Image: Public domain.

In the spring of 1989, while Eastern Europe prepared for liberation, Iranian imam Ruhollah Khomeini issued a so-called “fatwa” calling for the assassination of Indian-born author — and British citizen — Salman Rushdie. A satirical novel, The Satanic Verses, had outraged Muslims around the world. At the time, the announcement of religious rulings, never mind any such of Islamic origin, was uncommon in temperate latitudes (i.e. “Dar al-Harb” for those who consider Western civilization a parenthesis in history).

Khomeini, the “holy man”, who returned from his exile in France to found a theocratic terror regime in his homeland, initially came across as an exotic change from “socialist (Ba’ath-Party) liberators” of the region, an anachronism, and — despite summary executions of political opponents and hostage taking at the American embassy in Tehran — an easy target for mockery. At any rate, Westerners responded to the fatwa with head-shaking disbelief or indifference. Largely unfamiliar with the history of Islam, sharia, and the mortal sin of blasphemy, they perceived the ruling as a purely symbolic incantation meant for domestic purposes in the Muslim world (i.e. “Dar al-Islam”).

That was back then, though. In parallel with the strategic involvement of Iran in (a) regional conflicts, (b) global terrorism, and (c) open-secret production of nuclear weapons, Westerners have learned that the Shiite revolution of 1979 is anything but a laughing matter and really concerns the safety of the entire civilized world. What is more, population movements from the Middle East and North Africa have changed the face of Europe. Inflammable and undaunted, the Muslim mob, germinating in self-governing suburbs and controlled by extremists, now roams Western cities.

Under the weight of invading Muslim masses who bring with them supremacist, intolerant attitudes towards people of other faiths and refuse to integrate, let alone assimilate, while straining health care, education, and the judiciary, public institutions that once formed the cornerstone of a high-trust society, are collapsing. Painstakingly building a just society with social cohesion has taken centuries in the West. In comparison, it has only taken a few decades to break it down to the ground.

Not long ago, social satire was an inseparable part of public debate in the West. An expression of intellectual resilience ever since Greek antiquity, its survival now hangs in the balance, threatened by both extremists and woke legislators. Indeed, freedom of speech itself has come under pressure from elected governments that behave cowardly and treacherously against their own people.

In the shadow of a growing Muslim diaspora (i.e. the recruitment base for Islamists), the British Labour Party is set on magnifying the unforgivable betrayal of the nation committed under Tony Blair twenty-seven years ago. This prime minister, who happily shook hands with hostile tyrants (e.g. Muammar Gaddafi, a supporter of the IRA and the mastermind behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988), set in motion mass immigration from the Third World. His successor, “human rights” lawyer Keir Starmer, who soon after taking office became identified with the Third-World practice of “two-tier policing”, contrary to the rule of law, has shown a striking resolve to crack down on members of the ethnic majority in the event of unrest, but spares members of the rising majority — the Muslims. 

In government circles, where further legislation against “hate speech” (and Islamophobia) is under consideration, they tend to (a) neglect — if not blame — victims of Muslim barbarism (e.g. gangraped minors, homosexuals, and Jews), discouraging coverage in news media and prosecuting those (e.g. frustrated working-class relatives) who take to the streets to insist on justice, (b) refuse to uphold law and order in the public space, which an ideologically corrupt police force has surrendered to the Muslim mob without a fight, and (c) pander to the Muslim vote at elections. Whether you happen to be a Muslim apostate or not, you cannot publicly express criticism of Islam without getting into trouble — to the extent of putting your life at risk.

Marking another milestone in Western Islamization, worldwide controversy arose after the publication of twelve handmade drawings of Islamic prophet Mohammed in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The background was a suspected — unusual and therefore widely questioned — reluctance by professional cartoonists to illustrate a children’s book about his life.

Fifteen years after the Khomeini fatwa, which originally dealt with a single Muslim apostate, the awareness of religious taboos was on the rise. Unsurprisingly, the revived orthodoxy and a belligerent sense of identity spread to the West with the flood of immigrants. Although playing on guilt, mercy, and generosity in post-Christian, liberal-decadent societies with open borders, they have themselves proved to be portents of implacable bigotry (e.g. antisemitism) and savagery.

Both diplomatic entanglements and bloody riots during the “cartoon crisis” (2005–10) resulted from subversive intrigues by imams living in Denmark. Drawing attention to the alleged blasphemy committed by “infidels”, they went on a world tour to inflame the inflammable minds of the ummah against their adopted homeland. Subsequently, numerous assassination attempts and large-scale terrorist plots to “put things right” got publicity in the press, including a dramatic scheme to attack the editorial office of Jyllands-Posten and massacre the staff. Since then (2015), a similarly designed attack on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo actually took place.

Whereas sharia used to apply somewhere beyond the Bosporus Strait (i.e. in dechristianized desert lands ravaged by warlords and other tyrants), it now looms over Europe as a menacing sky and limits the personal freedom of Westerners themselves. In the progressive press, however, woke-dictated censorship is presented as if Westerners are concerned not to violate the delicate sentiments of their Muslim neighbors.

The truth is that Westerners, stuck in melancholic self-doubt and victims of secular desperation, take the end of their civilization for granted. Instead of fighting for human freedom and dignity, they are busy negotiating the conditions of their surrender. Without any (a) experience of something greater in life than themselves, (b) historical insight, and (c) intellectual-moral self-discipline, they no longer know who they are, they have learned to hate themselves, and they therefore cannot bear to fight for themselves. Accordingly, parading their pitiful defeatism like masochists, they are ready to submit to Islamic rule. 

Apart from violent jihad (i.e. classic Muslim warfare), which comprises individual assassination and indiscriminate terrorism, “juridical jihad” has recently entered the modern vocabulary. Intimidation and suppression of critics may thus present themselves in the form of frenzied bloodsheds or elaborate lawsuits. Islamist tacticians know exactly how to exploit self-inflicted weaknesses of the West, including its judiciary system.

The enfant terrible of French literature, Michel Houellebecq, famous for a provocative style and satirical comments on Islamic supremacism, including his dystopian novel Soumission, which describes a morally disintegrated France submitting to Islam, finally succumbed to the pressure of the superior power in January 2023.

Sued by representatives of the Grand Mosque in Paris, who took offense at remarks from a transcribed conversation with philosopher Michel Onfray in Front Populaire, a “sovereigntist” review, Houellebecq lost heart. At long last, he had reached the limit of his endurance; his courage failed. In the absence of strong allies willing to fight side by side with him, personally tested to the extreme, he fell silent.

Another voice of freedom had been silenced. Indisputably, the French author is now on retreat. And with him, it would seem, the rest of the French Republic as it used to be: A beacon of civil courage, the philosophical origin of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”. Perhaps, without overstating the case, the rest of Europe.

Although Houellebecq was to avoid sharing the tragic fate of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose film “Submission” undoubtedly helped incite his Muslim assassin, his self-censorship signifies a suicide of the soul. And a defeat for freedom in the West.