The dreaded "D" word.

"Disengagement" that is.

The more we think about this concept the better we like it. We don't have to fret about what transpires in Muslim countries and what Muslims choose to do to each other can be their affair alone.

Shades of the Colonel's Sharia Enjoyment Strategy.

But even if we accepted [Daniel] Pipes’s view that the worsening of the Islam-West divide resulting from the cartoon jihad is a bad thing, what could we possibly do to solve the problem? If the practice of Western free speech in publishing extremely mild satires of Muhammad is enough to stir up the entire Muslim world against us, it ought to be clear that no peace between Islam and the West is possible, short of the complete surrender of the West to Islam.

I celebrate the increased clarity that the cartoon jihad has wrought. Pipes is distraught by it. . . . [Pipes] wants more Muslims traveling and immigrating to the West, with everything that that implies.

* * * *

Let us also point out that notwithstanding Pipes’s handwringing about the disengagement of Muslims from the West, the Muslims who are already in the West, and particularly in Europe, are more numerous, more in our face, and more threatening than ever, as shown by the fearful response of most Western media and governments to the cartoon jihad. Which means that the real disengagement, the disengagement of Muslims in the West from the West, the disengagement upon which our very civilizational survival depends, has yet to begin. . . .

"Pipes says that the West and Islam are separating from each other—and that this is bad." By Lawrence Auster, View from the Right 2/14/06.

See also discussion of practical solutions: "What, Realistically, Can We Do About Muslims In The West?" Lawrence Auster, View from the Right 2/14/06.