At the time I am writing this, roughly 3pm on Monday, the precise identity and heritage of the person who took it upon themselves to drive a car into a crowd of people in Mannheim, Germany, is unknown. It may be that by the time you read this article, it turns out to have been a 78 year old German Grandmother upset about the price of gas.
That would, however, be somewhat of a surprise.
As a general rule, when cars get driven into crowds of people in Germany – which is now a regular occurrence – the drivers of those cars tend to be disproportionately young males of muslim and middle eastern heritage.
This is interesting, because it brings back echoes of the Iraq war.
Those of you old enough to recall the glorious heyday of George W. Bush’s war on terror, fought hand in hand with Tony Blair, will recall many of the arguments against it. One such argument was that the Americans were creating a generation of radicalised young Muslim men who would grow up to hate America and Britain and would wage endless war against those two countries.
Few people predicted at the time that the Germans – who made quite the song and dance about staying out of the war on terror and looking down their noses at Dubya Bush – would be the ones to reap the whirlwind.
This is the thing that should really stand out: Germany disproves the notion that a western country’s conduct meaningfully influences the desires of some radicalised young men from Islamic backgrounds to attack the west.
Germany is a model citizen, by the standards of its conduct towards the Islamic world. It opened its doors to a million Syrians. It has largely stayed out of middle eastern wars, aside from a historically understandable affinity for Israel – but even that is rhetorical affinity rather than providing the Israelis any vital aid. It is a famously secular society where even the resident Catholic Church is an almost open schism with Rome over questions like homosexuality and female priesthood. It has an enormous and well-integrated existing Muslim community, in part due to the historic friendship between the German Kaiserreich and the Ottoman Turks.
Indeed, you can read all you want about Germany on the internet, and you will never come across a convincing argument that it has offended Islamic sensibilities.
This leaves us with only one explanation: That to be a target of extremist Islamic terror, you do not need to have directly offended the Islamic world. You need only to be culturally and religiously out of step with the Islamic world.
It should not be controversial – though some will insist it is – to note that the Islamic world and the beliefs of those who mostly inhabit the Islamic world are simply incompatible with the west. More than that, many people in the Islamic world consider western society to be deeply immoral. Speaking plainly, a great many people – especially young men – of that heritage believe that women who do not wear veils are little better than prostitutes. They believe that free speech is a sin against the prophet. They believe, in many cases, that not practicing the Muslim faith makes one guilty of apostasy and therefore an enemy. These beliefs are not hidden, they are preached in Mosques across the Middle East and the further reaches of the Islamic world.
Germany’s crime is not anything it did.
Germany’s crime is what it is.
The overwhelming majority of majority muslim countries on earth are not democracies. Of those that are democracies in some form or other, only Indonesia could truly be said to have made it work. Turkey was on that list until relatively recently, but President Erdogan has now been in power for 11 years and shows no sign that he ever intends to relinquish it while alive. Pakistan lurches from coup to coup. Iraq, despite billions of American dollars, is one capable strongman away from reverting to type. Democracy is simply not a common thing in places where Muslims become the majority. The most stable Muslim countries tend to be those ruled by Monarchs, like Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The most pernicious tend to be those ruled by clerics, like Iran and Afghanistan.
Put simply, when you bring millions of people from this world into the western democratic world, some portion of them are going to consider it their holy mission to destroy the western world and bring proper Islamic values to the west.
Germany is learning that the hard way. The rest of Europe may soon follow.
This is not a conversation that has truly made it into the mainstream, in part because it is genuinely uncomfortable.
Most civilised people in the west recognise a fundamental truth: That for all “doctors and engineers” is a much-mocked cliché, there are in fact a great many peaceful and decent people of middle-eastern heritage living in the west. Some of them are doctors and engineers. Others are people who have come here because they genuinely prefer our way of life to what is on offer in their homeland, and want to raise their children as western, while continuing to practice a moderate and decent version of their faith. Because most people are decent and recognise those to be legitimate ambitions, we still wish to welcome them.
But equally, it is clear that the more Islamic immigration you have, the more cars will drive into crowds in places like Mannheim and Munich. There is a link between the two. Even if, as you’re reading this, it turns out that yesterday’s attacker was a little old lady who couldn’t find the brake pedal in time, she would be an aberration. Not the rule.
To finish this article where it began: I remain an admirer of George W. Bush, even though his project was an abject failure. I admire what he tried to do: He believed that if the Muslim world could just taste democracy and freedom, it would embrace it.
The irony is this: Many Europeans scorned him, recognising that for an imperialist project that tried to impose western values on people who reject them.
But if George W. Bush was wrong to try and export democracy to Muslims, what on earth made Europe think it was a good idea to import millions of Muslims who don’t like democracy?
Food for thought.