Injun Territory

Both of these critiques of the influence of Islam in Europe employ the major persuasive rhetorical strategy that we identified in The Communist Manifesto: positioning the argument as an inevitable progression of history. Really, both Steyn and Holmes agree that Islam is already a power that Europe must reckon with. It is the way in which they recommend that Europe respond that differs. Steyn's overarching historical analogies reinforce the sense that Islam is the next historical power, the next age. Drawing from disparate continents and political climates, Steyn compares Muslim countries to "Indian territory" in the United States, at a time when American politicians were obsessed with spreading the "civilizing" influence of American culture into some of the best (inhabited) land in the country. Borrowing a term from Robert D. Kaplan, "the lawless fringes of the map as 'Indian territory'," Steyn compares the Native Americans of the United States to Muslim immigrant settlements in European countries:

"The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry
about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.
Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.
And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons." (Steyn, 3).

In the three differences Steyn lays out for his readers, he presents the Muslim immigrant as more confrontational, more powerful, and better armed. Rather than portraying Muslims in Europe as a persecuted group, Steyn casts them as a settling force, comparing them to the European colonists that once "settled" the inhabited Americas. This seems like a risky connection to make, on a subject that most writers tiptoe through with an effort toward political correctness, "One of Hirsi Ali's reiterated themes is that well-meaning Europeans frequently hesitate to criticize Islam 'for fear of being called racist'" (Holmes, 3). Indeed, Steyn is little concerned with political correctness, when he uses colloquial slurs like "Injuns." It is curious that in his parallel constructions that correspond to Muslims, Steyn never uses a correspondin slur that would relate the hostility toward Muslims expressed by some racist and xenophobic Westerners such as "towelhead." The most offensive characterization Steyn makes of Muslim immigrants is "followers of the badland's radical imams." This awkward phrase separates the subject of the sentence "followers" from the nexus of their beliefs "the badland's radical imams." This prepositional phrase is completely lacking in the power of a slur like "Injuns." Between the first difference and the second, Steyn also makes a clever alteration of the word "badlands" with a apostrophe. In the first sentence, it is the American plains of the Sioux; in the second, it is a moral judgment on the Arab world as a "badland." Following the first usage, "badland's" carries the connotation of the actual "Indian territory" of the U.S. that seems to comment on the moral distinction of a large geographic space, so that this potentially offensive name also loses its weight. The implicit message is that Muslims have overcome the persecution of the West, or that their persecution is irrelevant, since they have the power of "youth and will" behind them. Comparing Muslim immigrants to American frontier settlers is a useful analogy: both essentially practice a belief in manifest destiny in their migrations.

Holmes, in his review of the two books on Islam in Europe, uses the lens of another enormously important intellectual development, The Enlightenment:

"That a clash of civilization is also heartily endorsed by Islamist extremists should make us sit up and take note. Rather than signaling an admirable willingness to defend the
Enlightenment against its enemies, eagerness to participate in such a clash implies a wholesale abandonment of one of the Enlightenment's main pillars -- namely, the overcoming of collective punishment or group-on-group revenge by the strict individualization of culpability. The Islamophobia of the European right is obviously no less tribalistic than the Islamists' hatred of the West. Although the tribalization of the Enlightenment by European xenophobes clearly distresses Buruma, it does not even interest Hirsi Ali." (Holmes, 3)

Holmes comparison of the two authors' critiques of the current usage of Enlightenment theories of Europe is very interesting. It is difficult to gauge Holmes' stance on the two opinions, perhaps because he is trying to remain objective, and he often seems to contradict himself by giving Hirsi Ali the benefit of the doubt. Rather than holding Hirsi Ali responsible for the potentially violent fracturing of Enlightenment virtues practiced in Europe, Holmes allows that, "It is no reflection on her motives to point out that her high-minded criticism of anti-racism and her plea for
Europeans to stand up and "fight" for their civilization have inevitably appealed to people who refuse coexistence with Muslim immigrants on much cruder and more emotional grounds" (Holmes, 3). While Holmes does criticize the grounds on which Europeans might refuse to interact with Muslims, he allows for the possibility that there could be justifiable grounds. Holmes implicit bias for the perspective of Hirsi Ali can be sensed in his having put the word fight in quotation marks rather than civilization. Holmes allows fight to be qualified by the quotation marks, as if the European response to radical Islam has been less violent than the attacks waged by Muslim extremist organizations, while allowing Hirsi Ali's notion that Europeans have a civilization that must be protected to go unqualified.

Holmes similarly characterizes the conflict between Muslim immigrants and Europeans as inevitable and violent, "One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe" (Holmes, 3).
For Holmes, this confrontation is a threat against a civilized, established culture, while for Steyn Islam is the next political force to take over from a literally dying civilization whose time has already passed.