Tony Blankley's subtitle asks, "Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?" (2005, ISBN 0895260158).
Reviewed by Melvin Rhodes
"In much of the West, and particularly in Europe, there is a blind denial that radical Islam is transforming the world. Most European elites and far too many American politicians and journalists believe that our challenges are business and politics as usual."
These are the words of Tony Blankley, a former Brit who now lives in the United States and is editorial page editor of The Washington Times and a regular panelist on PBS' The McLaughlin Group. They are taken from his new book, The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?
Don't let the first chapter put you off reading the rest of the book! Mr. Blankley begins, incorrectly I thought, by suggesting a fictional scenario that finally makes people realize there really is a clash of civilizations taking place between radical Islam and the West.
That aside, the book is an excellent read. It is thought-provoking, shocking, sobering and even depressing all at the same time.
How have we come to this point? Massive numbers of immigrants from Islamic countries have been arriving in the West since the end of World War II, filling the labor shortage gap created by two world wars and a rapid expansion of Western economies in the last six decades. These immigrants, their children and their grandchildren have now been living in their adopted homes for many years. It is all that the second and third generations know.
But they are not assimilated as other immigrants have been. Moreover, they suffer from a major identity crisis, unable to reconcile the teachings of their Islamic religion with the liberal, permissive attitudes of the West.
Mr. Blankley points out, "We need to grasp the idea of discontinuity." Life as it has been lived the last 60 years is not going to go on indefinitely. The problem of Islamic radicalism has been growing for three decades, is spreading in influence and is building up to a major crisis—the clash of civilizations we have often written about.
