Unlike most other religious developments around the world today (such as the spread of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere) that have benign or at least nonviolent consequences, the overwhelming political fact deriving from the ferment in Islam is that, to some degree, some percentage of the world's Muslims are prepared to, and actually are, murdering large numbers of people in what they feel is their religious duty. Larger numbers of Muslims are, to some degree, supportive or protective of these killers. A yet larger number of Muslims, while not supportive of such tactics, share many of the terrorists' religious convictions and perceptions.
Indeed, Muslim parts of Paris, Rotterdam, and other European cities are already labeled "no-go zones" for ethnic Europeans, including armed policemen. As the Muslim populations -- and their level of cultural and religious assertiveness -- expand, European geography will be "reclaimed" for Islam. Europe will become pockmarked with increasing numbers of "little Fallujahs" that will be effectively impenetrable by anything much short of a U.S. Marine division.
Such conditions pose three related but distinct threats to Europe and the West: 1) The cultural dominance of Europe by Islam; 2) The price of European resistance to such dominance if the Europeans do resist; 3) The increased danger of actual terrorist attacks that can be planned and launched from Islamists securely based in Europe.
If the current leaders of Europe do not respond to the Islamist threat boldly and effectively, the common European people might decide to defend their culture as vigilantes. In that case, Europe will again become a bloody urban battleground.
What's more, an Islamified Europe would be as great a threat to the United States today as a Nazified Europe would have been to the United States in the 1940s. Even before Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt understood that a Nazi-dominated Europe would be more than a fearsome military and industrial threat; it would be a civilizational threat. Now we face another civilizational threat in insurgent Islam.
This brings me to one of the primary reasons I decided to write "The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?" -- to give what publicity I can to the following political fact: The danger of America being horribly hit by terrorist attacks, great as it inherently is (given the capacities of the enemy), is compounded by the plain fact that the public -- and much of the government and media -- do not take terrorist threats seriously enough.
Tony Blankley's The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? is now available here.