Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist and columnist widely read in the United States and Great Britain, whose current book, "America Alone," is an alarming portrait of a rapidly rising Islamic Europe, has served his cause better than he could have hoped.

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Not only does his book convincingly demonstrate the catastrophic demographic consequence of Europe's descending birth rate and ascending Muslim population, it did one thing more. The only review of it that I could find in Canada's largely liberal print media showed unmistakably that the liberal Western world has no solution to the problem. It is utterly baffled. It doesn't know what to do.

Steyn, of course, is not alone in sounding this warning. The renowned journalist, atheist and anti-clerical Oriana Fallaci, who died in September at New York (after, curiously, praising the thinking and approach of Pope Benedict), became so assertive in her warnings about Islam in Europe she was accused in her native Italy of vilipendio (vilification) of religion by an Italian anti-Catholic. She coined the term "Eurabia" and dedicated her last years to describing its alarming growth.

In Britain, London Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips this year produced the terrifying "Londonistan," focusing particularly on the seemingly irresistible Islamic menace in her country where superficially good British lads with unmistakable regional accents are in fact dedicated to the destruction of their neighbors.

Steyn, however, with his gift of devastating sarcasm and eye for absurdity in high places, has produced an entertaining, if frightening, read, making some obvious though rarely confronted points, such as:

• Since a core objective of Islam is an autocratic theocracy, Muslims cannot embrace democratic government without fundamentally compromising their religion and thereby ceasing to be Muslims. Any working accommodation with Islam is therefore impossible, as France, Britain and Germany are painfully discovering.

• However, Europe will not be defeated by Islam, but by its own failings, particularly by its failure to produce children. When the time comes for the great Muslim takeover, it won't face any serious resistance because practically no one under the age of 60 will be there to do the resisting.

Steyn's book soared immediately to the Canadian best-seller list and was running No. 3 on Amazon – though the country's ultra-liberal biggest book retailer drastically under-stocked it, for reasons it found difficult to explain.

What intrigued me, however, was how the liberal media would respond to it. Typically, up to this date anyway, the Toronto Star and most of the old Southam chain have ignored it. The Globe and Mail, however, faced up to the challenge. The reviewer they chose was William Christian, a much-published professor of political science from Guelph, Ontario. He writes a very strange review. It consists of two elements – a ferocious denunciation of Steyn's book – "possibly the most crass and vulgar book about the West's relationship with the Islamic world I have ever encountered" – and a recitation without comment of some of the alarming demographic and theological facts that Steyn presents.

Now this is mystifying. Look at the awful things this man is writing, says the reviewer. How crass! How vulgar! But you want to take Dr. Christian by both shoulders and demand: "Yes, but are they true? And, if they are not true, why don't you say so? And if they are true, what do you suggest we do about them?"

In short, Dr. Christian's clear responsibility as a reviewer was to respond at least minimally to the validity of Steyn's assertions. In not one fragment of one sentence does he do so. The conclusion is inescapable: He doesn't say, because he doesn't know. He doesn't provide an answer, because he hasn't got one. His solution to the Muslim threat is to pretend it isn't there. His silence betrays his poverty. He is flummoxed, and he is furious with Steyn for having exposed this fact.

But this bewilderment is not confined to Christian. What's notable is that no one in the entire phantasmagorias realm of modern liberaldom is responding to it. The alarms are being sounded and the reigning authorities can do nothing more than denounce those who sound them. Which of course is Steyn's main point. Those in charge do not know what to do. They have built a society that doesn't work, and they hate people who point this out.

But realizing this is surely the first step in building one that does work, and that is what Steyn obviously seeks to do.

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Mark Steyn's "America Alone"

"Londonistan"