Click here to read Mark Steyn's "The Future Belongs to Islam"

Muslims are not a homogenous entity. Far from it. Like all other faith communities, we are divided along sectarian, ethnic, class and political lines. Even a casual tourist to the Muslim lands will vouch for these divisions.

Whether it is Acehnese fighting Javanese domination in Indonesia or the secularists lined up against Islamists in Turkey; be it the Leftists of Pakistan facing up to the Ultra-Right religious parties or the Egyptian "Enough" activists debating the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims are as divided in their vision of the future as are Christians or Jews.

Yet despite this clear evidence of ethno-social diversity and political division, many Western observers often view all of Islamdom as if it were a monolithic Islamist mob. At times their fears are grounded in ignorance, but quite often it borders on an alarmist fear of the Muslim world.

Among the authors paying particular attention to this supposed war of civilizations is Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn. Last year Steyn published America Alone, a bestseller that raised the spectre of a Europe that would soon drown in a sea of radical Muslims committed to turning the clock back to the Middle Ages. Excerpts from the book then appeared as a cover story in Maclean’s, "The future belongs to Islam."

Steyn predicts nothing less than the end of Western civilization as we know it, thanks to an invasion by Muslims deploying the womb as a weapon of mass destruction. His thesis is that Muslims in Europe are failing to integrate or embrace the values of the Enlightenment, freedom and secular democracy, choosing instead to create their own enclaves, which often become hotbeds of fundamentalism. Worse, the numerical growth of Muslim communities in the West, he contends, will allow radical Islamists to dilute the political, social and cultural values of the West beyond recognition.

The Maclean's article triggered a vigorous debate in the magazine’s letters page and led to accusations that Steyn was being alarmist. Some alleged that his writings could raise hatred against Muslims. One Muslim group, the Canadian Islamic Congress, has even gone so far as to file complaints with the federal, Ontario and B.C. human rights commissions. Yet the reaction of the CIC has only given credence to his premise—that Muslims in the West cannot accept the values of individual freedom, a free press and the right to offend."

How ironic, and how unfortunate. For Steyn's thesis could as easily have been disproved, by the traditional means of rational debate. While Steyn's analysis of the spread and influence of radical Islamic factions in Europe is certainly compelling, the premise of his argument, that Muslims are a monolithic entity hostile to Western values, does not withstand scrutiny.

Steyn writes: "We are witnessing the end of the late 20th-century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad."

Steyn is right to raise the alarm against the rise of religious extremism, but wrong in his diagnosis, and especially in his prescription. In predicting the rise of radical Islamist forces, Steyn fails to acknowledge the role of progressive movements within Islam. Both in Canada and abroad, it is Muslims who have stood up to jihadi goons to defend liberal values. It was a Muslim MNA from Quebec, Fatima Houda-Pepin, who spoke out against sharia, not the PQ or the Charest; it was the Canadian Council of Muslim Women who confronted misogynist practices, not NAC and the mainstream feminists. So why launch a tirade against the very people who are standing up to the Islamofascists?