A part of europe islamification
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070315-082220-8641r.htm
Europe, as we may readily observe, is very far along in an accommodation
with its still-increasing Muslim immigrant population that is resulting not
in the Europeanizing of Islam, but rather the Islamizing of Europe.
As Bernard Lewis declared in 2004, Europe will have an Islamic majority by
the end of the 21st century at the latest. As Vlaams Belang's Mr. Dewinter
recently put it, "We are becoming foreigners in our own land." Such tragic
pronouncements turn conversation with Vlaams Belang into a kind of political
free verse -- sadly evocative but rooted in a desperate reality that should
shake American complacency. That is, "foreigners in our land" is poetry;
Mohammed as the most popular boy's name in Brussels for six years running is
implacable fact. The idea that "We are living on a dying continent but we
are not dead yet," as Mr. Dewinter has explained, is metaphorical.
His citation from Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi that "Allah is mobilizing
Muslim Turkey to add... 50 million more Muslims" to the European Union
augurs world-class revolution.
Is such a revolution desirable? After writing nearly incessantly about
Islamization since September 11, I won't surprise anyone by saying no -- not
if freedom of conscience, religious equality or women's rights are your bag
(not to mention the glorious representational artwork Europe's museums are
stuffed with). Besides, the strategic implications for the United States
are, in a word, bleak.
In multiculturally totalitarian Belgium, however, you make such judgments at
your own risk. Vlaams Belang, a conservative, free-market party that stands
for Flemish secession from the French-speaking part of Belgium and opposes
continued immigration, now stands trial in a Belgian court for a comment --
a comment! -- Mr. Dewinter made in 2005 to a New York publication, The
Jewish Week. When asked why Belgian Jews should vote for a party that
espouses "xenophobia," Mr. Dewinter replied: "Xenophobia is not the word I
would use. If [it] absolutely must be a 'phobia,' let it be 'Islamophobia.'
Yes, we're afraid of Islam. The Islamization of Europe is a frightening
thing."
If convicted of the "crime" of "Islamophobia" ("1984," anyone?), the party
would lose its state funding. In a country that effectively prohibits
private political fund-raising, Vlaams Belang -- the largest party in
Belgium -- would ultimately cease to exist. And so, too, would free speech
in the center of Europe.
Before I met Vlaams Belang's Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter in
Washington, I believed Europe's rush to Islamize itself was a stampede, its
transformation all but inevitable. Now, I think these men have at least
earned Europe the benefit of the doubt. Studying their various statements
and interviews, I found no evidence to support the crude slanders to which
they are continually subjected in the media for being a right-wing party
opposed to the massive Islamic immigration now transforming traditional
European culture. Indeed, their statements on Israel are more supportive
than any European party I know of.
As Mr. Vanhecke put it in a recent speech, "They call us 'intolerant'
because we oppose intolerance. They call us 'fascists' because we oppose
Islamofascism. They call us 'the children of holocaust perpetrators,'
because we oppose Islamists who are preparing a new holocaust against the
Jews."
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Islamization Is Not Inevitable
By The Brussels Journal
Created 2007-03-16 16:52
A quote from Diana West in The Washington Times, 16 March 2007
Why don't our leaders face [the likely transformation of Europe into an Islamic continent]? This may be one of those questions our children will ask some day. But if such natural curiosity isn't expressed until the next generation, the civilizational struggle for Europe will certainly have been lost. Better to question our politicians now.
Europe, as we may readily observe, is very far along in an accommodation with its still-increasing Muslim immigrant population that is resulting not in the Europeanizing of Islam, but rather the Islamizing of Europe.
[…] Is such a revolution desirable? After writing nearly incessantly about Islamization since September 11, I won't surprise anyone by saying no – not if freedom of conscience, religious equality or women's rights are your bag (not to mention the glorious representational artwork Europe's museums are stuffed with). Besides, the strategic implications for the United States are, in a word, bleak.
In multiculturally totalitarian Belgium, however, you make such judgments at your own risk. […] If convicted of the "crime" of "Islamophobia" ("1984," anyone?), the [Vlaams Belang] party would lose its state funding. In a country that effectively prohibits private political fund-raising, Vlaams Belang – the largest party in Belgium – would ultimately cease to exist. And so, too, would free speech in the center of Europe.
Before I met Vlaams Belang's Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter in Washington, I believed Europe's rush to Islamize itself was a stampede, its transformation all but inevitable. Now, I think these men have at least earned Europe the benefit of the doubt.
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1986
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Islamosocialism
By The Brussels Journal
Created 2007-03-13 21:42
A quote from Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal, 13 March 2007
For Muslim voters in Europe, the attractions of the Socialists are several. Socialists have traditionally taken a more accommodating approach to immigrants and asylum-seekers than their conservative rivals. They have championed the welfare state and the benefits it offers poor newcomers. They have promoted a multiculturalist ethos, which in practice has meant respecting Muslim traditions even when they conflict with Western values. In foreign policy, Socialists have often been anti-American and, by extension, hostile to Israel. That hostility has only increased as Muslim candidates have joined the Socialists' electoral slates and as the Muslim vote has become ever more crucial to the Socialists' electoral margin.
More mysterious, however, at least as a matter of ideology, has been the dalliance of the progressive left with the (Islamic) political right. Self-styled progressives, after all, have spent the past four decades championing the very freedoms that Islam most opposes: sexual and reproductive freedoms, gay rights, freedom from religion, pornography and various forms of artistic transgression, pacifism and so on. For those who hold this form of politics dear, any long-term alliance with Islamic politics ultimately becomes an ideological, if not a political, suicide pact. One cannot, after all, champion the cause of universal liberation in alliance with a movement that at its core stands for submission.
This is not, of course, the first time such a thing has happened in the history of the progressive movement, or in European history. On the contrary, it is the recurring theme. In the early 20th century, the apostles of Fabianism – George Bernard Shaw among them – looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration; in the 1960s the model was Mao; in the late 1970s, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault went to Iran to write a paean to Khomeini's revolution. In nearly every case, the progressives were, by later admission, deceived, but not before they had performed their service as "useful idiots" to a totalitarian cause.
But the stakes today are different. At question for Europeans is not the prevailing view of a distant country. The question is the shaping of their own. Europe's liberal democrats were able, sometimes with outside help, to preserve their values in the face of an outside threat. Whether they can resist the temptations of Islamosocialism remains to be seen.
Source URL:
Ulei de ricin pret
Re-Christianize Europe: As Christianity Fades, Islam Beckons
By The Brussels Journal
Created 2007-03-07 10:47
A quote from Joseph Farah at World Net Daily, 27 February 2007
Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said the growing Muslim presence in Europe is “a fascinating issue and one that the American government is just now trying to get its mind around. It’s a huge problem, we are thinking about it seriously, and we’ve tried to do some intellectual framing-up.”
What does he propose? He says Europe is to blame. “You have a weird nativist surge in Western Europe, and a kind of odd panic: Aliens are here, they don’t accept our values, they are a threat to our way of life and turn to radicalism,” says Fried.
So [the] State [Department] is going to bring American Muslims to Europe to meet with their counterparts in an effort to “break down stereotypes” and help them end their “self-isolation.” [...]
On one point, however, I think the eggheads at the State Department are right. The key to the outcome of this global conflict is in Europe. Do you want to know how to win the fight against the global jihadists? I’m going to tell you how, and I’m serious. Re-Christianize the continent. […] No, I don’t think sending American Muslims to Europe is a good idea. I think sending American Christians there would make much more sense.
A quote from Daniel Pipes in The National Interest, 1 March 2007
[E]xtreme secularism pervades Europe, especially among its elites, to the point that believing Christians are seen as mentally unbalanced and unfit for public office. In 2005, Italy denied Catholic politician Rocco Buttiliglione the European Union commissionership – because of his views on issues like homosexuality. Entrenched secularism also means empty churches: London is home to seven times more born-Christians than born-Muslims, but more people attend mosques on Friday than churches on Sunday. As Christianity fades, Islam beckons; Prince Charles exemplifies many Europeans’ fascination with Islam. The continent could see many conversions, for as the saying ascribed to G. K. Chesterton contends, “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1950
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Tariq Ramadan and Islam’s Future in Europe
By Marij Uijt den Bogaard
Created 2007-03-13 22:14
From 2003 to 2006 I worked as a civil servant in the Berchem borough of Antwerp, Flanders. Berchem is a multicultural neighbourhood with many immigrants of Turkish and Moroccan origin. My job was to promote the integration of these people and foster good relations between the different ethnic groups living in Berchem. Prior to 2003 I worked in Antwerp North, another neighbourhood with many immigrants.
During the past years I noted how radical Islamists groups began to take over the immigrant neighbourhoods. I warned for this danger in my reports to the city authorities. The latter made it clear to me that they did not like my reports. They said my reports read like “Vlaams Belang tracts.” The VB is the local anti-immigration party. When I kept reporting about what I saw happening around me I was fired.
After my dismissal I wrote to the Antwerp city council:
“You employ workers to improve social cohesion in the city’s neighborhoods. But if you do not want to know what is damaging social cohesion, then you need not bother sending those workers!
“It is alarming that not a single politician in Antwerp is interested in the structural radicalization, the absence of women’s rights, the prevalence of domestic violence, the real reasons why Antwerp citizens of Turkish and Moroccan descent lag behind in education and employment.
“The notion that there could be a connection between religion and the social and economic situation of your ‘difficult to reach target groups’ is a complete taboo!
“You have no interest whatever in ascertaining the causes of street crime, which constitutes an environment where radical Islamist groups recruit followers. Worse, employees who are confronted with this problem and investigate are silently removed, losing their income and their reputation. That is censorship in the fashion of political dictatorships. As a former member of your services I am shocked to find myself in this position and to discover after years of service that you have no policy whatever, either political or with regard to your personnel.”
Recently I began to post articles about my experiences on the Dutch-language section of The Brussels Journal. Since then I have received threats from Islamists, warning me to stop. I will not stop because it is important that people know what is going on. I have many Muslims friends who are also opposed to the radicals. They keep me informed about what is going on, but cannot say this in public for fear of reprisals. As Theodore Dalrymple said: “On a micro-level people are now living in a totalitarian climate. In our Western societies. Within our Western societies there is a micro-totalitarian climate.” This is something we should not tolerate. If we do, we, too, will soon be living in a totalitarian society.
Europe is being confronted with a new challenge: Islam and its influence on political, social and economic policy. Muslims give different interpretations of what Islam means. Islam as a fixed doctrine does not exist. This makes dialogue with the Islamic community extremely difficult. To be sure, there are a certain number of tendencies which – depending on schools and traditions – claim to be interpretations of an Islamitic doctrine. But the very absence of a well defined doctrine makes Islam a Trojan horse. You have to wait to see what is inside, and the latter could be a big surprise. Unfortunately, a radical version of Islam is becoming dominant in Europe. It is the so-called “European Islam,” promoted by modern Islamic philosophers like Tariq Ramadan.
Extremist Muslim groups, such as the Salafists, find in Ramadan a defender of their range of thought. Considering the man’s background this is hardly strange. Ramadan’s maternal grandfather is Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and a source of inspiration for the distribution of Islam as a strict teaching. The Muslim Brotherhood is a worldwide organisation that puts the Quran above the law, with violence if need be. The organisation is forbidden in Egypt – all the more reason for a critical look at Ramadan’s message.
Ramadan describes his vision in a book called “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam”. The first sentence in this book is: “One day we shall go back to the source!” That sounds promising, but who are “we”? All Muslims or all humanity? This question is fascinating, because certain Muslims are convinced that this return to the “source,” obviously meaning the Islam, most certainly applies to all humanity and – depending on interpretation – must be achieved with gentle coercion or with straightforward violence.
An opinion that is alive worldwide among Muslims says that first there was Judaism, then Christianity and finally Islam. They claim that religion means evolution and that, hence, Islam is the final point, past Judaism and Christianity. Is this the return to the “source” to which Mr Ramadan refers? Like the Salafists, Ramadan sees a link between tradition and science. He claims to start from the Quran and Sunnah to arrive via the methodology of Islamic scientists at an enlightened version of Islam, based on a strict adherence to the sources and values of interpretation.
The Quran, however, is not a harmless book for people who are not Muslims. It says that people who do not convert to Islam deserve death and oppression. Does Ramadan’s allegiance to the sources extend to these verses as well? In his book Ramadan explains what Islam will mean for Europe socially, politically and economically. He dissects how Europe can adjust itself to Islam. Indeed, Islam is essentially a doctrine consisting of political, economic and social structures. Europeans think it is a religion, but it claims to be more. I agree with Ramadan that inside Europe we are witnessing to a revolution of youngsters and intellectuals who are looking for the means to live in harmony with their faith, while they also live in our society.
In 2004 a new organisation, called Youth for Islam (YfI), established itself in Berchem, the neighbourhood where I worked. YfI is a Salafist organisation. This means that they put Salaf, or the following of the road of Muhammed’s companions, at the centre of their lives. In other words, they return to the source, by letting their lives as much as possible be a reflection of the life of the prophet. In this the literal interpretation of the Quran is essential. Through attending summer camps, where they are instructed in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and Sharia (Islamic law), youngsters are encouraged not to accept the laws of the Western country where they live, but the Quran.
What the Salafists teach cannot be reconciled with European values: the stoning of women, flogging, the repudiation of children whose fathers are not Muslims, etc., is in contradiction with European law. Those who ask young people living in Europe to follow the rules laid down in a 7th century manual are asking for problems and promote conflict. European law or culture is not compatible with Tariq Ramadan’s doctrine about Islam’s future in Europe.
Organisations like YfI in Antwerp, and similar groups in other European cities – and they are in the process of being established everywhere – have plenty of money. They are sponsored by billionaires in Jordan and Saudi-Arabia. Because they do not get – nor ask – subsidies from European authorities there is no control on their activities. As the YfI chairman told me, his organization does not ask for subsidies because it does not want to be controlled.
In Ramadan’s orthodox Salafist opinion, Europe’s Muslim youths must refuse to come into contact with non-Islamic environments. They have to isolate themselves from Western influences. This is exactly what YfI does. Once they had rented the Berchem conference hall for a lecture and there happened to be a simultaneous exhibition of photography in the entrance hall. I saw how they turned all the “indecent” pictures round and how the great hall where the lecture was held was divided into two sections by curtains: the women had to sit behind the curtains, not visible for the men.
Mr. Ramadan will say that this is exactly how it should be because of Quran regulations. Such conduct however, is not correct according to our European principles. Ramadan’s “European Islam” has not in the least been influenced by European values. I am not a philosopher nor a scientist, as Ramadan, who currently lectures at Rotterdam University, pretends to be. I wonder, however, whether the West should allow Islamists the right to undermine our legal system by advocating the primacy of Islamic law and the imposition of the Sharia in Europe. Why do we have to allow separate swimming hours for Muslim women in public swimming pools? Why do we allow it? Why has Ramadan been given a lectureship at Rotterdam university?
I know many of the Berchem youths who have been hooked by YfI. I know their parents, their families. Like other youths, these youths are searching for an identity. Caught between the traditions and beliefs of their culture and the expectations of Western society, they have problems integrating and do badly economically as well as socially. Can Mr Ramadan’s vision ameliorate their situation? Or is he isolating them even more?
According to the Salafists non-Muslims are lesser people. By saying this they justify the behaviour of young Muslim criminals who target the non-Muslims whilst they never touch fellow Muslims. They told me that drug trafficking is perfectly acceptable as long as one only sells to non-Muslims. They told me that stealing from non-Muslims is allowed as long as one does not harm fellow Muslims. One day our office was burgled and our computers were stolen. All except the two computers belonging to our two Muslim colleagues. You don’t steal from brothers or sisters! The culprits were YfI-members.
Many victims of burglaries in houses and cars, of steaming and other forms of violence, can testify that aggression by Muslims is not directed against brothers and sisters, but against whoever is a kafir, a non-believer. Young Muslims justify their behaviour towards women who do not wear the headscarf, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, by referring to the Salafist teaching which says that these women are whores and should be treated as such. They told me this. I wrote it down in my reports, but the authorities refuse to hear it.
Of course Mr Ramadan disapproves of the young criminals’ behaviour. Of course the YfI leadership disapproves too. But I am convinced they are double-faced. In public, when talking to Westerners, such as the media and the authorities, they condemn the criminals, but they continue to spread the ideas which the criminals use to justify their acts.
Ramadan and the Salafists promote segregation. They tell Muslim women to turn down jobs where they are not allowed to wear the headscarf. They tell young men and women not to go and work in banks, restaurants, hospitals, because the Quran prohibits lending money against interest, forbids alcohol, and instructs people not to touch human beings of the opposite sex. Increasingly the Shariah dictates how a growing number of European citizens lives. It is also beginning to dictate how we have to behave, what cartoons we are allowed to draw, what food we are allowed to eat, what operas we are allowed to see.
Muslims radicals object to a play because the head of a Muhammed puppet is cut off, but at the same time they approve the beheading of journalists in Iraq. Organisations like YfI claim the former is a Western provocation, while the latter is in accordance with the divine right of Dar al harb, the “house of war.” Ramadan and the Salafists teach the Muslim youths that they have the right to demand that our society will adjust to them, but they are unwilling to respect us.
In my opinion Muslims are welcome to live in Europe, but only if they show respect for our culture and history. Mr Ramadan’s philosophy does not offer us anything of value. Just look at the sorrowful conditions of many Muslims in Islamic states. These people flee their own countries and come to the West, where they demand that their way of life be introduced here. Indeed, Tariq Ramadan’s book “Western Muslims and the future of Islam” would never have been written if Muslims had not en masse left their own countries searching for a better life in Europe than in the countries where Islam dictates the political, economic and social structures. We must be aware that Ramadan’s “European Islam” is a Trojan horse in our midst. If Western authorities remain blind to this, it may soon be too late.
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1970
UN predicts huge migration to rich countries
By David Blair
At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, the United Nations said yesterday.
|
Britain's population will rise from 60 million to approaching 69 million by 2050 - almost entirely because of immigration.
The latest figures from the UN's population division predict a global upheaval without parallel in human history over the next four decades.
There will be billions more people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Of these, tens of millions will migrate to Europe and America, while the indigenous populations of most countries in the rich world will either stagnate or decline.
In total, the world's population will grow by 2.5 billion and reach about 9.2 billion by 2050.
This increase - almost all of which will occur in Africa, Asia and the Middle East - is the equivalent of the global population in 1950.
While some countries will grow exponentially, others will shrink dramatically.
The UN predicts the steady depopulation of vast areas of eastern Europe and the former Communist world, as a result of high levels of emigration and birth rates running persistently below replacement levels.
Bulgaria's population will fall by 35 per cent by 2050. Ukraine's will plummet by 33 per cent, Russia's by one quarter and Poland's by one fifth. There will be 10 per cent fewer Germans and seven per cent fewer Italians.
But the flow of migrants across borders will dramatically increase the populations of other developed countries.
"The population of the more developed regions is expected to remain largely unchanged at 1.2 billion, and would have declined, were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries," said the UN.
The level of sustained, mass migration across borders that the world will experience over the next four decades is unprecedented.
Between 1970 and 1980, the rich world took about one million migrants a year from poor countries. During the next 43 years, immigration will run at more than twice that level and approach 2.3 million every year from now until 2050.
Of these migrants, some 400,000 will leave Africa every year and about 1.2 million will emigrate from Asia. The gap in wealth and opportunity between the rich and poor worlds will be the most significant "pull factor" behind this change. But the pressure exerted by rapidly rising populations in developing countries will also be an important underlying cause.
· By 2050, India will have the highest population in the world, totalling almost 1.7 billion people. There will be 292 million Pakistanis, giving their country the fifth biggest population. Nigeria will have 289 million people - making it the world's sixth most populous country - and Uganda's population will rise to 93 million, comfortably exceeding the totals in both its larger neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania. This massive population growth will lead to land degradation on a huge scale and place an immense strain on the limited water resources of poor countries. Malawi cannot feed its present population of 13 million - and every year its soils become more degraded and yields steadily fewer crops. By 2050, the UN forecasts that it will have almost 32 million people - more than twice as many as today. Population growth on this scale will almost certainly leave Malawi permanently dependent on international food aid to keep millions of its people alive. The UN's population predictions have proved largely accurate in the past. While the margin of error for these figures runs into the millions, the broad trends they disclose are undisputed. |
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Will the Third Rome Fall to Islam?
By Fjordman
Created 2007-03-15 08:26
I recently read the book The Reformation by Owen Chadwick, about the Protestant Reformation and the situation in 15th and 16th century Europe. It is fascinating to read about Western Europe during a period when it was genuinely dynamic, not the anemic and self-loathing continent it is now. But still, I was also struck by how many similarities there are between the situation then and now. This was also during a period of Muslim aggression, as the Turks made inroads into the Balkans and Central Europe, eventually threatening even Western Europe.
Ironically, this period was also when the Greco-Roman heritage was rediscovered in the West. The classical heritage had been preserved in the East for a thousand years after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and with the pressures from Muslims, many Greek Byzantine scholars brought their texts with them to northern Italian cities such as Venice, thus fuelling the Renaissance.
However, the overall picture was one of Western division. Spain, which was probably the strongest nation in Europe during the 16th century, was after expelling Muslims from their own peninsula in 1492 more interested in looking westwards to the Americas rather than eastwards to the expanding Ottoman Empire.
The French even allied with the Muslims for their own short-term gains. According to Chadwick, "the French king had not hesitated to attempt alliance with the Turks when it suited his political need, and once allowed a Turkish admiral to celebrate the fast of Ramadan in the streets of Toulon." In general, "the European powers were more frightened of each other than of the Turk."
This was during the Second Jihad against the West. Now similar divisions are occurring during the Third Jihad. Not necessarily between countries, but between various cultural and ideological groups within the West.
It is especially interesting to see how the fall of Constantinople in 1453 affected the other Eastern churches, in particular in the rising Russian state which viewed itself as the successor of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. According to Chadwick, page 360-61:
The Russians always looked to Constantinople, received their faith from the south, felt themselves to participate in Christendom by means of their Slavonic Orthodoxy. By 1505 Russia had been created by Ivan III the Great out of the little principalities of the great plains. He married Sophia, the niece of the last Roman Emperor of Constantinople, and looked upon himself as the heir to the Christian heritage of East Rome. He took for the Russian arms the double-headed eagle of the Byzantines. These notions were powerful in the formation of Russian tradition and autocracy. We find a monk named Philotheos writing to the Tsar between 1505 and 1533: 'Two Romes have now fallen, and the third one, our Moscow, yet standeth; and a fourth one there shall never be […] In all the world thou alone art the Christian Tsar.'
This relationship can be detected clearly in art. Russian religious icons, as well as those in other Orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, have been strongly influenced by Byzantine art. Muslims in Russia are very much aware of this historic connection, which is why a group of top Muslim clerics in 2005 demanded that Orthodox Christian symbols should be removed from the Russian coat of arms.
People from Russia, a country which was once under the Tartar Yoke, should understand the Islamic threat. So why are the Russians helping The Islamic Republic of Iran with missile and nuclear technology that will eventually be used to intimidate non-Muslim countries?
In early 2007, during a meeting with the Russian foreign minister in Tehran, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei was reported as calling for a cooperation between the two countries to halt US ambitions in the region. In 2005, President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is the Islamic world's most reliable partner.
Are the Russians so naive that they believe this beast won't eventually come back to bite them, too? Iran has been secretly training Chechen Muslim rebels in sophisticated terror techniques to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces, the Sunday Telegraph has revealed.
Russia's relationship with the West has always been complicated. As writer Alexander Boot, himself a Russian by birth, states, Russia is only partially Western and has never gone through some of the determening periods of the modern West, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. The country's culture is a complex mix of Western, non-Western and a few anti-Western impulses. According to Boot, author Fyodor Dostoyevsky "sensed that Russia was irreconcilable with the Catholic West, which is why he believed that destroying the West was the holy mission of Russian Orthodoxy."
Some of the Russian skepticism towards the West is understandable. As long as Western nations pander to Muslims, why shouldn't the Russians do so, too? The reaction of European Union officials to the grotesque Islamic Beslan massacre of Russian school children, almost blaming it on the Russian security forces instead of the Islamic terrorists, rightly upset many Russians.
As Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald notes, the American bombing of the Orthodox Serbs to aid Muslim Albanians was seen as an attack on a historic ally of Russia. He thinks the West should be proving to the Russian public that we are on the side of the Serbs, not the Muslims. We should ask them to do the same with Iran: "Russians want a task equal to their putative power, and what they see as their rightful place in the world. Helping the Old World come to its senses about Islam is such a worthy task. They might just consider it."
Perhaps the Russians should study more closely what happened to the Byzantines. In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer discusses the sad case of the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes, who invited the Ottoman Turks into Europe to help him win a dynastic dispute. His invited guests overthrew his Empire about 100 years later, and have stayed in Europe to this day.
Islam was controlled in the Soviet Union but has had a renaissance since its downfall in 1991, helped by oil money from the Middle East. This re-Islamization of Central Asia should worry the Russians. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a border security project, partly to avoid being demographically overwhelmed by Muslims. But Russia, too, has a large and growing Muslim population, and a non-Muslim population in marked decline. It is not impossible, if current trends continue, that Russia could either disintegrate completely or be majority Muslim within this century. Russia's non-Muslim population is declining, but numbers are rising in Muslim regions. Will the country called Russia still exist in the future? And if so, will it be the Russia of Pushkin or of Abdullah?
It is understandable that the Russians have Great Power ambitions of their own. However, one would hope that they will wake up, remember their history and realize that there are worse threats out there than American power.
Some of them do. Elena Chudinova, the author of the dystopian novel The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris, says that if the Muslims were to succeed in establishing their own rule in Moscow, then Russian culture, Russians as a people and Russia itself would cease to exist. And because that danger is not unthinkable, she is calling for a struggle against the Islamic threat to the Christian world.
After Constantinople, the Second Rome and the last remaining vestige of the Roman Empire, in the 15th century was overrun by Muslims, Moscow became the Third Rome. Will the Third Rome fall to Muslims in the 21st century, just as the Second Rome did in the 15th? Or will the Russian people rise to the occasion and defeat the threat, as they have done in the past?
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1978
Did Women's Status Improve With Islam?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ali Sina
Contrary to common belief of the Muslims, Islam did not improve not even “a little” the status of women in Arabia. It actually denigrated them instead of elevating them. There are many proofs to that and one of the evidences can be found in this hadith.
Bukhari Volume 3, Book 43, Number 648:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Abbas:
I had been eager to ask 'Umar about the two ladies from among the wives of the Prophet regarding whom Allah said (in the Qur'an saying): If you two (wives of the Prophet namely Aisha and Hafsa) turn in repentance to Allah your hearts are indeed so inclined (to oppose what the Prophet likes) (66.4), till performed the Hajj along with 'Umar (and on our way back from Hajj) he went aside (to answer the call of nature) and I also went aside along with him carrying a tumbler of water. When he had answered the call of nature and returned. I poured water on his hands from the tumbler and he performed ablution. I said, "O Chief of the believers! ' Who were the two ladies from among the wives of the Prophet to whom Allah said:
'If you two return in repentance (66.4)? He said, "I am astonished at your question, O Ibn 'Abbas. They were Aisha and Hafsa."
Then 'Umar went on relating the narration and said. "I and an Ansari neighbor of mine from Bani Umaiya bin Zaid who used to live in 'Awali Al-Medina, used to visit the Prophet in turns. He used to go one day, and I another day. When I went I would bring him the news of what had happened that day regarding the instructions and orders and when he went, he used to do the same for me. We, the people of quraish, used to have authority over women, but when we came to live with the ansar, we noticed that the ansari women had the upper hand over their men, so our women started acquiring the habits of the ansari women. Once i shouted at my wife and she paid me back in my coin and i disliked that she should answer me back.She said, 'Why do you take it ill that I retort upon you? By Allah, the wives of the Prophet retort upon him, and some of them may not speak with him for the whole day till night.' What she said scared me and I said to her, 'Whoever amongst them does so, will be a great loser.' …
(This is a long Hadith; please read all of it in my article Maryiah the Coptic Maid.)
As you see here Umar is complaining that while the people of Quraish, used to have “authority” over their women, since they came to Medina they noticed that the Ansari women had the upper hand over their men.
Mecca was a religious hub. In all religious centers, often fanaticism overrides commonsense and wherever religion has a stronger grip, women are discriminated. Mecca was no exception. It was natural that women in Mecca had a lower status than their Jews and Ansari counterparts and when they encountered the liberty that the women of Medina enjoyed, they wanted it too. This of course did not sit well with Umar and Muhammad, the two misogynist men of Mecca. The above conversation between these two central figures of Islam clearly shows that they were not pleased to see their wives getting used and enjoying the taste of freedom.
Arabs were not used to write their history. Very little is left of their pre Islamic culture and way of life. What the Muslim historian wrote of that time is all derogatory calling it the days of ignorance "jahiliya" and claiming that until the advent of Islam they were barbarians, who buried their daughters alive and were constantly in war. They say that women prior to Islam were worth less than camels and it was the Prophet who gave them the status of human being. The above hadith however tell us a different story. We can see that Arab women everywhere, except in Mecca, had more rights that Islam took them away. And it shows that the dismal treatment of women in Islam is not a Divine mandate but is how the Qurash used to treat their women. The Prophet being from Quraish himself was used to that kind of women abuse and to him that was the right way. Naturally he projected his is bias against women in his religion and his book.
But there is also another factor that played a great role in the destiny of Muslim women; and that is the impact that the wives of the Prophet had on the Quran and its laws about women.
Anytime that the Prophet needed to say the ultimate word and make others shut up, he would make his Allah reveal a verse. He was an old man, having a harem of almost 20 wives and concubines. All of his wives were young and beautiful (Except the first two, Kadijah and Saudah, whom he married when he was a poor man). In his old age he became the chieftain and very powerful. So he could afford to marry anyone and some even came and offered themselves to him. He would choose only the pretty ones. But political power is not a substitute to physical stamina. The Prophet was fully aware of the age gap between his young wives and himself. He was jealous of other young men looking at them and would warn his wives to not betray him.
33.30
O Consorts of the Prophet! If any of you were guilty of evident unseemly conduct, the Punishment would be doubled to her, and that is easy for Allah.
31. But any of you that is devout in the service of Allah and His Messenger, and works righteousness,- to her shall We grant her reward twice: and We have prepared for her a generous Sustenance.
He would often remind them to behave in a way as not to attract the attention of other men and cover themselves as not to make themselves desired by strangers.
32. O Consorts of the Prophet! Ye are not like any of the (other) women: if ye do fear (Allah), be not too complacent of speech, lest one in whose heart is a disease should be moved with desire: but speak ye a speech (that is) just.
33. And stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display, like that of the former Times of Ignorance; and establish regular Prayer, and give regular Charity; and obey Allah and His Messenger. And Allah only wishes to remove all abomination from you, ye members of the Family, and to make you pure and spotless.
The above clearly shows the worries of an aging man concerned of numerous young and attractive wives. He needed to control them and that is why he ordered them to cover themselves. ironically what was originally meant for the wives of the Prophet became part of the Sharia and was imposed for 1400 years in all Islamic countries.
The Prophet (pbuh) repeatedly emphasized to women the importance of obeying their husbands. Did this too have something to do with the fact that most of his wives were teenagers that he needed to control? They perhaps would not listen to him but they sure would have no choice but to submit to what Allah said. So when he had some domestic problems his Allah would rush to his rescue and reveal verses the the following to put all his wives in their place.
Q. 66: 5.
"It may be if he divorced you (all) that his Lord will give him instead of you, wives better than you, Muslims (who submit to Allâh), believers, obedient to Allâh, turning to Allâh in repentance, worshipping Allâh sincerely, fasting or emigrants (for Allâh's sake), previously married and virgins. “
The truth that women in Arabia had more liberty and authority before Islam than after it can also be evinced from the fact that Khadijah, the Prophet’s first wife had a business of her own and had many men at her service. Muhammad, in fact was but one of her employees. Do we have any tale of women after Islam, running their own business and hiring men to work for them?
For Muhammad (pbuh) women were nothing more than sex objects. It is reported that he refused to shake hands with them. And when they came to give their allegiance he delegated Umar for a such task. What is so sexual about a simple shake hand? Perhaps the Prophet was torn between his sexual impulses and his religious ideals. Something must have happened in his mind that made him feel guilty when he touched women.
The holy Prophet also thought that women are deficient in intelligence and the majority of them will go to hell because they are ungrateful, not to Allah, but to their husbands. Here is what he said.
Bukhari Volume 2, Book 24, Number 541:
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri
On 'Id ul Fitr or 'Id ul Adha Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) went out to the Musalla. After finishing the prayer, he delivered the sermon and ordered the people to give alms. He said, "O people! Give alms." Then he went towards the women and said. "O women! Give alms, for I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-Fire were you (women)." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is the reason for it?" He replied, "O women! You curse frequently, and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. O women, some of you can lead a cautious wise man astray."
It is hard to believe that a man who thought women are responsible for leading men astray, that the majority of them go to hell because they are ungrateful to their husbands and that they are deficient in intelligence, really respected women at all. Various versions of this Hadith are repeated in several places. In another version the Prophet explains the reason for which he believes women are deficient in intelligence in this way:
Bukhari Volume 1, Book 6, Number 301:
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
So according to the holy Prophet’s great reasoning, women are deficient in intelligence because the witness of two of them equal to the witness of one man. And they are also deficient in religion because during their menses they cannot pray or fast. It is not clear what the holy Prophet meant by "deficient in religion". Perhaps he meant that women are spiritually less evolved than men. By using these excuses to prove his case It seems that these unjust laws have been already prevalent among the Arabs. The Prophet, however made them universal by inserting them in the Quran. But isn’t it absurd to prove an absurdity by the authority of another absurdity? Who said a woman’s witness should be worth half of that of a man? Whether it was the Prophet who devised such an unfair ordinance or he echoed what was customary among his people, this law is unreasonable and cannot be used as a proof to call women deficient in intelligence.
The Prophet always used fear as a means to drive home his point. His Allah would send women to hell for the most trivial things like displeasing their husbands.
Bukhari Volume 2, Book 18, Number 161:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin Abbas:
I also saw the Hell-fire and I had never seen such a horrible sight. I saw that most of the inhabitants were women." The people asked, "O Allah's Apostle! Why is it so?" The Prophet replied, "Because of their ungratefulness." It was asked whether they are ungrateful to Allah. The Prophet said, "They are ungrateful to their companions of life (husbands) and ungrateful to good deeds. If you are benevolent to one of them throughout the life and if she sees anything (undesirable) in you, she will say, 'I have never had any good from you.' "
However, there is no mention of men going to suffer any consequence for their mistreating of their wives. As a matter of fact, men are instructed to abuse their wives verbally, emotionally and physically. Yes, that is precisely what Allah has ordained.
Q.4:34
Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.
If anyone has any doubt about the position of women in Islam, the above ayah will dissipate it. It clearly says that men are “maintainers” of women, thus taking away their independence and autonomy, making them subservient to men. It suggests that men are the masters and the owners of the house because they are the breadwinners. It implies that women are incapable or should not be allowed to work and become independent and providers. It assumes that women’s work at home, taking care of the children and the house is worth nothing and she must be grateful for the piece of bread that her husband graciously provide her. Up to here women are nothing but slaves. Yet the holy Prophet (peace be upon him) did not stop there. He instructs men to punish their wives, verbally, sexually and even physically, thus downgrading them to the level of animals. In a world that you could pay a fine for cruelty to animals, these “divine’ teachings are very difficult to swallow. It is unthinkable that a compassionate and just God could ever say such a horrendous things about women. The superiority of men over women is also ratified in another verse of Quran where it says: “and men are a degree above them (women)”. Q.2:228
There are also other versions of the above hadith in Sahih Muslim.
Sahih Muslim Book 004, Number 1926:
Jabir b. 'Abdullah reported: I observed prayer with the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) on the 'Id day. He commenced with prayer before the sermon without Adhan and Iqama. He then stood up leaning on Bilal, and he commanded (them) to be on guard (against evil for the sake of) Allah, and he exhorted (them) on obedience to Him, and he preached to the people and admonished them. He then walked on till he came to the women and preached to them and admonished them, and asked them to give alms, for most of them are the fuel for Hell. A woman having a dark spot on the cheek stood up and said: Why is it so, Messenger of Allah? He said: For you grumble often and show ingratitude to your spouse. And then they began to give alms out of their ornaments such as their earrings and rings which they threw on to the cloth of Bilal.
Basically the holly Prophet (pbuh) used these scare mongering tactics to collect money from his foolhardy audience who gathered around him and listened to his nonsense stories.
In another place the Prophet of Allah compares women to devil.
Bukhari Volume 1, Book 6, Number 301:
Jabir reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) saw a woman, and so he came to his wife, Zainab, as she was tanning a leather and had sexual intercourse with her. He then went to his Companions and told them: THE WOMAN ADVANCES AND RETIRES IN THE SHAPE OF A DEVIL, so when one of you sees a woman, he should come to his wife, for that will repel what he feels in his heart.
Perhaps the Prophet thought it is so holy to go to one of his wives after desiring another woman. I wonder how a wife would feel when her husband actually is fancying another woman but is using her just to relieve himself?
There are numerous verses in Quran and hadithes that are outrageous. The following Hadith however, in my opinion, takes the cake.
Bukhari Volume 4, Book 54, Number 460:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "If a husband calls his wife to his bed (i.e. to have sexual relation) and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning."
The above makes one wonder, whether Allah has nothing else to do than worrying about the sexual pleasures of his male servants? It seems quiet absurd that God would employ so many angels to do nothing but sit around and curse the women who do not want want to please their husbands sexually. Hadithes like this are repeated so many times that one start to suspect whether Allah is a dirty old pervert voyeur who gets pleasure, watching people doing it.
Sahih Muslim Book 008, Number 3367:
Abu Huraira (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: By Him in Whose Hand is my life, when a man calls his wife to his bed, and she does not respond, the One Who is in the heaven is displeased with her until he (her husband) is pleased with her.
And
Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 122:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "If a woman spends the night deserting her husband's bed (does not sleep with him), then the angels send their curses on her till she comes back (to her husband)."
It is hard to determine why the holy Prophet (peace be upon his immaculate soul) was so concerned about this issue. But again we should remember that he was an old man. Perhaps his teeth were decaying and his mouth had a foul smell. On the other hand his wives were very young ladies. They must have enjoyed their status as the wives of the Prophet and the first ladies of Arabia, but probably they were not that much desirous to share the bed with and old man like him. Perhaps these warnings of angels’ curses and the Allah’s displeasure were to coerce his own wives to sleep with him.
I am not a woman but still I am offended at so much insult hurled at my my own sister and my sisters in humanity. The following is the most obscene and offensive statement of the holy Prophet. I find it extremely derogatory to women.
Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 33:
Narrated Usama bin Zaid:
The Prophet said, "After me I have not left any affliction more harmful to men than women."
But he did not stop there. In every occasion he found an excuse to show his despise of women and poison the minds of his followers with ridiculous talks like the following.
Sahih Muslim Book 008, Number 3466:
AbuHuraira (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Woman is like a rib. When you attempt to straighten it, you would break it. And if you leave her alone you would benefit by her, and crookedness will remain in her. A hadith like this is reported by another chain of narrators.
How can a society (ummah) truly respect their women when their prophet was so scornful of them? When he was so contemptuous of their faith, so derisive of their intelligence, so disrespectful of their rights and so disdainful of their status, can we expect more from his followers?
Bukhari Volume 4, Book 55, Number 623:
Narrated Abu Musa:
Allah's Apostle said, "Many amongst men reached (the level of) perfection but none amongst the women reached this level except Asia, Pharaoh's wife, and Mary, the daughter of 'Imran. And no doubt, the superiority of 'Aisha to other women is like the superiority of Tharid (i.e. a meat and bread dish) to other meals."
Here Mohammad is confusing the Miriam (in Arabic Maryam) the daughter of Imran and the sister of Moses and Aaron with Mary (alos Maryam in Arabic) the mother of Jesus. He made the same mistake in Quran. Miriam, the daughter of Imran is not an important religious figure. In fact she even disobeyed God once. We also don't know who is this Asia the Pharaoh's wife it must have part of a legend that Muhammad had heard, which is now forgotten.
The moral standard and ethical values of the holy Prophet (peace be upon his immaculate soul) can be revealed by his examples and stories of his life. Like this one:
Bukhari Volume 7, Book 63, Number 182:
Narrated Abu Usaid
We went out with the Prophet to a garden called Ash-Shaut till we reache d two walls between which we sat down. The Prophet said, "Sit here," and went in (the garden). The Jauniyya (a lady from Bani Jaun) had been brought and lodged in a house in a date-palm garden in the home of Umaima bint An-Nu'man bin Sharahil, and her wet nurse was with her. When the Prophet entered upon her, he said to her, "Give me yourself (for sex) as a gift." She said, "Can a princess give herself to an ordinary man?" The Prophet raised his hand to pat her so that she might become tranquil. She said, "I seek refuge with Allah from you." He said, "You have sought refuge with One Who gives refuge. Then the Prophet came out to us and said, "O Abu Usaid! Give her two white linen dresses to wear and let her go back to her family.
Didn’t the Prophet have enough women already? Did he have to mount every beautiful woman whom he met? Look at his temper. In one moment he is overtaken by lust asking his hostess to "give herself to him as a gift", when he is rejected he becomes violent and raises his hand to beat the poor woman, then when she seeks refuge with Allah the Prophet (peace be upon his immaculate soul) comes to his senses and feels guilty for his despicable behavior and to alleviate his conscience decides to compensate his victim by bribing her. Is this the profile of a mentally stable man?
The Prophet had no regard for women. To him women represented everything that was evil. Even at a subconscious level the holy messenger of God, saw women as the mark of disease and affliction. When he dreamt a black woman in his dream, his disparage of women and the blacks made him interpret it as the sign of epidemic.
Bukhari Volume 9, Book 87, Number 163:
Narrated Salim's father
The Prophet said, "I saw (in a dream) a black woman with unkempt hair going out of Medina and settling in Mahai'a. I interpreted that as (a symbol of) epidemic of Medina being transferred to Mahai'a, namely, Al-Juhfa."
Even in religious matters he asserted the symbolical inferiority of women.
Narrated Sahl bin Sa'd:
The people used to pray with the Prophet tying their Izars around their necks because of their small sizes and the women were directed that they should not raise their heads from the prostrations till the men had sat straight. (Sahih Bukhari 1.778)
And as recorded in the following hadith he sealed the eternal enslavement of them.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "It is not permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and the Last Day to travel for one day and night except with a Mahram." (Sahih Bukhari 2.194)
Let us end our review of the status of woman in Islam with these inspiring words of wisdom uttered by the messenger of Allah (peace be upon his immaculate soul) found in hadithes:
· "To find a good woman among women is similar to finding a white crow among a hundred crows."
· "The marriage commitment is a kind of slavery for women."
· "If anybody has been required to prostrate before others beside God, the woman should prostrate before her husband."
· "If the body of the husband is covered with pus and his wife licks it with her tongue, she still will not be able to pay her debt to him."
Religion of Peace? 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111HOME
By Andrew C. McCarthy |
National Review Online |
January 10, 2007 |
Islam is quintessentially tolerant. Its adherents are hospitable to liberty, equality, and pluralism, the rudiments of modern democracy. Those committing terror in its name are heretics — a fringe which has “hijacked” a “religion of peace.”
This conventional wisdom brims over the mainstream media’s daily servings. It is, moreover, the not-to-be-questioned premise of U.S. policy on a host of paramount issues: everything from how the war on terror is conceptualized and prosecuted, to the wisdom of negotiations with Iran, a sovereign state for Palestinians, agitation for freedom and popular self-determination throughout the Middle East, and the assumption that our own growing Muslim population will seamlessly assimilate.
But is it true?
Emphatically, the answer is “no.” So argues best-selling author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in The Truth about Muhammad — Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95). And he does not expect you to take his word for it.
Painstakingly, Spencer has crafted a biography Islam’s Prophet from the authentic Muslim Sunnah, comprised of: the Koran, which is taken by believers to be the verbatim word of Allah, dictated to Muhammad in Arabic by the angel Gabriel; the tafsir, or Koranic commentary; the hadith, which are lengthy volumes recording the words and traditions of Muhammad (there are six different collections, dating from the eighth and ninth centuries); and, finally, the sira, authoritative biographies of the Prophet, including what remains to us of Ibn Ishaq’s hagiographic account, written about 150 years after Muhammad’s death in 632.
The picture that emerges is complex but not ambiguous. Muhammad was a dynamic figure — necessarily, among the most dynamic in history, having formed from scratch a movement that ultimately dominated lands from the Near East to Central Asia (to say nothing of pockets of Europe, Africa, and the Far East), a movement that today claims over a billion adherents. He was also, through and through, a product of Arabia’s tribal antiquity — a fact often stressed by Islam’s modern sympathizers to explain, if not smooth, the Prophet’s many rough edges.
In such a life, unsurprisingly, one finds episodic acts of tolerance and benevolence. But there are episodes and then there is trajectory. The arc of Muhammad’s life tends decisively to intolerance and inequality. His was, ultimately, a bellicose, us-versus-them world of conquest and booty. This cannot help but imbue the religion he founded. In it, his example is normative: the scriptures revere him as “an excellent model of conduct” (Sura 33:21), who exhibits an “exalted standard of character” (68:4) and obedience to whom is repeatedly adjured — indeed, is made equally as essential as obedience to Allah Himself (4:80). Recalling the Muslim fury over Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2005, Spencer points out that in the Koran “again and again Allah is quite solicitous of his prophet, and ready to command what will please him. To the mind of someone who accepts the [Koran] as an authentic revelation, this places Muhammad in a particularly important position.”
CONTRADICTION AND AMBIGUITY
The Prophet of Islam was born in Mecca, a member of the Quraysh tribe which did a lucrative trade in pilgrimages to the local shrine, the Kabah — now the central locus of Islamic worship but then home to numerous pagan idols. Both Muhammad’s parents died in his early childhood. In his twenties, he was hired as a traveling salesman by his distant cousin Khadija, an accomplished merchant woman whose wares he deftly traded in Syria. Though fifteen years his senior, Khadija proposed marriage, becoming the first of Muhammad’s many wives (biographers peg the number at between eleven and thirteen, with Muhammad having claimed to be “given the power of sexual intercourse equal to forty men”). Eventually, she also became the first Muslim.
Muhammad’s prophetic career spanned about 23 years after he received, at age 40, what he came to believe was his first revelation. Initially, the call to Islam was a straightforward summons to monotheism — to worship only “Allah,” who, Spencer explains, may have been the tribal god of the Quraysh (and thus one of the many local deities).
As further revelations fleshed out nascent Islam, there was transparent borrowing from the Bible, the Torah, other Jewish and Christian sources (including heterodox strains of Christianity then abundant in Arabia), Zoroastrian writings from Persia, and local pagan ritual. The resulting similarities discomfit Muslims, who often insist that they represent not emulation but happenstance, the Koran having been recited to Muhammad (who was illiterate) by Allah in His original language of Arabic. Beyond that, any seeming Judeo-Christian influence is attributed to Jews and Christians being fellow “People of the Book,” whose God Muslims share and whose heritage they claim to supersede. It is, in fact, an enduring tenet that Jews and Christians are, as Spencer puts it, “sinful renegades from the truth of Islam,” who corruptly altered their scriptures to elide foreshadowings of Muhammad’s coming.
One of the seeming contradictions of Muhammad’s life is the contrast of his early hospitality toward Jews (and Christians) with his final position of unremitting enmity. Contradictions, of course, create ambiguity. This is useful for Islam’s modern apologists, who incessantly underline a few isolated episodes of tolerance and even kindness as if they could bleach away Muhammad’s legacy of arch hostility toward non-Muslims — a legacy built, for example, on the Koran’s admonition that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51); on Muhammad’s vision of the end of the world: marked by Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, … there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him”); and on the Prophet’s deathbed call for the total expulsion of unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula — a desire the Saudi government honors to this day, particularly in Mecca and Medina, cities closed to non-Muslims.
Spencer cogently explains, however, that there is no real contradiction or ambiguity. Especially in the early phase of his prophesying — the Meccan period before Hijra, when the Muslims were forced to flee to Medina — Muhammad had great reason to be solicitous: He was building a movement. Arabia’s powerful Jewish tribes (the Qaynuqa, Auf and Qurayzah, among others) were among those the Prophet most energetically called to Islam. Thus we find Muhammad “situating himself within the roster of Jewish prophets, forbidding pork for his followers, and adapting for the Muslims the practice of several daily prayers and other aspects of Jewish ritual.” Muhammad, moreover, struck a treaty with Medina’s Jewish tribes — grandiosely regarded by Muslims as “the world’s first constitution” — which described them as “one community with the believers” (though tellingly, even in this amicable period, the pact drew sharp distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims).
In fact, this adaptability, when exhibited in Muhammad’s similarly earnest efforts to convert his native Quraysh to Islam, resulted in the nearly ruinous “Satanic verses” incident (made infamous in modern times by Salman Rushdie’s book and the consequent murder fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). Desperate to be reconciled with his own people, Muhammad convinced himself that he’d received a revelation allowing Muslims to pray to three pagan goddesses favored by the Quraysh as intercessors for Allah. The Quraysh were thrilled, but the Prophet, upon a countermanding revelation from an angry Gabriel, soon realized he had not only contradicted the core of his monotheistic preaching but potentially undermined the entire Islamic enterprise by raising the possibility that his revelations were not authentic. Allah forgave Muhammad, observing that Satan’s interference had been an occupational hazard for all His beleaguered prophets through the ages. Still, the incident is sufficiently embarrassing that Muslim scholars and apologists continue ferociously to discredit it, although, Spencer concludes, the evidence preponderates against them.
BRUTAL CONQUEST
In any event, good will between Muslims and non-Muslims proved fleeting. Muhammad’s overriding aim was Islamic hegemony not ecumenical coexistence. Upon resettling in Medina, Muhammad became as much a political and military leader as the apocalyptic preacher of his first 13 years of prophesying. The Jews, like the Quraysh, many Christian communities, and other non-Muslims declined to heed his call. Rejection of Islam was construed as attack upon Islam, for which the prescription was jihad.
Incontestably, jihad is a central imperative (in fact, the highest obligation) of Islam. Muhammad’s career as a fierce and, at times, brutal warrior illustrates the futility of efforts to render congenial to modern sensibilities this command to struggle against perceived enemies. Yes, the Koran famously asserts that there shall be “no compulsion in religion” (2:256). But however hortatory this injunction may be, it is ahistorical. Islam was spread by the sword.
The Prophet’s military feats began with attacks, many of which he led personally, on Quraysh caravans. These raids, Spencer explains, were not merely acts of vengeance against those who had rejected Islam; they further “served a key economic purpose, keeping the Muslim movement solvent.” Booty would be central to Muslim militancy, and thus grew rules for its division (such as one-fifth of the haul set aside for the Prophet, and the propriety of using female slaves as concubines). Asked by a follower about the legitimacy of nighttime attacks given the probability of endangering women and children, Muhammad indicated these were permissible because such noncombatants “are from them” (i.e., the unbelievers).
It is due to this and other lessons that the battles of early Islam resonate today — creating a major hurdle (I fear, an insuperable one) for reformers hopeful of convincing the ummah (i.e., the worldwide Muslim community) that it’s the terrorists, not the reformers themselves, who are doctrinally wayward.
The Prophet, for example, directed “martyrdom” operations. Martyrdom, Spencer elaborates, was understood exactly as it is by today’s jihadists: “referring to one who (in the words of a revelation that came to Muhammad much later) ‘slays and is slain’ for Allah (Qur’an 9:111), rather than in the Christian sense of suffering unto death at the hands of the unjust for the sake of the faith.”
Muslims were authorized by another revelation to break treaties — particularly with the Jews — when there appeared advantage in doing so (8:58). And in the tone-setting “Nakhla Raid” against the Quraysh, a timely revelation helped Muhammad overcome his initial reluctance to accept booty derived from killings committed by his followers during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden. Those murdered had disbelieved Allah. This, the Prophet learned, was the greater evil. Of course, the collateral lesson, as Spencer relates, was that “[m]oral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.”
Believers were instructed to fight and behead non-believers (47:4), and did so mercilessly. After the out-numbered Muslims decisively triumphed over the Quraysh in the “Battle of Badr,” for example, one captured Quraysh leader pled for his life, asking, “But who will look after my children?” “Hell,” replied Muhammad, ordering the man killed. Another leader’s head was brought as a trophy to the Prophet, who expressed delight and gave thanks to Allah. (No wonder then, Spencer interjects, that when al Qaeda’s strongman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, decapitated American hostage Nicholas Berg, he declared, “The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in Badr and to kill them…. And he set a good example for us.”) (Brackets in original.) Allah, in fact, expressed anger at Muhammad after Badr because the Prophet agreed to take ransom from some captured Quraysh leaders rather than beheading them as his companion, Umar, had urged.
In Medina, the Muslims were pitted against an alliance of the Quraysh and the Qurayzah Jews in the “Battle of the Trench.” During the Muslims’ building of the defensive trench, Muhammad’s pick blows are said to have emitted lightening flashes, which drew cries of “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest” — the “Islamic cry of victory” for Spencer) and were interpreted by the Prophet as a sign that Allah would eventually make Islam triumphant beyond Arabia in the east and west. Opining that “war is deceit,” Muhammad directed one of his followers to appear as a sympathizer to the enemy factions, while sowing discord between them. It worked: the Quraysh abandoned the field and the Muslims laid siege to the Jews, whom Muhammad called “brothers of monkeys.” (Spencer notes three places — 2:62-65, 5:59-60 and 7:166 — where the Koran records that “Allah transformed the Sabbath-breaking Jews into pigs and monkeys.”) When the Qurayzah surrendered and sought mercy, Muhammad agreed with the assessment of his follower Sad bin Muadh that “their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives.” In the execution, Muhammad personally participated in the beheading of between 600 and 900 captives — including all males who had reached puberty.
This incident was not unique. Spencer recounts that Muhammad ordered a Jewish poet, Kab bin al-Ashraf, killed because the Prophet took offense at “amatory verses of an insulting nature about Muslim women.” After the murder, he commanded the Muslims: “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” When Muhammad ordered the expulsion of the Nadir Jews with whom area Muslims had a treaty, Muhammad’s emissary declared, “Hearts have changed, and Islam has wiped out the old covenants.” When the Jews declined to leave, Muhammad construed this to mean that “[t]he Jews have declared war” — another reminder that whether Islam is “under attack,” the trigger of jihad, is ever in the eyes of the beholder. In the ensuing siege, the Prophet ordered the earth scorched, refuting his own prohibition against the wanton destruction of property so often cited by Islamic apologists. And in the “Raid at Khaybar,” Muhammad directed that a Jewish leader, Kinana bin al-Rabi, be tortured to extract the location of tribal treasure; when al-Rabi stood fast, Muhammad had him beheaded, and later, when more hidden treasure was located, the incensed Prophet — as he had done with the Qurayzah Jews — directed that warriors among the Khaybar Jews be killed and the women and children taken as slaves.
WHY MUHAMMAD MATTERS
Why rehash these and other chilling episodes in the meteoric, militaristic rise of early Islam? Because, Spencer maintains, they are crucial to appreciating the dual challenge faced by Westerners and Islamic reformers.
Americans, told incessantly by their elites that Islam is a “religion of peace,” watch in bewilderment when, for example, a Muslim convert to Christianity is subjected to a death penalty trial in the “new” Afghanistan, liberated from the Taliban due to great American sacrifice. How, they rightly wonder, could the “moderates’ now in charge abide such a thing? The answer is as simple: Islam’s prophet made death the penalty for apostasy. (“Whoever changed his Islamic religion,” said Muhammad, “then kill him.”) There is a crying need, Spencer observes, “for Westerners to become informed about the words and deeds of Muhammad — which make the actions of Islamic states much more intelligible than do the words of Islamic apologists in the West.”
The foundation of American policy, furthermore, is the conceit that moderates represent the Islamic mainstream, that they reflect the authentic image of a Muhammad — the “highest example of human behavior” — who championed the values of democracy and equality. “But,” as Spencer cautions, “if the jihad terrorists are correct in invoking his example to justify their deeds, then Islamic reformers will need to initiate a respectful but searching re-evaluation of the place Muhammad occupies within Islam — a vastly more difficult undertaking.”
And this must be said not just of jihad terrorists. Spencer, for example, is understanding about the actions of Muhammad, then aged 50, in taking Aisha as a wife when she was six and consummating the marriage when she was nine. This was, after all, in the spirit of the times. Nevertheless, for believers, the Prophet’s example transcends its time, and thus child-brides are a commonplace in the Islamic world. Muhammad’s Islam, moreover, still confines women to a subordinate status — the Koran likens a woman to a “tilth” to be used as a man wills (2:223); a man may take four wives and have sex with slave girls (4:3); a woman’s testimony is valued at half that of a man (2:282); and so on. There is, moreover, simply no credibly denying the denigrated status of non-Muslims, reduced by Muhammad and his successors to humiliating dhimmitude and, as we have seen, brutalized.
Individually, countless Muslims have evolved past these notions. But Islam has not — certainly not in a dominant or convincing way. If anything, atavism is at least as strong a current as reform. Is it realistic to believe the tens of millions (more likely, hundreds of millions) of Muslims whose compass is Muhammad’s belligerent, hegemonic vision of Islam — a vision that has endured for 14 centuries — will abandon it in favor of an Islam that embraces liberty, self-determination, and equality based on our common humanity? Anything, one imagines, is possible … but such a seismic shift is not going to happen any time soon.
Robert Spencer graphically illustrates the depth of our folly in thinking — or, rather, blithely assuming — otherwise. An alarming book, and a necessary one.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
http://www.spcm.org/Journal/spip.php?article7249 11111111111111111111111111111111HOME
Islam is Taking a Grip on Europe
Why Muslims Object to 'Piggy Banks'
By Wolfgang Polzer
WETZLAR — Islam is slowly but surely taking a grip on the European
culture, warns the German journalist and university lecturer Udo Ulfkotte.
Traditional values, customs and judicial standards are gradually customized
to meet Muslim requirements.
As Ulfkotte explained at a meeting of Christian Democrats in Wetzlar, March
8, more and more institutions are making allowances for Muslims. Many banks,
he said, are abandoning the so-called piggy banks, because they are afraid
of losing Muslim customers. Muslims regard the pig as an unclean animal.
German butchers who sell pork are targeted by Muslim extremists, according
to Ulfkotte. Muslims occasionally spit on sausages on sale at open-air
markets.
In some European cities Muslim taxi drivers refuse to transport dogs, even
blind persons with guide dogs. Two schools in Berlin have installed two
separate entrances – one for German Christians and Jews and the other
for Muslim Arabs and Turks.
The Muslim Sharia law is also beginning to take hold. Banks are offering
Sharia-friendly investments, Ulfkotte said. Authorities in Berlin have
recognized a Sharia lawyer, who settles family feuds.
According to the journalist many German politicians turn a blind eye to the
gradual Islamization. They often emphasize that the vast majority of the 3.5
million Muslims in Germany are peaceful citizens. But, says Ulfkotte, 40
percent are convinced that the German constitution is incompatible with
Islam.
According to the journalist many Muslims in Europe show a lack of tolerance.
For their integration to be successful they would have to adapt to basic
European values.
Hindus, Ulfkotte said, are a good example that this is possible. They accept
that Europeans eat beef, although Hindus regard cows as sacred animals.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111HOME
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/entertainment/article.jsp?content=20061023_134898_134898
The future belongs to Islam
The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An excerpt from 'America Alone'.
MARK STEYN | Oct 20, 2006
Loose translation by : …
Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed.
The larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.
1) Let's start with demography, because everything does:
If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.
Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. (Romania ?? … Robert pls fill in 1.3… )Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.
As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs.
Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in.
2) Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.
You might formulate it like this:
Age + Welfare = Disaster for you;
Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way.
By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture. Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere.
Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare.
We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim's pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.
For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view.
3) Which brings us to the third factor -- the enervated state of the Western world, the sense of civilizational exhaustion, of nations too mired in cultural relativism to understand what's at stake. As it happens, that third point is closely related to the first two. There is a correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social democratic state and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood -- health care, child care, care of the elderly -- to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal "deficit" isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a cheque to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it.
There were two forces at play in the late 20th century: in the Eastern bloc, the collapse of Communism; in the West, the collapse of confidence. One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis The End Of History -- written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism -- is that the victors didn't see it as such. Americans -- or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans -- may talk about "winning" the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do. These are all formal NATO allies -- they were, technically, on the winning side against a horrible tyranny few would wish to live under themselves. In Europe, there was an initial moment of euphoria: it was hard not be moved by the crowds sweeping through the Berlin Wall, especially as so many of them were hot-looking Red babes eager to enjoy a Carlsberg or Stella Artois with even the nerdiest running dog of imperialism. But, when the moment faded, pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea. With the best will in the world, it's hard to credit the citizens of France or Italy as having made any serious contribution to the defeat of Communism. Au contraire, millions of them voted for it (!), year in, year out. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation of the West only accelerated.
And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Indians had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons !!!
The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al-Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally franchised, extensively outsourced -- but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation-states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation-states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. Sept. 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses.
We can argue about what consequences these demographic trends will have, but to say blithely they have none is ridiculous. The basic demography explains, for example, the critical difference between the "war on terror" for Americans and Europeans: in the U.S., the war is something to be fought in the treacherous sands of the Sunni Triangle and the caves of the Hindu Kush; you go to faraway places and kill foreigners. But, in Europe, it's a civil war. Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little." This time round, for much of western Europe it turned out the faraway country of which they knew little was their own.
Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower. The longer the long war gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.
Almost every geopolitical challenge in the years ahead has its roots in demography, but not every demographic crisis will play out the same way. That's what makes doing anything about it even more problematic -- because different countries' reactions to their own particular domestic circumstances are likely to play out in destabilizing ways on the international scene. In Japan, the demographic crisis exists virtually in laboratory conditions -- no complicating factors; in Russia, it will be determined by the country's relationship with a cramped neighbour -- China; and in Europe, the new owners are already in place -- like a tenant with a right-to-buy agreement. The only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.
On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America – 40% of Muslims in UK want Syariah law !!) to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA (anti-UK) man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at his minority party will loose at the ballot box. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.
You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything's about jihad."
Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.
In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."
No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed.
Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so:
There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis' (alleged) Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians.
How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak.
In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?
"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."