D’Sousa and his Critics

The culture wars and the war on terror are intimately connected. If we want to win the war on terror we have to win the culture war at home. That is the central argument of Dinesh D'Sousa's new book, The Enemy at Home, and it's a point worth pondering.

Why were we attacked on 9/11? Why do they hate us? D'Sousa rounds up and dismisses the usual answers to these questions — "they hate us for our freedom," "they're angry about Colonialism," etc. — and proposes the same answer that the terrorists themselves give: they hate us for our decadence. And they fear that we mean to export our debased values to their traditional societies — not just Britney and Madonna and rap music, but also illegitimacy, easy divorce, abortion, and gay marriage. According to D'Sousa, Muslims feel threatened less by our military, and more by our seductions. They refer to us as the "Great Satan," he observes, because Satan is primarily understood as a tempter, not a conqueror.

There are some problems with this analysis. It doesn't quite explain why radical Muslims attack other traditional people in India or Indonesia, or why traditional Sunni Muslims blow up mosques in traditional Shia neighborhoods. Nor is it useful in explaining why Muslims swept out of Arabia in the seventh century, and subjugated most of the Middle-East, all of North Africa, and most of Spain. Whatever the reason for these conquests it had nothing to do with outrage over images of scantily clad temptresses beamed over satellite TV from stations along the North African coast. D'Sousa slides too quickly over the aggressive, expansionistic side of Islam, and gives too much credit to the notion that the current jihad is motivated solely by fear of cultural subversion. Most Islamic religious authorities hold that jihad is a duty commanded by Allah in good times and bad.

Nevertheless, D'Sousa's argument deserves serious consideration. His thesis may not explain all of Muslim aggressiveness, but it does help to clarify the current situation. "The Muslims who hate us the most," he writes, "are the ones who have encountered Western decadence, either in the West or in their own countries." The hatred of Muhammad Atta and his Hamburg cell, he observes, "was not a product of ignorance but of familiarity." They were well acquainted with the seamy side of Western culture, and we have evidence they were tempted by it.

A consistent theme in the lives of fundamentalist Islamic leaders and theorists is their shock on confronting Western style sexual liberation. One incident from the life of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of the modern Islamist movement, will serve to make the point. While attending a church dance in Greeley, Colorado in 1949 Qutb was repulsed not only by the "feverish music" and the "dancing naked legs," but also by the minister's willingness to collude in setting the scene by dimming the lights and putting a "seductive song" on the turntable. Critics of D'Sousa such as Andrew Sullivan scoff at this example, suggesting that only an extreme prude would react this way to a mid-America church dance in the late 1940's. Thus, suggests Sullivan, D'Sousa's thesis falls apart. "What can you do", he intimates, "if some people object to harmless fun?" The implication is that there's nothing wrong with our culture: it's all in the minds of a few uptight Muslims. But Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 also cites this incident as being decisive in determining Qutb's path, and thereby setting the direction of the Islamist movement. And judging by the enthusiastic response to Qutb's writings, Western-style temptations were on the mind of many Muslims. Moreover, by the time that Qutb's two most prominent disciples, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden, came of age, the sexual revolution was in full swing, and it figured as a central factor in their negative view of the West.

But the question is not whether Qutb, coming as he did from a society where the sexes were kept apart before marriage, had a right to be shocked by a church dance. A better question might be, does anyone, at any time have a right to be shocked by any kind of sexual behavior? To this question, leftists as well as many liberals answer with a resounding "no". Nowadays, dancing cheek to cheek has been replaced by dancing crotch to crotch. The newest fad on the high school dance floor (sometimes, literally on the floor) is freak dancing — simulated sex acts performed to a pulsing beat. But there has been little coverage or concern on the part of the media. The recent Sundance film festival includes one film about sex with animals, and another in which twelve-year-old Dakota Fanning participates in a rape scene. To those who raised questions about using the child-actor in this way, New York Times critic David Halbfinger wrote, "She's growing up. Get used to it." "Get used to it" seems to be the standing reply to anyone who gets upset by moral boundary pushing.

If D'Sousa goes too far in implicating the sexual revolution and other forms of permissiveness in contributing to 9/11, his liberal critics go too far in absolving it. It is evident in reading the reviews of his book that what D'Sousa refers to as "decadence" is very dear to his critics. Instead of conceding that yes, he may have a bit of a point in assigning cultural decadence a role in motivating our enemies, they totally reject the idea. To the cultural left, sexual and other kinds of permissiveness are a positive good, and indeed embody the ultimate meaning of freedom. Anyone who suggests they might lead to very bad results is beyond the pale. Consider some of the over-the-top responses generated by The Enemy at Home. Allan Wolfe, reviewing for the New York Times, calls the book "a national disgrace," and characterizes D'Sousa as "thoroughly indecent." Warren Bass, writing for the Washington Post.com calls it a "dim, dishonorable book." A review by Katha Pollitt in The Nation terms it "slimy, nasty and silly," while Mark Warren writing for Powells.com Review-A-Day considers it an "unbearably prim" and "despicable book," and goes on to challenge D'Sousa to a physical fight ("You know where to find me"). All of this tends to confirm D'Sousa's assertion that the cultural left feels more threatened by conservative morality than by Islamic terrorism.

From a more conservative point of view the most controversial point of The Enemy at Home is its assertion that traditional Americans and traditional Muslims are natural allies because both are religiously and socially conservative, and share many of the same values. To keep traditional Muslims from sliding into the radical camp, says D'Sousa, we need to show them that there is another America which is not represented by pop culture, and is equally upset by aggressive secularism. In addition to condemning "the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberal values," traditional Christians and traditional Muslims should work together in international forums to block secular impositions such as abortion, Planned Parenthood and homosexual marriages.

If America could put its moral act together it would improve our standing with traditional societies, as D'Sousa says. It might even slow or stop the rate of radicalization among traditional Muslims. But don't count on it. D'Sousa greatly overstates the similarities between conservative Americans and traditional Muslims.

Nevertheless, his main thesis still holds up. The outcome of the culture war is directly tied to the war on terror. Winning the culture war at home might not convince traditional Muslims to side with us rather than with radicals, but it at least insures that we will have the will to resist jihad ourselves, whether it comes in the form of bombings or in the form of political and cultural pressure (of the kind that France, England, and Denmark are experiencing right now.) One of the effects of moral decline is that people eventually lose the conviction that anything is worth fighting for. Europe already seems well on its way to losing that conviction, and, not surprisingly, it is Europe that the cultural left in America holds up as a model to emulate. Of course, Europeans are also getting too old to fight. They stopped having babies because babies get in the way of self-gratification, but also because they had, or thought they had, nothing meaningful to pass on to the next generation.

A culture which concentrates on self-gratification is bound to drain life of meaning because meaning is usually found in something outside the self. People will fight and die for God and for family, and for values that are perceived as noble, but not many are willing to sacrifice themselves so that strangers can gratify themselves in strange ways. How many want to die in order that polyamory might live? Or that Britney might expose herself with impunity? Or that Robert Redford might indulge himself by screening films about zoophiles? The cultural left seeks an expansion of rights for the self-expression lobby, and a restriction of rights for those who look beyond the self for moral standards. If they win that fight we all lose, left and right alike.

If you think the culture wars don't matter, take a look across the Atlantic. They never had a culture war in Europe because when the war was declared, only one side showed up. Now they have another kind of fight on their hands for which they are totally unprepared. D'Sousa's analysis is not without flaws, but when the critics urge us not to read it — as Warren Bass does — or dismiss it as beneath discussion, it may be an indication that he's hitting close to home.