Western civilization must believe in itself

The West won the Cold War primarily because leaders like President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made the case that western democracy and capitalism were morally superior to Stalinist dictatorship and socialism. The American and European Left was often unwilling to wage the Cold War effectively because there was too much that the Left disliked about capitalism and too much that they admired about socialism.

We are in a similar situation today as we face up to the Islamist threat. In a new column titled The New Berlin Wall, Peter Schneider demonstrates that ideas, like power, abhor a vacuum.

There are no reliable figures showing how many Muslims living in Germany regularly attend a mosque; the estimates vary between 40 and 50 percent. Councilwoman Stefanie Vogelsang stresses that the majority of the mosques in NeukAlln are as open to the world as they ever were, and that they continue to address the needs of integration. But the radical religious communities are gaining ground. She points to the Imam Reza Mosque, for instance, whose home page - until a recent revision - praised the attacks of Sept. 11, designated women as second-class human beings and referred to gays and lesbians as animals. "And that kind of thing," she says, fuming, "is still defended by the left in the name of religious freedom."

This is the least expected provocation of the three author rebels: a frontal assault on the relativism of the majority society. In fact, they are fighting on two fronts - against Islamist oppression of women and its proponents, and against the guilt-ridden tolerance of liberal multiculturalists. "Before I can get to the Islamic patriarchs, I first have to work my way through these mountains of German guilt," Seyran Ates complains.

It is women who suffer most from German sensitivity toward Islam. The three authors explicitly accuse German do-gooders of having left Muslim women in Germany in the lurch and call on them not to forget the women locked behind the closed windows when they rave about the multicultural districts.

If the west decides that to believe in any set of universal moral principles is intolerant, Islamist radicals will happily advance while a morally nihilistic west retreats.