OUGHT we to fear an expansionist Islam? There has recently been a fresh rash of scare comment in the press, suggesting that Islam is the new spectre haunting Western civilisation: by tolerating this enemy in our midst, we are sleepwalking to cultural oblivion.

Of course no such fear is warranted. The Islamic-related terrorist threat is real, but it does not amount to a concerted political threat. Even if bin Laden struck again on the scale of September 11, it would lead him no nearer to the overthrow of the West. In global terms, there is no Islamic state or alliance of states that constitutes a threat to the West.

And in European terms, the Islamic minority is weak. Muslims are not storming the citadels of business or culture. They are, for the most part, surviving on low-wage jobs. Yes, the minority is expanding – from almost nothing a generation ago to about three per cent of the average European country’s population. But there is no reason to fear that the minority will continue to expand until it dominates.

But the problem is the ideology, some will say. Unlike Hindus or Jews, Muslims want to see their religion overtake European society. This is an expansionist religion. But so is Christianity: don’t Christians hope that Islamic nations will come to accept the lordship of Jesus Christ?

Islamophobia does not have a rational basis. Yet it affects intelligent people who are not generally racist; its roots are deep and complex. Could it be that Islamophobia is based in a sort of envy? For Islam painfully reminds us of what we lack. It highlights our lack of faith in our common values. We envy the unitary vision of Islam, its fusion of politics and religion.

Our own religious heritage is locked in a long-running conflict with the secular ideal of the Enlightenment. An ideological civil war has been simmering away ever since the French Revolution. In the 19th century, secular liberalism made huge gains, but it failed to win hearts as well as heads. Europe still suffers from a sort of cultural duality: it still yearns for a religious unity that secular liberalism seems to make impossible. It is still haunted by Christendom. This is one interpretation of 20th-century fascism: it was an attempt to take a shortcut back to an organic, unified culture.

It is no accident that Europe has seen an intensification of this long-running struggle in the past few years, as the perceived threat of Islam increases. Last year, arguments relating to religious observance in schools and other state institutions broke out in France, Germany and Italy. By banning the hijab in the classroom, France has tried to defend its secular identity. But in reality it is only half-secular; it has a residual attachment to Catholic culture as a source of identity.

There is no way for these countries to shore up cultural identity, for modern Europe is ideologically divided. On the one hand, there is a will to reassert the secular ideal, and to exclude every religion from public life.

On the other hand there is a will to reassert the older basis of European culture, to defend the symbols of the Christian national past — and of course this entails keeping the secular ideal in check. European culture has never settled the question of religion. It simply cannot decide between secularism and Christianity. It wants to have it both ways: to have a secular culture in which traditional Christian forms survive, for those who value them. It wants both forms of cultural identity, secular and religious, to be available.

The rise of Islam within Europe makes us nervous about this internal division, this deferral of identity. Europe is forced to confront the fact that it lacks ideological stability, that the values of the Enlightenment have never really replaced those of Christendom. The certainties of Islam make Europe feel divided and scared.

And of course this is not merely a continental thing: it is our situation in Britain too. We have the same ideological split, the same uncertainty as to whether our identity is essentially religious or essentially secular. And for us the stakes are even higher. For our political constitution remains pre-secular; we have an established Church, which is joined at the hip to the monarchy. It is highly ironic that we think ourselves exempt from the secular-religious debate in its fullness, because of our unique constitution.

The truth is that we will imminently experience this debate just as fully as the Continent, and that it will challenge our political fabric with far greater force.

Is there a solution to the old duality of post-Christian, semi-secularised Europe? We cannot reinstate pre-secular Christian culture, and we cannot assert secularism as a coherent unifying ideology, without creating something horrible. So we need to patch up the marriage between our Christian and secular identities. We need to reaffirm the inner affinity between Christianity and secularism. The key work to be done is not so much political, or cultural, as theological. The “spectre ” of Islam may be providential: the spur to a new era of Christian-secular relations, the forging of a coherent European identity.

Theo Hobson is author of Against Establishment, an Anglican Polemic (2003)