The amazing thing about the novel is that the ideologiealrntransfomiation from progressive to MusHm is accompHslied sornconvincingly that we can readily accept it. One of Chesterton’srnmost striking characters is the progressive prohibitionist Philip,rnLord Ivywood, the naive aristocrat who leads the campaignrnagainst wine and social nonconformity: He espouses all the faddishrncauses of his day, including vegetarianism and theosophy,rnand is, in short, the very model of a modern New Age general.rnHe represents that old patrician intellectual lineage that tracesrnback through the Enlightenment to the thought-world of Plato’srnguardians. And he is clearly meant to be a thoroughly pernicious,rnsubversive force, the deadly ivy on the native oak,rnwhich in timi symbolizes the authentic Europe:rnBut Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,rnHe rots the tree as ivy would.rnHe clings and crawls as ivy wouldrnAbout the sacred tree.rnBut Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,rnHe hates tlie tree as ivy would.rnAs tire dragon of the ivy wouldrnTlrat has us in his grips.rnIvywood moves neatly from representing the voice of Fabianrnor progressive idealism—the world of H.G. Wells or BertrandrnRussell—to becoming a tool of organized Islam, which usesrnhim as a convenient front man for the annexation of England.rnIn the multicultural dream that he advocates, the two religionsrnwill merge to fomi a new synthesis (“Something called Chrislam,rnperhaps,” glowers one disenchanted rebel). A Cros.s-Crescentrnhybrid appears on St. Paul’s Cathedral (tlie “Croscent”),rnand the Koran is to be integrated into a revised Bible.rnIncreasingly, it becomes obvious that prohibitionism andrnprogress are Trojan horses for full-scale Islamicization.rnThough osteirsibly an account of the triumph of progress, thernplot resolves itself into a struggle between the only two intellectualrnforces that have ever mattered in the world—those who acceptrnthe Incarnation and those who reject it. The two forcesrnclashed bloodily at Tours in 732, at Constantinople in 717 andrnagain in 1453, and now they meet once more on a battlefield inrna not-qiiite-yet England. “There, encamped in the Englishrnmeadows . . . was something that had never been in camp nearerrntlian some leagues south of Paris, since that Carolus calledrnthe Hammer broke it backwards at Tours.” In the last great battle,rnthe struggle that saves England for the Incarnation, LordrnIvywood stands on the field under the banner of Islam, dressedrn”in a uniform of his own special creation, a compromise betweenrnthe Sepoy and Turkish imiform.” All pretense of humanisficrnsecularism is gone. After the Muslim forces are routed,rnhe retreats into a baffled insanity, as Christendom gains thernfield. He is lost in the fantasy world of those who try to creaternUtopias without taking account of human and divine realities.rnHe cries, “I have gone where God has never dared to go. I amrnabove the silly Supemien as they are above mere men.”rnThe Flying Inn can be seen less as a novel than as the creationrnof a whole mythical world. I here take the word “myth” as arnchild once defined it: a story that is not true on the outside, butrnis true on the inside. ‘The story’s characters have the pristinerntruth of mythology, speaking words tlrat we can hear all aroundrnus in everyday life: They are archetypes. Reading Lord Ivywood’srnspeeches, we can hear precisely the senfiments about religionrnthat surface so frequently in the media today, about thernnecessity for a wide-ranging relafivisfic tolerance that must bernapplied to every religion under the sun —except Christianity.rnAs Ivywood puts it, “Ours is an age when men come more andrnmore to see tliat the creeds hold treasures for each other, thatrneach religion has a secret for its neighbor, that faith unto faithrnuttcreth speech, and church unto church showeth knowledge.”rnWe diink equally of Ivywood when we hear modern paeansrnto the glorious lost civilization of medieval Islam—that heroic,rntolerant, proto-Enlightenment world that supposedly stood inrnsuch magnificent contrast to the horrors of European Christendom.rnSaid Ivywood: “Islam has in it the potenfialifies of beingrnthe most progressive of all religions; so that a century or two torncome we may see the cause of peace, of science, and of reformrnsupported by Islam.” Wliile we might be troubled by aspects ofrnthe history of Islam—the pervasive despotism, the mass slavetrading,rnthe corruption—we have to understand that (as Ivywoodrndeclares) these notions are products of “the illimitablernpro-Christian bias with which the history of those Eastern tribesrnis told in this country.” The very symbol of Islam was the Crescent,rna sign of growth (and not the Cross, the death-symbol favoredrnby other religions now out of favor). Ivywood felt thatrnevery Western progressive could agree with this sign and all itrnimplied, tire “principle of perpetual growth towards an impliedrnand infinite perception.” Ivywood has countless modern imitators.rnFor millions today, the sublimest religious truth is to bernfound not in the native Christian tradition, but in the works ofrnIslamic nrystics, of Sufi masters like Rumi, though in New Agernforms shorn of much of their overt Muslim content.rnIvywood stands triiunphant whenever a contemporary politicianrnor academic boasts how non-Chrisfian immigrafion willrntransform our failed Western nations into Utopian multiculturalrnsocieties. Wlien Chesterton wanted to introduce Islam as arnfactor in his story, he had to concoct a fantastic story of howrnEngland forged a diplomatic alliance with the Ottoman Empire.rnToday, such a stieteh is utterly unnecessary, given the migrationrnof mass Muslim populations across Europe and, indeed,rninto the United States. There are now three million Muslimsrnin Cermany, two million in France, at least a million in Britain,rnand perhaps 750,000 in Italy. The urost thorough tiansformationrnhas been in French cities like Marseilles, which have acquiredrna strongly North African flavor. Muslims make uprnaround a fifth of the population of Vienna, a proportion that hasrnmore than doubled just since the late I980’s. Europe as arnwhole has some 15 million Muslims, many of whom are of ancientrnstock, particularly in southeastern parts of the continent.rnMeanwhile, I can only specrdate how urany Emopeans ofrnChristian heritage still espouse the doctiine of the Incarnation,rnbut I imagine the proportion is tiny. Ilie ivy has spread far.rnMany things tiiat Chesterton portrayed, seemingly ludicrously,rnas part of the Turkish invasion of England have appeared inrnthe West as components of multicidtiiralisnr. In September,rnthe U.S. Post Office issued its first stanrps commemorating Islam,rncomplete with Arabic inscription—though these items becamerna little scarce a week or so later, when other Muslims notoriouslyrnsucceeded in obliterating the World Trade Center.rnHonestly, I wonder why the word “Ivywood” has not enteredrnour popular speech, commemorated in the same way as “boycott”rnor—perhaps a better analogy—”quisling.” So do not rulernout the appearance of flic Croscent ere too long—not to sayrnChrislam. ‘•’rn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn