Note: Updates appended at the end ...
Amazon.com offers the following synopsis of Dinesh D'Souza's book, The Enemy At Home:
D'Souza once again turns his eye for social criticism to liberals, this time asserting their responsibility for the rise of anti-Americanism abroad and perhaps even the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The cultural Left in the U.S., by pressing for sexual freedom for women and gays through birth control, no-fault divorce, and support for gay marriage, has not only undermined American culture but also provoked the ire of religious conservatives in other nations, most prominently Islamic fundamentalists. Contrary to President Bush's assertions that terrorists and their supporters hate American freedom, D'Souza asserts that what they really hate is our licentious culture. He notes that American conservatives have more in common with Islamic Fundamentalists than with American liberals. He outlines a battle plan for the Right that includes building alliances with traditional Muslims and enlisting them in the war against radical Islam. This is an interesting perspective on the hostilities between the West and the Muslim world, particularly in light of the ongoing declared war against terrorism. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
This is quite intriguing. Stanley Kurtz over at National Review Online, offers his review and rebuttal. I look forward to delving further into this debate at a later time.
Update 2/15/06 - There's activity today in National Review Online's Corner blog. Jonah Goldberg writes:
Well, since we're all chiming in, I suppose I should say something too as I've written a review for The Claremont Review of Books (available soonish). I agree very much with
Andrew on the big picture — the book's failings, man's inherent weakness for fanaticism, etc — but let us note that amidst the many flaws of Dinesh's argument, there is some truth to his basic point. American culture doesn't always help our task in winning hearts and minds. Liberals had no problem pointing this out when it came to, say, Jim Crow during the Cold War. Dinesh makes a similar point about the push for gay marriage, feminism etc. I don't see why we have to reject the point entirely simply because we think Dinesh exaggerates its importance way too much (and he does).
But, there is a caveat (though I'll be short so as to not anger the editors of the CRB): It shouldn't matter. If gay marriage is wrong, it's wrong. If feminism goes too far, it goes too far. Jim Crow was wrong because it was wrong, not because it gave the Soviet Union talking points at the UN. So even if Dinesh were right that our "pagan depravity" prompts Jihadis to behead Jews and Christians, kill homosexuals, enslave women, hijack planes, and blow up buildings full of civilians, the fault still lies entirely with the Jihadis.
I don't like Michael Moore. If he says something really, really obnoxious and, in response, I cut off his head I don't think I get to claim that he was asking for it.
Mark Steyn comments on D'Souza's thesis this way:
Dinesh....speaks in praise of "traditional Islam" and notes that most of the world’s people also live in "traditional societies" who are as revolted by our pop culture as your average imam. But how then do you account for the very problematic relationship "traditional Islam" has with other "traditional societies"? In Nigeria, in Sudan, in southern Thailand, etc.
Me: No need to stop with present-day Nigera, Sudan, or southern Thailand—or even with nineteenth-century India. There is also the matter of the seventeenth-century siege of Vienna—or, for that matter, of the eighth-century invasion of the Iberian peninsula. Did the Ottomans march on Vienna in 1683 because they believed the Hapsburgs were promoting gay marriage? Did the Moors overwhelm the kindgoms of Iberia to prevent Visigothic culture from corrupting the morals of Berber youth? Dinesh makes some good and useful points, just as Stanley argues. I’d even insist that he displays real courage in doing so. But that hole smack in the middle of his argument—that hole just sits there.
Mona Charen likewise weighs in. She acknowledges popular culture's debauchery and decadence (as D'Souza stresses), but like the writers above, she points out many factors D'Souza fails to consider. She notes, for example, that
the godfather of the radical movement that spawned Osama bin Laden was the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, who formed his fanatical beliefs after living in the United States in the late 1940s. . . So the America Qutb despised was one that most conservatives consider pretty tame. Yet it was to his eyes a sewer. This suggests the cultural divide between American conservatives and Muslim conservatives is more like a chasm. D’Souza speaks approvingly of traditional Muslims seeking to “preserve the innocence of their children,” perhaps forgetting that throughout large swaths of the Muslim world, child brides are quite acceptable.
There are other troubling aspects of traditional Muslim family life that D’Souza glosses over. The tradition of honor killing — husbands, brothers and fathers killing their female relatives who engage in immodest behavior — is widespread and uncontroversial in Muslim lands and even in Muslim communities in Europe. Temporary marriage permits Muslim men to “marry” any number of women, for as little as a couple of hours — a barely disguised form of prostitution, which they piously condemn in the West. Rape victims are stoned to death, and so forth.
But even if the radical Muslims are truly enraged by American decadence and see it as an assault on traditional Muslim values — by what stretch of the imagination do they take to suicide attacks as a response?
UPDATE 3/7/07 - Dinesh D'Souza responds to his critics.
Q: What's your battle plan for how you'd want conservatives at home to use the culture war to win the war against Islamic radicalism?
A: First of all, conservatives need to do their best to block the project of liberal cultural imperialism that is trying to promote secularism, feminism, gay rights and all the rest of it, on the traditional world. This is already producing a huge backlash, not just in the Muslim world, but even in South America, Africa and Asia. I came back recently from a trip to Singapore and India, and the big slogan in Asia today is "Modernization yes, Americanization no," reflecting that these are traditional cultures. Yes, they are kind of patriarchal and they abide by traditional values. So what the left is doing abroad is seen as a real assault on the values that the ordinary people live by.
Radical Islam has exploited this. The ordinary Muslim on the streets of Islamabad or Riyadh -- are you telling me that the guy is willing to go to his death because the Palestinians don't have a state? I don't believe it. I think the guy is mobilized because some mullah is telling him, "Your religion is in danger. These Americans want to corrupt your religion and destroy your family and erode the innocence of your daughter." This is the kind of thing that hits the ordinary fellow in the gut and gives him a motive to strike back and fight back. I think this dimension of why they hate us, if you will, has gone totally ignored.
Conservatives are sort of taken by surprise and so I think they are reacting in a very foolish and irrational way to my book, which actually is just making a novel conservative argument. I agree it’s different than the prevailing orthodoxy, but there’s no reason to be jumping out of windows. (more)