America Alone?

I've recently become a fan of Mark Steyn, who has long held forth on the dying of the West as a concept in Europe due to the very real death and decline of native Europeans there. Interestingly, as government there got bigger and bigger, the Church got smaller and smaller, as did European families. But an expanding population is required for the government to continue financing cradle-to-grave entitlements for all (such as France's annual six-week vacation for all workers and mandated 35 hour workweek). But where to get an expanding population when native Frenchmen aren't having enough children to replace themselves? Why, if we import people from Turkey and former African and Middle Eastern colonies, then that will fix it.

Problem is, these new immigrants are culturally unassimilated and often of Islamic faith, a dangerous combination in our modern world. If present trends continue, both continental Europe and Great Britain will be majority Islamic by 2030. And given the increasing radicalization of Europe's Muslims, what will that mean? I fear it will mean that America will find itself alone in the world, the sole defender of basic human rights, including freedom to convert to another faith without penalty (something Muslims in most countries cannot do, under penalty of death).

America Alone is the title of Mr. Steyn's book. In it, he gives detailed support to the views I have outlined above. He, along with the Candadian magazine Maclean's are currently being sued by a wealthy Saudi for "libel" for making these very points in a magazine article excerpting America Alone. The Canadian human rights council has agreed to take the case and review it for possible damages and the revocation of the right to publish the book, or excerpts thereof, in Canada. As always in these cases, the process is the punishment, even if you are eventually cleared.

Why is this an issue? Because Islamic radicals are, even now, in the absence of power and majority status using Western customs and laws to establish the functional equivalent of Islamic law, which proscribes the criticism of Islam or Muhammed. Incidents like this and the "teddy bear Muhammed" incident in Sudan recently are, I think showing us what the future will look like. And the future is scary precisely because many Americans are either too steeped in multiculturalism (anyone hear a feminist protest of the female teacher sentenced to 40 lashes for allowing her students to name the teddy bear?) or too afraid to resist. War has been declared, and it seems we are slow to recognize it, even though we are fighting Islamic radicalism in Iraq and elsewhere.

When the eventual open war comes, what will be the Christian response, I wonder? What should be the Christian response? Should Christians respond with love and missions work, as many here in the still-comfortable West assert? Or should Christians prepare for the reality that they may have to fight for their lives, as Christians have done in places like southern Sudan, Nigeria, and East Timor?