Ironies abound in the terrorist bombings in Brussels. Consider this propaganda video in which the organization Visit Brussels on 18 January assures the world that Belgium is a terrific place to visit. As part of a PR campaign, conspicuous phones were set up around the world in which world strangers might call Belgian strangers. At just before the one minute mark is heard this conversation from a distant caller to a Brussels resident.

“Is it safe for this moment?” “Of course it’s safe, it’s very safe.”

Stick around, because at about 1:10m is heard this from another distant stranger:

“I read in — on — the Internet that it’s dangerous to visit your city.” “Well actually it’s the media that’s made a whole fuss about it, but nothing is happening.”

The accompanying official text to the video (which appears right below it) says this:

After Brussels was linked to terror plots, the international media portrayed the city as a warzone. visit.brussels wants to change this perception with an honest answer. We gave people in Brussels the opportunity to tell how life really is in the city.

Alas, their answer forgot to mention a lot of people would be blown up.

The press says the attacks were caused by (a) Islamophobia, and (b) by Muslims failing to assimilate to Western secular culture. On these points, celebrated writer Max Boot burst out of the gate, and even before the blood began to congeal on the pavement, tweeted, “Problem in EU is failure to assimilate Muslim immigrants. US has done better job, but Trump attacks alienate Muslims & threaten security.”

Why might the United States have done a marginally better job? For starters, we have far fewer Muslims. And though our culture is doing its best to catch up, we’re not yet so far down the track to embracing secularism, sodomy, radical gender equality and transsexualism. Since many parts of America still have a solid core of Christian moral standards, perhaps many Muslims still feel like there is an American civic culture, at least in some parts of the country, where they can live without feeling like foreigners.

Boot, incidentally, wins the award for being the first Western journalist to blame the victims for the attack (this is always a tight race); he also earns a gold cluster attached to the award for dragging in Trump. Tough to do in 140 characters.

In any case, what Boot fails to realize is that assimilation is a two-way street. Why should Muslims adapt to a decadent culture when they can force the denizens of that decadence to assimilate to their way of thinking? Reverse assimilation is the goal of the terrorist. That this isn’t recognized in the West is the real root of the problem. Saying the cause of terrorism is “Islamophobia” foolishly does not credit Muslims with independent thought.

These attacks are not caused by “Islamophobia” on the part of some Westerners, but by “Secularaphobia” or “Westernaphobia” on the part of some Muslims. The secularists response to this obvious truth is to blame everybody but themselves.

Western Bootlich elites (to use a Germanic suffix) believe, in the face of reasonable but limited evidence, that the solution to deter future attacks is to infect Muslims with the Secular Virus, after which Muslims will drop their nature, their religion, their entire sake of identity and they will be transformed (using the term coined by our friend Ianto Watt) into Mammonites. A Mammonite is one who worships, not God, but money and self. Just think: this form of biological warfare did, after all, work with a substantial proportion of Christians in the West, and even tenuously with a small minority of Muslims. Why not keep trying it?

Because, believe it or not, money, nihilism and the abandonment of human nature aren’t the ultimate goals of many people. Most religious people are immune to the virus. Secularists don’t comprehend this because they never fully accept that religious people believe what they’re saying, perhaps because — another irony — secularists never truly believe anything (hence nihilism). Can you imagine the consternation of the frustrated terrorist after a deadly bombing? “I said I hated them, but they didn’t believe me! What more evidence do they want?!”