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Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
In February 2006, I published a book called While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. That same month – exactly a week later, to be specific – Claire Berlinski came out with Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too. We were just part of what would turn out to be a wave of warnings between hard covers. September 2006 brought Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. In 2007 came Walter Laqueur’s The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent. And in 2009 Christopher Caldwell published Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.
Most writers are irked when they find their books competing with other titles on the same topic. I wasn’t. The more the merrier. Why? Because the main arguments leveled against While Europe Slept were as follows: I was a hysteric who was dramatically overstating the problem. I was a bigot, a racist, an Islamophobe. Much of my evidence was anecdotal, and hence without value. I wasn’t a credentialed expert in Islam. My book didn’t have footnotes. (Actually, it had had footnotes, but the publisher decided to yank them at the last minute.)
The best way of demonstrating to these critics that I wasn’t peddling sheer fantasies was to point to the authors of those other books. I’d never met or communicated with any of them, and I don’t think any of them had ever met or communicated with each other. Also, we had a wide range of backgrounds and educations and professional résumés: I was born in New York City, earned a Ph.D. in English at Stony Brook, and went on to live in the Netherlands and Norway; Berlinski was born in California, earned a doctorate in International Relations at Oxford, and went on to live in Paris and Istanbul; Laqueur (who died in 2018) was born in Wroclaw, Poland, spent a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and became a distinguished historian of modern Europe and a professor at several American universities; Caldwell, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, is a Harvard-educated political journalist who became an editor of the Weekly Standard; Steyn is a Toronto-born high-school dropout who became a TV and radio host in both the U.S. and U.K.
In short, several very different people with very different perspectives. But we had all taken a long, hard look at Western Europe and had all seen exactly the same thing – and had all been worried enough to sit down and write books that we knew would land us in hot water with the Western cultural and political establishment.
Of course, not all of us saw eye-to-eye on every detail. Berlinski devoted the fourth chapter of her book to France’s second largest city, which is a major Mediterranean port and a traditional melting pot. Berlinski’s take on the city was made clear by the chapter’s title: “The Hope of Marseille.” It began as follows:
Compared with those of other European countries, French policy has in one way been a success. It has been a full ten years since the last wave of Islamic terrorism on French soil, a circumstance in large measure owed to the sheer ruthlessness of French antiterrorism prosecutors and investigators, who are Europe’s most draconian….So far, these policies have worked.
Well, that was 2006. In 2012 three soldiers, three schoolchildren, and a rabbi would be shot to death by a jihadist in Toulouse and Montauban. In January 2015 came the Charlie Hebdo massacre, which took 17 lives. In November of that year came the attacks on the Bataclan theater and other targets in and near Paris, in which 131 people were killed. On Bastille Day 2016, 86 victims were mowed down on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. That year the Centre for Geopolitics & Security in Realism Studies posted an article entitled “Why always France? The logic behind the surge of Islamist terrorist attacks on its territory and possible policy implications.” France as an antiterrorism success story? The very idea was now ancient history.
To be sure, Berlinski had been quick, in the opening of her fourth chapter, to acknowledge that while France had been spared major acts of terrorism, Muslim immigrants were no more successfully assimilated in the French Republic than in other Western European countries. The exception, she maintained, was Marseille. In that city, a wave of antisemitic attacks in 2001-2 had been succeeded by calm: “the animus,” as Berlinski put it, “has fizzled out.” While Muslim leaders in other French cities stayed mum on antisemitic violence, their counterparts in Marseille condemned it.
Why the difference? Berlinski went to Marseille to find out. Her cabdriver told her: “I’m a Jew, my neighbors, they’re Arabs, we understand each other fine….It’s not like the rest of France; we’re cosmopolitan here, everyone understands everyone else.” One reason for Marseille’s exceptionalism, Berlinski decided, was that immigrants were not “shunted off into suburban slums,” as in other large French cities. Another reason was that Muslims were afforded “representation as a group in city politics,” which made possible certain trade-offs: while the city provided Muslim cemeteries and abattoirs for halal slaughter, Islamic leaders, in return, promised to “keep the extremists in their community in check.”
If Marseille worked, concluded Berlinski, it was largely “because its constituent ethnicities, particularly its Arab immigrants, [we]re recognized, organized, courted, and given voice in a formal system,” and because moderate Muslims, “who have been co-opted into the system,” were used effectively to contain their “violent and immoderate” coreligionists.
Berlinski wasn’t alone in considering Marseille a noble – and promising – exception to the rule when it came to the peaceful incorporation of Muslims into Western Europe. Six years after Menace in Europe, a researcher named Françoise Lorcerie contended in the New York Times that the reason why Christians and Muslims seemed to get along better in Marseille than in other French cities was that its residents had forged for themselves “a kind of creole identity, a bit like another port city, New Orleans. In Marseille a collective identity has arisen from a history of hardships and from shared strong aspirations to a better life.”
By 2015, however, the bloom seemed to be off the rose. A report on PBS, of all places, admitted that the number of Muslims in Marseille had grown, that the Muslims had become increasingly radicalized, and that the radicals were more and more inclined to be violent. Both Muslims and non-Muslims testified that the situation was getting “worse and worse.”
On 1 October 2017, in a crime later classified by Europol as a terrorist act, an illegal Tunisian immigrant stabbed two young women to death at a train station in Marseille. In May of last year Éric Zemmour, the former presidential candidate, said in an interview that Marseille was “no longer really a French city” but was, instead, the site of “a war of civilizations, a daily jihad.” In September of this year, after another Tunisian stabbed five people in Marseille, Zemmour told an interviewer: “I am very sad when I see Marseille transforming steadily. It is no longer the city I knew in the 1980s. It has fallen into the hands of the North Africans….It is no longer truly a French city, and there is no longer a French social life.”
Is any of this a surprise?
Now, I’ve never been to Marseille. I’ve spent a week in Cannes, 100 miles down the coast, but not Marseille. But I didn’t need to have visited Marseille to shake my head when, 19 years ago, I read the fourth chapter of Menace in Europe. My observations of Islam in Europe had already made it clear to me that Muslims were not like other immigrant groups, that settling them in city centers instead of suburbs would not make any difference in the long run, that relying on “moderate” Muslims to restrain their immoderate brothers was a pipe dream, and that interfaith “understanding” was a crock. It was already clear to me that as a city’s population of Muslims grew, those Muslims would flex their muscles with increasing aggressiveness, causing the illusion of integration to fade steadily.
Claire Berlinski, while seeing a lot of things about Islam in Europe very clearly, nonetheless felt driven to embrace the notion of Marseille as a beacon of hope and a role model for other European cities whose native populations dreamed of coexistence with their Muslim neighbors. After all, wrote Berlinski, “[i]f immigrants cannot be assimilated and they cannot be sent back – and they can’t – Europe must find some way to make its peace with them.” In her desperation to cling to this hope for peace, alas, Berlinski apparently forgot momentarily that for Muslims the words peace and submission are synonymous.
As for her statement that unassimilated immigrants “cannot be sent back” – why not? Like many Americans today who are fiercely hostile toward ICE, Berlinski seemed, at least in 2006, to regard the very idea of rounding up enemies within as distasteful. Well, perhaps. But better to carry out a distasteful mass expulsion, and thereby save one’s civilization, than to commit civilizational suicide for the sake of sensitivity. In 2025, to contemplate Marseille is to reflect sadly upon the once vibrant but now quickly dying dream of a Europe defined by a multicultural harmony that – as more and more of us now realize – never could have been.
We need to stop retreating. We need to stop managing defeat. The real French should be determined to take back Marseilles. It’s theirs. France was liberated from Nazism. It’s time that it was liberated from Islam.
Marseilles is the oldest city in France (founded in 600 BC by Greek settlers). A very important city in Ancient Roman history (called then Massalia) and a great trading port..
We could use a man like Charles Martel today. Escort the Algerians and other Africans back home.
Maybe allow the attractive young women to remain who are willing to convert to Christianity or Judaism and marry French men that are willing to have children. Traditional nuclear families, since many French women are not interested in reproducing. All the males and other women must go.
“cannot be sent back”
I’m sure Berlinski knows all about La Reconquista and it scares the hell out of her. But that’s what is going to have to happen if America and the West survive this Marxist-Muslim cancer.
Long live Saint James Matamoros!
Excellent article. Bruce Bawer and the other authors mentioned are Cassandra heroes who are still waiting almost twenty years later for people to heed your bitter truths. Most Western people never will. They can’t or their minds would shatter.
We’re in this mess because the majority of Western people still cling to “The Hope of Marseille” — that desperate hysterical refusal to allow themselves to face the fact that “despite everything, people are really good at heart” is NOT TRUE! It’s a child’s fairy tale — lovely for children but not of the real world. People are not good at heart. Indeed mass numbers have no need of such a sappy metaphor as a “heart” — they only need their tribal allegiance to the domination of their tribe over all other peoples.
Western people of every stripe — religious, leftists, liberals, optimists, etc. — cannot accept the tribal reality of islam and that its members are not “good at heart” and never will be, don’t want to be, and worse, the concept not only doesn’t exist for them — the concept personifies only weakness and surrender — a sign that the sheep are ready for the wolves to begin their slaughter. We are the spoiled heirs of decadent illusions whose affluent hermetic Western society is dying of sentimental naive and deadly nursery tropes about Utopian human nature and magical thinking talisman beliefs to ward off and avoid the truth that man is a wolf to man.
“…..majority of Western people still cling to “The Hope of Marseille” …
I don’t know that most Western people know much about Marseille, period. I certainly didn’t think about it all until Bruce Bower’s fine article, here. However, the entire Western world has fallen for a series of very adolescent fantasies, and the one involving Islam could be summed up under “My Mohammed is different.”
Uh, no he isn’t.
The Spanish Reconquista lasted 8 centuries. Islam will dominate Europe as long as there is no active war or forcible deportation of Muslim colonizers. NATO is a joke and focused on traditional war, like with Russia, but ignored the hostile foreign invasion of a historically anti-West ideology by migration. Islamic Ummahs always default to extremism because that’s what their Koranic manifesto preaches along with killing infidels, forcible conversions and a Global caliphate. It depends on how easy the current Leftists allow for the suicide of Europe coupled with the loss of their nationalistic pride because that’s Nazism….don’t you know?
Even if the Globalist Commies take control, Islam will consider them infidels and cut-off their heads.
Europe would be better off with a Russian take-over—at least it’s culturally more Western and has Russian Orthodox religlion. Then by dictatorial rule, it could ostracize Islam like what Europe used to do with Islamic invasions. It’s still the lesser of the two evils…even if everyone had to convert to Russian Orthodox religion. Hopefully European nations could retain their cultural customs and women wouldn’t be forced into burkas.
Its time to evict that United Nations from America reverse and withdraw World Heritage Sites(Independence Hall,)from America and withdraw all those Biosphere Reserves)from under UN Control lets move the whole rotten UN to Moscow or Beijing
Tolerance of islam, like socialism, is something that has been tried many many times in the past and it only results in disaster. But the Left always thinks that this next time it will work.
‘Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.’ — Ben Frankiln
Multiculturism is one of the dumbest ideas to ever exist and anyone who ever believed in it is an imbecile. Multiculturism, DEI, ESG, Net Zero are all the same thing and none of them are designed to make anything better. They are all just avenues of control and to concentrate political power in the hands of the few. There are many multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religion nations(Russia, China, India, etc.) but they stress loyalty to the nation, malcontent is quickly crushed, and separatists are eliminated. Disruption is not allowed and there is an unquestioned dominant ethnicity, language, religion and culture. Dumbass tourists travel to a city with “an international flavor” for a week’s vacation and think that’s a national model for multiculturism.
Multiculturalism is a lie. It’s an islamic deception.
What it really translates to is the we accept and cherish the invader’s culture while they reject and destroy ours.
Trying to put a whole American Community under Sharia Law shouldn’t be allowed Period and those who force it upon American Citizens needs to be deported to Middle east to stay
Sharia Law it totally Satanic, it is against Judo/Christian values, the Infidel under Sharia becomes a Dhimmi.
Here is one dhimmi treaty with Christians: & Jews.
1. We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
2. We shall keep our gates wide open for passersby and travelers. We shall give board and lodging to all Muslims who pass our way for three days.
3. We shall not give shelter in our churches or in our dwellings to any spy, nor hide him from the Muslims.
4. We shall not teach the Koran to our children.
5. We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.
6. We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.
7. We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims by imitating any of their garments.
8. We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor bear any kind of arms nor carry them on our persons.
9. We shall not engrave Arabic inscriptions on our seals.
10. We shall not sell fermented drinks.
11. We shall clip the fronts of our heads. [An Arabic sign of shame, a beaten man]
12. We shall always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and we shall bind the zunar round our waists.
13. We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices when following our dead. We shall not take slaves who have been allotted to Muslims.
14. We shall not build houses higher than the houses of the Muslims.
Whoever strikes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall forfeit the protection of this pact.
(from Al-Turtushi, Siraj al-Muluk, pp. 229-230)
Homogenous societies are always better for the people. Birds of a feather flock together and fish of a fin together will swim. Outsiders are usually predators…….
Around the time mentioned in this article, I read a wonderful book
‘The Cube and the Cathedral” by George Weigel which opened my
mind to new ideas and reshaped my thinking. As did Mark Steyn’s
‘America Alone” which I loved and Claire Berlinski’s “Menace in
Europe” which I liked.
Americans have come a long way since then in their understanding
of the crucial importance of God and Christianity as the foundation
and support of Western civilization – in understanding the crucial
importance of populations replenishing themselves – and in under-
standing the clear and present danger from Islam.
Rabid anti-Trumper, anti-gun, pro-climate change Claire Berlinski –
if her 2006 take on Marseille is any indicator – has evidently gone
backwards instead of forward.