Is the West “at War with Islam”?

“This becomes painfully clear when it is one’s own city that is being attacked. I had cycled through the neighborhood a mere 30 minutes before the attack commenced.”

The recent terrorist attacks in France and Austria bring to mind a controversial statement made by Sam Harris in his 2004 book The End of Faith: “We are at war with Islam.” What does he mean by that? The neuroscientist-cum-philosopher elaborates:

“It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet.”

Having read the Koran, I concur with Harris’s conclusion that a peaceful future is one “in which most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon, just as most Christians have learned to do.” Unless we are willing to assert that Muslims are, somehow, incapable of maturing out of theocracy and ancient superstition, this is not an unreasonable expectation. As Harris points out, however, “[s]uch a transformation is by no means guaranteed to occur…given the tenets of Islam.”

Nor is such a transformation sufficiently incentivized by the West. On the contrary, the Western media is rife with apologism for even the most gruesome, most barbaric manifestations of Muslim bigotry. In the wake of the recent killings of French citizens by Muslim terrorists, The Associated Press, for example, commented: “Why does France incite anger in the Muslim world? Its brutal colonial past, staunch secular policies and tough-talking president who is seen as insensitive toward the Muslim faith all play a role.” And Politico blamed “An extreme form of secularism and embrace of blasphemy, which has fueled radicalism among a marginalized minority.”