary reality. A Muslim-dominated conservative Europe may not be the ideal, but at this point I think it’s by far the most viable alternative to a completely Leftist Europe. Christianity is toxic in the public mind. Europeans think we’re all a bunch of bigots and mass-murderers. And let’s not forget that half of those European Christians are Roman Catholics, who in the public mind are all child molesters. No one would ever vote for us. On the other hand, Islam, as they’ve been told ad nausium, is the religion of peace. Also, while the genetic differences between us and Turks or Arabs is small, they are regarded as non-white for some reason, which automatically gives them higher status in the European mind. Finally, they are a more formidable force because of their self-confidence. They really know that they’re right, and they don’t care what the New York Times says. Christians conservatives, on the other hand, are use to defeat. We’ve known nothing else for two centuries. We’ve come to expect it. We go into every fight demoralized, worried more about how to avoid social ostracism for what we know will turn out to be an unpopular cause than about how to make it a popular cause. The Muslims are psychologically better equipped to fight than we are.

Most importantly, between Islam and hedonistic nihilism, I’d choose Islam hands down.

We need to re-learn structured daily prayer, setting aside one day in seven, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, the global community of faith as the primary focus of personal allegiance and locus of personal identity, the lesser outward and greater inward struggle, the need for a comprehensive and coherent critique of both capitalism and Marxism, the coherence between faith and reason, and a consequent integrated view of art and science. The answer to the challenge of the Sunna is Sacred Tradition. The answer to the challenge of the Imamate is the Petrine Office. The answer to the challenge of Sufism is our own tradition of mysticism and monasticism. Liberal Catholics will be the last to see the point.