Echo Opinion: Detached Europe must face dangers of militant Islam

A new Europe has replaced the Old, a Europe where the very idea of the nation-state is being challenged. The European Union has emerged as an economic superpower, one with the might to challenge the supremacy of the United States.
Meanwhile, America’s military presence in Europe — a relic of World War II and the Cold War — is shrinking. Europe can handle itself these days. There’s no need for U.S. tanks to guard the plains of Germany against a Russian assault.
The partnership between Europe and America served its purpose and now should die a natural death. Or so said some commentators, on both sides of the Atlantic. Of course, the Europeans are no fans of George W. Bush, and Americans aren’t particularly enthusiastic about the French or the Germans these days. So drift is inevitable, many commentators said.
It would be hard to imagine a more dangerous turn of events. Aside from shared traditions and values, the U.S. and Europe have another reason to remain allies and partners: Militant Islam.
Some Europeans may think that Islam’s holy warriors consider only America as their enemy. They couldn’t be more mistaken. The storm troopers who gather around Osama bin Laden in his mountain hideouts are working for the downfall of the West — of Europe and of North America. Europeans kid themselves, dangerously, if they think that somehow they are exempt from the exhortations of bin Laden’s propagandists. When they speak of killing infidels — “Crusaders” and “Jews,” to use their words — they’re not talking about Americans only. They’re talking about Europeans too.
While it’s very likely that neutral countries like Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland may not be at the top of Al Qaeda’s target list, it would be foolhardy to assume that militant Islam will grant such nations exemptions in its war on western civilization. Indeed, last spring, when Denmark — yes, inoffensive, non-imperialistic Denmark — celebrated a royal wedding, its security forces were on high alert because of possible threats from jihadists.
Some Europeans seem to believe that somehow they can appease the holy warriors, in part by criticizing the United States and Israel. Apparently, they don’t realize that included on bin Laden’s long list of grievances is the legacy of colonial, i.e. European, rule in the Middle East. Today’s borders in the region were drawn, for the most part, not by Muslim Arabs, but by European Christians.
Other Europeans, you can be sure, believe that militant Islam has targeted the United States for understandable reasons: the U.S. is an imperial power; the jihadists are 21st century freedom fighters, and conflict is inevitable. What they don’t understand is that the United States is only the largest symbol of all that militant Islam finds offensive and worthy of destruction. One of the founders of militant Islam wrote in the 1940s — yes, this conflict is not new — of his disgust upon seeing men and women dancing together in U.S. cities. (In a way, I can’t say I blame him, not after some of the “dancing” I’ve seen at family weddings.)
Bin Laden and his comrades see the western way of life — not the American way of life — as heresy, an affront to God and to Islam. So they have declared war, not only on the United States, but on the culture, values and civilization that Americans share with the British, the Irish and, yes, the French.
Some Europeans don’t want to recognize this. They prefer to remain supremely detached, serving as merely ironic, post-modern observers of this conflict between imperial power and the oppressed nation of Islam. After Sept. 11, one French writer asked why anybody would care about a few thousand New Yorkers killed in the World Trade Center. The implication was that the United States got what it deserved.
America’s critics in Europe — some of them, anyway — apparently believe that militant Islam can be appeased by a change of policy in Israel (or perhaps even the destruction of Israel) and American withdrawal from the Middle East. Yes, and all Hitler wanted was the Sudetenland, which was by rights part of Germany, after all. Right?
In fact, the jihadists have done the West the favor of telling us exactly what they want (just as Hitler did, by the way, in “Mein Kampf”). Their plan is to overthrow regimes in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, erase national boundaries and create a super-Muslim state — that is, a state that adhered to the Taliban’s version of Islamic law. Once that is achieved, the Islamic world could set out and take its revenge on the West for the Crusades and colonialism. Europe — with its growing Muslim population — would fall, and American power would be destroyed. Islam would be the new superpower on earth.
An impossible dream? Perhaps, but those who wish to achieve it will stop at nothing until they are defeated. Bin Laden and his soldiers believe that the U.S. stands in the way of achieving its goals. They are correct. Do the Europeans — do the Irish — think this is good, or bad?
It certainly is possible that many Europeans understand the threat of militant Islam but also believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was wrong. Criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy is not necessarily the same as appeasement of the jihadists.
Still, it’s worth noting that the continent that failed to see the threat that Hitler posed now seems equally inclined to turn a blind eye to bin Laden.