The First part of this series is here: Islam
and the Future of Europe.
Dr. Jenkins takes a much more optimistic view of Europe's future than I do. I hope he's right, but I have responded to a few of his statements in this post. Please do
read the whole interview at OUP blog.
Will be in Italy later this month, Spain next month. Both trips have a good amount of business involved, including meeting with folks focused on reaching Muslims, or
who may be considering such action.
Excerpts:
He says: Critically too, I’m
not sure that many of the incidents that people cite when they warn
about “Eurabia” arise from the issue of Islam as a religion, as opposed
to conflicts of race and class, and the best example of that would be
the French riots of 2005. I see very little evidence of any religious
motivation there. This does not mean that such outbreaks are not
serious, but governments have to respond to them differently than they
would if they represented a true religious movement.
I answer: I don't think so. I mean, if you live here in good ole' Dar al-Islam for a few years you see pretty quickly that even non-practicing Muslims have a fervent devotion to their religion as an idea, as a concept. Some people are devoted to it as a religion, but others are devoted to
it as a political system, and others still as a pillar of Arab culture,
others as an economic system capable of eradicating injustice and
poverty.
Islam is not a religion. It is a civilization.
Let me say it again: Islam is not only a religion, but an entire civilization.
He says: Also, we should not
complain about Muslim failure to assimilate into European societies
when these populations have been there such a short time. Think how
poorly assimilated America’s minorities were in the 1920s, which is a
fair comparison - about thirty years after the beginning of the main
influx.
I answer: But there was a Christian foundation for integration, and a Christian desire for integration. Neither of these
is present in Europe. Muslims do not want to integrate, for that would
be to leave Islam--which is superior toEuropeanism . There was also the
idea that new immigrants would integrate into something, the American
dream, if you like. That is not present in Europe. What is there to
integrate into in Europe?
He says: Finally, forecasts
about Muslims taking over Europe assume that Muslim birth rates will
continue to be very high. All immigrant populations have high fertility
in the first generation, but usually that usually falls within a
generation or so, and that is exactly what we are seeing in Europe.
Moreover, the home countries for most of Europe’s migrants have
experienced a dramatic fall in fertility just in the past decade, and
that will certainly have its impact in Europe itself.
I answer: yes, and Muslim
immigration into Europe will continue at a fast pace based on current
trends. So there will be many, many new 'first generations' of Muslim
immigrants. In addition to the previous generations which are
reproducing at a lower rate. We have also seen that it is second and
third generation European Muslims (like 7/7 in London) which tend
towards traditional Islamic militant worship (what the West derisively
and ignorantly calls terrorism).
All in all, I respect Jenkins as a great historian. But his scholarship on Islam in Europe is entirely unrealistic and fails to grasp the power of Islam as a
pan-ethniccivilizational and totalitarian ideology.
I have posted quite a bit about Europe because I think it will be pivotal in
the coming decades. I also think that Europe is, in some way,
foundational to the faith.
Here is a recent
post on a review of Jenkins' book "God's Continent."
Here is a link to an older
interview with him.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Europe. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Europe. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Immigration and Europe and Islam
From The Brussels Journal:
Europe, however, is also a magnet for immigration: It is set to attract up to one million immigrants this year. But the European experience with immigration is very different from that of the United States. Part of the reason is that in Europe, many or most immigrants to the continent end up on welfare, while in the United States, almost all immigrants take one or more entry-level jobs and work their way up the economic ladder. Welfare is simply not the American way.
The result is that most immigrants to the United States, a country with no dominant ethnic group, are fully integrated into American society by the second generation, regardless of their country of origin. By contrast, most immigrants to Europe, where countries are built around a population base with a common ethnicity, are Muslims who are not easily integrated, no matter how long they have been living on the continent.
The challenge of integration is exacerbated by the fact that over the past 30 years, Europe’s Muslim population has more than tripled. According to data compiled in the US State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, there are almost 25 million Muslims living in Europe today. And instead of assimilating into mainstream European society, Muslim immigrants tend to cluster in marginalized ghettos all across the continent.
By contrast, the first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that divide Muslims and Westerners around the world.
In Europe, Muslims already make up more than 25 percent of the population of Marseilles, 15 percent of Brussels and Paris, and 10 percent of Amsterdam, for example. And these numbers are rising fast. Indeed, demographers predict that the number of Muslims living in Europe may double again by 2015. Thus Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Arab and Islamic cultures, recently told the German newspaper Die Welt that: “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.”
This unfortunate reality provides the political context for Zapatero’s concern with the US-Mexico border. The Spanish prime minister, who like so many other European leftists is religiously fixated on building a post-modern multicultural utopia, seems blinded to the fact that runaway immigration combined with socialist mismanagement is creating a Eurabian horror story. Much easier, it would seem, for Europeans to criticize America than to acknowledge their own shortcomings.
Indeed, many analysts believe that the steady weakening of Europe is the underlying cause of growing anti-American and anti-Israel bigotry among Europe’s elites, many of whom are bending over backwards to please Muslim immigrants in naive attempts to buy fake peace with radical Islamists. Says Fouad Ajami, a well-known authority of the Arab world: “In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam”.
Europe, however, is also a magnet for immigration: It is set to attract up to one million immigrants this year. But the European experience with immigration is very different from that of the United States. Part of the reason is that in Europe, many or most immigrants to the continent end up on welfare, while in the United States, almost all immigrants take one or more entry-level jobs and work their way up the economic ladder. Welfare is simply not the American way.
The result is that most immigrants to the United States, a country with no dominant ethnic group, are fully integrated into American society by the second generation, regardless of their country of origin. By contrast, most immigrants to Europe, where countries are built around a population base with a common ethnicity, are Muslims who are not easily integrated, no matter how long they have been living on the continent.
The challenge of integration is exacerbated by the fact that over the past 30 years, Europe’s Muslim population has more than tripled. According to data compiled in the US State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, there are almost 25 million Muslims living in Europe today. And instead of assimilating into mainstream European society, Muslim immigrants tend to cluster in marginalized ghettos all across the continent.
By contrast, the first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that divide Muslims and Westerners around the world.
In Europe, Muslims already make up more than 25 percent of the population of Marseilles, 15 percent of Brussels and Paris, and 10 percent of Amsterdam, for example. And these numbers are rising fast. Indeed, demographers predict that the number of Muslims living in Europe may double again by 2015. Thus Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Arab and Islamic cultures, recently told the German newspaper Die Welt that: “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.”
This unfortunate reality provides the political context for Zapatero’s concern with the US-Mexico border. The Spanish prime minister, who like so many other European leftists is religiously fixated on building a post-modern multicultural utopia, seems blinded to the fact that runaway immigration combined with socialist mismanagement is creating a Eurabian horror story. Much easier, it would seem, for Europeans to criticize America than to acknowledge their own shortcomings.
Indeed, many analysts believe that the steady weakening of Europe is the underlying cause of growing anti-American and anti-Israel bigotry among Europe’s elites, many of whom are bending over backwards to please Muslim immigrants in naive attempts to buy fake peace with radical Islamists. Says Fouad Ajami, a well-known authority of the Arab world: “In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam”.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Obama: the first Muslim-born president?
From HERE:
[...]Perhaps Mr. Obama strikes the Europeans as the “most European candidate” because he was born a Muslim. If America can have a Muslim-born leader, why not Europe, many Europeans will ask. They know that the latter is “unavoidable” (to use the archbishop of Canterbury’s words). In America, Mr. Obama’s Muslim family background (unlike Mr. Romney’s Mormonism) is a non-issue because he attends a Christian church. Nevertheless, being born from a Muslim father, raised by a Muslim stepfather, having been enrolled at school (in Indonesia) as a Muslim and having attended Friday prayers at the local mosque as a young boy, he cannot be seen by Muslims as anything but a Muslim, especially because he has never explicitly rejected the faith of his fathers nor said anything negative about it.
The day Barack Hussein Obama comes to the White House many Muslims, also in Europe, will see it as a vindication of recent announcements by radical Islamists that the green flag of Allah will soon fly over the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Vatican and the other “fortresses of the West.”
Since perception is often more powerful than reality the importance of an Obama presidency cannot be underestimated. The American political establishment, including the Republicans, are very naive about the Islamic threat to Europe. Rather than working against the Islamization of Europe American policies tend to hasten the process. America is an ally of Saudi Arabia – a dictatorship which funds the most extremist Islamic organizations. America pushes for the independence of Kosovo, which will establish an Islamist regime in the heart of Europe. America wants the European Union to accept Turkey as a member state. If Mr. Obama proceeds with these policies (as he is likely to do) and withdraws from Iraq, thereby indicating that America has lost the war, the radical Islamists in Europe will become even more arrogant than they are today.
Obviously, America is not to blame for Europe’s present predicament. The demographic and religious vacuum in Europe, which is being filled by Muslim immigrants and by Islam, is entirely of Europe’s own making. The Europeans – and they alone, not the Americans and not even the Muslims, who were invited to come to Europe – are to blame for the Islamization of the old continent. The irony, however, is that America does not seem to draw lessons from Europe’s predicament.[...]
[...]Perhaps Mr. Obama strikes the Europeans as the “most European candidate” because he was born a Muslim. If America can have a Muslim-born leader, why not Europe, many Europeans will ask. They know that the latter is “unavoidable” (to use the archbishop of Canterbury’s words). In America, Mr. Obama’s Muslim family background (unlike Mr. Romney’s Mormonism) is a non-issue because he attends a Christian church. Nevertheless, being born from a Muslim father, raised by a Muslim stepfather, having been enrolled at school (in Indonesia) as a Muslim and having attended Friday prayers at the local mosque as a young boy, he cannot be seen by Muslims as anything but a Muslim, especially because he has never explicitly rejected the faith of his fathers nor said anything negative about it.
The day Barack Hussein Obama comes to the White House many Muslims, also in Europe, will see it as a vindication of recent announcements by radical Islamists that the green flag of Allah will soon fly over the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Vatican and the other “fortresses of the West.”
Since perception is often more powerful than reality the importance of an Obama presidency cannot be underestimated. The American political establishment, including the Republicans, are very naive about the Islamic threat to Europe. Rather than working against the Islamization of Europe American policies tend to hasten the process. America is an ally of Saudi Arabia – a dictatorship which funds the most extremist Islamic organizations. America pushes for the independence of Kosovo, which will establish an Islamist regime in the heart of Europe. America wants the European Union to accept Turkey as a member state. If Mr. Obama proceeds with these policies (as he is likely to do) and withdraws from Iraq, thereby indicating that America has lost the war, the radical Islamists in Europe will become even more arrogant than they are today.
Obviously, America is not to blame for Europe’s present predicament. The demographic and religious vacuum in Europe, which is being filled by Muslim immigrants and by Islam, is entirely of Europe’s own making. The Europeans – and they alone, not the Americans and not even the Muslims, who were invited to come to Europe – are to blame for the Islamization of the old continent. The irony, however, is that America does not seem to draw lessons from Europe’s predicament.[...]
Europe in the House of War
(This article is so excellent that I am posting it in its entirety. Please read it all.--Abu Daoud)
Europe in the House of War
by Spengler
Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.
Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason.
Coercion in the Muslim communities of Europe is so commonplace that duly-constituted governments there no longer wield a monopoly of violence. Behind the law there stands the right of the state to inflict violence, and the legitimacy of states rests on what German political economist and sociologist Max Weber once called "the monopoly of violence". Once this right is conceded to private groups, the legitimacy of government crumbles. No one appreciates this more than the British, whose tradition of protecting individual rights under law is the oldest and strongest in the West, excepting the United States, which inherited English Common Law.
By proposing to concede a permanent role to extralegal violence in the political life of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury pushed his phlegmatic countrymen over the edge. No one is better than the British at pretending that problems really aren't there, but once their spiritual leader admits to an alien source of coercion and proposes to legitimize it, they understand that a limit has been reached.
Williams' exercise in what might be termed the Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into the Dar al-Harb, or the "House of War" in the Muslim terms for all that lies outside the "house of submission", or Dar al-Islam. Europe's governments refuse to rule, that is, refuse to enforce their own laws because they fear violence on the part of Muslim immigrant communities who refuse to accept these laws. "No-go" zones proliferate that non-Muslims dare not enter. In the United Kingdom, according to evidence presented by respected journalists and public-interest organizations, Muslim community organizations, Muslim police officers and medical personnel collaborate to stop women from escaping domestic violence.
The erring spiritual leader of the Church of England persuades me that Europe's Man of Destiny is the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who for two years has lived in hiding under constant police protection for the crime of criticizing Islam. It is a measure of the degradation of Europe's body politic that is only one means to expose the motives of Williams and his ilk, namely to draw fire from Muslims who overtly threaten violence against any public figure who questions the authority of Islam.
Contrary to his critics, Wilders is not provoking violence. The violence is already there, a matter of workaday fact in Muslim enclaves throughout Europe. In an act of great personal courage, Wilders is enticing violent elements out of the tall grass in order to expose them to public opprobrium.
It is triply hypocritical when Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, speaks of sharia law as if it were a private matter of conscience between consenting parties, rather like the use of rabbinical courts by Orthodox Jews. First, he admits outright that Muslim communities combine to coerce women but pretends that this is not relevant to sharia. Secondly, he offers concessions to sharia in the first place to appease the threat of social violence on the part of Muslims. As a final insult to conscience, he cites as his authority on sharia Professor Tariq Ramadan, who notoriously refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery, precisely because Muslim legal rulings specifically endorse such violence.
There is overwhelming documentation that Muslim entities in Britain wield the threat and fact of violence against dissenters, particularly the most vulnerable, namely young women. The fact is so scandalous that in his February 7 address, Williams felt compelled to address it directly, in order to insist that the subject fell entirely outside the issue of law - a conclusion he must know to be false.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, warned on January 7 of the spread of "no-go" zones in England that non-Muslims dare not enter. As a result, Nazir-Ali has received death threats against himself and his family and requires protection.
The British authorities will take measures to protect bishops from the threat of violence, but they leave to their own devices thousands of Muslim women. According to a February 2008 report by the Center for Social Cohesion, Islamist groups and individuals frequently link ideas of honor with the welfare of the Muslim world. By using words such as Ird and Namus in a political context, they imply that by protecting the chastity of Muslim women, the security and collective honor of Islam and Muslim states and individuals can also be defended. This politicization of women's bodies helps create an environment where the abuse and control of women is tolerated.
Muslim communities, the report documents, terrorize women who refuse arranged marriages or otherwise break with social norms:
Almost all refuges dealing with Asian women report on the existence of informal networks which exist to track down and punish - with death if necessary - women who are perceived as bringing shame on their family and community. In many cases, women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councilors and civil servants of immigrant origin.
Muslim coercion against women extends to psychiatric hospitals, the Times of London's religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported on February 7 (cited in Rod Dreher's indispensable Crunchy Con blog, .) Glenhill quoted a women's rights advocate as follows:
The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing Western clothes. There can be many reasons. The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP [general practitioner] referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned (committed to a psychiatric ward). She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?
That brings us back to the archbishop of Canterbury, who acknowledged the fact of coercion of women in his February 7 address, but insisted that because it belonged to "custom" rather than "religious law", he preferred to change the subject:
Recognition of "supplementary jurisdiction" in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. The "forced marriage" question is the one most often referred to here, and it is at the moment undoubtedly a very serious and scandalous one; but precisely because it has to do with custom and culture rather than directly binding enactments by religious authority, I shall refer to another issue.
That makes a lurid lie out of Williams' bland assertion that adherence to sharia "assumes the voluntary consent or submission of the believer":
Sharia depends for its legitimacy not on any human decision, not on votes or preferences, but on the conviction that it represents the mind of God ... while such universal claims are not open for re-negotiation, they also assume the voluntary consent or submission of the believer, the free decision to be and to continue a member of the umma.
Williams was lying. His authority in matters of sharia is Ramadan, whom the Department of Homeland Security prevented from accepting an American university appointment. Ramadan set off a scandal In 2003 when he refused to condemn violence against women (calling instead for a "moratorium," that is, a temporary cessation) precisely because Islamic law sanctions such violence. The Westernized Ramadan will twist himself into a pretzel rather than disagree with Islamic jurisprudence.
Six million Frenchmen watched Ramadan defend the stoning of women for the crime of adultery in a televised debate with the present President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister. As quoted by Paul Berman in The New Republic of June 4, 2007, the transcript reads as follows, Ramadan refuses outright to say that he is against stoning adulteresses:
Sarkozy: A moratorium ... Mr Ramadan, are you serious?
Ramadan: Wait, let me finish.
Sarkozy: A moratorium, that is to say, we should, for a while, hold back from stoning women?
Ramadan: No, no, wait ... What does a moratorium mean? A moratorium would mean that we absolutely end the application of all of those penalties, in order to have a true debate. And my position is that if we arrive at a consensus among Muslims, it will necessarily end. But you cannot, you know, when you are in a community ... Today on television, I can please the French people who are watching by saying, "Me, my own position." But my own position doesn't count. What matters is to bring about an evolution in Muslim mentalities, Mr Sarkozy. It's necessary that you understand ...
Sarkozy: But, Mr Ramadan ...
Ramadan: Let me finish.
Sarkozy: Just one point. I understand you, but Muslims are human beings who live in 2003 in France, since we are speaking about the French community, and you have just said something particularly incredible, which is that the stoning of women, yes, the stoning is a bit shocking, but we should simply declare a moratorium, and then we are going to think about it in order to decide if it is good ... But that's monstrous - to stone a woman because she is an adulterer! It's necessary to condemn it!
Ramadan: Mr Sarkozy, listen well to what I am saying. What I say, my own position, is that the law is not applicable - that's clear. But today, I speak to Muslims around the world and I take part, even in the United States, in the Muslim world ... You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things. You can decide all by yourself to be a progressive in the communities. That's too easy. Today my position is, that is to say, "We should stop."
Sarkozy: Mr Ramadan, if it is regressive not to want to stone women, I avow that I am a regressive.
"You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things" such as stoning women, Ramadan insisted, which is to say that were he to condemn violence against women outright, he would be unable to speak to Muslim communities.
That is Williams' source. Coming from the leader of a major Christian denomination, this depth of hypocrisy is satanic, if that word has any meaning at all.
Unlike his Church of England colleague, Bishop Nazir-Ali, Williams does not require a security detail. But it appears that every European journalist and politician who attacks Islam requires personal protection, starting with the stout-hearted Dutchman Wilders. In the cited New Republic report on Tariq Ramadan, Paul Berman reported:
When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell-influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination.
I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera - and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding ...
So Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia - its Muslim wing especially - who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last 60 years.
Postscript: I had not intended to mention James J Sheehan's silly book on Europe's postwar conversion to pacifism, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the object of many glowing reviews by soft-headed liberals, most recently by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the February 8 New York Times. Sheehan admires modern Europe for abandoning war; it does not occur to him that Europe also has abandoned being European. Abysmal non-immigrant fertility rates condemn most of Europe's peoples to effective extinction during the next century or two. It deserves a one-word review by Homer Simpson, namely, "Doh." If there are to be no future generations, what soldier will lay down his life for them? The word "demographics" does not appear once in Sheehan's plodding account, which liberal reviewers praised as if it were a roadmap to the millennium.
Sheehan is woefully misguided. Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.
END
Europe in the House of War
by Spengler
Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.
Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason.
Coercion in the Muslim communities of Europe is so commonplace that duly-constituted governments there no longer wield a monopoly of violence. Behind the law there stands the right of the state to inflict violence, and the legitimacy of states rests on what German political economist and sociologist Max Weber once called "the monopoly of violence". Once this right is conceded to private groups, the legitimacy of government crumbles. No one appreciates this more than the British, whose tradition of protecting individual rights under law is the oldest and strongest in the West, excepting the United States, which inherited English Common Law.
By proposing to concede a permanent role to extralegal violence in the political life of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury pushed his phlegmatic countrymen over the edge. No one is better than the British at pretending that problems really aren't there, but once their spiritual leader admits to an alien source of coercion and proposes to legitimize it, they understand that a limit has been reached.
Williams' exercise in what might be termed the Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into the Dar al-Harb, or the "House of War" in the Muslim terms for all that lies outside the "house of submission", or Dar al-Islam. Europe's governments refuse to rule, that is, refuse to enforce their own laws because they fear violence on the part of Muslim immigrant communities who refuse to accept these laws. "No-go" zones proliferate that non-Muslims dare not enter. In the United Kingdom, according to evidence presented by respected journalists and public-interest organizations, Muslim community organizations, Muslim police officers and medical personnel collaborate to stop women from escaping domestic violence.
The erring spiritual leader of the Church of England persuades me that Europe's Man of Destiny is the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who for two years has lived in hiding under constant police protection for the crime of criticizing Islam. It is a measure of the degradation of Europe's body politic that is only one means to expose the motives of Williams and his ilk, namely to draw fire from Muslims who overtly threaten violence against any public figure who questions the authority of Islam.
Contrary to his critics, Wilders is not provoking violence. The violence is already there, a matter of workaday fact in Muslim enclaves throughout Europe. In an act of great personal courage, Wilders is enticing violent elements out of the tall grass in order to expose them to public opprobrium.
It is triply hypocritical when Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, speaks of sharia law as if it were a private matter of conscience between consenting parties, rather like the use of rabbinical courts by Orthodox Jews. First, he admits outright that Muslim communities combine to coerce women but pretends that this is not relevant to sharia. Secondly, he offers concessions to sharia in the first place to appease the threat of social violence on the part of Muslims. As a final insult to conscience, he cites as his authority on sharia Professor Tariq Ramadan, who notoriously refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery, precisely because Muslim legal rulings specifically endorse such violence.
There is overwhelming documentation that Muslim entities in Britain wield the threat and fact of violence against dissenters, particularly the most vulnerable, namely young women. The fact is so scandalous that in his February 7 address, Williams felt compelled to address it directly, in order to insist that the subject fell entirely outside the issue of law - a conclusion he must know to be false.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, warned on January 7 of the spread of "no-go" zones in England that non-Muslims dare not enter. As a result, Nazir-Ali has received death threats against himself and his family and requires protection.
The British authorities will take measures to protect bishops from the threat of violence, but they leave to their own devices thousands of Muslim women. According to a February 2008 report by the Center for Social Cohesion, Islamist groups and individuals frequently link ideas of honor with the welfare of the Muslim world. By using words such as Ird and Namus in a political context, they imply that by protecting the chastity of Muslim women, the security and collective honor of Islam and Muslim states and individuals can also be defended. This politicization of women's bodies helps create an environment where the abuse and control of women is tolerated.
Muslim communities, the report documents, terrorize women who refuse arranged marriages or otherwise break with social norms:
Almost all refuges dealing with Asian women report on the existence of informal networks which exist to track down and punish - with death if necessary - women who are perceived as bringing shame on their family and community. In many cases, women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councilors and civil servants of immigrant origin.
Muslim coercion against women extends to psychiatric hospitals, the Times of London's religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported on February 7 (cited in Rod Dreher's indispensable Crunchy Con blog, .) Glenhill quoted a women's rights advocate as follows:
The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing Western clothes. There can be many reasons. The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP [general practitioner] referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned (committed to a psychiatric ward). She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?
That brings us back to the archbishop of Canterbury, who acknowledged the fact of coercion of women in his February 7 address, but insisted that because it belonged to "custom" rather than "religious law", he preferred to change the subject:
Recognition of "supplementary jurisdiction" in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. The "forced marriage" question is the one most often referred to here, and it is at the moment undoubtedly a very serious and scandalous one; but precisely because it has to do with custom and culture rather than directly binding enactments by religious authority, I shall refer to another issue.
That makes a lurid lie out of Williams' bland assertion that adherence to sharia "assumes the voluntary consent or submission of the believer":
Sharia depends for its legitimacy not on any human decision, not on votes or preferences, but on the conviction that it represents the mind of God ... while such universal claims are not open for re-negotiation, they also assume the voluntary consent or submission of the believer, the free decision to be and to continue a member of the umma.
Williams was lying. His authority in matters of sharia is Ramadan, whom the Department of Homeland Security prevented from accepting an American university appointment. Ramadan set off a scandal In 2003 when he refused to condemn violence against women (calling instead for a "moratorium," that is, a temporary cessation) precisely because Islamic law sanctions such violence. The Westernized Ramadan will twist himself into a pretzel rather than disagree with Islamic jurisprudence.
Six million Frenchmen watched Ramadan defend the stoning of women for the crime of adultery in a televised debate with the present President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister. As quoted by Paul Berman in The New Republic of June 4, 2007, the transcript reads as follows, Ramadan refuses outright to say that he is against stoning adulteresses:
Sarkozy: A moratorium ... Mr Ramadan, are you serious?
Ramadan: Wait, let me finish.
Sarkozy: A moratorium, that is to say, we should, for a while, hold back from stoning women?
Ramadan: No, no, wait ... What does a moratorium mean? A moratorium would mean that we absolutely end the application of all of those penalties, in order to have a true debate. And my position is that if we arrive at a consensus among Muslims, it will necessarily end. But you cannot, you know, when you are in a community ... Today on television, I can please the French people who are watching by saying, "Me, my own position." But my own position doesn't count. What matters is to bring about an evolution in Muslim mentalities, Mr Sarkozy. It's necessary that you understand ...
Sarkozy: But, Mr Ramadan ...
Ramadan: Let me finish.
Sarkozy: Just one point. I understand you, but Muslims are human beings who live in 2003 in France, since we are speaking about the French community, and you have just said something particularly incredible, which is that the stoning of women, yes, the stoning is a bit shocking, but we should simply declare a moratorium, and then we are going to think about it in order to decide if it is good ... But that's monstrous - to stone a woman because she is an adulterer! It's necessary to condemn it!
Ramadan: Mr Sarkozy, listen well to what I am saying. What I say, my own position, is that the law is not applicable - that's clear. But today, I speak to Muslims around the world and I take part, even in the United States, in the Muslim world ... You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things. You can decide all by yourself to be a progressive in the communities. That's too easy. Today my position is, that is to say, "We should stop."
Sarkozy: Mr Ramadan, if it is regressive not to want to stone women, I avow that I am a regressive.
"You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things" such as stoning women, Ramadan insisted, which is to say that were he to condemn violence against women outright, he would be unable to speak to Muslim communities.
That is Williams' source. Coming from the leader of a major Christian denomination, this depth of hypocrisy is satanic, if that word has any meaning at all.
Unlike his Church of England colleague, Bishop Nazir-Ali, Williams does not require a security detail. But it appears that every European journalist and politician who attacks Islam requires personal protection, starting with the stout-hearted Dutchman Wilders. In the cited New Republic report on Tariq Ramadan, Paul Berman reported:
When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell-influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination.
I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera - and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding ...
So Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia - its Muslim wing especially - who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last 60 years.
Postscript: I had not intended to mention James J Sheehan's silly book on Europe's postwar conversion to pacifism, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the object of many glowing reviews by soft-headed liberals, most recently by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the February 8 New York Times. Sheehan admires modern Europe for abandoning war; it does not occur to him that Europe also has abandoned being European. Abysmal non-immigrant fertility rates condemn most of Europe's peoples to effective extinction during the next century or two. It deserves a one-word review by Homer Simpson, namely, "Doh." If there are to be no future generations, what soldier will lay down his life for them? The word "demographics" does not appear once in Sheehan's plodding account, which liberal reviewers praised as if it were a roadmap to the millennium.
Sheehan is woefully misguided. Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.
END
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Part XX: The Islamization of Europe
Part XX: The Islamization of Europe
by Abu Daoud
I have suggested on numerous occasions that Western Europe is being Islamized at a rapid and consistent pace. However, a recent article in Newsweek contends that this is not the case. In this section XX of my series on Islam and Christianity I want to analyze the Newsweek article by William Underhill and reveal its lack of coherency. (The article can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/206230/output/print)
It is well known by now that Muslims have many more children than ethnic Europeans, and that Islamic immigration has been robust for decades and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. These factors indicate the Islamization of Europe, or the creation of ‘Eurabia.’ Underhill says these fears are overblown. What are his reasons?
One thing that the author mentions without actually spelling out the implications is that the Europeans are getting older: you have fewer Europeans and they are older, while the new Muslims are young, very young. Youth matters. Folks in their 50's and 60's will not take up arms to defend their European heritage. Now youth in the 20's and 30's might, but guess what? They were mostly aborted and were never born because of European hedonism. On the other hand, as we see with the 'immigrant youth' (not Muslim youth, mind you!) every revolution starts with youth--that was true in France and the USA and it will be true Europe.
It is easy to risk everything when you don't have much to begin with, and the possible prize is great power and wealth. The older Europeans will not resist it, other than with the occasional ineffective 'immigration reform' passed by their governments. But guess what--these reforms will not be effective. Immigration has been ‘tightened’ in the past, but the number of immigrants did not decline after these restrictions. As long as there is a policy of ‘family reunification’ like we see in the UK and the US, there will be a wide open door because most people in the lands of Islamdom already have family somewhere in the West. Because of this there are already entire areas in France in the UK where the civil authorities do not venture. This is what we call a failing state: a state that does not have a monopoly on violence.
Like they say in London, "Islam, our religion today, your religion tomorrow."
And Newsweek is most certainly wrong about this on multiple levels. One thing is that Newsweek keeps talking about a Muslim majority in Europe. I am not talking about that at all. I am talking about Muslim majorities in major cities such that those large cities are Islamized. Think Marseilles, for example, or Malmo, Sweden. And also, let's not talk about a majority--let's talk about a majority of the population under 35--the ones who might actually be able to take up arms if it came to that (and it will, in certain places, almost without a doubt). You don't need a majority of the population to take political control of a region. The history of Islam shows us this very clearly.
But surely Underhill has some other arguments, let me examine a few of them:
"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." True, but I'm talking about the establishment of de facto Islamic city-states, and there are indeed individual cities/regions where powerful Islamic groups (including ethnic-criminal ones) could realistically monopolize power. Newsweek shows its historical ineptitude in its monoculturalism--thinking that it's all about nation states. A very narrow-minded Western reading of the situation. In other words, I am not saying there will be one monolithic state of Eurabia—no one is saying that. Underhill is constructing a straw man and then knocking it down. I am talking about a variety of de facto Islamic city-states around Europe.
"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." On the contrary, I recognize that Islamdom is every bit as fragmented as is Christianity. But we could say the same thing about the Islamic states today: Morocco, Egypt, Saudi, Pakistan, and Malaysia are all very different in their Islam. But guess what? Conversion from Islam to Christianity is illegal in every single one of those states.
Also, every one of those states has a Muslim population that is willing to use acts of violence to further their politico-religious aims (in Islam there is no distinction, of course). So yes, a Muslim city-state in France with Algerian leadership will look different than the Turkish Islamic city-state in Germany or the Pakistani one in England. They will not be alike, but they will all be Islamic which tells us a few clear things: no religious freedom, an inferior status for women, persecution of homosexuality, an increase in nepotism and decline in rule of law, and the use of state-sponsored violence to proscribe dissent. These are trends that one can find in every single Muslim state in the world.
And that is the future of Europe. That is Eurabia. Who cares about the hamlet of 700 old Scots in the Highlands. Not to sound heartless, but they just don't matter. Also, Underhill fails to take into account emigration from Europe. Does he not know that many ethnic Europeans are not so keen on living in a neighborhood where they are discriminated against and churches are regularly vandalized? Is it a surprise if these folks move out of the Islamic area or as is increasingly the case simply leave the country?
Underhill has written an incomplete and illogical piece of tripe. He has selected information when it was convenient for him and ignored other information. Furthermore, he does not seem to realize that his ‘myth of Eurabia’ is not a theory that anyone to my knowledge is actually advancing. It is rather like fishing in the stocked pond where everyone is promised to catch at least fish. It is not genuine scholarship or journalism.
Also, see my links here:
European Islamdom I
European Islamdom II
European Islamdom III
by Abu Daoud
I have suggested on numerous occasions that Western Europe is being Islamized at a rapid and consistent pace. However, a recent article in Newsweek contends that this is not the case. In this section XX of my series on Islam and Christianity I want to analyze the Newsweek article by William Underhill and reveal its lack of coherency. (The article can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/206230/output/print)
It is well known by now that Muslims have many more children than ethnic Europeans, and that Islamic immigration has been robust for decades and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. These factors indicate the Islamization of Europe, or the creation of ‘Eurabia.’ Underhill says these fears are overblown. What are his reasons?
One thing that the author mentions without actually spelling out the implications is that the Europeans are getting older: you have fewer Europeans and they are older, while the new Muslims are young, very young. Youth matters. Folks in their 50's and 60's will not take up arms to defend their European heritage. Now youth in the 20's and 30's might, but guess what? They were mostly aborted and were never born because of European hedonism. On the other hand, as we see with the 'immigrant youth' (not Muslim youth, mind you!) every revolution starts with youth--that was true in France and the USA and it will be true Europe.
It is easy to risk everything when you don't have much to begin with, and the possible prize is great power and wealth. The older Europeans will not resist it, other than with the occasional ineffective 'immigration reform' passed by their governments. But guess what--these reforms will not be effective. Immigration has been ‘tightened’ in the past, but the number of immigrants did not decline after these restrictions. As long as there is a policy of ‘family reunification’ like we see in the UK and the US, there will be a wide open door because most people in the lands of Islamdom already have family somewhere in the West. Because of this there are already entire areas in France in the UK where the civil authorities do not venture. This is what we call a failing state: a state that does not have a monopoly on violence.
Like they say in London, "Islam, our religion today, your religion tomorrow."
And Newsweek is most certainly wrong about this on multiple levels. One thing is that Newsweek keeps talking about a Muslim majority in Europe. I am not talking about that at all. I am talking about Muslim majorities in major cities such that those large cities are Islamized. Think Marseilles, for example, or Malmo, Sweden. And also, let's not talk about a majority--let's talk about a majority of the population under 35--the ones who might actually be able to take up arms if it came to that (and it will, in certain places, almost without a doubt). You don't need a majority of the population to take political control of a region. The history of Islam shows us this very clearly.
But surely Underhill has some other arguments, let me examine a few of them:
"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." True, but I'm talking about the establishment of de facto Islamic city-states, and there are indeed individual cities/regions where powerful Islamic groups (including ethnic-criminal ones) could realistically monopolize power. Newsweek shows its historical ineptitude in its monoculturalism--thinking that it's all about nation states. A very narrow-minded Western reading of the situation. In other words, I am not saying there will be one monolithic state of Eurabia—no one is saying that. Underhill is constructing a straw man and then knocking it down. I am talking about a variety of de facto Islamic city-states around Europe.
"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." On the contrary, I recognize that Islamdom is every bit as fragmented as is Christianity. But we could say the same thing about the Islamic states today: Morocco, Egypt, Saudi, Pakistan, and Malaysia are all very different in their Islam. But guess what? Conversion from Islam to Christianity is illegal in every single one of those states.
Also, every one of those states has a Muslim population that is willing to use acts of violence to further their politico-religious aims (in Islam there is no distinction, of course). So yes, a Muslim city-state in France with Algerian leadership will look different than the Turkish Islamic city-state in Germany or the Pakistani one in England. They will not be alike, but they will all be Islamic which tells us a few clear things: no religious freedom, an inferior status for women, persecution of homosexuality, an increase in nepotism and decline in rule of law, and the use of state-sponsored violence to proscribe dissent. These are trends that one can find in every single Muslim state in the world.
And that is the future of Europe. That is Eurabia. Who cares about the hamlet of 700 old Scots in the Highlands. Not to sound heartless, but they just don't matter. Also, Underhill fails to take into account emigration from Europe. Does he not know that many ethnic Europeans are not so keen on living in a neighborhood where they are discriminated against and churches are regularly vandalized? Is it a surprise if these folks move out of the Islamic area or as is increasingly the case simply leave the country?
Underhill has written an incomplete and illogical piece of tripe. He has selected information when it was convenient for him and ignored other information. Furthermore, he does not seem to realize that his ‘myth of Eurabia’ is not a theory that anyone to my knowledge is actually advancing. It is rather like fishing in the stocked pond where everyone is promised to catch at least fish. It is not genuine scholarship or journalism.
Also, see my links here:
European Islamdom I
European Islamdom II
European Islamdom III
Friday, June 29, 2007
How the West was Lost
Just brilliant, but what else would you expect from Stein reviewing Dalrymple? Here it is, all of it:
How the West was Lost
by Mark Stein
The American Conservative
How the West was Lost
by Mark Stein
The American Conservative
The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, Walter Laqueur, Thomas Dunne Books, 256 pages
by Theodore Dalrymple
Flying to Rotterdam recently, the largest and busiest port in the world, I was forcibly struck by the aerial view. I doubt there is a sight anywhere that is more eloquent testimony to the power of human intelligence and organization. Indeed, this applies to the whole of the Netherlands: a physically unpromising fragment of land, much of it reclaimed from the sea, has been diligently transformed into one of the globe’s most flourishing regions, whose economic product exceeds that of the whole of Africa. The second threat comes from the presence of a sizable and growing immigrant population, a large part of which is not necessarily interested in integration. As the population ages, the need for immigrant labor increases, and among the main sources of such labor are North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. When I recently drove to Antwerp from the South of France, I thought I had arrived in Casablanca. There are parts of Brussels where the police are enjoined not to be seen eating or drinking during Ramadan. Similar accommodations are occurring all over Europe: in the Central Library in Birmingham, for example, I found a women-only table occupied exclusively by young Muslims dressed in the hijab. (They were the lucky ones, members of liberal households that allowed them out on their own.) The answer surely lies in the shame of Europe’s recent past. The Dutch, for example, are aware that not only did many of them (or their parents and grandparents) collaborate enthusiastically with the Nazi occupiers, but no sooner was Holland liberated than it engaged in a bloody colonial war to try to retain the East Indies. Under these circumstances, reference to the extraordinary positive achievements of the country came to seem like chauvinism or worse, and no pride in Dutchness could be communicated to immigrants. The same, a fortiori, applies to Germany and even to Britain, whose enormous achievements intellectuals have long been deconstructing. Only the French, with their republican model, have gone in for a salutary monoculturalism, but unfortunately their economic and social policies helped, if not to create, at least to maintain Muslim ghettoes. On one hand, the children of immigrants were told they were French; on the other, they were de facto excluded from the rest of society. Ferocious resentment was the result, and to coin a phrase, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
The text accompanying a book of photographs of the Dutch landscape that I was given as a present is an unconscious witness to the country’s wealth. Extolling Dutch society’s fundamental egalitarianism, the text stated that in Holland you will not see expensive cars, only middle-of-the-range models. The examples given were Mercedeses and BMWs.
The Dutch are probably the best-educated people in the world (though middle-aged people complain, as everywhere else, that standards are falling). Many Dutch have a vocabulary in English that exceeds that of native speakers in Britain and America. And for many years, the Dutch prided themselves that theirs was a country in which nothing ever happened. The business of Holland was business—plus social security with a bit of anti-Calvinist decadence thrown in. The country was so tranquil, contented, and firmly established that, failing a rise in the level of the North Sea, it seemed the idyll would continue forever.
But a couple of political assassinations, unprecedented in Holland for more than 300 years, suddenly illuminated, as if by a flash of lightning, a darker aspect of reality—one that was not confined to Holland but was Europe-wide. In a very short space of time, complacency gave way to a nagging sense of doom.
It is Europe’s doom that Walter Laqueur explores and explains in this succinct and clearly written book. He does not say anything that others have not said before him, but he says it better and with a greater tolerance of nuance than some other works on this vitally important subject.
There are three threats to Europe’s future. The first comes from demographic decline. Europeans are simply not reproducing, for reasons that are unclear. They seem to care more about the ozone layer and carbon emissions than they do about the continuation of their own societies. Or perhaps bringing up children interferes with what they conceive to be the real business of life: taking lengthy annual holidays in exotic locations and other such pleasures.
The third threat comes from the existence of the welfare state and the welfare-state mentality. A system of entitlements has been created that, however economically counterproductive, is politically difficult to dismantle: once privileges are granted, they assume the metaphysical status of immemorial and fundamental rights. The right of French train drivers to retire on full pension at the age of 50 is probably more important to them than the right of free speech—especially that of those who think that retirement at such an age is preposterous. While Europe mortgages its future to pay for such extravagances—the French public debt doubled in ten years under the supposedly conservative Chirac—other areas of the world forge an unbeatable combination of high-tech and cheap labor. The European political class, more than ever dissociated from its electorate, has hardly woken up to the challenge.
All this Laqueur lays out with exemplary clarity. He sees Europe, once the home of a dynamic civilization that energized the rest of the world, declining into a kind of genteel theme park—if it’s lucky. The future might be grimmer than this, of course: there might be a real struggle for power once the immigrants and their descendents become numerically strong enough to take on the increasingly geriatric native population.
As is to be expected in a relatively short book, the author does not explore matters in great depth. One interesting and important question is why Europeans have abjectly surrendered to the dishonest nostrums of multiculturalism. Why, for example, can a couple of Dutch children be told by their teacher to remove the Dutch flag from their school bags because it might offend children of Moroccan descent—who, it should be noted, are supposed to be Dutch citizens? Why, when I arrive in regional airports in Britain, do I see signs for British passport holders written in Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and Hindi scripts, presumably for the benefit of British citizens who cannot read the Latin alphabet? Why do German courts rule that beating women is a religious right for Turks, just as terms such as “illegitimate children” have been banned from official usage as being denigratory and stigmatizing?
Laqueur makes the important point that shortcomings of the host countries notwithstanding, many immigrant groups have thrived without difficulty. He might have added that they have all successfully overcome initial prejudice against them. There is no Sikh or Hindu problem in Britain; the country has recently absorbed half a million Poles without any obvious tension or difficulty. (Tony Blair, with his usual perspicuity, predicted that when Poland joined the European Union, 13,000 Poles would move to Britain.)
This suggests—and Laqueur has no hesitation in so saying—that there is a problem peculiar to the integration of Muslims in Western countries, at any rate, when they are in such large numbers that they are able to make whole areas their own. Imbued with a sense of their own religious superiority, which considers a Muslim way of life better than any other, they are ill-prepared to adapt constructively to Western society.
Yet adapt they do, though not necessarily in the best way. The young men of the second generation adopt many aspects of American ghetto “culture,” which in conjunction with Islamic teaching and tradition, enables them to dominate women in a way that is to them extremely gratifying. This prevents the women (who, as Laqueur tells us, and I can confirm from personal experience, are vastly superior morally and intellectually to their menfolk) from achieving all they might in an open society. In turn, the cheap and unconstructive satisfactions of domestic dictatorship discourages Muslim men from real achievement and engagement in the wider society around them. For the majority of young men of Muslim descent in Europe, the chief attraction of Islam is the justification it offers for the ill-treatment of women.
Is a “clash of civilizations” within Europe thus inevitable at some time in the future? Laqueur is cautious, as befits a man who has seen so much that was unprecedented in his own lifetime. Secularization, if only of a strange and not altogether reassuring kind, has already made deep inroads into the Muslim population. On the other hand, it may be that this very secularization is what calls forth religious fanaticism as a response. After all, Muslims can see in European Christianity an example of what happens when the light of reason and historical criticism is allowed into the purlieus of religious doctrine: it falls apart. Since Islam is so much a part of the identity of people wherever it has predominated, an attack on Islam, even or especially in the form of rational criticism, provokes an existential crisis.
Laqueur is neither apocalyptic nor optimistic but measured and open-minded about the future. Yet given the earnest frivolity of the European political classes, who face up to and legislate for every problem except the serious ones, it is likely that his prediction for Europe is accurate: it will sink into insignificance, more important, it is true, than Africa but no more important than Latin America.
Actually, I like Latin America.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Demographics in Europe; European Islamdom III
The question of demographics is very important. The reason that Islam is growing faster than Christianity is entirely demographic. Worldwide there are more converts to Christianity each year than to Islam. But when Muslim families are having upwards of three or four children, and Christian families are hovering around one or two, maybe three, it does not bode well at all.
The IHT has an article on the topic here, though they try to spin the decline of Europe positively. Also, they make the same error as the secular liberal press always makes, which is to say that the main danger for Europe is economic. It is not. It is civilizational. What is the fate of Europe? I have proposed three options here:
European Islamdom I
And there is some more good info here: European Islamdom II
But for your pleasure, a section from the IHT article:
The IHT has an article on the topic here, though they try to spin the decline of Europe positively. Also, they make the same error as the secular liberal press always makes, which is to say that the main danger for Europe is economic. It is not. It is civilizational. What is the fate of Europe? I have proposed three options here:
European Islamdom I
And there is some more good info here: European Islamdom II
But for your pleasure, a section from the IHT article:
...The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the "replacement rate" - the average number of births per woman that can maintain a country's population level. But according to the report, for the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3.
For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: "lowest-low fertility." [...]
Will Europe as we know it just peter out? Venice has lost more than half its population since 1950; its residents believe their city is destined to become a Venice-themed attraction. Will the same happen to Europe as a whole? Might the United States see its closest ally decay into a real-life Euro Disney? [...]
Monday, March 25, 2013
What does the West owe to Islam? Very Little...
One often hears, ad nauseum, about how much Europe owes to Islam for this and that. I have from time to time shared how suspicious I am of this hypothesis. I mean, it does a lot to inflate the self confidence of Muslims who live in countries that (excepting Sub-Saharan Africa) are the worst in the world in areas like economic growth, education, new technologies, human rights, corruption, and so on.
And then I find there is a whole book about the topic of what Europe owes to Islam. Sylvain Gouguenheim has proposed that the West owes very little to Islam in his book (only in French, alas) Aristote au Mont-Saint-Michel. Here is a section from a review of the book by Roger-Pol Driot (Le Monde, 4 April 2008):
And then I find there is a whole book about the topic of what Europe owes to Islam. Sylvain Gouguenheim has proposed that the West owes very little to Islam in his book (only in French, alas) Aristote au Mont-Saint-Michel. Here is a section from a review of the book by Roger-Pol Driot (Le Monde, 4 April 2008):
Now this serious academician, a professor of mediaeval history at l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, refutes a number of convictions that had become dominant. During the last decades, following the works of Alain de Libera, or Mohammed Arkoun, Edward Said, or the Counsel of Europe, a wrong turn had been taken regarding the role of Islam in the history and culture of Europe … Should we follow this book, it will be necessary to revise further our judgments. Rather than believing that the entire body of European philosophical knowledge was dependent on Arab intermediaries, we should remember the major role played by the translators of Mount-Saint-Michel. They had transmitted all of Aristotle directly from Greek into Latin, several decades before the same works were translated in Toledo from the Arabic versions. Instead of dreaming that the Islamic world was both open and generous and offered to dark and dormant Europe the means for its renewal, it is necessary to remember that Europe did not receive all that learning as a gift. It had to go and search for it. And it was Europe alone that applied that knowledge both in the scientific and political fields.Have any of you read the whole book? If so, what did you think?
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Demographics in the USA and Europe
As many of you know, demographics is, in my opinion, the key factor in determining the future cultural direction of the West. As much as I am interested in religious conversion (here, and here, and here), and as much as I advocate welcoming Muslims into the household of God, the numbers of converts are just not large enough to make a big difference on a longterm societal level (right now).
So I was interested to find this article, about immigration and birth rates in the USA and Europe. The author says that most American babies will be Latinos. And that Europeans are also not having babies, but Muslim immigrants are, thus making 'Muhammad' the most popular male baby name in various european countries:
Europe is dying as its nations run out of babies. Three-quarters of Europeans live in societies with fertility rates below 1.5. In the 14th century, the bubonic plague wiped out 75 million people; and in the 21st century, a larger number will be lost in Europe through demographic suicide.
Europe's demographic meltdown means it has to turn to immigrants for its workforce, and the vacuum is being filled by Muslims. From 1990 to 2010, the Muslim population of Europe grew from 30 million to 44 million. It will reach 58 million by 2030 and 10 European countries will be more than 10% Muslim.His overall conclusion, which you can take or leave, is that immigration into the USA of Latinos (and mostly Mexicans), is an overall good deal for the country, especially when compared to Europe's situation.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Turning tide for migration in Europe?
Salamu 'aleykum min Londonistan! I am sojourning here near Hyde Park, home to one of the most infamous mosques in the world, in case you don't know. Got a chance to visit the splendid Greek Orthodox Cathedral Church today and it was truly splendid. Meanwhile, some interesting information has surfaced regarding immigration. You judge for yourself:
In country after country, immigrants, often from Muslim countries, are being targeted. More than at any point in recent decades, fear is becoming the dominant force in European politics, warns the French commentator Dominique Moisi. The immediate cause for this fear has been the economic crisis, which has stoked worries about outsiders stealing Europe's jobs and overburdening its welfare system. But the animosity reflects a deeper shift. Immigration to Europe has exploded in recent years, so much so that the EU has overtaken the U.S. as the world's premier destination for people seeking a better life abroad. Since 1990, 26 million migrants have landed in Europe, compared with 20 million in America. There they have helped fuel economic booms, reinvigorated the continent's declining birthrate, and transformed cities from Madrid to Stockholm. The European Commission estimates that, since 2004, migration by Eastern Europeans alone to Western Europe has added a net €50 billion, or 0.8 percent, to the bloc's GDP each year.
Yet not everyone is convinced of these benefits, and the migrants are provoking deep fears that Europe's racial and religious identity is being lost. Driven by such anxieties, governments are starting to turn against the newcomers. Many states, including Britain and Italy, have put new limits on immigration, while others, such as Spain and the Czech Republic, are paying migrants to go home. As a result of such measures and the downturn, labor migration to Europe plummeted last year.
From HERE.
Abu Daoud's prediction? Migration will not significantly decline. Maybe legal immigration will, but that's just one slice of the pie. As Muslim countries (Yemen, Pakistan) continue to disiintegrate look for many, many more immigrants/refugees. They will arrive and will do anything they can not to leave.
In country after country, immigrants, often from Muslim countries, are being targeted. More than at any point in recent decades, fear is becoming the dominant force in European politics, warns the French commentator Dominique Moisi. The immediate cause for this fear has been the economic crisis, which has stoked worries about outsiders stealing Europe's jobs and overburdening its welfare system. But the animosity reflects a deeper shift. Immigration to Europe has exploded in recent years, so much so that the EU has overtaken the U.S. as the world's premier destination for people seeking a better life abroad. Since 1990, 26 million migrants have landed in Europe, compared with 20 million in America. There they have helped fuel economic booms, reinvigorated the continent's declining birthrate, and transformed cities from Madrid to Stockholm. The European Commission estimates that, since 2004, migration by Eastern Europeans alone to Western Europe has added a net €50 billion, or 0.8 percent, to the bloc's GDP each year.
Yet not everyone is convinced of these benefits, and the migrants are provoking deep fears that Europe's racial and religious identity is being lost. Driven by such anxieties, governments are starting to turn against the newcomers. Many states, including Britain and Italy, have put new limits on immigration, while others, such as Spain and the Czech Republic, are paying migrants to go home. As a result of such measures and the downturn, labor migration to Europe plummeted last year.
From HERE.
Abu Daoud's prediction? Migration will not significantly decline. Maybe legal immigration will, but that's just one slice of the pie. As Muslim countries (Yemen, Pakistan) continue to disiintegrate look for many, many more immigrants/refugees. They will arrive and will do anything they can not to leave.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
A Prophet Speaks: "The fall of Europe is close at hand."
The Cardinal of the Czech Republic, Miloslav Vick, is concerned about the fate of Christianity in Europe. He argues that Europe must return to its roots, if not the fate of the continent will be to become Islamic.
"Medieval Muslims tried to conquer Europe but Christians expelled them,” he said. “Today there is a similar war but with spiritual weapons. However, Europe lacks the tools and ability for a spiritual struggle while Muslims are well equipped," he says, adding that "the fall of Europe is close at hand.”
From HERE.
The day is coming when finding a practicing Christian in France will be as interesting and exotic as finding an Assyrian Christian in Iraq.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe
From HERE:
The Muslim Brotherhood, today widely regarded as the largest Islamic movement in the world, was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Its member groups are dedicated to the motto: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Research analyst Lorenzo Vidino writes about The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe: "Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations." Their ultimate goal "may not be simply 'to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be,' but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community. But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism."
Moreover, "While the Muslim Brotherhood and their Saudi financiers have worked to cement Islamist influence over Germany's Muslim community, they have not limited their infiltration to Germany. Thanks to generous foreign funding, meticulous organization, and the naïveté of European elites, Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations have gained prominent positions throughout Europe. In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council. In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic issues."
The irony, according to Vidino, is that "Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would never have dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe." [...]
The Muslim Brotherhood, today widely regarded as the largest Islamic movement in the world, was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Its member groups are dedicated to the motto: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Research analyst Lorenzo Vidino writes about The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe: "Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations." Their ultimate goal "may not be simply 'to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be,' but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community. But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism."
Moreover, "While the Muslim Brotherhood and their Saudi financiers have worked to cement Islamist influence over Germany's Muslim community, they have not limited their infiltration to Germany. Thanks to generous foreign funding, meticulous organization, and the naïveté of European elites, Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations have gained prominent positions throughout Europe. In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council. In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic issues."
The irony, according to Vidino, is that "Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would never have dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe." [...]
Saturday, July 21, 2007
"Deport all Muslims..."
Wow, but check out the source--he's a Muslim in the USA. Thanks to MEMRI. These are strange days indeed:
Khudayr Taher: Europe and America Should Deport All Muslims - Including Myself
Khudayr Taher, an Iraqi Shi'ite writer living in the U.S. and a regular contributor to the liberal Elaph website, had a quite illiberal suggestion - he asked why Europe and America shouldn't deport their Muslim populations. He wrote:
"Countries have the right to defend themselves and assure their citizens' safety from terrorism. Likewise, it is clear that the source of the terrorist crimes in Europe and America is the Muslims who live in these countries.
"The security services cannot know people's intentions and sort out who is the noble immigrant and who is a terrorist criminal. [But] wherever there are Muslims, their presence has produced crimes of terrorism and murder.
"Among those Muslims in Europe and America who do not practice terrorism, most of them do not have loyalty and sincere attachment to these countries that have offered them all of the means of life in dignity - housing, studies, work, and citizenship…
"The legitimate question is this: Since the security services cannot sort out the good immigrant from the bad terrorist… why don't these countries deport all Muslims, of all races, from Europe and America, and [thus] find rest from the danger of terrorism, and protect their peoples?
"I, as an Arab Muslim immigrant, sincerely call on the countries of Europe and America to deport all Muslims from their territories - including myself, despite my love and my sincere attachment to the U.S…"
Khudayr Taher: Europe and America Should Deport All Muslims - Including Myself
Khudayr Taher, an Iraqi Shi'ite writer living in the U.S. and a regular contributor to the liberal Elaph website, had a quite illiberal suggestion - he asked why Europe and America shouldn't deport their Muslim populations. He wrote:
"Countries have the right to defend themselves and assure their citizens' safety from terrorism. Likewise, it is clear that the source of the terrorist crimes in Europe and America is the Muslims who live in these countries.
"The security services cannot know people's intentions and sort out who is the noble immigrant and who is a terrorist criminal. [But] wherever there are Muslims, their presence has produced crimes of terrorism and murder.
"Among those Muslims in Europe and America who do not practice terrorism, most of them do not have loyalty and sincere attachment to these countries that have offered them all of the means of life in dignity - housing, studies, work, and citizenship…
"The legitimate question is this: Since the security services cannot sort out the good immigrant from the bad terrorist… why don't these countries deport all Muslims, of all races, from Europe and America, and [thus] find rest from the danger of terrorism, and protect their peoples?
"I, as an Arab Muslim immigrant, sincerely call on the countries of Europe and America to deport all Muslims from their territories - including myself, despite my love and my sincere attachment to the U.S…"
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Ex-Muslims Unite!
Encouraging news from Eurabia:
Europe: New Groups Unite Those Who Renounce Islam
September 11, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Some call them apostates, but they prefer the term ex-Muslims.
Today marked the official launch of the Dutch Ex-Muslim Committee, the latest such group to emerge in Europe. The groups say they want to make it easier for people to renounce Islam -- and draw attention to places where leaving the faith is punishable by death.
The new group is headed by Ehsan Jami, a 22-year-old Dutch politician of Iranian origin.
The group's creation follows the launch this spring of a German council for former Muslims.
Other groups soon followed suit in Scandinavia, and in Britain.
"If these groups in Europe are able to draw attention to the worldwide problem, this is of great benefit." -- Paul Marshall, Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom
Rights activist Maryam Namazie, the force behind the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, said that even for those living in Europe, it's not easy to renounce Islam. Those who do face threats and intimidation. "So we thought if we could have an organization based on the German model where you could actually have people's faces and names who announce that they want to renounce Islam, it would make it easier," Namazie said.
She says her group aims to "break a taboo" about leaving Islam, and to present a more varied image of Muslims and people of Muslim background.
Membership is small: Namazie says her group still only has some 70 members, while the German group claims around 600-700.
But she says this is likely a small fraction of the number of former Muslims in Britain. "It's not an organization that people can become members of easily because of the threats and intimidations that surround it. And so I think in reality each member that does put his name and face to the organization represents many more who are unable to do so right now," she said.
Fear of Persecution
To be sure, all these groups have sprung up in the relative religious freedom of Western Europe.
It's a long way from countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where apostasy is punishable by death.
But Namazie says she herself has received death threats. Mina Ahadi, who set up the German council, is under police protection. And Jami of the Dutch group is reportedly now living in a secret location after being assaulted.
Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, says initiatives like these groups have the potential to be helpful by highlighting what he calls a major issue worldwide.
"Many ex-Muslims around the world are persecuted, some are killed, others are imprisoned and very many live in fear. So this is a huge issue," Marshall said. "If these groups in Europe are able to draw attention to the worldwide problem this is of great benefit."
But the latest initiative has drawn criticism, too.
Today's launch comes on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States -- a date chosen for its associations with militant Islam.
Han Noten, a senator from Jami's Labour party, said the choice of date was a provocation. "It suggests the issue is about the innocent and the guilty, with former Muslims being innocent and Muslims guilty," he wrote.
And even some other Dutch ex-Muslims have been critical, too.
"We defend the right to be able to walk away from any religion, including Islam,” one of them, Behnam Taebi, said in a statement. "But they are using that right as a cover to categorically insult Muslims and to stigmatize them as 'violent' and 'terrorists.'"
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Islamification of the West?
Another Islam-Christian Blow-up on the Horizon?
by Hillel Fendel
"While Christians respect Islam and desire to dialogue with Muslims," Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary says, "[we] must act to protect the Christian identity of Europe."
Msgr. Georg Ganswein, the Pope's secretary, was interviewed in the current edition of Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazine. Though the interview covered many different issues, his comments about Islamic influence in Europe, and what Catholics should do about it, may prove to be the most controversial.
Msgr. Ganswein was asked about Pope Benedict's September 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany, and its criticism of violent trends within Islam. Though the Pope may have intended to warn against religious terrorism, his remarks aroused fury throughout the Moslem world, developing into actual violence in several places. Arabs in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas attacked seven Christian churches, a nun was murdered in Somalia, a call for the Pope's death was issued in London, and Iraqi groups threatened the Vatican.
"I believe the Regensburg speech, as it is known, was prophetic," Msgr. Ganswein told the German magazine, because it countered a "certain naivete" among people who do not recognize that various currents exist within Islam.
"Attempts at the 'Islamification' of the West cannot be denied," he said, according to an English translation in the Catholic Explorer. "And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect... The Catholic side sees this clearly and says as much." True respect, Ganswein said, is shown in a dialogue with Muslims that is frank, open and honest.
The Pope's speech in Regensburg speech included a quote from a 14th-century Christian Emperor, who said, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Several days afterwards, the Pope related to the speech and the storm it caused. He did not apologize or retract his words, but rather expressed his "deep regret" at its consequences, saying the quote was misunderstood to be his own opinion. He also noted his "high regard" for Islam.
It remains to be seen what type of Islamic reaction will be caused by the papal secretary's warning against the Islamification of Europe and the "associated danger for the identity of Europe."
by Hillel Fendel
"While Christians respect Islam and desire to dialogue with Muslims," Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary says, "[we] must act to protect the Christian identity of Europe."
Msgr. Georg Ganswein, the Pope's secretary, was interviewed in the current edition of Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazine. Though the interview covered many different issues, his comments about Islamic influence in Europe, and what Catholics should do about it, may prove to be the most controversial.
Msgr. Ganswein was asked about Pope Benedict's September 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany, and its criticism of violent trends within Islam. Though the Pope may have intended to warn against religious terrorism, his remarks aroused fury throughout the Moslem world, developing into actual violence in several places. Arabs in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas attacked seven Christian churches, a nun was murdered in Somalia, a call for the Pope's death was issued in London, and Iraqi groups threatened the Vatican.
"I believe the Regensburg speech, as it is known, was prophetic," Msgr. Ganswein told the German magazine, because it countered a "certain naivete" among people who do not recognize that various currents exist within Islam.
"Attempts at the 'Islamification' of the West cannot be denied," he said, according to an English translation in the Catholic Explorer. "And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect... The Catholic side sees this clearly and says as much." True respect, Ganswein said, is shown in a dialogue with Muslims that is frank, open and honest.
The Pope's speech in Regensburg speech included a quote from a 14th-century Christian Emperor, who said, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Several days afterwards, the Pope related to the speech and the storm it caused. He did not apologize or retract his words, but rather expressed his "deep regret" at its consequences, saying the quote was misunderstood to be his own opinion. He also noted his "high regard" for Islam.
It remains to be seen what type of Islamic reaction will be caused by the papal secretary's warning against the Islamification of Europe and the "associated danger for the identity of Europe."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Pat Buchanan: The Year's big winner is Islam
Very interesting article here with some good background research. Here is a segment of it:
When will this happen and how should other countries react to it--that is the real question, and it must be addressed sooner rather than later. It is more urgent than the question about the projected failure of the new Islamist regimes. These regimes will understand what they are doing as the will of God, and a god who doesn't make breaking a few eggs to make an omelet (worldwide Islamic hegemony, namely). They will hold on to power, and their ruthless reigns will not result any time soon in a new revolution, but in oppression and, guess what? More emigration to Europe, thus making the Islamization of that continent all the more pronounced. Cf Iran--massive emigration and a theocracy and no coupe.
If demography is destiny, the future would seem to belong to Islam.
Consider. The six most populous Muslim nations – Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Turkey – had a total population of 242 million in 1950. By 2050, that 242 million will have quintupled to 1.36 billion people.
Meanwhile, Europe's fertility rate has been below zero population growth since the 1970s. Old Europe is dying, and its indigenous peoples are being replaced by Third World immigrants, millions of them Muslim.
Yet there is another side to the Islamic story.
In international test scores of high school students in reading, math and science, not one Muslim nation places in the top 30. Take away oil and gas, and from Algeria to Iran these nations would have little to offer the world. Iran would have to fall back on exports of carpets, caviar and pistachio nuts.
Not one Muslim nation is a member of the G-8 economic powers or the BRIC-four emerging powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China.He then goes on to conclude (rightly, I think) that the new Islamist regimes will not be able to deliver the new jobs and freedoms that the revolutionaries wanted. And then, I think, he misses the point and fails to see where his argument is going in the long run. He starts asking questions about what will replace those regimes when they fail. I think the more interesting question is what will replace the European regimes when they fail? He gets the demographics right, and the logical conclusion is that Europe must start to perform poorly and be less educated, Europe must start to look more like the countries where its new population is from. France MUST look more like Algeria. Germany MUST look more like Turkey. The UK MUST look more like Pakistan.
When will this happen and how should other countries react to it--that is the real question, and it must be addressed sooner rather than later. It is more urgent than the question about the projected failure of the new Islamist regimes. These regimes will understand what they are doing as the will of God, and a god who doesn't make breaking a few eggs to make an omelet (worldwide Islamic hegemony, namely). They will hold on to power, and their ruthless reigns will not result any time soon in a new revolution, but in oppression and, guess what? More emigration to Europe, thus making the Islamization of that continent all the more pronounced. Cf Iran--massive emigration and a theocracy and no coupe.
Thursday, January 08, 2015
No, Europe's Muslims will not integrate into a secular society
When I talk about Europe's Islamic future, I often get the rejoinder, "Everyone is becoming more secular and European, whether Christians or Muslims." Not really. Here is Dr Eric Kauffman of the University of London responding to that claim:
That having been said, I want to wish all my readers a happy and religious new year!
Abu Daoud
Other sceptics claim that Muslims will increasingly integrate and leave Europe’s culture largely unchanged, but this is difficult to prove. Here intermarriage is arguably the best barometer of assimilation. Leo Lucassen and Charlotte Laarman of the University of Leiden have researched this area, focusing on Muslim populations in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Britain and France. They concluded that roughly 6 per cent of foreign-born Muslims married outside the faith, rising to 10-11 per cent by the second generation. Much of the increase can be attributed, however, to the somewhat exceptional integration of French Algerians. Overall, the level of Muslims marrying out remains low. In Germany, for instance, just 7.2 per cent of Muslim men and 0.5 per cent of Muslim women were married to someone of another religious faith.Also, young Muslims are as religious (or devout) as their parents are:
An alternative route to integration is secularism. If Muslims are turning into secular Europeans, demography is immaterial. Here again, though, group boundaries are holding. Europe-wide surveys find that Muslims under 25 are as devout as those over 55, a big contrast with Catholics or Anglicans. Muslim youth are often stricter than their elders: a 2006 poll discovered that 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds want to live under sharia law compared to 17 per cent of those over 55.Here is the link to the article: "Europe's Muslim Future"
That having been said, I want to wish all my readers a happy and religious new year!
Abu Daoud
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
EU promoting Islamization?
From the Brussels Journal:
Egyptian-born scholar Bat Ye'or, author of the book "Eurabia," ... explained how the European Union (EU) has become a vehicle for the Islamization of Europe and how the EU has promoted "a massive Muslim immigration [...] hoping that the Euro-Arab symbiosis through economic development, soft diplomacy and multiculturalism would guarantee [Europe] peace, markets and oil."
The citizens of Europe are extremely worried by this Islamization process, but their political leaders impose it on them against their wish. Europe is in worse shape than America because European democracies lack two pillars of freedom that America still has – solidly enshrined in the first and second amendments of its Constitution. In many European countries, freedom of speech no longer exists. It has been restricted by laws intended to curb so-called "hate speech." These laws forbid people to express their worries about massive immigration and about the Islamization of their nations.
Europe, with few exceptions, such as Switzerland, is also unfamiliar with the second pillar of free societies: the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. In countries such as Belgium even pepper spray is an illegal weapon. The result is that the law-abiding citizens are at the mercy of criminals, many of them of foreign extraction.
Read it all Here.
Egyptian-born scholar Bat Ye'or, author of the book "Eurabia," ... explained how the European Union (EU) has become a vehicle for the Islamization of Europe and how the EU has promoted "a massive Muslim immigration [...] hoping that the Euro-Arab symbiosis through economic development, soft diplomacy and multiculturalism would guarantee [Europe] peace, markets and oil."
The citizens of Europe are extremely worried by this Islamization process, but their political leaders impose it on them against their wish. Europe is in worse shape than America because European democracies lack two pillars of freedom that America still has – solidly enshrined in the first and second amendments of its Constitution. In many European countries, freedom of speech no longer exists. It has been restricted by laws intended to curb so-called "hate speech." These laws forbid people to express their worries about massive immigration and about the Islamization of their nations.
Europe, with few exceptions, such as Switzerland, is also unfamiliar with the second pillar of free societies: the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. In countries such as Belgium even pepper spray is an illegal weapon. The result is that the law-abiding citizens are at the mercy of criminals, many of them of foreign extraction.
Read it all Here.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Teaching Frenchness
An interesting article on France's attempt to integrate immigrants by teaching them about 'Frenchness'. How nice. But note the skirting of Christianity:
Another illuminating section, because it mentions that many other countries in Europe have similar concerns:
In the end I think that trying to explain the history or identity of Europeans (whether French or German or English) without a real investigation of Christianity cannot succeed. This is not to say that the governments should tell the people to become Christian, or be openly evangelistic, but really the prosperity and rule of law that exist in Europe could not have been obtained without the Christian faith.
There are many other places on earth with equal natural resources that lack these things. Rule of law is central to growth and development. As China and the Middle East continue to rise look for rule of law to decline. As Christianity declines in Europe, look for rule of law and social stability to decline.
This is an interesting reform for France, but from the article it does not look like it is very well received (except for by the American lady). Sorry to say it, but Europe without the Christian faith--whether Catholic or Protestant--is a hollow shell. And just like a movie without a plot will not succeed, neither will Europe without her heart find any buyers.
Someone wondered why such a proudly secular country had so many Catholic holidays.
"That's just the way it is," the instructor said finally, shrugging in exasperation.
Another illuminating section, because it mentions that many other countries in Europe have similar concerns:
France is certainly not alone in adopting increasingly rigorous integration policies. Other European countries, like the Netherlands, Germany and Britain, have established similar measures, including tests for potential citizens on the host country's language, culture and principles.
But Sarkozy's emphasis on national identity and "Frenchness" is unsettling to some migrants and political critics, who feel he is fundamentally hostile to immigration. After all, his detractors say, this is the man who stepped up the deportation of illegal immigrants and courted far-right voters by evoking (with slightly more tactful language) a slogan used by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party: "France, love it or leave it."
If this day of civic training - with its flashes of skepticism, and even direct criticism, on the part of the immigrants - was any evidence, many immigrants are not willing to buy the patriotic formula offered.
In the end I think that trying to explain the history or identity of Europeans (whether French or German or English) without a real investigation of Christianity cannot succeed. This is not to say that the governments should tell the people to become Christian, or be openly evangelistic, but really the prosperity and rule of law that exist in Europe could not have been obtained without the Christian faith.
There are many other places on earth with equal natural resources that lack these things. Rule of law is central to growth and development. As China and the Middle East continue to rise look for rule of law to decline. As Christianity declines in Europe, look for rule of law and social stability to decline.
This is an interesting reform for France, but from the article it does not look like it is very well received (except for by the American lady). Sorry to say it, but Europe without the Christian faith--whether Catholic or Protestant--is a hollow shell. And just like a movie without a plot will not succeed, neither will Europe without her heart find any buyers.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Council of Europe promotes Islamization of Europe
Read all about it here.
Resolution 1605 of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe member states should continue to be vigilant in their work to prevent and combat the phenomenon of Islamophobia.
9. In light of the above, the Assembly calls on the member states of the Council of Europe to:
9.1. act strongly against discrimination in all areas;
9.2. condemn and combat Islamophobia;
9.7.6. encouraging the participation of people with an immigrant background in political parties, trade unions and non-governmental organisations;
9.7.7. taking all the necessary measures to eliminate the inequality of opportunity faced by immigrants, including unemployment and inadequate education;
9.7.8. removing unnecessary legal or administrative obstacles to the construction of a sufficient number of appropriate places of worship for the practice of Islam;
9.7.9. ensuring that school textbooks do not portray Islam as a hostile or threatening religion;
11.6. encourage young European Muslims to become imams;
11.8. encourage the promotion of fair coverage of Muslim reality and views in the media and ensure that the voice of moderate Muslims is also reported;
11.9. develop ethical guidelines to combat Islamophobia in the media and in favour of cultural tolerance and understanding, in co-operation with appropriate media organisations;
Resolution 1605 of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe member states should continue to be vigilant in their work to prevent and combat the phenomenon of Islamophobia.
9. In light of the above, the Assembly calls on the member states of the Council of Europe to:
9.1. act strongly against discrimination in all areas;
9.2. condemn and combat Islamophobia;
9.7.6. encouraging the participation of people with an immigrant background in political parties, trade unions and non-governmental organisations;
9.7.7. taking all the necessary measures to eliminate the inequality of opportunity faced by immigrants, including unemployment and inadequate education;
9.7.8. removing unnecessary legal or administrative obstacles to the construction of a sufficient number of appropriate places of worship for the practice of Islam;
9.7.9. ensuring that school textbooks do not portray Islam as a hostile or threatening religion;
11.6. encourage young European Muslims to become imams;
11.8. encourage the promotion of fair coverage of Muslim reality and views in the media and ensure that the voice of moderate Muslims is also reported;
11.9. develop ethical guidelines to combat Islamophobia in the media and in favour of cultural tolerance and understanding, in co-operation with appropriate media organisations;
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