Eurabia

Call It Eurabia Now

By Alan Caruba (02/15/2005)

I used to wonder why the Jews of Europe, particularly German Jews, didn’t flee the Holocaust that would destroy six million of them by the end of World War II. Some did, of course, but many simply could not conceive that their fellow countrymen would conspire to kill them.

In a similar fashion, many Americans still want to believe that Islamists, the extreme Muslims characterized by the Taliban and al Qaeda, are just a minority of greater Islam. The wish that, once isolated and destroyed, we will be embraced by those to whom we have brought freedom and democracy, ignores the long history of Islam’s quest for world domination

Recent history bears witness to the fact that Arab Muslims kill each other and anyone else with impunity to insure Jihad succeeds. Why would we ever think they would not want to continue to kill us as well?

This is also a question Europeans had to ask themselves after the oil embargo of the 1970s that was intended to achieve what several Arab wars on Israel had not. They opted for appeasement. They put themselves in thrall to the Arab bloc. Deeply anti-Semitic, they embraced the lies intended to isolate Israel.

In my lifetime, America brought freedom to France, a nation that had quickly surrendered to Germany. During the war, the Vichy collaborator government under Marshall Petain established twenty-eight detention camps where French Jews were then deported to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe. France, today, is one of the most anti-Semitic nations of modern Europe and the closest ally of Arab nations and their ruling dictators minus, of course, Saddam Hussein whom the US deposed.

France does not like America. Neither, for that matter, do Germany and several other European nations. All those lovely headlines about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit, suggesting that Europeans will forgive us for killing their Arab friends in response to 9-11, are the foolish notion of journalists who haven’t a clue that Europe has been taken over by Arabs in particular and Muslims in general.

These Muslims do not like Christians and Jews, and that is going to make things worse for the Jews who still live in Europe and very unpleasant for the Christians, most of whom have long since embraced secularism, socialism, and the anti-Semitism that existed for centuries before the Nazis and swiftly reasserted itself after their defeat.

Europeans do not see what is coming and like the Jews who in the 1930’s refused to see what their fellow countrymen throughout Europe had in mind for them, they face a fate that Bat Ye’or, the author of “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” ($49.50/$23.95, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, hard/softcover), calls “a civilization of dhimmitude.”

It comes from the Arab word, “dhimmi.” As Bat Ye’or explains it, “It refers to subjugated, non-Muslim individuals or people that accept the restrictive and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death.” And then she adds, “The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunctional dhimmitude.”

Two nations stand against the worldwide Jihad being waged by Islamists in the name of all Muslims and they are the United States of America and Great Britain. And even today there are Americans who, like the European Jews barely a lifetime ago, do not fully comprehend how utterly determined Islamists are in their desire to destroy or enslave us.

In early February, Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, was continuing to warn Americans about the internal threat revealed in a recently published study, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques.” The study was undertaken by Freedom House, a New York-based organization, founded in 1941 and dedicated to the spread of democracy and freedom around the world. This is the same freedom to which President Bush devoted his inaugural speech.

What Freedom House discovered was that American mosques are filled with writings, more than two hundred books and other publications disseminated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that espoused “an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, misogynist, Jihadist, and (a) supremacist outlook.” Somewhere among those categories is YOU.

If you’re an American Christian, the Jihadists hate you. If you’re an American Jew, the Jihadists want you dead. If you’re an American woman, the Jihadists want you covered from head to foot in a burka. In brief, if you are not a Muslim, you have no rights except those permitted to a dhimmi, an unbeliever under the control of Islam.

Aiding them in every way is France and the European Union whose hatred for Israel is as strong as its Muslim allies. So, while the air is filled with talk of “peace” or a “truce” between the so-called Palestinians and the Israelis, do not be deceived.

The Muslims divide the world between dar al-Islam, the world of Islam, and dar al-harb, the world of war, a region that must be conquered until the entire planet bows down to Allah and declares Mohammed his prophet. There are more than a billion Muslims worldwide. They are not all Jihadists, but they are all devoted to Islam.

As for any truce with the Israelis or with any non-Muslim nation, Islam limits such treaties to a period of ten years, after which Jihad must resume. The wall Israel built between itself and the Palestinian Arabs remains its best defense. Ceding any land to them is a mistake.

Welcome home, Madame Secretary. France will betray you. Germany will do little to support the war on terrorism. Just as they did with the millions the European Union sent them each month, the Palestinians will take the forty million US dollars we have given them and buy more weapons for the day when they can drive the Jews into the sea. The Iranians will continue to build their nuclear bombs. The Saudis will conspire against us. No diplomacy on earth will diminish the Jihad. Only our will to defeat it will save us from dhimmitude.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 1:14 PM 0 comments

Greek or Turk?

Bruce Clark’s exploration of a conflicted history raises profound questions of politics and national identity.

Twice A Stranger: Greece, Turkey and the Minorities They Expelled, by Bruce Clark (Granta Books, 300 pp., £20)

When empires break up, they leave a terrible mess behind. Ordinary people then become the victims of the ambitious and unscrupulous successors of the former imperial rulers, who themselves often proved less than tender-hearted about the fate of those ordinary people. Distilling centuries of experience in this regard, the Romanian peasants had a characteristically pithy proverb: A change of rulers is the joy of fools.

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was highly productive of horrors, for reasons hard to summarize succinctly. It has taken me many years to appreciate what my history masters at school tried to make me understand about something they called the Eastern Question. I always wondered why it was not possible to put that question simply, for example in the form “What is the capital of Bulgaria?” and to answer accordingly, with a fact. Now at long last I have begun to see, albeit as through a glass darkly.

The Ottoman Empire’s long and tortuous decline, caused by intellectual and technical stagnation relative to European dynamism, resulted in the slow attrition of its European territories. In order to arrest the empire’s obvious decline, the Ottoman Turks could adopt one of three strategies: pan-Islamism (the Sultan, after all, was Caliph as well), Turanianism (pan-Turkism), or what was in effect Anatolian Turkish nationalism. The tide of the times seemed to suggest that the third strategy was the solution, since the Young Turks, above all, believed that it had been the force of ethnically-exclusive nationalism that had allowed the Serbs, the Bulgarians, the Rumanians, the Greeks (and even, eventually, the Albanians, who were predominantly fellow-Muslims) to break away from the empire and form supposedly modern states of their own between 1821 and 1912. Moreover, the era’s great European powers appeared, no doubt deceptively, to owe their greatness to national homogeneity. It was time for Turkey to follow suit.

Yet no part of Turkey was ethnically or culturally uniform. It is true that after the Ottoman Empire lost its European provinces, Turks became a majority in the remainder for the first time in centuries. Until well past 1850, the majority of Ottomans were not Muslims, let alone Turks. A kind of ramshackle tolerance held sway—based on custom and Islamic law regarding people of the Book rather than on Enlightenment first principles—in which minorities such as the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Armenians bought exemption from military service with higher taxes but could sometimes flourish economically, making them the empire’s richest inhabitants.

Turkish nationalism swept away this semi-tolerant multiculturalism as an anachronism. In the process, minorities had to assimilate—become Turkified—or face expulsion or, in the case of the Armenians, death.

The Ottoman Empire allied itself in the First World War with the Central Powers, and suffered defeat as a consequence. An irredentist and nationalist Greece, egged on by Britain, took advantage of the situation to try to create a Greater Greece. It landed troops at Smyrna (one half of my wife’s family descends from Smyrna Greeks, who, during one of the periodic Ottoman persecutions of Greeks earlier in the century, took refuge in France, where one pioneered the French cinema industry). Not content with occupying Smyrna, the Greeks advanced into Anatolia, committing terrible atrocities en route, until Kemal Pasha’s resurgent Turkish nationalist army crushed them utterly.

In the ensuing peace settlement, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Greece and Turkey agreed to a mutual exchange of populations, irrespective of those populations’ wishes: Greece forcibly expelled 400,000 Turks, while the Turks expelled 1 million Greeks. The nationalists of both countries wanted ethnically uniform countries, though a few Turks received permission to remain in western Thrace, and a few Greeks in Istanbul.

In the splendid and moving Twice A Stranger: Greece, Turkey and the Minorities They Expelled by Bruce Clark—a journalist whose background in Northern Ireland allows him to understand, in his flesh and bone as it were, the deep complexities and ironies of communal antagonisms—we hear about the human costs of the population exchange agreed to by the nationalist leaders of Greece (Venizelos) and Turkey (Kemal Pasha, known as Ataturk). It is a well-written, skillful, and subtle blend of high politics and personal testimony from the victims of that policy. The author’s desire to record that testimony before no one can record it—for of course, the population-exchange survivors must soon die, as all survivors of the First World War have now died—is a noble one, above praise. He has performed a real service to the world.

In deciding who was a Greek and who was a Turk, the criterion used was religious: a Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christian who knew no Greek was thus a Greek, and expelled to Greece; while a Greek-speaking Muslim who knew no Turkish was Turkish, and expelled to Turkey. Even when those expelled spoke the language of their country, they seldom felt entirely at home in their allegedly “national” homeland. On the contrary, they felt a strong sense of nostalgia for the “enemy” country that they had left behind, where life had been far from a catalogue of misery and hatred; for, as Clark amply demonstrates, the Greek and Turkish nationalist assertion that Greek and Turk could only have antagonistic relations was simply not true. But it was a necessary tenet of nationalist historiography.

And yet, at the same time, there is no doubt that the horrible exchange of populations, that inflicted so much suffering, did lead to a certain international stability for a time. Good fences make good, if not necessarily amicable, neighbors; and only a few years after being at daggers drawn, Ataturk and Venizelos feted one another.

The stability that resulted from the exchange of populations is now under threat, however, as Clark points out, though not from Greco-Turkish confrontation. With massive immigration into Greece from everywhere from Africa to China (to say nothing of retirees from Britain), Greece is no longer an ethnically or religiously homogeneous country; and Turkey’s application to join Europe, if successful, will force the greatest change upon it since Ataturk’s reforms.

This book not only moves by the power of the narratives it contains, both Greek and Turkish, and informs through its succinct summary of a history we have mostly forgotten; it also raises profound questions of political philosophy, especially concerning the relation of communal and national identity to polities. No subject could be more contemporary or more filled with paradox: for example, it would not be mere sentimentality to assert that the Habsburg Empire was in many respects a lot better than anything that succeeded it, at least for a time (the great Austro-Jewish writer, Joseph Roth, spent his last years declaring undying loyalty to his one and only sovereign, the Emperor Franz Joseph, who slept for more than 60 years on an army cot from a sense of duty), though it would not be easy to justify that empire from philosophical principles, first, second, or third.

This is not a book for those seeking easy answers to the world’s problems. It is an eloquent call to those dual, but often antagonistic gods, humanity and realism.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 10:37 PM 0 comments

Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for

Slavoj Zizek The New York Times

TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2006 LONDON

For centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?

More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.

This argument couldn't have been more wrong: The lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted - at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than the "godless" Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted, since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism.

Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume made this point poignantly when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.

Two years ago, Europeans were debating whether the preamble of the European Constitution should mention Christianity. As usual, a compromise was worked out, a reference in general terms to the "religious inheritance" of Europe. But where was modern Europe's most precious legacy, that of atheism? What makes modern Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.

Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public space for believers. Consider the debate that raged in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, my home country, as the constitutional controversy simmered: should Muslims (mostly immigrant workers from the old Yugoslav republics) be allowed to build a mosque? While conservatives opposed the mosque for cultural, political and even architectural reasons, the liberal weekly journal Mladina was consistently outspoken in its support for the mosque, in keeping with its concern for the rights of those from other former Yugoslav republics.

Not surprisingly, given its liberal attitudes, Mladina was also one of the few Slovenian publications to reprint the caricatures of Muhammad. And, conversely, those who displayed the greatest "understanding" for the violent Muslim protests those cartoons caused were also the ones who regularly expressed their concern for the fate of Christianity in Europe.

These weird alliances confront Europe's Muslims with a difficult choice: The only political force that does not reduce them to second-class citizens and allows them the space to express their religious identity are the "godless" atheist liberals, while those closest to their religious social practice, their Christian mirror-image, are their greatest political enemies.

The paradox is that Muslims' only real allies are not those who first published the caricatures for shock value, but those who in support of the ideal of freedom of expression, reprinted them.

While a true atheist has no need to bolster his own stance by provoking believers with blasphemy, he also refuses to reduce the problem of the Muhammad caricatures to one of respect for other's beliefs. Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: Either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple "regimes of truth," disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth.

What about submitting Islam - together with all other religions - to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as adults responsible for their beliefs.

Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of "The Parallax View."

posted by Gurdjieff @ 11:48 AM 0 comments

The Fallaci Code

A Review by Brendan Bernhard

In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?

How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, "if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?"

In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of "Islamophobia" (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with episodes of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.

If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual "cicadas," as she calls them — "You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers" — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion's bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more exaggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.

The book is also animated by a world-class journalist's dismay that she could have missed the story of her lifetime for as long as she did. In the 1960s and '70s, when she was a Vietnam War correspondent and a legendarily ferocious interviewer going mano a mano with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, Fallaci was simply too preoccupied with the events of the moment to notice that an entirely different narrative was rapidly taking shape — namely, the transformation of the West. There were clues, certainly. As when, in 1972, she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who told her (while a bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head) that the Palestinian problem was about far more than Israel. The Arab goal, Habash declared, was to wage war "against Europe and America" and to ensure that henceforth "there would be no peace for the West." The Arabs, he informed her, would "advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet."

Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later did she realize that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens ... In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism." It is a low-level but deadly war that extends across the planet, as any newspaper reader can see.

Fallaci is not the first person to ponder the rapidity of the ongoing Muslim transformation of Europe. As the English travel writer Jonathan Raban wrote in Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth (1979), in the mid-1970s Arabs seemed to arrive in London almost overnight. "One day Arabs were a remote people ... camping out in tents with camels ... the next, they were neighbors." On the streets of West London appeared black-clad women adorned with beaked masks that made them look "like hooded falcons." Dressed for the desert (and walking precisely four steps ahead of the women), Arab men bestrode the sidewalks "like a crew of escaped film extras, their headdresses aswirl on the wind of exhaust fumes."

Writers far better acquainted with the Muslim world than Raban have been equally perplexed. In 1995, the late American novelist Paul Bowles, a longtime resident of Tangier, told me that he could not understand why the French had allowed millions of North African Muslims into their country. Bowles had chosen to live among Muslims for most of his life, yet he obviously considered it highly unlikely that so many of them could be successfully integrated into a modern, secular European state.

Perhaps Bowles would have been interested in this passage from Fallaci's book: "In 1974 [Algerian President] Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said: ‘One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.'"

Such a bald statement of purpose by a nation's president before an international forum seems incredible. Yet even in British journalist Adam LeBor's A Heart Turned East (1997), a work of profound, almost supine sympathy for the plight of Muslim immigrants in the West, a London-based mullah is quoted as saying, "We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers." In fact, such remarks are commonplace. Just this week, Mullah Krekar, a Muslim supremacist living in Oslo, informed the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Muslims would change Norway, not the other way around. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," he said. "By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim."

In other words, Europe will be conquered by being turned into "Eurabia," which is what Fallaci believes it is well on the way to becoming. Leaning heavily on the researches of Bat Ye'or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fallaci recounts in fascinating detail the actual origin of the word "Eurabia," which has now entered the popular lexicon. Its first known use, it turns out, was in the mid-1970s, when a journal of that name was printed in Paris (naturally), written in French (naturally), and edited by one Lucien Bitterlin, then president of the Association of Franco-Arab Solidarity and currently the Chairman of the French-Syrian Friendship Association. Eurabia (price, five francs) was jointly published by Middle East International (London), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva) and the European Coordinating Committee of the Associations for Friendship with the Arab World, which Fallaci describes as an arm of what was then the European Economic Community, now the European Union. These entities, Fallaci says, not mincing her words, were the official perpetrators "of the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created," and Eurabia was their house organ.

Briefly put, the alleged plot was an arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab "manpower" (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally toe the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. Hundreds of meetings and seminars were held as part of the "Euro-Arab Dialogue," and all, according to the author, were marked by European acquiescence to Arab requests. Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by delegates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for "the diffusion of the Arabic language" and affirming "the superiority of Arab culture."

While the Arabs demanded that Europeans respect the religious, political and human rights of Arabs in the West, not a peep came from the Europeans about the absence of freedom in the Arab world, not to mention the abhorrent treatment of women and other minorities in countries like Saudi Arabia. No demand was made that Muslims should learn about the glories of western civilization as Europeans were and are expected to learn about the greatness of Islamic civilization. In other words, according to Fallaci, a substantial portion of Europe's cultural and political independence was sold off by a coalition of ex-communists and socialist politicians. Are we surprised? Fallaci isn't. In 1979, she notes, "the Italian or rather European Left had fallen in love with Khomeini just as now it has fallen in love with Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and Arafat."

Considerably less intemperate than her last book on the topic of radical Islam, the volcanically angry The Rage and the Pride, The Force of Reason is despairing, but often surprisingly funny. ("The rage and the pride have married and produced a sturdy son: the disdain," she writes with characteristic wit.) And, Fallaci being Fallaci, it is occasionally over the top and will no doubt be deeply offensive to many, particularly when, in a postscript the book might have been better off without, she claims that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Nonetheless, the voice and warmth and humor of the author light up its pages, particularly when she takes a leaf out of Saul Bellow's Herzog by firing off impassioned letters to the famous both living and dead. She is savage about the Left, the "Peace" movement (war is a fundamental, if regrettable, condition of life, she states), the Catholic Church, the media and, of course, Islam itself, which she considers theological totalitarianism and a deadly threat to the world. She is much more optimistic about America than Europe, citing the bravery of New Yorkers who celebrated New Year's Eve in Times Square despite widely publicized terrorism threats, but here one feels that she is clutching at straws. Though Fallaci now lives in New York, little amity has been extended to her by her peers since the post-9/11 publication of The Rage and the Pride, and she remains almost as much of a media pariah here as she does in Europe. The major difference is that we're not putting her on trial.

As that Norwegian Mullah told Aftenposten, "Our way of thinking ... will prove more powerful than yours." One hopes he's wrong, but if he is, it will be ordinary Americans and Europeans, including courageous Arab-Americans like L.A. resident Wafa Sultan and the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali (two women openly challenging Islamist supremacism), who prove him so, and not our intellectual classes (artists, pundits, filmmakers, actors, writers ...). Many of the latter, consumed by Bush-hatred and cultural self-loathing, are perilously close to becoming today's equivalent of the great Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who so hated the British Empire that he sided with the Nazis in World War II, to his everlasting shame. The Force of Reason, at the very least, is a welcome and necessary antidote to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 12:19 PM 0 comments

Eurabia Is Already Here: European Parliament Condemns Danish Cartoons

Via Spanish Eowyn/Blueslord, check out what the EU Parliament is up to:


Regarding the Danish cartoons, MEPs and members of parliament from the 25 EU member states as well as the ten Euromed partner countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey) strongly condemned "any offence against religious values" and urged governments "to ensure respect for religious beliefs (...) and to promote the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism".

The resolution also defends the freedom of expression as a fundamental value, which should however respect the rights and values of others. The Euromed parliamentarians called on "governments and political leaders to refrain from making any declaration or speech which might bring to mind the expression 'clash of civilisation'."

Debate

In the morning, the Euromed MPs held a wide-ranging debate.

On the Danish cartoons, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour said that the cartoons and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit, while stressing that freedom of expression cannot be unlimited.

Jordanian MP Hashem Al-Qaisi said it was not enough to deplore the cartoons, as these things might then happen again in another country.

Danish MP Troels Poulsen stressed that Danish society was based on both freedom of expression and religious tolerance and that the government could not influence the media. He felt that the violent reaction to the cartoons was disproportionate.

Turkish representative Zeynep Uslu said freedom of expression was an essential value, but not a limitless freedom, something the Court of Human Rights had also stated. Freedom of expression must be exercised with respect for religions, she said. She stressed the goal of an alliance of civilisations, not a clash between them.

Pasqualina Napoletano (PES, IT) said that the cartoon crisis was a real problem, but that EMPA was a lay assembly: "We must separate political from religious activities. We cannot allow people to divide us by using religion as a means."


Why are these uncivilized Turkish and Jordanian "representatives" given a table at a European Union Parliament meeting?

Yes, that's from the website of the European Parliament. Arab Muslim countries are already "partners" in the European Union, and, as such, they are rendered a voice and a vote in Europ ... uh, Eurabian affairs.

I didn't know that.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 12:02 PM 0 comments

Eurabia Buries Her History and Traditions

Friday, February 17, 2006


There may be no worse affliction for a culture than its flaccid deflation in the face of bullies. When nothing is worth dying for, then life has no joy either. When the goal is to avoid getting killed, joy dies.

Celebrations in America are often based on old traditions, imported from Europe. Louisiana has Mardi Gras, and throughout the rest of the country Christian churches which follow the liturgical calendar closely also have a much quieter festival in the form of Shrove Tuesday, with pancake suppers and celebrations to mark the final day of the seasons of Christmas and Epiphany. At midnight, Ash Wednesday begins the penitential season that will lead to Easter.

Europe threw out the meaning behind the celebrations, but hey, that’s no reason to throw out the party, right? Especially the festivals which allow cultural transgressions with a certain impunity for making fun of important figures. For millennia, these carnivals have served as a vent for mayhem, making the rest of the year, with its daily, dull routines, more endurable.

At Brussels Journal there are two essays on the death and the dearth of Festival in Eurabia. In the first, “Dispatch from the Eurabian Front: The End of Carnival,” Belien describes the sad fear that infects the prospects of future festivals. Last year, after the carnival, those who are most compelled to obliterate joy — the “frothing fundos” as eteraz calls them — complained that the festival had made fun of Muslims:

After last year’s parade the organizers received a protest letter from the Arab League, stating that the event had been “insulting and offensive to Muslims and their culture.”

Well, yes. That was the point. They also make fun of the Pope and the King and any group deemed worthy of having a little air taken out of its tires.

Have you noticed that a “clash of cultures” really translates into a “rash of Muslims”? Europeans gather in crowds to celebrate; Muslims gather in crowds to complain, bully, or burn things down. I guess it comes down to this: whether your culture is rooted in Eros or Thanatos. You may guess which side is which here.

The real issue is freedom to celebrate who you are and what your history has been. It is a freedom that is disappearing in Eurabia, because above all, Islam obliterates other cultures’ histories:


…the most famous carnival celebration in Belgium is the one of the Flemish town of Aalst, 35 kms to the west of Brussels. Several groups parade through town in a pageant with floats, bands, and jesters, making fun of recent national and international events. The tradition goes back centuries, to mediaeval times. With carnival [mardi gras, as they say in Louisiana] approaching (28 February), the authorities are afraid that some groups might use the Danish cartoon crisis to dress up – God, or rather Allah, forbid – as the prophet Muhammad.

The carnival in Aalst is known for its disrespect of just about anything. This has never caused trouble in the past, though Aalst’s most popular group is a raucous, vulgar bunch of men dressed up as women, and calling themselves the “voil jeanetten” (“dirty faggots”). Mind you, the bawdiness and vulgarity is restricted to carnival, and these people are respectable, civilized, straight citizens throughout the rest of the year. Everyone, the participants and the public, know that the indecent and disrespectful behaviour is all in jest and until now nobody has ever taken offense.

Until now. Until the Muslims came and pooped on the party. The thin-skinned, the arrogant, the spoilers. Sometimes you wonder: does this inability to laugh at oneself go all the way back to Mohammed’s characterological deficits? Surely he was not known for his ability to jest about himself.

The parade and festival organizers haven’t given up hope yet. They’re meeting with town officials, trying to figure out how to have their ancient festivities without getting killed by The Grim Ones.

“Prohibit[ing] certain things might have the opposite effect,” Nicole Ringoir, the president of the organizing committee, told a Flemish newspaper. “Perhaps we should trust that the carnival revellers know how far they can go.” In other words: count on the fact that even dirty faggots fear for their lives.

That’s true. A bomb or two ought to settle things down.

Meanwhile, officials are caught between a rock and a hard place:

“We cannot censor the parade. During carnival the inhabitants of Aalst mock everything and everyone, including the Pope and the King,” Anny De Maght, the mayor of Aalst says. “I trust that our groups will know what limits to respect.”

As Mr. Belien sadly notes:

One thing is certain: in the coming age of Eurabia the mediaeval tradition of carnival will be abolished. I guess that is the price Europe will have to pay for “progress.”

Well, it is the price to be paid for dhimmitude. But maybe that’s how Eurabia will have to define “progress” from now on. The light of joy will get dimmer and dimmer until it finally flickers out.

As it is flickering now, even in Spain:
In 711 Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. They took Spain by force and remained there until they were thrown out during the reconquista in 1492. Every year, in a tradition that goes back to the 16th century, Spanish villages still celebrate the liberation from the Moors —emphasis added — (as the Muslims were locally called) during “Moros y Cristianos” festivals in which effigies of the prophet Muhammad – the so-called “la Mahoma” – are mocked, thrown out of windows, and burned.

Now the Spanish, having witnessed what happened to the Vikings recently, are wondering whether they can still continue their tradition of “offending Muslims.” The village of Bocairent near Valencia decided this year to discontinue the century old tradition of mocking and burning effigies of Muhammad. Bocairent does not want to risk becoming the target of suicide bombers.

Eurabia: death by a thousand cuts.



It is enough to make you weep, watching the light in the eyes of Europe dhimmi down and weasel out. It is a dark time in a darkling continent.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 11:09 AM 0 comments

Comfortabel Cultuurrelativerend Correct

Gepost door Nick (ArchEnemy) - maandag 20 maart 2006 @ 00:16

Op de site van islamophobia-watch.com staat het in vette letters: Muslim vote tips the balance in Netherlands. Wouter Bos praat nu zelf ook over zijn 'Partij van de Allochtonen'. Hij gaat zelfs zo ver om openlijk te twijfelen aan de competentie van de verse nieuw-Nederlandse raadsleden die met voorkeursstemmen in de verschillende gemeenteraden gekozen zijn. Deze slag om de arm is opmerkelijk, er zijn wel vaker raadsleden op onverkiesbare plaatsen met voorkeurstemmen in de raad terecht gekomen. Wouter heeft het dan ook even over 'een uitloop van de Nederlandse stemmers', om daar gelijk aan toe te voegen dat dat natuurlijk niet zal gebeuren.

Blijkbaar waren de allochtonen welkom om Leefbaar Rotterdam weg te werken, maar moet men nu de stemmen geteld zijn niet meteen denken dat er met de religieuze vingers aan de beleidsknoppen gedraaid mag worden. Deze vrees is opmerkelijk, we zijn toch allemaal exact gelijk bij de PvdA? En de nieuwe islamitische raadsleden zijn toch gewoon overtuigde sociaal-democraten? Die door hun andere culturele achtergrond vooral een verrijking van het duffe, ingeslapen oubollige Nederlandse stadsbestuur zullen zijn? De PvdAleiding gelooft haar eigen verhaal blijkbaar niet meer. En ik geloof er niets van dat Wouters terughoudendheid ten aanzien van de islamitische raadsleden alleen komt omdat hij de Nederlandse 'racisten' niet wil vervreemden van zijn partij, er is meer aan de hand.

Wat dat precies is, heeft natuurlijk breeduit de media gehaald vorige maand(not). Onder bezielende leiding van een aantal professoren, waaronder Paul Cliteur, Paul Scheffer en Hans Jansen werd 'The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Muslim Attitudes to Europe's Public Order: Rebellion and Acceptance" gehouden. Er werden workshops gegeven met wereldberoemde gastsprekers zoals de befaamde Bat Ye'or, die als een van de weinige wetenschappers het ontstaan van Eurabia heeft gedocumenteerd, en schrijvers als Ibn Warraq en Robert Spencer. Van de laatste is op zijn site een typerend verhaal te vinden over zijn korte verblijf in Nederland.

Hij vertelt hoe hij de eerste avond van zijn aankomst in Nederland uitgenodigd was voor een diner op de Amerikaanse ambassade, zij het zonder de vriend van Bush, die was nog niet aangekomen. Tijdens de avond werd hij geïntroduceerd aan "an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders." Hij stelde haar onder andere de vraag waarop iedere Nederlander in dit land zo graag het antwoord wil weten: "Hoeveel moslimsleiders in Nederland zijn bereid de islamitische staatskundige wet (sharia) opzij te zetten om als staatsburgers de democratie te omarmen?" Het antwoord was: "Heel weinig. Maar met die weinigen zullen we het doen, daar gaan we de toekomst mee in" of woorden van gelijke strekking. Ookal betrof dit een conferentie met de naam "Pim Fortuyn", en was hij misschien wel gericht op het aanbrengen van kloven tussen bevolkingsgroepen, naar de Amerikaanse ambassade stuur je als Departement van Integratie geen koffiejuffrouw of uitzendkracht, dit moet een beleidsdame van formaat zijn geweest. En zij vertolkte het regeringsbeleid dat Nederland al zo lang kenmerkt: "We merken geen wil, geen inzet vanuit de islamitische gemeenschap om tot een volwaardig democratisch burgerschap te komen, hooguit bij een paar mensen. Maar met die paar mensen zijn we in dialoog". Ze zitten werkelijk niet stil bij onze overheid, die hele conferentie kon eigenlijk worden afgelast na deze geruststelling. Wantrouwend van aard waagde Robert Spencer nóg een vraag, en hij kreeg een griezelig antwoord: "I asked her if she had read the Qur'an. She told me no, she hadn't, and wouldn't, because she didn't want to lose all hope"

Flauwe opmerkingen over goede kwaliteit elastiek in je broek kunnen achterwege blijven, het staat er echt: Als die beleidsbobo van dat departement de koran zou doorlezen verliest ze de hoop dat het ooit goedkomt met de integratie van de Nederlandse moslims in onze democratie, dus doet ze dat maar niet. Robert Spencer geeft haar nog wat vaderlijke raad die ze waarschijnlijk ook optimistisch terzijde legt en hij schrijft er -oprecht verbaasd- een kort stukje over op zijn weblog, blijkbaar als ode aan de overtuigde stupiditeit waar Nederlandse topambtenaren vanuit ideologische motieven toe in staat zijn. En ergens kan ik die vrouw ook wel begrijpen, verzen als: "9:29 Fight those who believe not in Allah, nor acknowledge religion of truth until they pay jizya and feel themselves subdued" geven weinig ruimte aan een ideologisch ingericht brein om achteroverleunend positief te kunnen blijven fantaseren over de toekomst. Zeker als je je daarbij realiseert dat de islam in haar hele geschiedenis laat zien zich nooit (achteraf) te schamen voor welke vorm van religieus (wapen)geweld dan ook, compleet met ijzeren rookgordijnen om ongelovigen met prachtige kluiten in een vredig wuivend riet te sturen.

Ik heb dit een paar dagen geleden gelezen en ben er nog beduusd van. Ik hou me altijd voor dat de Nederlandse politieke realiteit meestal gestoorder is dan ik me voor kan stellen, maar om zo overdonderend gelijk te krijgen is ook weer zoiets... We hebben het hier notabene over het departement van onze ijzeren Rita, over een van haar topambtenaren. Maar die meid zal wel omhooggeklommen zijn in de hoogtijdagen van het politiek-correctisme, waarin het absoluut not done was om kritisch te kijken naar de religie van de nieuwe Nederlanders. Tijdens de parlementaire enquête over het gefaalde integratiebeleid kwam ook boven tafel dat dat simpelweg niet gedaan werd, omdat men bang was door collega's en leidinggevenden als 'verdacht persoon' in de racistische hoek weggezet te worden, ontdaan van alle carrièremogelijkheden. Deze topmuts heeft netjes gedaan wat van haar verwacht werd: meedromen met de politiek-correcte leiders en vooral niet wakker willen worden. Dát is immers de basis van positief beleid, daarmee hou je het zaligmakende poldermodel in stand. Want de dialoog -ookal voer je hem met een spiegel-, die zal ervoor zorgen dat het allemaal goed komt. In theorie. Want aan de praktijk durven we ons niet te wagen, als we daar aan beginnen weten we immers zeker dat het een verloren zaak is en wat schiet je daar nou mee op.


Waar zou Wouter van dromen? Dat zijn stralende gezicht en zijn strakke achterwerk garant staan voor een stabiele, florerende en saamhorige toekomst van Nederland? We boffen maar met deze kwaliteit van bestuur, de dorpen en steden van dit land gaan weer vier mooie jaren tegemoet.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 1:56 PM 0 comments

Welcome to Eurabia!

Palestinian burn a French flag during a demonstration in Ramallah against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.


- Jonathan S. Tobin

The other day while driving to my office, I passed by The Philadelphia Inquirer and viewed a familiar sight: demonstrators protesting the publication of what they saw as an offensive cartoon in the newspaper.

Many groups in this city have taken their turn waving signs in front of the Knight-Ridder bastion on North Broad Street. In the not-so-distant-past, some of those lined up angrily outside of the Inquirer building were members of the Jewish community, venting their disgust at what they believed to be biased coverage of the Middle East, which did Israel a grave disservice.

And at times, prominent on the list of their complaints, were those focused on the Inquirer's editorial cartoonist Tony Auth, who has taken his share of pot-shots at the Jewish state in ways many of us believe has gone over the line between fair comment and utter bias.

But this week, the complainers were local Muslims, voicing their outrage at the Inquirer's decision to reprint - in the context of a news story - one of a series of controversial cartoons about Islam originally published last fall by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

In a controversy that's gradually been gaining steam, Muslims around the world have been taking to the streets to show just how angry they are about the cartoons they say violate a religious taboo by depicting the image of the Prophet Mohammed, though only four of the 12 cartoons can be fairly characterized as criticisms of Islam or its prophet (to view the cartoons, go to: www.brusselsjournal. com/node/698).

As someone who has made pointed criticisms in print of the Inquirer, I might be expected to sympathize with Muslims, who now perceive themselves as being in the cross-hairs of Knight-Ridder's local media monopoly.

But I'm not at all - because this debate isn't about a bad cartoon or even the perception of slurs against a faith group.

On the Side of the Angels

Despite the abject apologies for the cartoons voiced by people like former President Bill Clinton and the U.S. State Department, the Inquirer's decision to print the cartoon put it on the side of the angels, not that of the bigots.

The original publication of the cartoons was not a casual slur or a prank by a Danish publication few had ever heard of. It was, instead, a deliberate response to a campaign of vilification and violence carried out by Muslims in Europe against anyone who dared criticize their behavior or their politics.

Muslims see any depiction of Mohammed as a grave offense, and that is a point we should not take lightly. In Israel, such acts are punished with prison, which says a lot about its sensitivity to Arabs and not much for its defense of free speech.

But what has been happening in Europe is that Muslim immigrants have been seeking not so much tolerance as demanding that everyone else conform to their sensibilities. And, in those instances where European critics of Islamic culture have dared to broach those differences - such as Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh - what followed was violence; in his case, death.

The growth of the Muslim population on the continent and the willingness of all too many European intellectuals to rationalize Islamic intolerance (with hatred for the State of Israel being an issue that gives them common ground) were leading to a trend of self-censorship.

Independent thinkers were not only fearful of being themselves the victim of Muslim violence. They were also wondering whether the rest of society would have the guts to back them up if they challenged the Islamist view on issues such as the treatment of women, the authoritarian nature of the Islamic world, and, yes, the treatment of Jews and Israel.

So Jyllands-Posten commissioned a group of artists to depict their impressions of contemporary Islam. And the answer they got from much of the world was hardly encouraging.

Many European governments, including that of Denmark itself, apologized. Rather than maintain a steadfast defense for freedom of speech in a context of assaults on that freedom from Muslims, the impulse to appeasement has generally prevailed.

And when a few European newspapers printed the cartoons in solidarity with the Danes, this - as was the case with the Inquirer - created new protests. The editor of one French newspaper who did so was fired.

The response from the Arab and Muslim world has been widespread riots and threats aimed at Europeans. And the more the Euros apologize, the more the calls for the beheading of cartoonists and editors - and the stifling of any anti-Islamic voices - grow.

It's Come Full-Circle

This is the Europe that Swiss historian Bat Ye'or so vividly described in her book Eurabia, published last year, which spoke at length about the ways European culture and politics was being subjected to a hostile takeover by Islam. Many critics scoffed at her gloomy view, in which the West was gradually being subjected to the same humiliating treatment that non-Muslims traditionally faced in the Islamic world.

But what word could better describe Europeans who are issuing craven apologies for the cartoons than that of dhimmi, the word Bat Ye'or uses to describe the inferior status of a non-Muslim subject in an Islamic state.

This is, after all, an Arab and Islamic world in whose press cartoons and articles depict Jews and Christians in a far more offensive manner than anything published in Denmark. Their anger is not that of the victim, but of the aggressor caught in the act.

Where is their outrage when Jews are depicted as ritual murderers, or in terms and images that are taken straight out of the Nazi handbook? Why don't they demonstrate when the leader of Iran simultaneously engages in Holocaust denial, while making his own implicit threat of committing the mass murder of Jews with the nuclear weapons he covets so badly?

Arab wrath would be better directed toward the Islamist terrorism against Americans and Israelis, or at the lack of freedom for believers in other religions in places like Saudi Arabia.

Viewed in that context, these violent Muslim protests must be seen as a vindictive attempt to silence critics of Islamist radicals.

Local Philadelphia Muslims were merely voicing their hurt feelings when they demonstrated peacefully. But when you look at these cartoons - rather than worrying about the delicate and curiously selective sensibilities of the Muslim world - think of the slain Theo van Gogh and the others who challenged Islamists - individuals who are under the threat of death. Think also of the intolerance of the Islamic world and wonder whether we want such people dictating what our newspapers can or cannot print.

Like it or not, this is merely part of what is a going to be a long and difficult clash of civilizations. It's time to tell the would-be censors of the Islamic world that Western freedoms will not be sacrificed to the demands of theocrats.

Contact Jonathan S. Tobin via e-mail at: jtobin@jewishexponent. com.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 1:29 PM 0 comments

The Qur'an reported to the police

By Kent Olsen, correspondent to Jyllands-Posten

A broad alliance of grass-roots movements have gone to the prosecutors of several states to hinder the dissemination of the Quran. According to the indictment, the Quran is not just a religious and historic book, but also a political book, which is incompatible with the constiution.

Berlin

At the prosecutor’s office at Gorch-Forck-Wall 15 in Hamburg, an unusual letter was received Monday morning, containing an indictment filed this weekend. The indictment targeted the Quran, charging that the holy book of the Moslems, according to the accuser, is incompatible with the German constitution.

“Support Denmark!”
The accuser is “Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen (BVB)”, which concerns itself with, in its own words, “defending basic rights and freedoms” against Islam. The extensive international furore, allegedly caused by the Muhammed cartoons, has made clear the relevancy of the alliance. Its homepage is decorated with a Danish flag with the words “Support Denmark! Defend the Free World” superimposed on it.

The indictment has been filed in several states, including Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bayern and probably more.

In several talkshows on German TV, conservative politicians have pointed out that the Quran is incompatible with the German constitution. The Turkish-born writer Serap Cileli said on January 29 this year that “the Quran must be considered a historic document. It is not compatible with our constitution and Human Rights.”

Now the alliance wants the matter tried at the courts.

Potent political book
The author of the indictment in Hamburg, Jutta Starke, says that the Quran was reported to the police two or three years ago, but that the report was dismissed on the grounds that it was a book of only historical interest.

“The events of the last months have made clear that the Quran isn’t just a historical book, but very much a potent political book, a thing which we document extensively in the indictment,” Jutta Starke says.

She says it is a task of sisyphean dimensions to inform the media, politicians and churches of the true intentions of Islam in the enlightened world of the West.

“We are grateful to Jyllands-Posten that discussions about Islam have now become possible,” says Jutta Starke.

“You suffer for all of Europe and that’s why we find it indecent that Europe hasn’t loudly, in unison, taken a stand for Freedom of Speech against the laws of the Quran.”

The indictment consists of five pieces of paper and a number of appendices. The indictment says that it is not against Islam’s spiritual message, but against the judicial and political message.

The decisive count of the indictment “is in the Quran’s status vis a vis the Federal Republic of Germany’s constitution”. In the appendices to the indictment, 200 points have been listed “where the Quran is against and claims itself above the constitution.”

The Quran has an answer to everything
It is pointed out that the Quran to Moslems is the end all, be all in matters of faith, in matters of society and state and in the discourse with people of different views. The Quran says that it is the words of Allah. According to the views of several, including leading, Moslems in Germany, it is literally and absolutely true at all time and in all places, the indictment says.
The newly elected German-born chairman of the Moslem Central Council of German, Ayyub Axel Köhler, is quoted in the indictment:

“A constitution after the principle of the division of powers into the legislative, the executive and the judicial powers, is nowhere to be found in the Islamic theory of the State. From an Islamic viewpoint, this is obvious, since the laws – the laws of God – in the form of sharia, are already made and thus no legislative power is needed, in that sense of the word. Only Allah is the legislative power.”

Muslim Chancellor
A prominent Moslem, Ibrahim El-Zayat, is quoted as saying that he thinks it is possible that “the Federal Chancellor in 2020 is a Moslem, born and raised in Germany, that the Federal Supreme Court has a Moslem judge, and that a Moslem representative will be on the Federal Radio/TV Council to secure the Moslem citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.”

“This land is our land and it is our duty to make positive changes. With the help of Allah, we will make it a paradise on Earth, by making available the Islamic ummah (ED: Islamic community) and all of mankind. Allah doesn’t change the situation of a people till the people have changed the situtation,” El-Zayad is quoted as saying.

Violence against the infidels
The indictment is against the 200 verses of 114 suras (chapters) of the Quran that are not compatible with the constitution, including demagoguery, incitement to murder, murder and mutilation, war, acceptance of thievery against infidels, meaning all non-Moslems. Verses are also pointed out where the equal rights of men and women are not upheld and where people of different faiths are oppressed.

Example: “The unbelievers among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians): They are the vilest of all creatures.” (Sura 98:6)

According to the indictment that paragraph violates Article 4 of the Constitution and Paragraph 166 of the Penal Code.


Translation taken from the Agora weblog.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 3:37 PM 0 comments

Goodbye Europe, Hello Eurabia

Europe's botched civilization, perverted by socialism and lost faith, seems to have lost the will, the passion to sustain itself. If it continues to practice today's multiculturalist leftism, Europe's demographic doom will be sealed. Some harbingers:


In Brussels, Belgium, the most popular name for baby boys is now Mohammad. Sustaining the population of a nation requires that on average each couple gives birth to 2.1 children. The average European couple now has fewer than 1.4 babies, compared to 3.6 babies born to the average Muslim immigrant couple in Europe. Across Western Europe 16 to 20 percent of babies are being born into Muslim families.
In France at least 12 percent of the population is already Muslim, the fruits mostly of immigrants from former French colonies in North Africa. If present birth trends continue, by 2030 a quarter of France's people will be Muslim, more than enough to determine who controls the national parliament and executive. As this columnist recently noted, the nuclear-armed French military is already 15 percent Muslim. Adjacent Switzerland is now 20 percent Muslim.
The German newspaper Deutsche Welle days ago reported that Germany's birth rate in 2005 fell to a level lower than at the end of World War II, to a "historic low," more than fifty percent lower than those of France and Great Britain. But at a meeting this week in Berlin that brought together the interior ministers of six European nations, Germany's leftwing Social Democrats continued to oppose the application of any test or standard that would restrict who could migrate into Germany.

The burgeoning Muslim population within Europe is not evenly spread. It is largely concentrated in and around big cities, whose local politicians feel its pressure acutely and often bend to that pressure. In the Netherlands the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam nearly have Muslim majorities now.

These Islamic enclaves are already taking on the character of conquered provinces that no longer belong to the European countries around them. As FrontPage Magazine recently quoted from the new book While Europe Slept by liberal American expatriate Bruce Bawer:

In France, a public official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix's Muslim district out of respect for his declaration of the neighborhood as Islamic territory to which she had no right of access. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to officially designate certain areas of Bradford as being under Muslim, not British, law. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought the same kind of control over parts of Copenhagen. And in Belgium, Muslims living in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek already view it not as part of Belgium but as an area under Islamic jurisdiction in which Belgians are not welcome.

Europe has several potential choices in the face of a flood of immigrants and families within its borders who refuse to assimilate European values of mutual toleration and liberal social policies.

Europe's cultural polarization vis-à-vis its Muslim underclass is being exacerbated by socialist policies that are producing stagnant economies and high unemployment. These fruits of Euro-socialism have also created a political tinderbox of Muslim frustration and, as we saw in recent days of protests in Paris, an angry refusal by many traditional Europeans to reform or relinquish their welfare state and job security benefits. This climate discourages investors and pits new and traditional Europeans against one another.

If Europe continues as it is now, the rising Muslim tide will, one at a time, transform the members of the European Union into Islamic Republics under Islamic Shari'a law as Muslims become the majority population.

Already the wealth of traditional Europeans is being bled away and transferred to new Muslim immigrants and their children. One mechanism for this is the European welfare state. In Denmark, observed Bawer, only five percent of the population is Muslim, but this minority demands and receives 40 percent of the Danish government's total welfare payments and other taxpayer-subsidized social benefits. Even the liberal New York Times Magazine in February reported on the social impact of this growing Islamic drain on the resources of European welfare states such as Sweden and Denmark.

Another method used to transfer wealth from Europeans to Eurabian Muslims is theft. Some radical Mullahs have told their European congregations that Islamic Shari'a law justifies shoplifting and other forms of stealing from European merchants and companies as a way to make non-Muslims pay the discriminatory jizya tax that is extracted from non-Muslim citizens in Muslim countries.

And in Europe's growing Islamic neighborhoods, where police are often afraid to go, European law is being supplanted by Shari'a. European women venturing into or near such enclaves have been assaulted and, in some cases, raped by gangs of macho Islamic males for violating Muslim dress codes and failing to exhibit the subservient status some Islamic subcultures require of females.

Forty percent of Muslims living in Great Britain want Islamic Shari'a law introduced into parts of that country, according to a poll reported last month by the London Sunday Telegraph.

Shari'a differs dramatically from modern Western notions of law and society. Shari'a has no separation of church and state; to the contrary, under Shari'a the Koran is the ultimate law book and constitution, and the Islamic Mullah is the magistrate who punishes violators of this law. Under Shari'a, as practiced in much of the Islamic world, equality exists only among Muslim men; women are inferior to men, and Jews and Christians are inferior to all Muslims. Risk-taking and usury, i.e., money-lending for profit, are forbidden, so we would kiss capitalism goodbye.

Religious freedom is non-existent under Shari'a. A Christian or a Jew is permitted to convert to Islam, but the penalty for any Muslim converting to a different faith is death. In American-liberated Afghanistan a 41-year-old former Muslim, Abdul Rahman, is on trial in Kabul for the crime of converting to Christianity. The prosecutor in the case, Abdul Wasi, has asked for a death penalty, as Shari'a requires. Wasi, reported Associated Press, said that he "had offered to drop the charges if Rahman changed his religion back to Islam, but the defendant refused." The Muslim judge's ruling is expected by mid-May.

It seems worth asking American authorities whether the U.S. would intervene to prevent the execution of an Afghan whose only crime was converting to Christianity.

European Muslims demand toleration and respect and accommodation for their laws, garb, Halal (Islamic "Kosher") dietary rules, customs, and faith. But as the world has seen in recent months, radical Muslims have no respect for Western traditions such as press freedom. Cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad set off riots, killings and death threats against European journalists.

(Oddly, as this columnist uniquely noted, the tradition prohibiting depictions of the Prophet began with Muhammad himself, who gave such guidance to avoid becoming an object of idolatry by misguided Muslims tempted to worship him instead of Allah. Logically, therefore, a devout Muslim should object to any positive depiction of Mohammad, but negative depictions of Mohammad, as in the European cartoons, pose no such danger of causing idol worship. It was the Islamists who fanatically objected to negative European cartoons of the Prophet who were practicing idolatry by turning Mohammad into an image too sacred to depict in any way.)

Islamic Shari'a is incompatible with Western traditions of tolerance. Too much of today's Islam preaches "an eye for an eye" but not "live and let live."

No wonder, then, that earlier this month the chairman of Britain's Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, responded to the Telegraph poll by urging the 40 percent of his nation's Muslims who want part of the country ruled by Shari'a law to move elsewhere. "We have one set of laws" in Britain, said Phillips. "They are decided by one group of people, members of Parliament, and that's the end of the story." (In February Australia's Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, said much the same, suggesting in a public speech that Shari'a advocates would feel more comfortable living in Saudi Arabia or Iran.)

Immigrant to Norway Iraqi Mullah Krekar, a former leader of the Kurdish guerrilla group Ansar-al-Islam, has told Norwegians that "our way of thinking…will prove more powerful than yours" and described Al Qaeda terror mastermind Osama bin Laden as "a good person." This prompted Norway's Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Hakon Hanssen to say he intended to deport Mullah Krekar back to Iraq in the near future. Selective deportation of such radical Islamist firebrands (such as those who inspired recent Muslim terrorism in London) across Europe could reduce immediate social tensions.

What Europe is doing in the meanwhile is preaching the need for press freedom and tolerance while preparing this June to prosecute, in Paris, famed Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci for daring to write a book, The Force of Reason, critical of the Muslim immigrant inundation of Europe. In today's Europe free speech is stifled by laws that prohibit Political Incorrectness in a wide and arbitrary variety of ways.

And France, at the heart of Europe, is promoting trade barriers with a dogmatic zeal not seen since the frenzy of stone castle building in the dark ages. In the name of preserving national security, as Daniel Schwammenthal reported in the March 13 Wall Street Journal, France last winter declared 11 of its industrial sectors off limits to purchase by investors from other European nations; these sectors, noted Schwammenthal, range "from data security to (bizarrely) casinos." What might become of France if its dice and roulette wheels became Dutch…or Russian?

France is also dragging its feet on agreements to allow European Union workers to move freely from one EU country to another. The French have phobias not only about Muslim peasant immigrants but also about what they call the "Polish plumber," the skilled European workers who would move to Paris and undercut the high pay now pocketed by scarce French workers. The French incentive to work is dulled by an easy, lazy alternative: a fat welfare check.

If Europe can somehow buy time, then in theory it might be able to make a comeback. What it needs is cloning and fertility technology, moxie, imports of its old sturdier, healthier genetic material from the United States and Australia to restore its seminal vigor, and a renewal of faith. Europe was able to restore its lost population rather quickly after the Black Plague and spawned Baby Booms after two World Wars.

Political policies could facilitate this. When France was unable to recruit many settlers to its colony called New France, now known as Canada, it offered fat pensions to any married couple there that had six children. Quebec to this day retains the spirit of fecundity those pensions bred.

Last September French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin proposed accelerating cash benefits to encourage women to have a third child. This is yet another kind of slacker welfare, but at least it encourages the lazy to spend more time breeding and less watching television. De Villepin did not propose restricting these or other government breeder benefits to non-Muslims, although he could have made the argument that non-Muslim French are an endangered species meriting special help.

Europe has stopped rising Islamic tides before, in battle in southern France in 732 by the knights of Charles Martel, "The Hammer," and twice at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683 by holding off the Ottoman Turks. Spain even rolled back its Muslim occupiers with the Reconquista of 1492, and Greece, the cradle of Western democracy, won back its independence from Muslim rule in 1829.

In time Islam could collapse, as Communism did. More likely, this religion now living through its own dark 14th Century might flower into a Renaissance and follow the enlightened model of Ataturk's Turkey. Modern Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a friend of Israel, and a candidate for European Union membership. Women had the right to vote in Ataturk's Turkey before they did in England. Turkey could become the model for the future Islamic world, besting the medieval ideology of Islamism, narrow-mindedness, hate and violence preached by Osama bin Laden and his ilk.

A courageous European stand against that nest of Islamist vipers and their atomic eggs in Teheran would be a good place for Europe to demonstrate to itself and to the world that it has the will and skill to survive.

By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com

Mr. Ponte co-hosts a national radio talk show Monday through Friday 6-8 PM Eastern Time (3-5 PM Pacific Time) on the Genesis Communications Network. Internet Audio worldwide is at GCNlive .com. The show's live call-in number is 1-800-259-9231. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest.

© 2006, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 12:30 PM 0 comments

"Die Muslime versuchen, die Niederlande zu kolonisieren"

Der holländische Trendforscher Adjiedj Bakas (41) drängt auf eine Veränderung der Einwanderungspolitik. Sonst könne der Kontinent zu Eurabia werden
Die Welt: Haben sich die Niederlande durch den Mord an Theo van Gogh verändert?

Adjiedj Bakas: Ja und nein. Es ist jetzt ein Wandel erkennbar, der schon vor einigen Jahren begonnen hat. Es wird darüber debattiert, wie wir mit den Muslimen im Lande umgehen sollen. Das ist ein positiver Effekt.

Die Welt: Inwiefern positiv?

Bakas: In erster Linie, weil die islamische Gemeinde selber über ihre Rolle in der niederländischen Gesellschaft diskutiert. Bis dahin hat es keine Beiträge in Zeitungen, keine Fernsehdiskussionen von Muslimen gegeben, in welche Richtung sich ihre Religion bewegt. Vor allem junge Muslime artikulieren, daß die den Fundamentalismus hassen und die Demokratie lieben - das ist für unser Land ziemlich einzigartig.


Die Welt: Reicht es aus, wenn die Muslime über ihre Rolle diskutieren oder brauchen die Niederlande eine neue Einwanderungspolitik?


Bakas: Ja, die bisherige Einwanderungspolitik der vergangenen 40 Jahre war schlicht desaströs. Man muß aber differenzieren. Mit den schwarzen, den südamerikanischen und den asiatischen Einwanderern haben wir so gut wie keine Probleme. Die gehen zur Schule heiraten Niederländer und haben Jobs. Schwierigkeiten bereiten die islamischen Immigranten, vor allem die aus Marokko, aber auch die aus der Türkei. Wir haben auch indonesische und surinamsche Muslime im Land. Mit denen haben wir ebenfalls keine Probleme.


Die Welt: Was soll die Regierung tun?


Bakas: Die Regierung sollte erstens die nicht-islamischen Immigranten willkommen heißen, weil sie ein Beispiel sind, wie Integration funktioniert. Zweitens sollte die Einwanderung von denjenigen gestoppt werden, die weder den Willen noch die Fähigkeit haben, Niederländer zu werden. Dazu sollte der Nachzug von Frauen für arrangierte Ehen, so weit es irgend geht, erschwert werden. Drittens sollten wir das belgische Modell kopieren: Dort ist die Religion jedes Bürgers registriert, so daß die Regierung weiß, mit wem sie es zu tun hat. Wir haben eine Million Muslime im Lande, viele sind aber nur "Minos" ("Moslems in name only"). Wir wissen also gar nicht, wie viele wirklich gläubig oder gar fundamentalistisch sind.


Viertens sollten alle Niederländisch lernen. Es ist lächerlich, daß Menschen sich der neuen Sprache entziehen können. Außerdem wäre es wichtig, daß die älteren Türken und Marokkaner, die sich hier nicht heimisch fühlen, in ihre Heimat zurückkehren. Sie üben eine unglaubliche soziale Kontrolle über die Jugend aus, so daß diese sich nicht frei entwickeln kann. Schließlich müssen wir eine eigene Ausbildung für Imame etablieren. Bislang kommen die aus der Provinz und wissen nichts über das Land. Wir brauchen Geistliche, die das Land und seine Regeln kennen.


Die Welt: Wissen die jungen Menschen genug über die Niederlande?


Bakas: Ich glaube, sie müssen erst einmal mehr über den Islam lernen. Muslime sind nicht daran gewohnt, als Minderheiten in einem fremden Land zu leben. Sie wollen immer die Macht in den Ländern, in denen sie leben, übernehmen. Sie versuchen die Niederlande zu kolonisieren. Bisher haben wir ihnen das zu einfach gemacht. Ein Beispiel: Muslimische, hochgebildete, aber fundamentalistische Frauen, die in Amsterdam Medizin studieren, weigern sich, Männer zu untersuchen, weil das ihrem Glauben widerspreche - und wir haben ihnen dieses Privileg, das für einen Arzt, der Leben retten soll, völlig lächerlich ist, zugestanden.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 5:12 PM 0 comments

The Quislings of Eurabia

From the desk of Paul Belien on Tue, 2006-02-21 23:55
Last Saturday Tim Blair wrote that so far thirteen papers have been closed down after they published the Danish cartoons. At least twelve journalists face charges and seven are in prison. “Most media organisations have taken a stand by boldly running away,” says Blair. “Journalists can spend entire careers mouthing off about their commitment to free speech without ever having the chance to properly demonstrate it. I once had a theory that the lack of repression in modern democracies drove journalists to invent McCarthyesque threats, so much did they crave an opportunity to stare down those who would silence them. Their ideal imagined foes (I’m guessing): brutish religious fundamentalists opposed to progressive notions on women’s rights, homosexuality, art, and education. Problem is, those imagined foes were always named Falwell or Robertson or Nile (or John Paul II). Faced with fundamentalist religious demands from people bearing less familiar titles, however, the media froze. Missed your chance, journalists!”

Since Saturday the figures need updating. Yesterday a Saudi newspaper was banned after printing some of the cartoons. Some socialist governments in the West are no better than their islamist counterparts. Sweden has already closed two websites for publishing the cartoons, and the Finnish government closed one, and quickly apologized to Muslims worldwide for the drawings.

The fate of the imprisoned journalists, who now linger in cells in Islamic countries for taking the brave decision to show the public what the cartoons are really like, should be a matter for concern amongst their colleagues around the globe. The resounding silence on the part of the latter, however, proves that most journalists are either downright cowards or the Quislings of anti-Western forces. This reminds me of the infamous Brussels journalist Philippe Servaty who last summer deliberately ruined the lives of more than eighty unfortunate Moroccan women (whom he had each wooed, promised to marry and take with him to Belgium) by posting nude pictures of them on the internet. While Servaty walks free, the women in Morocco were killed by their disgraced families, committed suicide or were locked up as whores in Moroccan jails. Today many of these women are still in prison, serving their one-year sentence. I addressed some of the largest and most powerful international women’s organizations and asked them to launch campaigns for their unfortunate sisters in Morocco – to no avail. The feminists are only interested in their own abortion rights, not in the plight of Muslim women in jail.

It is interesting to compare the behaviour of the Quisling governments of Sweden and Finland to that of the Netherlands. Today (Tuesday) Dutch foreign minister Ben Bot sharply rebuked EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana for the way in which the latter grovelled at the feet of radical Muslim regimes last week, when on a tour of Arab nations Mr Solana, a Spanish Socialist, declared that Europe shared the “anguish” of “offended” Muslims over the Danish cartoons. The Dutch Secretary for European Affairs, Atzo Nicolai, is quoted in today’s De Telegraaf, the largest paper of the Netherlands, about Mr Solana: “He has toured around in order to offer apologies. On behalf of whom, I ask. You and me? We did not draw those cartoons.”

Despite its brave stance, however, the Dutch also have their Quislings. Last month the authorities in Amsterdam prohibited the police from patrolling certain areas of the city in uniform after a Moroccan “youth” had died in a traffic accident. This situation was sufficient for the authorities to consider it unwise that the “youths” be “provoked” by the sight of police uniforms.

One of the worst Quisling regimes can be found in neighbouring Belgium. There the government has an entire organisation at its disposal, the so-called Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR). This Centre systematically prosecutes people who oppose “multiculturalism.” Yesterday it decided to take a Belgian company to court. The company, Feryn, in the Flemish town of Londerzeel, 20 kms to the north of Brussels, makes and installs security garage gates. Though Feryn has Moroccan employees working in the factory it never sends Moroccans to clients when the gates have to be installed in their villas and mansions. This is so, the company says, because the clients do not want Moroccans working in their houses. The CEOOR is now charging Feryn with racism and demanding penalties.

The Centre is also prosecuting Father Samuel, a traditionalist priest, on charges of racism and “islamophobia.” The 64-year old priest, whose real name is Charles-Clément Boniface, was born in Turkey. He writes articles and books and has a website, warning against “the islamic invasion of Belgium.” The priest has been brought to court for “incitement to racism” for remarks such as “Every thoroughly islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority,” or “Muslims have no nationality. The only thing that counts is Islam,” or “Islam is the eternal enemy of the West.’’

The Belgian authorities are currently also prosecuting Daniel Féret, the leader of the Belgian Front National, a party which has 8% of the votes in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. The public prosecutor is demanding a one-year jail sentence for Mr Féret and the outlawing of his party. Two years ago the CEOOR obtained a conviction of the Vlaams Blok, the largest party in Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking north, where it polled 25% of the votes. The party was disbanded after having been declared “a criminal organisation.” It has since been reestablished as Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) and is currently the largest party in Belgium. Recently, the CEOOR opened an investigation against it for “islamophobia,” threatening to deprive it of its funding.

The Belgian authorities, however, deliberately refrain from prosecuting racist speech from Muslims such as Dyab Abu Jahjah. When the latter recently started a judeophobic cartoon series the CEOOR explicitly decided not to prosecute so as not to inflame the situation. Hate crimes against Americans are also tolerated. Indeed, if people would say about Muslims what they say about Americans the CEOOR would long have dragged them to court for hate crimes. As Luc Van Braekel wrote here last year:

Racist or semi-racist expressions are punished when they originate from popular culture or from right-wing politicians and are directed against muslims, Arabs or Africans, but similar expressions remain unpunished when they come from ‘progressive’ artists and leftist intellectuals and are directed against the Americans, the British or the Dutch. In my opinion, the CEOOR and its policies are leading us to a less tolerant society, with more social irritation, distrust and friction. When the state tries to control the thoughts and minds of the people, it will only lose their respect.

The latter, however, does not matter to the Quislings whose only goal it is to sell the people out to dhimmitude in Eurabia.

Unfortunately, the Belgian authorities may not be the only Quislings in Brussels. The Frankfurter Rundschau reports today that the EU is considering increasing aid to the Palestinian Authority in response to Israel’s decision to place financial restrictions on the country. Representatives of Hamas are currently in Tehran, and EU diplomats are worried that if the Palestinian finances collapse the Palestinians will turn to the Iranians for assistance rather than to Europe.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 4:11 PM 0 comments

Europe or Eurabia 2050? part 1

Written by Sandra Carney
Saturday, March 04, 2006

Like a mellowing parent, America in the 21st century needs to plan for the best possible future for its children and grandchildren. Common to human nature, as our years advance, we begin to search out our roots and pass on hereditary information to our descendants. In this great melting pot of a nation, there are few of us who don’t have links to Europe and we look back at the “old country” with the greatest of affection.

But do we want as an ally an aging Europe, with mounting debt and a population that is declining to grow by the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, with angry Muslim immigrants from North Africa and Middle East countries?

Historically, up to the beginning of last century, elderly people aged 65 years or older made up approximately 2% to 3% of the population.

In 1980 the median age for Europeans was 32 years. For U.S. citizens, it was 30 years.

By 2050, the median age projection for the European Union is 52 years. For U.S. citizens, it is 39 years.

So between 1980 and 2050, Europeans have aged 20 years, but U.S. citizens have aged 9 years.

There are two primary reasons for this age span between the average European and American. A declining birth rate in Europe has become trendy, which is coupled with rising longevity. Though Americans are also enjoying longevity, our birth rate is at about replacement level.

This forecast is dire for the continent of Europe and may bring several economic and geopolitical difficulties.

The disadvantages include slower economic growth and a higher cost per person to subsidize the public debt and provide public service such as national defense. Combine this with the funding of pensions and healthcare for the elderly and a gloomy picture rears it’s head for the future of Europe’s economic state.

The Europeans own figures project that the EU’s share of the world’s GDP will shrink substantially over the next two generations, from 18% in 2000 to 10% in 2050.

In the same period the EU projects that the U.S. share will go from 23% to 26%.

According to the European Commission 2002, the largest economies in the world will be that of the USA, China, and India.

“European Commission, The EU Economy: 2002 Review, ELFIN/475/02-EN:
December 11, 2002.”

In the EU report of 2005, the commission forecast that from the year 2015 a shrinking workforce, will act as a brake on potential growth of the EU, reducing it from 2.5% today to 1.25%

Another disaster that looms in the future of Europe is the shrinking pool of people available to pay for government health and pension plans.

These systems are un-funded. The governments hold few assets, and benefits must therefore be paid directly from incoming taxes.

With the shrinkage of working people, the revenues from taxation will decrease, while the number of people on pensions will increase.

The demand for government health care will increase substantially, as seniors consume most of the health care cost.

According to the “UN Population Division in 1980,” there were 22 people aged 65+ for every 100 workers.

In 2005 that number increased to 25 people aged 65+ for every 100 workers and by 2050, there will be 56 people aged 65+ for every 100 workers.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this is less than two workers per retiree!

In a report published in 2005, Laurence Kotlikoff, et al., have calculated that:
• Europe, where the total tax on wages is already above 40 percent, the tax burden will rise to 60 percent by 2030 and approach a staggering 70 percent by mid-century.
• Combining these tax rates with an 8 percent simulated fall in real wages, the expected reduction in take-home pay of European workers will be one quarter by 2030.
• By mid-century, the relative fall in after tax wages will exceed 40 percent relative to what it would have been without the growing burden of elderly entitlements.

“Aging, the World Economy and the Coming General Storm”
(NCPA Policy Report No 273)

Here comes the hard bite for the Europeans:

Tax rates have to be raised on a public that is already overburdened with taxation.

The other critical solution would be to raise the immigration barriers and take in more young people to pay the taxes to fund the pensions promised.

Of course, there are other solutions that might resolve the problems of Europe’s emptying coffers.

1. This could be achieved by reversing the trend of the lower birth rate by psychological means and/or monetary rewards.

2. Reducing pensions by up to 41% and cutting back on health care benefits, which would lead to a desperate state for the seniors.

3. Liberalizing immigration laws.

4. A combination of all of the above options.

Here-in lies a conundrum for the Europeans: Is there a chance that the birth rates will reach replacement levels very soon? Not very likely!

Neither the “U.N. Population Division,” nor the “German Federal Statistical Office” see this happening by 2050.

Fertility rates change slowly over time and to get the fertility rate from 1.5 per woman (i.e.15 live births for every 10 women during their child bearing years) to 2.1 per woman (which is the requirement for a society to replace itself) is a 50% increase.

Even with incentives by the government, if it can possibly happen, it will take a generation for the population to replenish itself. which is too late to impact the year 2050.

And to make matters worse, since the pool of women in their childbearing years is small, a 2.1 fertility rate will replace a smaller society.

Let’s take a look at immigration. Could this be the solution to Europe’s shrinking population? Perhaps, but Europeans may want to learn Arabic, look in the direction of Mecca, and learn the ways of the benevolent Sharia!

The grave dangers of the “immigration” solution to Europe’s glaring geopolitical and economic problems is the subject of Part Two, which will appear next week.
About the Writer: Sandra Carney, born in India, is Anglo-Burmese, of British birth. She became an American Citizen in 1972 and has enjoyed living in the U.S.A. since 1967. She inherited her interest in politics from a family heavily inculcated in the politics of their times. Because of her mixed heritage, she is keenly interested in all that goes on around the world and is fiercely protective of her adopted country, the U.S.A.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 3:55 PM 0 comments

Europe or Eurabia 2050

Written by Sandra Carney
Sunday, March 19, 2006


The question is: Do we really want our children and grandchildren depending on a European continent that will come to be known as Eurabia?

The United Nations’ calculations on the size of immigrants needed in Western Europe to stabilize the work force leave little room for optimism.

If the ageing problem is to be solved and the old age dependency ratio kept constant through immigration alone, then over 700 million people will have to have begun immigrating into the 15 richest European Union countries in 2000 and continue at a constant rate for the next two generations.

Only with this level of immigration will there be 100 people of working age for every 24 retirees, as there are today.

If this can be achieved by the year 2050, the population of the EU will be 1.2 billion--of which 920 million (about 75% of the populace) will be immigrants and their descendants.

The dimensions of such an immigration requirement are not very realistic.

Not to be daunted, however, the United Nations has made another more modest calculation.

In order to keep the size of the population, aged 15 to 64 constant, at the level it was between 1994 to 2000, (250 million), 80 million people would have to migrate to Europe over the next two generations.

If this can be achieved, by the year 2050, the total population should rise to 420 million, of which immigrants and their descendants will be 110 million, or 29%. With this level of immigration there will be 42 retirees per 100 people of working age.

Of course, this is worse than the required 56 retirees per 100 workers, but better than today’s 25 retirees per 100 workers.

Where will these people come from?

Eastern Europe? Not likely, since the demographic outlook for this region is catastrophic.

The United Nations calculates that the population of that region will drop from 297 million to 185 million during the next several decades.

There closest geographic area that can supply Europe with this massive number is Northern Africa and the Middle East. Populations in these impoverished regions will grow from 560 million to 1.1 billion by 2050. The median age will change from 23 in 2005 to 26 years in 2050.

Do we really want our children and grandchildren depending on Eurabia?

The Muslims who have been emigrating today have not been able to assimilate in their newly adopted countries. There have been riots in France over such trivialities as head-scarfs for women students. There have been similar problems in the United Kingdom, with the bus bombings by the sons of Muslim emigrants. The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, was British born, with one Muslim parent. The Danish cartoons have caused riots, mayhem, and deaths worldwide.

In a study done by Goldman Sachs, by the year 2050 the economies of China and India combined will be six times larger than the combined economies of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The size of Brazil’s economy will be larger than Italy’s by 2025, France’s by 2031, and the U.K.’s by 2036. The rise in China and India will not mean the decline of the USA. Instead, it will come at the expense of Europe, whose loss of share of the global GDP will continue to be chiefly for demographic reasons.

The future of the world is not in Europe

From a geopolitical perspective, it’s time for the USA to disengage from Europe. The European countries should not, and will not, be our partners in the future. Militarily they spend between 1%-2% on their own defense. We spend 4%-5%, (which is up from 3% under President Clinton). But even these modest expenditures on defense by the Europeans will be under pressure due to the increasing burdens of pensions and health care costs.

Can we count on the EU?

With the exception of the United Kingdom, will Europeans come to our aid militarily? It does not seem likely. Even if they are willing, they will not have the means.

The Europeans believe that they are wise and sophisticated, and they sneer at Americans as undistinguished, gum-chewing rednecks. Though they scorn us, when they are in trouble, they traditionally have looked to America to save their cans, and no doubt will continue to do so. After all, what have they to lose?

Lest we forget, 20th Century Europe brought us World War I, World War II, the Cold War, Fascism and Nazism, Socialism, and Communism, with sprinklings of other minor conflicts in-between, such as the three Balkan wars of 1910, 1911, and 1990. And who can forget the Spanish Civil War?

Strategically, the Orient and South Asia are where economic and trade growth is going to be. The USA needs to develop strong relationships with countries in those regions. We need to find a way to resolve the issues between China and Taiwan, and between India and Pakistan. The latter conflict is between Hindus and Muslims and going back centuries.

China and India already have a strong-interest agenda in working with the USA, in fighting the Islamic terrorists, and in trade. The forecast in the crystal globe is clearly telling America that it is in our national interest to become friends with the Indians and Chinese, as they are no longer under the boots of socialism or communism and are thriving in Free Markets. We can continue to love the old country, but we need to stop being influenced by their pedestrian, myopic unproductive and potentially self-defeating policies.

While it is not in the interests of the United States simply to abandon Europe to a takeover by an increasingly Muslim immigrant population, our foreign policy efforts should continue to focus on getting Europeans themselves to come to understand how important it is to preserve their ties with the United States and to preserve their national identities. Their future depends on it--and ours may well depend on it too.

About the Writer: Sandra Carney, born in India, is Anglo-Burmese, of British birth. She became an American Citizen in 1972 and has enjoyed living in the U.S.A. since 1967. She inherited her interest in politics from a family heavily inculcated in the politics of their times. Because of her mixed heritage, she is keenly interested in all that goes on around the world and is fiercely protective of her adopted country, the U.S.A.

posted by Gurdjieff @ 3:41 PM 0 comments