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| 2006/10/29-11/1 [Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:45029 Activity:moderate |
10/29 Mark Steyn op/ed in the Chicago Sun Times.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/114966,CST-EDT-steyn29.article
The invaluable Brussels Journal recently translated an interview
with the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from the Belgian paper De
Standaard. A Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the
trifecta of Eurocool), van den Boogaard was reflecting on the
accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that
the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but
who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my
freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."
\_ Yay I'm eurocool!
Just something to think about.
\_ I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I believe that the suspension
of habeous corpus is a life-and-death issue for this republic.
\_ Which may be true but isn't at all what OvdB is talking about.
Do you believe whole heartedly with him that the accelerating
Islamificiation of Europe is destroying it as we speak?
\_ No, I agree with the op's assertion that the quote, sans
context, is something to think about.
\_ Ok, then you totally missed the point because context
is everything. Without context the quote floats out in
meaningless space. Do you really believe that there is no
Islamification process taking place in Europe now or do you
believe it will not end Mr. OvdB's freedom as he knows it?
And btw, replying by misdirection is thread jacking and
somewhat rude since you didn't agree at all with the real
point being made. Please make your own thread if you
want to talk about the US and Bush bashing. --op
\_ Well, now, you didn't actually seem to have a point
before. If you wanted this to be a thread about the
"islamification" of Europe, perhaps you should have
included explicating text to that effect. Instead, you
gave us a shotgun splatter or both "islamification" and
a quote that seemed to be aimed at galvanizing geeks
sitting on their asses. Really, if you're not going to
be clear in what you want to talk about, how do expect
anyone to take you seriously? In regards to the
\_ <sarcasm> Hmmm, multi-line post about
Islamification. No mention of US or Bush.
Clearly, I was unclear and I can now see how you
thought I was talking about Bush and the US and not
Europe and Islamification. </sarcasm>
\_ I didn't. I thought you were talking about
learning to fight for your freedom, hence my
declaration that I agree that we must fight for
for our freedom against its enemies, like Bush.
\_ I was but in a European/Islamic context. I
read+hear enough about this country's
problems which are serious but I don't believe
rise to the level of what I see going on in
Europe. If Europe really does fall and turn
into a part of some Greater Caliphate then
our current problems and trends will look
trivial in comparison.
\_ And if we let the Jews own property,
they'll turn all good Christians into their
slaves and drink the blood of Christian
babies. Alarmist overreactions are often
used to solidify nationalist support and
ostracize/marginalize foreign populations.
The much more likely outcome of Muslim
immigration to the EU is secularization
of Islam. How we handle this integration
and assimilation will determine how much of
stake the next generation of Islamo-Euro-
peans feel they have in the status quo.
Cf. the riots in Paris which have nothing
to do with Islam and everything to do with
economic depression in the ethnic slums.
\_ Hopefully you can see the difference
between the racism inflicted on other
people and the demographic trends in
Europe going on right now shifting
towards people who are anti-Western and
have no concept of freedom as we know
it in the West. Blood libels against
Jews are not the same as the real world
events you can read about in newspapers
every day. But I'm sure you knew that.
\_ Please show me evidence of these
demographic trends you speak of.
\_ Try this. It even attempts to
tell us that all of this is a-ok.
I thought you might appreciate a
link of this nature instead of
the doom n gloom link I more
easily could have provided:
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19233
\_ Thank you. I do indeed
appreciate your effort here.
This is an interesting article
and certainly raises some
issues. However, I still don't
see a trend toward anti-
Western populations with no
concept of freedom as we know
it in the West; in fact, I see
a trend toward people who are
even more painfully aware of
how precious our (now their)
freedoms are.
\_ This doesn't directly talk
of demogph trends but it
does cover several issues
more broadly and is perhaps
more interesting than some
of the charts I found
elsewhere:
http://www.digitalnpq.org/articles/europe/10/08-17-2005/ayaan_hirsi_ali
\_ Let's be blunt: any
crimes against another
person (or illegal
possession of explosives
or weapons) should
certainly be dealt with
immediately and with the
full weight of the law.
That goes for anyone,
native or immigrant. That
said, immigrant !=
terrorist or criminal.
\_ Islam has never successfully been
secularized (even Turkey is not what
we in the West would call secular).
The experience of India under the yoke
of Islam is illustrative. If not for
the British, India would have been
lost.
\_ India under Islamic rule is history,
not current events. You'd be better
off pointing to the Islamic Rev. in
Iran. However, find me a country that
has turned to Sharia as a result of
immigration.
\_ I do not know of a country that
has turned to Sharia b/c of
immigration BUT this is largely
because population did not have
a great degree of mobility till
the 2d 1/2 of the 20th century.
Slower mobility in the past ment
that there was greater time for
indigenous culture to assimilate
and modify the immigrant culture.
This is no longer true and to
act on the assumption that it
remains true risks the future of
Europe.
[ The problem is futher compounded
by the falling birth rate in
Europe, outside of Islamic
immigrants ]
\_ I'm not seeing evidence that
immigrants to Europe or the
US are causing cultural or
legislative changes. The charge
of creeping Islamification
still rings of alarmism. What
changes do you see that alarm
you, and how are these changes
different from the assimilation
of other immigrant populations?
\_ Just as Europe had to be defended against
Soviet communism, despite its reluctance
to defend itself, Europe must be defended
against Islamism. The current administra-
tion, unfortunately, makes this difficult
b/c it is unable or unwilling to understand
the European mind and work w/ it. [ I do
not mean to suggest that a Democratic
administration would be more effective, I
think that neither party, currently, has
leaders who would be able to effectively
help Europe and thereby help America w/
this particular problem. ]
"islamification" of Europe, I believe that the effect is
being exaggerated and exploited by national front types
to further an agenda of immigrant bashing. If we let
these reactionaries determine policy, all foreigners
will end up in ghettos and there will be regularly
scheduled pogroms to keep them in line.
\_ So you think OvdB is a national front ultra
nationalist type? Or he's been suckered in by them?
He is certainly not a national frontist.
\_ I'm not sure what his deal is. That having been
said, even self-described Dutch gay humanists are
not immune to overreactions.
\_ Just this morning I read of a Muslim teacher in the UK who
was fighting for her "right" to wear a veil in the classroom.
This, to me, is sufficient illustration of Islamification
subverting and destroying Europe and European ideas.
Europe has long embraced an admirable attitude of tolerance
for all manner of ideas. But, this same attitude has been and
is being used against Europe by the Islamists in order to
import all manners of practices directly opposed to the
fundamental values of liberty and equality. Is it really
equality and choice that the above mentioned teacher is fighting
for? Or is she merely a pawn in some larger game?
The root of the problem is that most European's have accepted,
as the philosophical basis for their tolerance, the proposition
that all belief systems are equally valid and that any distaste
for alternate systems is based, not on any inherent flaw in
that system, but rather in our own prejudices and biases. "If
only we understood them better, there would be no problem" is
the problem. By thinking of the problem as one from w/in
instead of one from w/o the revolution has not been televised.
I agree w/ above poster, that some national front types have,
in the past, exaggerated the effect of the Islamification of
Europe for purposes other than the protection of Europe's
Europe has long embraced an admirable attitude of
tolerance for all manner of ideas. But, this same attitude
has been and is being used against Europe by the Islamists
in order to import all manners of practices directly opposed
to the fundamental values of liberty and equality. Is it
really equality and choice that the above mentioned teacher
is fighting for? Or is she merely a pawn in some larger game?
The root of the problem is that most European's have
The root of the problem is that many European's have
the panda says "NO!"_/
accepted, as the philosophical basis for their tolerance, the
proposition that all belief systems are equally valid and that
any distaste for alternate systems is based, not on inherent
flaws in that other system, but rather in our own prejudices
and biases. "If only we understood them better, there would be
no problem" is the problem. By thinking of the problem as one
from w/in instead of one from w/o the revolution has not been
televised.
\_ I don't know based on what you make this assertion, but
it's not accurate. Replace "most" with "many" and you
have something there. The success of Pim Fortuyn in
Holland, the recent Swiss immigration referenda, and
various other restrictive laws/moves against what is
essentially islamification prove this nicely. The main
problem is that political groups most active against the
rise of islamist influence have a strong association with
neo-fascist, xenophobic extremist groups (i.e. Le Pen,
Zhirinovsky, NPD, NPB, Liga Norte, etc) and those more
centrist groups advocating strong curbs on islamism are
easily painted by their opponents as equally extreme. Add
to this a historical reluctance to focus on one particular
group (for obvious reasons) and you have a problem. -John
\_ Okay, I think I'm mostly in agreement w/ you. I have
changed "most" to "many." My main concern is that
either not enough Europeans see the potential problem
or that they are too afraid (b/c they would be singled
as bigots by other Europeans and targeted by Islamists)
to take action. It may also be that many Europeans are
to used to the "good life" to take a stand.
\_ Take a stand on what exactly? What do you want them
to do?
\_ Immigration reform, less tolerance for Sharia
and Islamic practices, such as forcing women
to wear veils and not allowing them to finish
schooling, would be good starting points.
Also dealing w/ problems such as the Paris riots
using necessary force, rather than making stmts
that we feel your pain and will do everything
we can to make you happy. Appeasement never works,
but Europe seems to have forgotten that lesson.
\_ Immigration reform is happening, gradually,
in a lot of countries in Europe. I sense that
there is a shrinking tolerance for bullshit
among voters; Turkey & its impending EU
membership, Theo van Gogh, the riots in
France and other factors are bringing this
sort of thing to a head. Regardless of
whether you support or oppose US foreign
policy, it has at least been presented in a
very in-your-face manner, which made life
_very_ difficult for people in Europe trying
to call bullshit on islamists. -John
\_ How did an open US foreign policy make it
had for Europeans to call BS on Islamists?
\_ Whether it's right or wrong, it's been
presented in a very confrontational,
unilateral manner since 2001. This
removed a lot of sympathy for the US and
tainted anyone agreeing even with the\
good parts of the "war on terror" with
a kind of "American stooge" label, thus
weakening the position of those who
support laying down the whoopass on the
real bad guys. No it's not rational,
but maybe you see the connection. The
militant islamists enjoying the relative
freedom of speech & movement they get in
Europe should be countered with total
and consistent determination, with no
room for mediocre bush-league shit like
Iraq. -John
\_ Appeasement of what? They're rioting because
they have no jobs and no prospects, and because
the cops are running in people simply for
being young and non-caucasian. Sounds like the
Watts riots to me. The solution there? More
economic development so that people have a
greater stake in the preservation of the status
quo. Also, while I agree that religion should
not be an excuse to pull kids out of school,
you cannot outlaw burqas if people _want_ to
wear them.
\_ I do not accept that the reason these
people do not have jobs is because of
failing on the part of the European
people. There are sufficient opportunities
in Europe for people who are willing to
become educated and work hard to build
a life. More economic development is not
the answer to a problem that is not born
from poverty w/o opportunity.
The problem is one of attitude, these
people want to live in Europe, but not
a Europe based on European ideals.
from poverty w/o opportunity. The problem
is one of attitude; these people want to
live in Europe, but not a Europe based on
European ideals.
Re police running in kids for not
being "white," you know the police don't
really run in Indian or Asian kids (even
here in Klan country). I wonder why that
is? Maybe it is b/c we want to actually
become contributing members of society
and try to adapt to our new homes, rather
I also disagree re Burquas. Even
under US law (including Cohen), which is
far more generous than European law, it
is certainly possible to regulate when
and where these garments may be worn.
There are many contexts in which the gov.
could ban the wearning of the garment (ex.
Re police running in kids for not being
"white," you know the police don't really
run in Indian or Asian kids. I wonder
why that is? Maybe it is b/c these kids
want to actual become contributing members
of society and try to adapt to their new
homes, rather than trying to destroy them.
I also disagree re Burquas. Even under US
law (including Cohen), it is certainly
possible to regulate when and where these
garments may be worn. There are many
contexts in which the government could
forbid the wearning of the garment (ex.
public school teachers - reasonable time
place manner restriction).
\_ Please search through news reports for
more information on the causes of
economic disenfranchisment in Paris.
The "they're poor because they're lazy"
argument has been shown time and again to
be specious in many countries. Also, it's
not just Islamic immigrants who are
having difficulty finding work in Paris.
For comparison, I submit this op-ed
piece from a BBC columnist comparing
the Paris riots (and their roots) with
the Brixton riots of '80s.
http://csua.org/u/hbk
As for
burqas, I would like this debated before
the courts, not just legislated. I can
see the argument in favor of banning the
burqa for public servants/teachers, but
I want a very healthy, very public
debate on it before we ban them. Let any
action we take be based on our ideals
and principles, not just our fear.
Oh, and by the way, let me just state for
the record that I will gladly repel, with
arms, any armed religious coup. If any-
one tries an Islamic (or Christian or
Buddhist) revolution, then yes, it will
then be time to fight.
I agree w/ above poster, that some national front types
have, in the past, exaggerated the effect of the Islamification
of Europe for purposes other than the protection of Europe's
freedom and liberty. But, I think that the problem is real and
cannot be dismissed as mere politics any more. To do so would
be to condemn Europe to the yoke of the Moors.
\_ You misspelled his name, even though it's in the URL.
be to condemn Europe to the yoke of the Moors for a 2d time.
[ I thank formatd for its efforts, but I want the paragraphs
for readability ]
\_ Sorry for mushing your post. I reformatted to bring the
length under 80 columns and didn't intend to squash your
paragraphs. --formatd
\_ What the hell is a traditionalist muslim woman doing
teaching?
\_ Unmarried muslim women often work as teachers at
girls schools in many Islamic countries; it is not
a "forbidden" occupation. But, even unmarried girls
must cover their faces, even while acting as teachers.
a "forbidden" occupation for a traditional muslim
woman. |
| 5/25 |
|
| www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/114966,CST-EDT-steyn29.article Behind the Obama scene: How he is using book tour to cultivate national network. The host, Paul Orgel, had asked me what I thought of President Bush and I replied that, whatever my differences with him on this or that, I thought he was one of the most farsighted politicians in Washington. That's to say, he's looking down the line to a world in which a radicalized Islam has exported its pathologies to every corner on Earth, Iran and like-minded states have applied nuclear blackmail to any parties within range, and a dozen or more nutcake basket-case jurisdictions have joined Pyongyang and Tehran as a Nukes R Us one-stop shop for all your terrorist needs. In 2020, no one's going to be worrying about which Congressional page Mark Foley is coming on to. Except Mark Foley, who'll be getting a bit long in the tooth by then. But if it really is, as Democrats say, ''all about the future of our children,'' then our children will want to know why our generation saw what was happening and didn't do anything about it. They will despise us as we despise the political class of the 1930s. And the fact that we passed a great prescription drug plan will be poor consolation when the entire planet is one almighty headache. My caller at C-SPAN thought this Bush farsightedness shtick was ridiculous. And, though I did my best to lower her blood pressure, I can't honestly say I succeeded. But suppose the ''Anyone But Bush'' bumper-sticker set got their way; suppose he and Cheney and Rummy and all the minor supporting warmongers down to yours truly were suddenly vaporized in 20 seconds' time. The slyer Islamist subversion from south-east Asia to the Balkans to northern England goes on, day after day after day. And one morning we'll switch on the TV and the smoke and flames will be on this side of the Atlantic, much to President Rodham's surprise. Bush hatred is silly and parochial and reductive: History is on the march and the anti-Bush crowd is holding the telescope the wrong way round. "We're in this grand ideological struggle," said the president two days later. "I am in disbelief that people don't take these people seriously." He was sitting in the Oval Office with a handful of columnists including yours truly. At the risk of making that C-SPAN caller's head explode, it was a great honor. I wasn't the only foreigner in the room: There was a bust of Winston Churchill, along with those of Lincoln and Eisenhower. Bush was forceful and informed, and it seems to me he performs better in small groups of one-night-only White House correspondents than in the leaden electronic vaudeville with Helen Thomas, David Gregory and the other regulars. Sometimes it's East Timor -- which used to be the leftie cause du jour. And, riffing on the endless list of Islamist grievances, Bush concluded with an exasperated: "If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons." That'd make a great slogan: it encapsulates simultaneously the Islamists' inability to move on millennium-in millennium-out, plus their propensity for instant new "root causes," and their utter lack of proportion. "We need to be on the offense all the time," said the president. I pointed out that, when the military are obviously on offense -- liberating Afghanistan, toppling Saddam -- the American people are behind them. But that it's hard to see where the offense is in what to most TV viewers has dwindled down to a thankless semi-colonial policing operation with no end in sight. "We are on the offense," he insisted, sounding sometimes as frustrated as us columnists that so much of the wider momentum had become (in Charles Krauthammer's words) "mired in diplomacy." Still, it was a different conversation than most Bush encounters with the media-political class. I happened to be plugging my book on a local radio show this week just as a Minnesota "conservative" (ish) Democrat joined the herd of stampeding donkeys explaining why they were now disowning their vote in favor of the Iraq war. It's not a question of whether you're "for" or "against" a war. And, if you're arguing for what will look to most of the world like the latter option, you better understand what the consequences are. In this case, it would, in effect, end the American moment. Bush said something, en passant, that I brooded on all the way home. Asked about poll numbers, he said that 25 percent of the population are always against the war -- any war. To be sure, if Canadian storm troopers were swarming across the 49th Parallel or Bahamian warships were firing off the coast of Florida, some of that 25 percent might change their mind, though it might be a bit late by then. But, as America's highly unlikely to be facing that kind of war in the foreseeable future, that 25 percent's objection to the only wars on offer is rather unnerving. The invaluable Brussels Journal recently translated an interview with the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from the Belgian paper De Standaard. A Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), van den Boogaard was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. That war-is-never-the-answer 25 percent are in essence saying that there's nothing about America worth fighting for, and that, ultimately, the continuation of their society is a bet on the kindness of strangers -- on the goodnaturedness of Kim Jong Il and the mullahs and al-Qaida and what the president called "al-Qaida lookalikes and al-Qaida wannabes" and whatever nuclear combination thereof comes down the pike. Some of us don't reckon that's a good bet, and think America's arms-are-for-hugging crowd need to get real. Van den Boogaard's arms are likely to be doing rather less of their preferred form of hugging in the European twilight. |
| www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19233 BUSINESS Half Wrong on Europe's Doom By Gideon Rachman Europeans of a nervous disposition should probably avoid going into bookshops on their next visit to the United States. In Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept" -- now in its eighth printing -- the US reader is told that by ignoring the threat from radical Islam, "Europe is steadily committing suicide and perhaps all we can do is look on in horror." Tony Blankley, author of "The West's Last Chance," warns that: "The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s." In "The Cube and the Cathedral," George Weigel, a Catholic conservative, claims that "Western Europe is committing a form of demographic suicide." In this he echoes US arch-conservative Pat Buchanan, who argues in his bestselling "The Death of the West" that Europe's population is set to fall to 30 percent of its current level by 2100, and therefore "the cradle of Western civilization will have become its grave." I suspect that few Europeans would recognize themselves in this distorting mirror held up from the other side of the Atlantic. And yet -- tempting as it was to toss all these books in the trash and go out for a drink in the midst of my doomed civilization (one might as well enjoy what little time is left) -- it is impossible to dismiss the American prophets of European doom completely. Strip away the hysteria and the hype, and they make two serious points. First, European fertility rates have fallen well below the rate of 21 children per woman needed for a population to remain stable. Across the European Union the average fertility rate is now approximately 15 This downward spiral in population is self-reinforcing, since Europe will have fewer and fewer women of reproductive age in the future. The second point is that the Muslim population of Europe is rising sharply at the same time as the white, European population is falling. The US pessimists argue that this is a recipe for social turmoil, or worse. Last week, the European Commission warned that without reform, the aging of the EU's population will see average economic growth rates of a mere 1 percent per year from 2030 to 2050. Meanwhile, a lively, sometimes agonized, debate about the assimilation of Muslim immigrants is taking place across the continent. The trends the US doom-merchants have latched on to are real enough. The weakness in their arguments is that at every stage they tend to make the most pessimistic assumptions. Take demography: Buchanan argues that "The Spanish birthrate is the lowest in all Europe and the population is projected to fall by 25 percent in 50 years." Such projections only hold, however, if you assume that Spain will have no net immigration. In fact, over the past three years more than half a million immigrants per year have been arriving in Spain, pushing the population over 44 million. The problem is not that the European population will simply shrink away, but that over the next 50 years, Europe will have to deal with the fact that its population is becoming both much older and much more diverse. If Europe's welfare states remain unreformed, the aging of the population could lead to a fiscal meltdown as pension and healthcare systems become unaffordable. But, as the saying goes: "Something that cannot go on forever, won't." Demographic pressures are already forcing Europeans to change their welfare systems and career patterns. Similarly, the US pundits' vision of a Muslim takeover of Europe -- creating a new continent called "Eurabia" -- relies on projecting demographic trends to their limit and beyond. Weigel fantasizes about a day when "the muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St Peter's in Rome." Given that just 17 percent of the Italian population is currently Muslim, that seems a long way off. Of the 456 million people in the EU, just 15 million to 16 million are Muslim. Of course, rapid immigration from the developing world combined with higher fertility rates among immigrant populations means that the Muslim population of Europe is likely to rise sharply. In some places such as France, where Muslims already make up 7 percent to 10 percent of the population, the changes could be quite dramatic. Until a few years ago, mainstream European opinion would have shrugged off rising Muslim populations as unworthy of debate but that is no longer the case. Just this week in Britain there has been heated argument over the wearing of veils by schoolteachers and the radicalization of Muslim students. One recent poll found that nearly one-third of young British Muslims agreed that the July 2005 bombings in London were "justified because of British support for the war on terror." That is a truly alarming picture, but it is also just a snapshot. There is no doubt that tensions between Muslims and other Europeans are at an unprecedented high after Sept. It is certainly possible that things will just get worse, but it is not inevitable. Zachary Shore, the author of "Breeding Bin Ladens" and the only one of the American authors in question to have taken the trouble to talk to a lot of European Muslims, sees Europe's Muslim population as poised "at a critical fork in the road: One trail leads them to western integration, the other sets a course for alienation and possible extremism." European governments are acutely aware of this and are changing policies in response. The British are rethinking their "multicultural" approach to immigration; If they do not, politics and policies will change again. Gideon Rachman is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment was first published. E-mail or online form: If you are willing for your comment to be published as a letter to the editor, please supply your first name, last name and the city and country where you live. |
| www.digitalnpq.org/articles/europe/10/08-17-2005/ayaan_hirsi_ali NOBEL LAUREATES PLUS 08-17-2005 EUROPE'S ISLAM PROBLEM DEMOCRATIC DEBATE IS NEEDED TO CLOSE IDENTITY GAP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a member of the Dutch Parliament for the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. She is the co-writer, with the late filmmaker Theo van Gogh, of the film "Submission: Part 1," and author of "The Cage of Virgins" and "The Son Factory." org) entitled "Islam and the EU Identity Deficit," part of a broader survey on identity in the European Union. She wishes to thank the co-writer of this article, who wishes to remain anonymous, for contributing to its realization. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali AMSTERDAM -- Two determining issues in the evolution of an EU identity -- immigration and Turkish accession -- can be traced back to negative perceptions of Islam. What do we mean when we talk about Islam-related problems? For various reasons, a number of different groups in Europe see Islam as a problem of great concern. Others feel very uncomfortable actually linking the words "Islam" and "problem," because they fear making an unjustified generalization, hence stigmatizing a group in society that is already seen as vulnerable. But not articulating the problem means not solving the problem. The ongoing reservation on the part of the Dutch political establishment is a significant obstacle in tackling issues such as anemic social participation, high school drop-out rates, domestic violence and militant religious fanaticism among people of Muslim background. This is not to say that these issues are solved just by articulating how Islam and certain social problems are related, but dismantling the taboo around this topic is a necessary precondition for ameliorating the societal tensions wracking the Netherlands. A first step toward lifting the taboo is exploring the sources of popular concern with Islam. Causes of disquiet with respect to Islam can be divided into short-term and long-term concerns. The most acute is fear of pure violence committed in the name of Islam. Terrorism, by definition, aims to spread a sense of insecurity and fear among large groups of people. In this sense, Islamist terrorist groups seem to have succeeded in their attacks in the United States on Sept. In the Netherlands, a number of Islamic fanatics have been arrested since last summer. Their houses contained ample proof that they were planning to bomb the Amsterdam Airport, the port of Rotterdam and the Parliament. they were also in possession of maps and drawings of their potential targets, including depictions of possible gaps in security measures. But individuals can only be convicted after the fact, so almost all of these young men, arrested before carrying out any bombings, were released. Next to the fear of direct violence, there seems to be major concern about Islamic social, religious and political movements throughout Western Europe. These movements operate parallel to the terrorist networks and usually work through dawa (preachers and missionaries) whose job it is to spread the radical message of political Islam. There is little doubt that these movements are the primary forces spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Europe today. Generally these organizations have no direct violent agenda themselves, but, as terrorism officials warn, many young Muslim men pass through these groups and find their way to an extremist, militant interpretation of their religion. There is a general agreement that these movements provide fertile soil for new terrorists, but intelligence services fail to penetrate the groups sufficiently to prove direct training of perpetrators. Reports from various Western European national intelligence services point out how these networks function as safe harbors: In them, hostility toward Western society is sufficient that potential terrorists are tolerated and by no means corrected in their ideas. This concern with Islamic movements, like the concern with terrorism, is grounded in experience and empirical evidence. at the Ministry of Education, another 200 applications for the establishment of new Islamic schools are waiting for approval. What can be empirically established is that these schools have high concentrations of disadvantaged pupils and students, both in socioeconomic terms and in terms of language skills. What is not empirically established, and therefore has to be treated as a perception, is the idea that at least some of these schools, especially those that operate in close cooperation with nearby mosques, are potential breeding grounds for a large cohort of orthodox anti-Western students. In this context, the role of (foreign) religious leaders on school boards is often seen as troubling. The ghettoization and Islamification of certain urban areas is also perceived as a disturbing problem. Demographic trends indicate that this particular type of ghetto formation will continue throughout Western Europe. This evident form of ethnic and cultural segregation is problematic. In cities, villages or provinces where Islam is dominant, it may mean that bits and pieces of the Shari'a are introduced in practice even though no formal legislation in this direction is taking place. In Western Europe, such pockets with a Muslim majority have become discernible over the past decade. Supermarkets stopped selling pork and alcoholic beverages, and ritual sheep slaughter has become an official activity. Social control is extremely high among Muslims, who constitute two-thirds of the total population of Evry. Although not formally institutionalized, in areas of this kind it is the Shari'a, rather than the secular constitution, that enjoys primacy. In the Netherlands, the same phenomenon is taking place in some areas of Rotterdam and West Amsterdam. Large sectors of society are deeply uncomfortable with the gradual emergence of these types of states within the state, where rules and values other than those of tolerant and democratic liberalism dictate social conduct. Throughout Western Europe, xenophobia forms another basis for the fear of Islam. Unlike other bases for fear, this one has no empirical grounding. Although members of traditionally xenophobic groups have often had little to no contact with Islam, Muslims or immigrants of any kind, they have strongly negative attitudes toward any group with diverging cultural backgrounds or ethnic origins. Besides Islam, their hostility may also be directed at Jews, Roma or even nationals of a neighboring country. A malicious distrust of the unknown characterizes these groups, even in the absence of rational or empirical arguments. Clearly, these groups provoke fear within the political establishment, in part because their rhetoric and, sometimes, because their use of symbols invokes associations with fascism and Nazism. Their abject ideas have a paralyzing effect on the discussion of immigration and Islam because established politicians and opinion-makers fear that even slightly touching on the negative elements of immigration and Islam means playing into the hands of the extremist right. This is why the Netherlands has been in a deadlock for more than a decade. There, for more than a decade, the political establishment has placed a cordon sanitaire around the xenophobic and racist Flemish Bloc, hoping its support would fade with time. The Flemish Bloc has continuously and steadily gained supporters, while at the same time problems with radical Islam have not be addressed, and have increased as the years go by. It is clear that not addressing these issues is not only shortsighted but also counterproductive. It is primarily the immigration question and the Turkish accession to the EU that raise issues of identity among the people of Europe, both giving a central place to Islam. Yet questions about the relationship between Islam and Europe have not been adequately addressed by elites, who fear both Islamic and nativist backlashes as a result of opening up identity problems for public discussion. Ignoring the issue, however, leaves extant a dangerous identity vacuum that encourages fundamentalist intolerance of all stripes. Democracy requires candid debate, even about sensitive issues. Failure t... |
| csua.org/u/hbk -> www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2005/11/14/kurtbarling_urban_myths_feature.shtml London Life Q-Z > Urban Myths Paris riots Urban Myths After nearly three weeks of rioting across France and particularly in the city which lost out to London in its Olympic bid, BBC London's Kurt Barling asks whether the capital's model of diversity holds in it lessons for our French counterparts. I wonder how many people have watched events across the English Channel this week without a tiny twinge of schadenfreude. There are an awful lot of sensible people who are characterising what is happening in French cities as "race riots" falling into the trap that many do when people whose roots are not exclusively European take to the streets. Many people have also been asking could this happen here? Firstly, the riots in Brixton were angry young people against the police. The trigger may have been specific behaviour of the police towards Afro-Caribbean youth but plenty of other ethnicities stood behind the barricades. So it has been in France where youths whose parents came from North Africa have joined forces with other disenfranchised French youth. Perhaps the way Londoners and London institutions have reacted in the past is as good an example as any of how the French will need to move swiftly to tackle some deep seated problems. In London it's a constant gripe that we seem to be endlessly bombarded with statistics about ethnicity. I can't count the number of times I've given up trying to find an appropriate category to place my cross in. In France it would be illegal to ask me to give this information. The root of this approach is part of the Republican ideal that each of us is entitled to "liberty, equality and fraternity" with our compatriots. Other republics like the United States go to the opposite extreme and categorise everything but precisely because they became aware of the deep racism at the heart of their system of government during the civil rights era. The French are no less conscious of social justice issues than the British it's just they've imagined it in a colour-blind way. In turn, we Londoners have given ourselves tools to ask the right questions, in most cases, about equal treatment and opportunity employment in the public and private sector, in provision of public services to individuals, achievements in education and critically in youth interaction with the police we have the tools to ask the. I recall only too well when I studied at the same Institute of Political Studies in Paris as the current French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy you were hard pressed to find an indigenous non-white face anywhere. The difference with British institutions in the past 20 years is that they've made an effort to find out who is not there and then set about trying to explain why. I'm bound to write that if you look at our own elite institutions you can see there is a long way to go to improve opportunities but this is rarely because access is blatantly denied. Statistics have had a way of embarrassing an awful lot of organisations. London has also seen some of the most searching public inquiries of modern times where ethnic origin has been a strong feature of the problems under review. Quite often the findings of such inquiries have been very uncomfortable. The Macpherson inquiry into the Met police's handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry made numerous recommendations when it concluded the police were institutionally racist. Stephen Lawrence Stephen Lawrence Lord Laming's inquiry into the murder of Victoria Climbie again highlighted serious shortcomings in the way social services dealt with children at risk from migrant communities. If you want to go back even further Lord Scarman's inquiry it the Brixton riots in 1981 recommended a root and branch change in the way public institutions (particularly those in the criminal justice system) dealt with minority communities. It also drew links between enterprise and social justice. If you look at the spectrum of businesses that are now black owned in London you can trace many of their origins back to the enterprise agencies set up by the Thatcher government in the early 1980s. The real lesson from all of these inquiries is that very little can be taken for granted when trying to get groups with different cultural heritages to engage with each other. It has become clear, for example, that it cannot just be assumed that complaints will be dealt with fairly. At virtually every level in London's civic institutions there are representatives from minority communities. Of course that doesn't mean we have all the answers, but what it does mean is that we have a better chance of asking the right questions. Some quarters of society may carp about this constant soul searching but there's a strong argument that this preserve's London's uniquely open perspective to all groups. France's minority groups do not have the same history as Britain's neither do they have the same historic relationship with France as a former colonial power. Indeed in the Caribbean there are still the French equivalents of the English Counties. Martinique and Guadaloupe are bits of France in the Caribbean Sea. But this has lulled the French into a false sense of diversity. In mainland France many people still fail to recognise that people from these islands are actually French citizens and this seems to me to sum up their confusion. There is one other aspect of these troubles which is a cause for concern. Those who feel most aggrieved in France are those of North African heritage. In the current climate of the fear of terrorism they like British Muslims have felt extremely vulnerable an isolated. Without a proportionate response these events could easily trigger a slide into a faith divide. The European Monitoring Centre on Racism reported last week that faith hate crimes in Britain rose dramatically after the 7th July attacks. But it also concluded that, "the decisiveness of political leadership against anti-Muslim incidents, the positive engagement with Muslim communities and the support of the police services", made all the difference in preventing a more serious backlash and focusing instead on the real criminality of the bombers. This week I'll be chairing a conference organized by the Metropolitan Police Authority which brings together all those involved in administering the criminal justice process. The central question to be addressed is how can peace can be preserved between different communities. I'm sure it won't reach all the right answers, but it will give people a chance to ask difficult questions. Forums like these have started to make a real difference in London and they're not just about preserving the peace but also creating real links between real people. We may moan about the tyranny of number crunchers in our computer age but the lesson from France is you need a robust quantitative method to analyse how a multiethnic community is evolving. As long as we're alive to the dangers of these figures being abused when they're deployed in argument they can be used effectively to question why things are the way they are and more crucially whether they need changing. |