About Europe teaching the values it does not have
Writing for Social Europe, in an article titled Europe Cannot Defend Its Values by Teaching Them Professor Jørn Bjerre makes a case in favour of liberal democracy in the European Union:
Only by building institutions in which rational argument takes precedence over utility can we prove al-Nabhani wrong when he claims that “there are no ethical, spiritual or humanitarian values in Western civilisation. Instead, there are only materialistic and utilitarian ones.”
Jørn’s point is that European governments can make citizens feel attached to their liberal institutions and they can, by extension, engender a sense of belonging or shared destiny within the framework of liberal democracy. He formulates his argument against an Islamist view of the world.
I consider Jørn’s proposal impossible to realise because the midpoint of liberal democracy is individualism. Individualism stands counter to every expression of collectivist thought: you do what works for you and you do not make sacrifices for the greater good.
This is where the Islamist position is fundamentally correct: you submit to the authority of the collective and through the collective you find a role that contributes to the greater good; a good that is shared. This is how you have a culture and a nation that stands the test of time. Liberal democracy is a tiny blip in history made possible by the coincidence of material abundance in the West, which itself was/is the product of colonialism.
Whether Islam has always contributed to an ethical, spiritual, or humanitarian order is an empirical question for which we can find answers in history’s various Islamic empires. I suspect the answer is negative because imperialism develops its own materialistic logic: to control as much as possible at the international level and, by extension, to consolidate as much power as it can among the elites in society. Imperialism is a two-front war against culturally and socially defined “others”, which can be summed up as normalised greed. China is becoming another example: formerly communist, until it turns into a global superpower with the singular telos of expanding its dominion at all costs.
Boutique views of any religion are thus not constructive. None is perfect in its application because it depends on imperfect humans. Still, central to Islam—and to Judaism, Christianity, Confucianism, and other worldviews for that matter—is an unconditional commitment to the collective and to all the structures that hold it in place. The requirement is faith in the worldly aspects of religion or administration more broadly, not mere spirituality in a vacuum. The believers do not just engage in a private relationship between the person and the divine. No! They recognise the authority of tutelary figures in their milieu, from parents and elderly relatives, to the religious hierarchs, and they behave in accordance with precepts passed down to them.
Religion thus is a political project, underpinned by theology and derivative corpora such as jurisprudence. Belief in God or some originary essence is important, of course, but from a historical standpoint it is belief in the political project as a whole that keeps everything going. Put simply, God does not need you, but society does.
For every culture that has survived over the centuries, some patterns will be common among them, especially those pertaining to social reproduction, i.e. biological and cultural continuity. The woman understands she has to be a mother. This requires collectivist thinking: to contribute to the family in phase one, to the neighbourhood in phase two, and to the wider society in phase three. The man knows he has to be a father and not waste his vitality on egoistic endeavours. Again, this is the same family-oriented mindset in which the male has to control, at least for the most part, his [self-]destructive propensities and instead channel his industry towards building a better world. The cleric needs to be a paragon of virtue and not some spirituality merchant. The pro-social basis must always be there. And so on.
When people fail to live up to the norms, provided they are capable of doing so, the society has a fixed point on the horizon—its values—with which it can judge whether a given situation is moving in the right direction or not. Without values there is no means of assessing outcomes. Put differently, you can move in any direction and see no problem with it in advance: you will only know you did something wrong after you suffer the consequences.
Values are the lessons learnt by a people through the course of millennia. They codify the knowledge that has been accumulated over the aeons in a manner that is didactic and mnemonic. Committing to what worked is how we avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over. Those values are collectivist in outlook: teachings passed from one generation to the next. Only through intergenerational solidarity does a people remain in place for centuries and does so without the need to continuously exploit others.
Values effectively are an early response mechanism, the antibodies of the society as it were, against moral decay. Such is not a nominal decline in some abstract morality: it always manifests as physical degradation because people quickly fall into self-destructive habits and/or commit to patterns of behaviour which erode the public good. If the woman is a whore, there is no stability in the household, eventually no family at all, and thus no people and no culture to be perpetuated. If the man is a womaniser/drunkard/gambler, the same problems arise from the other side. And so on. At the root of such decline is the turn to oneself, the failure to recognise and then to uphold the greater good through pro-social deeds, not mere words.
[ Also read: About the coolest Seoul neighbourhood and erosion of public spaces (2026-09-20). ]
The European Union does not have such values. What it describes as “European values” are empty talking points like those sprinkled across Jørn Bjerre’s opinion piece that sound nice to the ears of the academic or the politically correct apparatchik but do not inspire any collectivist conduct whatsoever. Virtue signalling is so deeply embedded in them that even their promoters do not recognise it. Take this from the excerpt I quoted above as an example:
Only by building institutions in which rational argument takes precedence over utility
It implies that those institutions do not exist right now. So they need to be created. If the institutions are not there already, it follows that whatever is in place is not conducive to rational argument, or not underpinned by it, and is thus promoting “utility”. Put differently, Jørn’s own exhortation leads to the logical conclusion that Europeans are a people with the aspiration to have values. And, I will add for emphasis, “people who nevertheless pretend to already have strong values”.
The European Union is what you get when bureaucrats gain too much power. The EU claims to stand for democracy but itself is not a democratic entity. There is no elected head of state in the EU. The European Commission is a bureaucratic apparatus with an appointed leadership. The European Council is an intergovernmental entity which decides for the supranational (European) level as a whole without having the commensurate accountability. This is the phenomenon of “sovereignty mismatch” that I have described many times before, including in the recent essay on Gigantism and Europe’s far-right transformation (2026-09-08). In short: rules for the whole, but accountability only for the parts.
This double speak extends to other areas of life. The European political elite has a tendency for humanitarianism Ă la carte, for example. Because jingoism in Eastern Europe is good business nowadays, they profess their strong commitment to the Ukrainian cause but turn a blind eye when Middle Eastern people are blown into smithereens.
It is understandable if you remain silent about issues you have no power over. But when you do have influence and, more importantly, when you claim to be holding the moral high ground on those matters, then I expect your deeds to match your claims. If all you have is aspirations, then you are a liar, my friend.
Widespread Islamism in Europe is a growing trend that will define the fate of the continent for centuries to come. Individualists will eventually be marginalised by cohesive groups. Others will recognise the pressing need to rekindle collectivism by rediscovering their communities. At any rate, those with no values will be replaced by the ones who uphold their values as sacrosanct.