Jolly Old ISIS

According to this article in USA Today, more British Muslims fight for ISIS than for the British Armed Forces.

Britain's Ministry of Defense confirmed to USA TODAY that there are approximately 600 British Muslim servicemembers in its armed forces of almost 200,000 people. Official government estimates put the number of British Islamic State fighters operating in Syria and Iraq at up to 800...

 Khalid Mahmood, a member of Parliament from an area with a high proportion of Muslim residents, said government estimates of the number of British Islamic State fighters currently in the Mideast is far too conservative. He told Newsweek magazine this week that at least 1,500 extremists are likely to have been recruited to fight in Iraq and Syria over the last three years.

It goes without saying that this is a profoundly disturbing set of facts for the future of UK.  Approximately 5% of the people in the UK are Muslim.  Due to birth rates and immigration, that percentage will almost certainly continue to grow.  According to several surveys of British Muslim opinion, attitudes amongst younger Muslims tend to be more antagonistic towards British society.  36% of 16-24 year olds believe that the punishment for a Muslim leaving Islam should be death.  Only 19% of the 55+ crowd have a similar belief.  Overall, 28% of British Muslims hoped that the UK would eventually become an Islamic state.

The good news is that the majority of British Muslims do not share these beliefs.  However, the proportion of British Muslims that reject the cultural traditions and mores of England is a testament to the decline in the confidence of the modern Western nation-state.  Many people believed that by attacking the concept of English (American, French, you name it) nationalism and patriotism, they would be able to inculcate a universalist ideology that would replace the messy nationalist creeds of the 19th and 20th centuries.  Instead, the result has been tribalism in the form of religious fervor.

People want to believe in something.  If a culture loses its confidence in its core beliefs, people will find something else to believe in.  That something else is not going to be the brotherhood of man, the United Nations, or anything so benign.  Instead, it will be something that can actually inspire the fire in a young man's belly:  Religion, tribe, nation, etc.

If a nation so loses its own confidence that it is unable or unwilling to make a case for its own value, it cannot survive in the long-term.  The major political parties in Europe have lost sight of the value of their own cultures.  Thus, new immigrants are not taught to value their new countries.  The eventual result can only be catastrophe.  Already, various Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant parties have made headway across the continent.  This should be no surprise.  The undemocratic nature of the European Union has disguised the disgust felt amongst the average citizen towards the immigration policies of their home countries.  The new parties have arisen in response to the traditional parties unwillingness to face the problem.

The endgame for all this is unclear.  But there are several possibilities:

1.  Major parties find the zeal of the convert and coopt the more reasonable platforms of their new rivals, resulting in sane immigration and naturalization policies that limit immigration, end perverse incentives caused by welfare payments to new immigrants, and encourage new immigrants to acculturate to their new home.

2.  They continue to ignore the problem, causing new, and ever-more radical parties to rise to prominence.  These parties will only exacerbate the problems between Muslim communities and the majority.  Eventually, this could lead to actual Fascism...which Europe is quite familiar with.

3.  The major parties bend to the will of the radical Islamists and allow the character of the nation to be changed through a lack of willingness to confront totalitarianism and theocratic fascism for what it is.  The results of this would be subtle at first...a rise in anti-Semitism, special treatment of Muslims at the expense of others, a blind eye to barbaric cultural traditions.  Some of this is already happening.

Let's hope for #1