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Fifthly, western states continue to demonstrate a political inability to integrate their diverse set of minorities. 7-7 and other trends have showed the British model has failed to integrate fully Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hurricane Katrina revealed the segregated model that operates in the Southern United States which secludes blacks and the French riots showed that the laicite model of secularism can hardly claim to be any superior. If western secular values cannot integrate minorities of different backgrounds at home, the attempt to export these values abroad successfully to countries rooted in diverse traditions and religious beliefs is doomed to fail.
Sixthly, secular liberalism has contributed to epidemic social breakdowns in societies in the West.Of course to state this is controversial as policy commentators rarely ascribe social problems to the fundamental values of the enlightenment. Yet to ignore values is to repeat the error of many Muslims who believe that the fundamental decline in the
Muslim world can simply be solved by imposing top down Islamic rule (devoid of convincing people of the values that underpin these rules). In the west the breakdown of the family, the decreasing level in the birth rate and the rise in absentee fathers have destroyed the building blocks that underpin a strong society. Allied to this are the epidemic levels of binge drinking, drug taking and sexual anarchy leading to further social and economic costs. Major technological transformation has resulted in reduced social interaction, an alarming new trend in a society already suffering from rabid individualism. Inequality between rich and poor is rising and the environment suffers under the gluttonous weight of excess consumerism. Inner city education and lawlessness is a problem. Social mobility is lagging in Europe and the US as monoethnic ghettoes increase, while disproportionate taxes on the middle and lower classes (as the rich and multinationals increasingly offshore their income) hurt hard working people. Secular liberals have yet to address these new generation of issues in an intellectually coherent fashion. Some might say this simplistic view of western society is not confined to a few obscurantist Muslims ranting about social decadence but even held by British Members of Parliament. Six of them, echoing the opinions of one of their colleagues, John Hayes, who had previously written on the same topic, wrote this in a letter to the British Spectator magazine in August 2005.
Some liberals remain in denial, unwilling to face the decadent consequences of years of their ideas being put into practice. But whether it is lawlessness, family breakdown, the menace of drugs, binge-drinking, teenage pregnancies or merely the coarse brutishness which, as Mr Hayes suggests, has infested popular culture, the results of years of woolly-minded liberal thinking (with the licentiousness it has created) are plain to see.
Seventhly, the Muslim world, the main audience in the battle of ideas, has largely rejected the western model, preferring an Islamic system more in tune with their religious beliefs, history and heritage. In rejecting the western model, Muslims can still enjoy a representative government, accountability of rule, the ability to criticise officials no matter their position, an independent judiciary, a strong obligation to eliminate poverty and the rule of law. These objectives may be shared by western citizenry but for Muslims these are better achieved by an Islamic model of governance via the Caliphate. In recent surveys (University of Jordan's Centre for Strategic Studies and the Pew Global attitudes report) most Muslims agreed with the view that Islam needs to play a larger role in societal affairs. In addition, Islamic texts reject western specific ideas of secularism (the detachment of religion from public legislation), the privatisation of vital resources such as water and energy, as well as the West's failed social model. Muslims also are increasingly rejecting the flawed basis of political unity being achieved through nationalism and find this increasingly anachronistic and a throwback to the nineteenth century. As the Muslim world rejects nationalism and the false bonds of race, the western world retreats back to the dark ages of Westphalian nation state supremacy and patriotic concepts of Americanism, Britishness and what it means to be French. Just look at Iraq, historically under Islamic governance, being Shia, Sunni or Kurd was largely a secondary concept.Yet today western occupation has fragmented the country into a caustic sectarian divide in less than three years.
Eighthly, the war in Iraq is going badly.You can tell it's going badly when the United States Commander in Chief is forced to make five speeches in three weeks about the war. Iraq was meant to be the holy grail, a western imposed template for the wider Middle East, yet it is fast becoming a metaphor for chaos, instability and brutal treatment of prisoners. An illegal occupation driven by an imperialistic rationale, the chronic barbarisation at Abu Ghraib and a complete disdain for civilian casualties has destroyed any attempt at using Iraq as a positive advertisement for western ideas. President Bush may claim that the US is defeating the Iraqi resistance and western values of secularism and individualism are universal, but no one else thinks so except those Iraqi journalists the Pentagon has now started to pay to carry their propaganda. Indeed in the Zogby poll previously mentioned, 77% of people sampled in the Middle East thought Iraq was "worse off" since the invasion. Security is so bad that even Vice President Cheney's recent visit to Iraq (two and a half years after the invasion was undertaken) had to occur in such secrecy that not even the Prime Minister of Iraq knew he was coming. Having paper Quisling elections devoid of security to effectively govern, is like trying to stage a classical concert without an orchestra. But even if we put the dire security to one side, how can Iraq be considered a truly sovereign country when 150,000 foreign troops occupy its country, influencing all its major political and economic decisions.The claiming of successful elections (despite the success of religious parties and other separatist actors) continues the insipid strategy of the coalition in desperate checklist diplomacy, ticking off artificial milestones while the country burns and the substantive change they seek eludes them
Ninthly, the intellectual underpinning of western ideas is beginning to erode at the seams. Personal freedom, the main idea behind secular humanism, is chronically unstable alongside a hedonistic culture emanating from the same value system. In the case of an obsessive desire for freedom and anarchy, the receipt of such a desire can only lead to pseudo-anarchy as no individual is morally or emotionally obliged to adhere to restrictions designed by others.Western society's consumerist culture constantly excite excessive desires that can never be fully satisfied, hence people in western societies never feel fully tranquil or at peace; the treadmill of material possession never stops. Hedonistic desires should normally be tamed by other values, but no such counter values are promoted in any public way in western society, due to the banishment of faith and morality to the private arena. This has led to a crisis in secularism in the sense that it has failed to provide hope and a holistic vision to more and more people who are instead now looking to religion and other spiritual pursuits. Secularists have lost touch with this vast new swathe of people who have largely rejected the triad of materialism, capitalism and hedonism. For these people the separation of religion from politics has become a metaphor for muscular atheism, an ideology driven by a rabid intolerance of anything religious or spiritual, whether it be Jesus Christ,The Chronicles of Narnia or a rational discussion about the origins of life beyond a narrow scientific focus. Muscular atheism in its narcissistic pursuit of one's self is hardly an attractive proposition for the number of people (especially the young) who are increasingly attracted to a more balanced, just and communal vision for mankind.
The good news is that that there are now sufficient rumblings within western secular circles - people who believe that a severe crisis is at hand and that it needs to be tackled not just at the policy level but at the intellectual level. New political and economic models inconsistent with the West's chosen menu are now being implemented in China, Russia, other parts of South East Asia and some parts of Latin America. In the Muslim world, to arrest the chronic problems of governance and justice there is a renewed and an unstoppable call for the re-establishment of the Caliphate specifically in one country at the outset. If this is realised it will be the first time for centuries that the Muslim world would have regained not just its political independence but its intellectual independence from western states,a much more important development in the battle of ideas. Western commentators in reviewing these new trends may then need to reflect on a new dictum, 'Old ideas never die, they just fade into intellectual oblivion.' Just ask Karl Marx.
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