London
The chill wind and cheerless skies didn't discourage thousands of Londoners from trudging to the Queen Elizabeth II conference center on Saturday, January 20, to hear a debate about "the clash of civilizations"--the challenge of militant Islam to the West. The overflow event, sponsored by the city of London, pitted American Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes against the leftist mayor, Ken Livingstone. At another level, it laid bare a massive divide between America and Europe: between those who view Islamic radicalism as an existential threat and those who see a protest movement that can be integrated into democratic societies.

Elected mayor in 2000, "Red Ken" Livingstone has become notorious for his role as London's chief America-basher, Iraq war critic, friend of shadowy Islamists, and apostle of multiculturalism. He played his role flawlessly.

The great problem, he argued, was not Islamic jihad, but its American counterpart. "I think there's a real danger," he warned, "that we could repeat the days at the end of the Second World War." What days does he have in mind? The beginning of American hegemony--Washington's secret plot to dominate the world, which everyone knows set off the Cold War.

Livingstone received rabid applause for the notion that the West, particularly the United States, has invited Muslim rage because of decades of miscreant foreign policy. Worse still, he huffed, America projects a pugnacious, Manichean view of culture and politics. Its militarism toward Islam threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Livingstone's immodest conclusion: "There is no honorable basis for the

The mayor's lodestar is multiculturalism, the active accommodation of Islamist values by Western states. He personally flaunts this doctrine, choosing as his debating partner, for example, the Islamist activist Salma Yaqoob. The pairing symbolized the macabre alliance of the political left with militant Islam: Yaqoob, who campaigns on behalf of captured terrorists, belongs to the RESPECT party--founded by George Galloway, the MP expelled from the Labour party after he "incited foreign forces" to attack British troops in Iraq.

Livingstone defended multiculturalism as outreach to moderate Islam. London, he said, is proof that his vision is working: The city boasts more language groups than any in the world, yet remains an exemplar of social integration and civic peace. "I think," he announced, "that we're at the beginning of a global civilization emerging."

Daniel Pipes, whose irenic style could not hide the magnitude of his burden, took Livingstone to task. There is indeed, he said, a fundamental clash--between those who are civilized and those who could be called "ideological barbarians." These modern-day barbarians, Pipes said, are the Muslim radicals who follow in the footsteps of European fascists and Communists. Like them, they seek to dominate through terror; to usher in a utopian vision; and to silence or destroy any murmur of dissent. Multiculturalism is not the remedy for this disease, but rather an enabler. "[Livingstone] wants everyone to get along. I want to defeat a terrible enemy."

Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, was joined by London-based commentator Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. Both argued that, contrary to the portrait of London as an oasis of calm, it has become a nesting place for international terrorism. The 7/7/05 train bombings, the first suicide attacks committed by native Britons against their fellow citizens, only hint at the problem. Britain's toleration of militant preachers--who use mosques and Internet cafés to incite violence--has inspired a vast network of Islamic radicalism.