Eurabia's Morass Elicits Mythical "Solutions"

Muslims continue to play up the "tolerance and justice" of Moslem Spain and the Ottoman Empire which were neither tolerant nor just to non-Muslims. A lie repeated often enough begins to have the ring of truth. The same can be said of the claims of the recent rioters in France and Europe that "trivialize the role of Islam" in those events. From the processor of Andrew Bostom at The American Thinker.

After nearly three successive weeks of rioting in France by predominantly Muslim youths, the violence has ebbed, albeit to an uneasy level in considerable excess of the early October “baseline” before the riots (for example, in terms of vehicles burnt per day see this graph).

The prevailing apologetics regarding these disturbances, which emanate from pundits across the political spectrum, denies or trivializes the role of Islam. For example, although twelve Christian churches were desecrated and/or burned by the overwhelmingly Muslim rioters in France during the intifada, these bigoted acts were barely reported by investigative journalists or bloggers, and ignored altogether by pontificating commentators.

Apologetic assessments further ignored the existence of ominous and influential Islamic entities such as the Arab European League (a hideous group which equates the assimilation of Muslims within a European context, to rape), or the European Fatwa Council, headed by Muslim Brotherhood “spiritual” leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who sanctions homicide bombings against Israeli non-combatants, and has stated  publicly that “Islam will conquer Europe”.

Also absent from such discussions were the alarming statements made by European Muslim leaders at a conference entitled, “Islam in Europe” that accompanied the July 10, 2003 opening of the new Granada Mosque. The keynote speaker at this erstwhile “ecumenical” conference, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader,  implored Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by switching to gold dinars, and ceasing to use Western currencies), while the German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told attendees not to adapt their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment ?) values. 

Finally, none of the apologetic narratives acknowledged, let alone addressed the implications of disturbing survey results from British Muslims polled shortly after the 7/7/05 London bombings. These data revealed that one-third of British Muslims were brazen enough to admit, “Western society is decadent and immoral and …Muslims should seek to bring it to an end”, expressing ostensibly, their desire to replace Britain’s current liberal democracy with a Shari’a-based theocratic model .
French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has noted, appositely, that it is a reductio ad absurdum to view the “social dimension” of the riots in France exclusively (and obsessively), as,

…a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity….in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult—Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese—and they’re not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character.
Despite Finkielkraudt’s salient observations, and others by the rare reporters Melanie Phillips aptly lauded for simply having “…their heads screwed on the right way”, Phillips warned of the dominant mentality which sought to negate the truth through vilification, and replace reality with fantasy.

Amir Taheri  has cited perhaps the most disturbing examples of this proclivity to indulge ahistorical and dangerous fantasy. Two mythical inventions of purported “ecumenical” Islamic rule in Europe have been revived— the “Andalusian paradise” of Muslim Spain, and the former Ottoman millet system (most relevantly, in Eastern Europe, primarily the Balkans). Taheri reports that Gilles Kepel, who (despite arguing prior to 9/11 that  jihadism was a spent force within the global Muslim umma!) currently serves as an adviser on Islam to President Chirac, recommended the creation of a modern Andalusia,
“…in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis”.

Taheri, but unfortunately, not Kepel, Chirac’s adviser, possessed the wisdom to ponder the critical matter of sovereign political power, asking “…Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?”. Other muddled thinkers, “…are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the ‘millet’ system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs”, according to Taheri.

Read it all. The internal links included in the original are very informative.