The threat Islam poses to Western/“universal” culture isn’t from suicide-bombing loons and Inspire magazine. Those are just, if you like, an exuberant side-effect. The threat is the prosperous Islamic — or Mormon or Orthodox — family, which sends its daughters to medical school, buys a widescreen TV for the living room, and has absolutely no intention of “Westernizing”, any more than 19th-century Victorians would have “Turkified”. Why embrace failure?
It doesn’t matter what the parents’ intents are. The kids will Westernize. This is borne out by statistics (immigrant birth rates fall to the same as that of the natives within two generations) and it’s borne out by the omnipresent cultural trope (especially w.r.t. South Asians) about the kid who embraces Western culture over the strident objections of his or her parents. In fact, the harder the parents try to force traditional values on their children, the more the children rebel, and the more likely they are to leave the community and embrace Western secularism.
As long as it’s Indian newspapers commenting about the increasing phenomenon of “love marriages” as opposed to western newspapers commenting about the increasing phenomenon of arranged marriages, I’m sanguine about the inevitability of the takeover of Western values.
(1) General Westernization. That certainly still takes place, as you point out. The question is how deep that Westernization is—to put it crudely, is it at “Magna Carta” or “Magna Mac” level?
(2) The emergence of “hardened” subcultures which are resistant to Westernization and which have high birth rates. The evidence from Kaufmann is pretty persuasive about (2).
I am still thoroughly unpersuaded. Birth rates are one thing. Retention rates are quite another. As we’ve seen from the evidence of Quiverfull, and other Evangelical Christian communities in the US, most children do not remain in the community and continue its practices. The Middle East is experiencing high population growth but is also the most rapidly secularizing region in the world.
Kaufmann seems to be making the mistake of assuming that because many Middle Eastern countries mandate Islam as a state religion, that means that the people residing in those countries are necessarily devout.
Finally with regards to the “depth” of Westernization, I would argue that changes to marriage practices and family structure are an even deeper form of Westernization than adoption of particular political values.
I’m not sure Kaufmann does making that mistake. He focuses on extreme sects within each religion, not on Islam as a whole, and mostly on Western countries rather than the Middle East. You could say I’m making the mistake, because I discuss the probability of non-Westerners buying into Western values. Yeah, that could be. But I also would distinguish between secularization (and other kinds of modernization) and Westernization. (Japan did the one but not the other, for example.)
You’re right that marriage and family structure are “deep”. A friend of mine suggested that other “deep” Western exports are also important. For example, Erdogan sits atop a recognizably Weberian bureaucracy. That’s an institution not a market product. However, I’d say that political and cultural values are, if not deep, important. It matters, say, that Turkey is very far from a liberal state—even if Ataturk introduced Western-style state structures, and if Turks are embracing love marriage and fewer children.
But I also would distinguish between secularization (and other kinds of modernization) and Westernization. (Japan did the one but not the other, for example.)
Where your argument is concerned, it’s a distinction without a difference. Secularization absolutely destroys birthrates. When Japan secularized, its total fertility rate (TFR) dropped to 1.4. China’s TFR was 6.32. It is 1.6 today. India’s TFR has dropped from 5.9 to 2.2. The decline in the Arab world, while not as severe as that in Asia, is still pronounced. Egypt’s TFR has dropped from 6.7 to 3.3. Jordan dropped from 8.0 (!) to 2.8. Morocco dropped from 7.0 to 2.4.
I think secularization is a nontrivial cause of these declines.
It doesn’t matter what the parents’ intents are. The kids will Westernize. This is borne out by statistics (immigrant birth rates fall to the same as that of the natives within two generations) and it’s borne out by the omnipresent cultural trope (especially w.r.t. South Asians) about the kid who embraces Western culture over the strident objections of his or her parents. In fact, the harder the parents try to force traditional values on their children, the more the children rebel, and the more likely they are to leave the community and embrace Western secularism.
As long as it’s Indian newspapers commenting about the increasing phenomenon of “love marriages” as opposed to western newspapers commenting about the increasing phenomenon of arranged marriages, I’m sanguine about the inevitability of the takeover of Western values.
I think there are two phenomena:
(1) General Westernization. That certainly still takes place, as you point out. The question is how deep that Westernization is—to put it crudely, is it at “Magna Carta” or “Magna Mac” level?
(2) The emergence of “hardened” subcultures which are resistant to Westernization and which have high birth rates. The evidence from Kaufmann is pretty persuasive about (2).
I am still thoroughly unpersuaded. Birth rates are one thing. Retention rates are quite another. As we’ve seen from the evidence of Quiverfull, and other Evangelical Christian communities in the US, most children do not remain in the community and continue its practices. The Middle East is experiencing high population growth but is also the most rapidly secularizing region in the world.
Kaufmann seems to be making the mistake of assuming that because many Middle Eastern countries mandate Islam as a state religion, that means that the people residing in those countries are necessarily devout.
Finally with regards to the “depth” of Westernization, I would argue that changes to marriage practices and family structure are an even deeper form of Westernization than adoption of particular political values.
I’m not sure Kaufmann does making that mistake. He focuses on extreme sects within each religion, not on Islam as a whole, and mostly on Western countries rather than the Middle East. You could say I’m making the mistake, because I discuss the probability of non-Westerners buying into Western values. Yeah, that could be. But I also would distinguish between secularization (and other kinds of modernization) and Westernization. (Japan did the one but not the other, for example.)
You’re right that marriage and family structure are “deep”. A friend of mine suggested that other “deep” Western exports are also important. For example, Erdogan sits atop a recognizably Weberian bureaucracy. That’s an institution not a market product. However, I’d say that political and cultural values are, if not deep, important. It matters, say, that Turkey is very far from a liberal state—even if Ataturk introduced Western-style state structures, and if Turks are embracing love marriage and fewer children.
Where your argument is concerned, it’s a distinction without a difference. Secularization absolutely destroys birthrates. When Japan secularized, its total fertility rate (TFR) dropped to 1.4. China’s TFR was 6.32. It is 1.6 today. India’s TFR has dropped from 5.9 to 2.2. The decline in the Arab world, while not as severe as that in Asia, is still pronounced. Egypt’s TFR has dropped from 6.7 to 3.3. Jordan dropped from 8.0 (!) to 2.8. Morocco dropped from 7.0 to 2.4.
I think secularization is a nontrivial cause of these declines.