Exploding Islamization of the West: A Conversation with Alexandre del Valle, Part I

by Grégoire Canlorbe  •  Gatestone Institute  •  July 26, 2026

“[B]y launching barbaric jihadist attacks — such as Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, or the July 14 Nice attacks — radical Islamists in fact aim to induce hostility toward Muslims and provoke a clash between Muslims and non-Muslims, to motivate Muslims to separate from their non-Muslim environment and de-assimilate.” — Alexandre del Valle. Pictured: The scene of a terror attack in Nice, France on July 14, 2016, the deadliest attack in the history of France in which the Islamic State group used a truck to mow down spectators on the Promenade des Anglais as they watched the Bastille Day fireworks display. The attack claimed the lives of 86 people, while injuring hundreds more. Screengrab via Youtube.

• One of the great successes of Islamist movements appears to have been to convince much of the third generation of Muslim families to break with assimilation. Many of that generation were beginning to become more integrated than their parents or grandparents.

• [B]y launching barbaric jihadist attacks — such as Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, or the July 14 Nice attacks — radical Islamists in fact aim to induce hostility toward Muslims and provoke a clash between Muslims and non-Muslims, to motivate Muslims to separate from their non-Muslim environment and de-assimilate.
• This strategy has been most effective. Islamic terrorism produces criticism of Islamism. The Islamists then say that the criticism is proof that they are victims of Islamophobia…. This community then functions as a counter-society against Western society, which is perceived as harmful, decadent, “Islamophobic,” or “racist.”
• There are networks that organize Islamization – it seems, mainly of three kinds. The first network consists of Islamist movements themselves…. Some states play an extremely direct role in this process: Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan, among others…. The institutions involved include the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which brings together 57 Muslim states and promotes an international Islamic order. One can also mention ISESCO, the Islamic counterpart of UNESCO. These structures help to spread a narrative that by adapting to Western culture… This narrative not only tries to adapt sharia to Europe, but tries to push Europe to adapt to sharia.
• The third network is… the dominant current within Western societies themselves, shaped by “political correctness.” Out of fear of conflict, fear of not getting votes, or Western postcolonial guilt, many Europeans conveniently manage not to see the Muslim colonization of Turkey, Egypt, Albania, Kashmir, Cyprus and Israel. The last is where Jews have lived for nearly 4000 years and are therefore the indigenous population. Muslims did not even exist until the seventh century.
• Sometimes, simply out of a desire to buy peace in their neighborhoods, Western elites accommodate Islamist demands. Local elected officials, confronted with “difficult” neighborhoods, come to implicit agreements with a community’s representatives just in order to preserve a form of peace.
• We are, in fact, creating “extraterritorial mini-caliphates.”
• US President Donald Trump has spoken of “civilizational erasure.” He is absolutely right.
• Many Islamists tell Muslims in Europe that their presence in a non-Muslim country can be justified only on two conditions. First, they must re-Islamize in order to protect themselves from the supposedly harmful influence of the unbelieving societies. Second, they must contribute to expanding the Muslim community until it one day becomes dominant. In this mindset, living in Europe becomes acceptable only if one works to transform it gradually into an Islamized space.
• A great mistake of the Western elites seems to have been to reduce “national interests” only to material interests. Many in the West appear to have believed that democracy and human rights would seduce all of humanity. They passed over in silence the dimensions of religion and ethnic values of the West — its shared culture, language and history, and its anchoring in Judeo-Christian priorities—in order to present democracy and human rights as a model exportable to the entire world.
• Much of the West no longer thinks of itself in cultural, religious, or civilizational terms. It thinks of itself rhapsodically as a space that is open to all ethnicities and religions, reduced to individual rights, democracy, and consumption — and capable of extending over the entire world.
• Much of the West also no longer believes in its own civilization; many no longer even believe it is a civilization. Under these circumstances, how could it be capable of pursuing a policy of defense of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian heritage?
• This loss of self-awareness might explain some serious strategic errors. If one believes that Europe has neither religion, history, shared values nor civilization, then Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, or Turkey can appear merely as economic partners. Their investments, buildings, football clubs, and financial power are noticed; their ideological and religious roles are overlooked.
• If the West had preserved a vision of itself as a civilization, it could have maintained economic relations with these countries while prohibiting any religious interference. It could have said clearly: “We cooperate, but you do not finance the Islamization of our territories.” The West, having stopped seeing itself as a civilization, allowed Islamist powers to finance mosques, associations, and networks of influence on its own soil.
• If you refuse to defend your civilization, you are disarming your nation. The West is a civilization shared by a number of groups, which are mainly the products of Judeo-Christian values. If a nation does not know its identity, how can it defend itself? If a nation renounces its value systems, its traditions, its historical religion, and its heritage, it implicitly accepts changing its population, identity and religion.

Grégoire Canlorbe: What do we know, please, about the Islamization of Europe?

Alexandre del Valle: The Islamization of countries such as Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, or the Netherlands has, in my view, reached a critical threshold, perhaps even a point of no return. The reasons are at once demographic, cultural, and ideological. These recent minorities have not only reached a significant numerical weight; they also have much higher fertility rates. Above all, for the past twenty years or so, there has been not only a failure of assimilation, but a form of de-assimilation among populations that, until then, had seemed assimilated.

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Alexandre del Valle is a French author specializing in geopolitics.