Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Eurabias Morass Elicits Mythical Solutions
November 24th, 2005
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 Britains current liberal democracy with a Sharia-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 difficultChinese, Vietnamese, Portugueseand theyre not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character.
Despite Finkielkraudts 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, Chiracs 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.
Andalusian Cultural Synthesis, and the Tolerant Ottoman Millet System*....
