The reckoning of the West
The problem is not radical Islam alone, but the convergence of radical Islamist ideology with Western institutional weakness and deliberate amplification by foreign adversaries.
By Dr. Marc Weisman
JNS
Jan 1, 2026
Pro-Palestinian demonstration march held on the occasion of 1st anniversary of Hamas attacks in support of Palestinians and condemn the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in the streets of New York on October 7, 2024.
History is filled with ignored warnings, but only rarely does it deliver a moment so clarifying that denial becomes more dangerous than confrontation. Fifteen years ago, I argued that radical Islam threatens Western civilization not through military conquest, but through “slow jihad”: demographic pressure, moral confusion and normalization within open societies. In its early stages, this process was sustained by institutional guilt and a media culture that reflexively equated scrutiny of Islamism with bigotry. As Muslim populations grew in key regions, moral paralysis gave way to political calculation, as politicians increasingly courted Muslim votes, often at the expense of assimilation, social cohesion and liberal norms.
Long-developing civilizational pressures rarely provoke action until a single, undeniable shock crystallizes them. That shock came on Oct. 7, 2023. It marked the moment when denial became untenable—not only for Jews, who have long understood the pattern, but for the broader West. The atrocities themselves were barbaric enough. What followed—the celebrations, justifications and moral inversions across Western capitals—was something more: a revelation. The question is no longer whether the warnings were correct, but whether this moment represents the point at which the West finally acts while it still can.
For decades, liberals and the left stigmatized a defense of Christendom or acknowledgment of a civilizational clash with political Islam as veiled far-right bigotry. That rhetorical shield is now collapsing as global events strip away denial, expose the scale of radical Islam, and sharpen the contrast so starkly that the Judeo-Christian world is at last beginning to recover its voice.
The barbarity of Oct. 7 was neither abstract nor ambiguous. Hamas deliberately targeted civilians in their homes and at a music festival. Families were murdered together. Women were raped. Parents were forced to witness the killing of their children. These were not acts of war but acts of ideological ritual.
What followed in the West was as revealing as the attack itself. University campuses across the United States became sites of Jewish intimidation and celebration of violence. Protesters chanted slogans calling for Israel’s destruction and the “globalization of the intifada.” Campus buildings were blockaded. Jewish students were warned to avoid certain areas “for their own safety.” Student groups openly declared that Zionists were unwelcome—using “Zionist” as a newly acceptable proxy for Jew—as administrators invoked “free expression” while Jewish students were excluded from academic life.
Across Europe, the pattern was more advanced. In the United Kingdom, authorities suppressed criticism of Islamism while accommodating Islamist demonstrations. Grooming-gang rape scandals long suppressed in the media—documented in multiple investigations and involving thousands of working-class girls—continued to surface, exposing decades of institutional cowardice driven by fear of appearing “Islamophobic.” Comparable failures have unfolded in France, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Sweden. Oct. 7 did not create these realities; it forced their recognition.
In the weeks following Oct. 7, the jihad was unmistakably globalized, exported into Western cities and campuses where demonstrations crossed from protest into intimidation and celebration of violence. That legitimization emboldened escalation until violence became inevitable, and many in the West began to realize this was more than they bargained for.
What is ultimately at stake is not Israel alone. Israel is the front line, but the target is far larger: the Judeo-Christian civilization that gave rise to modernity itself—individual rights, equality before the law, secular governance, scientific inquiry and moral accountability. Oct. 7 was not merely an assault on Israel; it was an assault on the ethical foundations of the West.
The urgency is not emotional; it is structural. Civilizations rarely collapse suddenly; they erode over time. One of the clearest indicators of civilizational decline is demographic trajectory. Trends in Europe and North America cannot be ignored. Time does not favor the West. Muslim fertility rates in Europe remain well above replacement level, while native European birth rates have collapsed. In the United States, overall fertility has fallen to historic lows, even as populations carrying illiberal norms grow more rapidly. Demographics are not destiny, but they are momentum.
The problem is not radical Islam alone, but the convergence of radical Islamist ideology with Western institutional weakness—and with deliberate amplification by foreign adversaries. Islamist regimes in the Middle East, along with Russia and China, exploit social media, bots and online propaganda to accelerate radicalization, deepen polarization and undermine social cohesion within open societies.
For years, Western elites insisted this threat was imagined and, when it became undeniable, that it was marginal or provoked. Oct. 7 tore away the protective cloak that had long insulated radical Islamism from scrutiny. Within hours, murder was reframed as “resistance,” victims as oppressors and barbarism as grievance, revealing an ideological alignment that could no longer be denied.
Words matter because they prepare the ground for action. Western democracies already understand that words can kill; yet when eliminationist logic is voiced through Islamist language, the West suddenly discovers an absolutist devotion to free expression. The long era of debating whether a substantial faction of Islam poses a genuine danger to the West is mercifully over.
What distinguishes this moment from all prior warnings is that the balance has begun to shift. Israel’s post-Oct. 7 victories have punctured the myth of Islamist invincibility; the Chanukah mass shooting on Bondi Beach and the public backlash against Australia’s leadership exposed the cost of appeasement; and in Britain, figures once dismissed as pariahs—Nigel Farage, even Tommy Robinson—now command growing support, while Douglas Murray and other defenders of Western civilization have moved firmly into the mainstream. Across Europe, governments have moved from rhetoric to action: Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, has fortified its borders and reasserted a Christian national identity; France has tightened immigration, conditioned welfare and dismantled Islamist organizations; Sweden has slashed asylum intakes. Germany has accelerated deportations and begun expelling radical imams; and Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, has curtailed NGO rescues. Iran and its proxies are weakened, Saudi Arabia again edges toward peace with Israel, and the West, albeit shaken, has begun to recover its voice.
Resistance is not bigotry. Lawful self-preservation is not persecution. What’s at stake is the survival of modernity itself and the Western civilization that produced it. Cultural pluralism cannot mean the institutionalization of parallel societies governed by incompatible norms.
If this moment is to mean anything, it must translate into policy. The West need not abandon liberalism to defend itself, but it must rediscover its boundaries. Deportation of radical clerics, which is already underway in Germany, should become standard practice across Western democracies. Assimilation must be restored as a requirement of residency. Parallel societies cannot be tolerated indefinitely within nations founded on shared civic norms. None of this is racial. None of it targets faith. It is the ordinary exercise of sovereignty—long deferred, but entirely lawful—and the minimum necessary for a civilization that intends to survive.
Civilizations rarely receive infinite chances. The danger is no longer abstract; it is visible, vocal and violent. Oct. 7 and its aftermath may prove to be the moment when the West finally stops mistaking tolerance for virtue and denial for compassion.
History will not ask whether the West was warned. It will ask whether it acted.
