Robert Ferrigno’s Prayers for the Assassin is, on one level, simply a thriller with futuristic trappings. As is the wont of that genre, we are presented with superhumanly competent heroes and villains, beautiful women, stereotyped sidekicks, a megalomaniacal mastermind plotting to take over the world, a plethora of plot twists, and a conspiracy of intricate cunning that collapses just a trifle too easily. What makes Prayers worth reading is not the disbelief-stretching action (thought that is excitingly portrayed) but the credible picture of an Islamified United States in 2040 A.D., a quarter century after the turning point in the struggle between a decadent West and its self-confident enemies.
The Moslem republic isn’t a pure dystopia. The regime is moderate, with room for suitably discreet modernists and unbelievers. Extremists are noisy but dominate only enclaves like San Francisco (where the skulls of homosexuals decorate the General Masood Bridge). Elsewhere, the “religious police” are limited to harassing self-identified fundamentalists. Democratic government of a kind still exists. Despite America’s loss of its superpower status, its prosperity and a large share of its liberties, there is virtually no sentiment, even among the Christian minority, for a return to the days before the “transition”.
Why not? The pith of the author’s answer, conveyed unmistakably but without overemphasis, is found is a quotation from Simone de Beauvoir cited in his postscript: “One can abolish water, but one cannot abolish thirst.” What undermined the liberal order was its failure, indeed refusal, to accommodate the thirst for God. Although the Islamic victory is precipitated by a spectacular hoax, the reader is led to see that the way had been prepared by cultural success. When post-Christendom offered no more wine, the thirsty lapped up Mohammed’s water. On the other side, resistance to Islam is centered on the secessionist Bible Belt, run by what Andrew Sullivan would call “theocons”.
Of course, a novel isn’t history or sociology, but this one should at least give pause to the facile assumption that secularism is more attractive than faith and therefore is destined to prevail.
Mark Steyn recently published a much-noticed essay arguing that demography makes Europe’s conversion into Eurabia inevitable. The high birth rate of Moslem immigrants is, however, only half the motive force needed for a religious revolution. In the 19th Century, Irish immigrants to England reproduced much more rapidly than Protestant Englishmen. Had that factor alone been decisive, England would be a Roman Catholic country today. It isn’t, because the Irish-born’s children and grandchildren turned Protestant, and Protestantism then withered to a vague sentiment of religiosity.
What secularism prevailed against was a faith that doubted its own affirmations. Before the modernist tide swept through Christendom, gathering force after World War I, secularists were a tiny minority with little persuasive power. They overcame the most shriveled form of Christianity. Their prospects against militant Islam do not look so promising.
In Robert Ferrigno’s fictional future, a disillusioned soldier, a sexy sociologist, a fat Catholic cop and a Jewish computer nerd unravel and defeat a half-century old, world-spanning conspiracy. The tale ends with freedom everywhere sprouting through the cracks in the despotic concrete. In the real future, things may not be so easy.
Update (2/18/06): Hugh Hewitt recently interviewed the author. Here are a couple of notable excerpts:[T]he premise of the novel is approximately 2010, the United States is in terrible economic straits, the political leadership is weak, there’s lots of dissention in the country, politically and socially, and over a period of time, the regular religious and social institutions are not able to deal with this. There is an increasing funding by Muslims, from Saudi Arabia particularly, building Mosques, doing good deeds, drawing converts, and there is a political and social shift where Islam becomes slowly more prominent, and there are massconversions . . . .
I was one of the people who thought if 19 guys with box cutters and a rudimentary knowledge of Microsoft [Flight Simulator] can bring down two gigantic skyscrapers, it’s conceivable that we could actually lose. And I never thought we could lose militarily, but I thought when you’re dealing with an enemy who is utterly certain of their purpose, and you have a liberal democracy, in which all points of view sort of thrash it out, there’s a certain weakness inherent in a liberal democracy, in terms of dealing with an enemy that is single-minded. So that was sort of the groundwork for that.
And there’s also a very spiritual aspect to the book that, in my own case, I felt there was sort of a spiritual hunger in myself, and in the nation at large. And I thought the more I studied Islam, it is a faith with all the answers, and that’s very compelling forpeople. . . . [In France and Germany,] the number one religion people are converting to [is Islam]. And these are German, usually German college educated women, and not converting because they have a boyfriend. Der Spiegel wrote about this about a month ago, and they were surprised. They assumed it would be only women to please a Muslim boyfriend, and it is not the case.
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