Den britiske historikeren Michael Burleigh har tydeligvis lært en del fra sine studier av nazismen, når han bedømmer dagens fromme ønske om dialog mellom sivilisasjonene for å løse problemet med radikalisering blant muslimer. Når dialogen skjer på bekostning av virkeligheten, er det grunn til skepsis, skriver Burleigh om en konferanse han deltok på i Madrid nylig. Tyrkia og Spania ønsker å bygge «en allianse mellom sivilisasjoner». En heller luftig ide, etter Burleighs mening.

Han begynner artikkelen i Linneausstraat i Amsterdam, hvor Theo van Gogh ble stukket ned for et år siden. Dette drapet er selve antitesen til det som fant sted i Madrid.

President Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, have been commendably unflinching in their determination to eradicate the pestilence of Islamist terrorism. Other governments are trying a different tack, which smacks of appeasement. Last week in Madrid, I attended a «Dialogue between Cultures and Religion», organised by a foundation with links to Spain’s ruling socialists. Here, talk of «dialogue» between faiths effortlessly mutated into the separate notion, promoted by Spain and Turkey, of «an alliance of civilisations» spanning the Mediterranean world. Countries can ally; civilisations generally don’t. A banquet in the government quarter elicited the intelligence, from a Moroccan diplomat, that not only was «Europe» morally superior to a US symbolised by Bush’s Texas, but that a distinctive «fusion» culture was emerging in the Mediterranean, «different » from that of northern Europe. One doubts whether the Italians feel that way.

The conference opened with protestations of goodwill from Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s former president, delivered by an ambassador who was not among those recalled for failing to reflect the crazed views of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Felipe González, the former Spanish premier, chose to overlook Ahmadinejad’s rant, preferring to contest the notion of a «clash of civilisations», as if this were US policy.

At least Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, managed condemnation of an elliptical sort. He has been a prime mover of the claim that you cannot «fight evil with evil», a formula begging many questions about moral equivalences. He favours marginalising extremists through a dialogue with Muslim «moderates». These included Dr Tariq Ramadan, an Egyptian intellectual, who is on an FBI watch list and banned from France, but welcome in Spain.

Discussion of religion and politics took the form of a «dialogue» between aggressive secularists — on this occasion Spanish socialists with memories of «national Catholicism» under Franco — who averred, against all the evidence, that «religion» will «inevitably» fade away, and those who think it is an essential and vital force in the modern world. This was a dialogue of the deaf, because Western liberals have become totally unmusical on the subject of religion, which they nevertheless combat with an evangelical fervour.

Dialog-kulturen er et fenomen med mange sider. Det kan bli en dialog på bekostning av de som bøter med sine liv. Konferansen etterlot en emmen bismak hos Burleigh.

The fate of a Dutch film director hacked down by a maniac seemed remote from the Madrid junket. After all, that was northern Europe. Actually, the conference was a few minutes’ drive from the station where 200 people were killed by a Moroccan terrorist network. Dialogues between civilisations, Christian, Islamic or other, are fine, but a constant part of this must be the grim reality that visited Van Gogh on a cold northern street, an event depressingly indicative of the ethnic and religious complexity of Europe. We cannot wish away the clash of civilisations.

Fine words cannot disguise it: the clash of civilisations is real