WEST: Creeping Islamization in Europe

Though the consequences of Islamization are dreadful in the extreme, when I sound people out on the subject, I find only ignorance, denial or apathy.

Ms. West in her enthuasism to stir up hysteria against Moslems doesn't even bother to check her facts. I can assure Washington Post readers that Sharia law (no more than Thalmudic law, or the Roman Catholic Marriage Tribunal) has any status whatsoever in English law. Recognition of the determinations of religious tribunals are an entirely voluntary matter for the adherents of these faiths. They are neither recognized nor enforceable under the civil law. This situation is exactly the same in France, Germany, and the US. Diderot and Voltaire are alive and well in Europe, and insofar as I am aware, the witch-hunt on Darwin remains a partiality of US "Christian" fundamentalists. And I will mention the Jewish Holocaust. The Holocaust is part of the standard history syllabus taught to most European children. Strangely, given Ms West's argument, the dispossession of the Palestinians and the continuing robbery of their private and public property, is not. In the early part of the 20th century anti-semitic propagandists fed the popular press a diet of lies and distortions about Jews and Jewish plots to subvert the continent. The Arabs are also Semites. Ms. West, you cannot dine al a carte on hatred - or on anti-semitism. (Incidentally, the real story concerning Moslems in Europe is their progressive secularization. A majority of second-generation Moslem immigrants are apostate. However, the political views of the vast-majority of Europeans of Moslem background, while rejecting of extremism, is strongly antagonistic towards the counterproductive US policy of violence and subversion towards the Islamic world. In that regard they are probably not too far from the European mainstream. However, it is true that a growing minority, witnessing on the free media the outrages in Iraq and the incremental robbery of Palestinian land and water, are becoming radicalized by the complicity of their governments in these crimes.)

Personally, I find Ms. West's article refreshing, if alarming. Unlike a previous reviewer, I find through my correspondents in Europe much of the same alarm at the increasingly aggressive incursion of Islam upon European society. A casual reading of the Q'uran, which I finally did sometime after 9/11 (anyone remember that?), shows that the tenets of Islam are easy enough to see: 1. Convert the infidels 2. If they don't convert, make the Infidel pay a toll to Islam. (Much as Christians did in Turkey) 3. If 1. and 2. fail, kill the Infidel. That's just what I read in that document. No peace, at all, there. Now, if "moderate" Muslims want to integrate into Western society because it offers so much more than the ones from which they emigrated, that is fine. Just let them pledge allegiance to the states in which they are currently being comforted, and become citizens of those states. Take the oath in the US (or Britain, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) and swear to abide by the laws of the land. But that is not what's happening. The "moderate" Muslims are mum when it comes to "radical" Muslims, it seems. Perhaps that's because Sharia does not allow for such dissent. Thanks to Ms. West for a good article. AS I say, my own friends in Europe share her fears.

Presumably, a "good" and "refreshing" article in the opinion of at least one Washington Times reader is one that includes serious factual mis-statements. You can be sure that the people like Ms. West who are printing diatribes based on untruths about the semitic Arabs would be exactly the same people who, if transposed back to Nazi Germany, would be publishing lies and hate about the semitic Jews. Same old hate - different target. Same old cowardly bigots prepared to rally to the hate-mongers. Hatred, like freedom, is indivisible. You're either for it or against it. Ditto, the truth. The overwhelming view of real live Europeans in published poll after poll(not ficticious European "correspondents)is that immigrants coming to Europe must accept the liberal democratic laws and values of contemporary Western Europe. Europeans also believe that the manner in which foreigners (including Arabs and Moslems) organize their own societies in the foreign countries from whence they came is their own business, but that in their dealings with foreign countries the West should practice the values (such as respect for private property) that we in the West preach. An Islamic sect that tried to set up a school with a Koranic syllabus rather than the national standard syllabus would get short shrift from the authorities in France (where I live). So too would a US fundamentalist sect who tried to indoctrinate pupils into "creationism" instead of teaching evolution, or Zionist fanatics who tried to operate a school that taught that it's ok to steal the land of non-Jews. Of course all these fanatics can teach their children anything they want after school hours. Such are the joys of a free society.

Petemurray: Actually, the new Sharia courts have a higher status that the other religious tribunals due to the recent reclassification (see <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/14/British_Sharia_tribunals_gain_new_powers/UPI-53041221405891/" > British Sharia tribunals gain new powers</a>). So Ms. West is spot on in her concerns, which are shared by at least one member of Parliament (the "shadow" home secretary being one specific member). To equate the diaspora of Palestinians with the Holocaust is disingenuous at best. Murdering millions cannot be equated in the reasonable mind with the U.N. sanctioned relocation of Palestinians. Note that Palestinian Arabs weren't the only cultural/racial group that was moved in establishing the Israeli State. I may have missed her statement, but you are the only one mentioning antisemitism. I'm guessing that you are trying to make the philosophical connection between Ms West's writing and antisemitism ("The Arabs are also Semites"). But nowhere in her writing does she single out Arabs. Certainly you know that the adherents of Islam represent many different cultural and racial groups (my African-American and German-American Muslim friends would be pretty surprised and actually offended to be called Arab, and for that matter what about the average Iranian Muslim who is Persian and would be very proud to make the distinction from Arabs?). To call being concerned about the imposition of Shariah law upon non-Muslim populations is hardly antisemitism. To adopt your logic, then when my Arab Christian friends have their right to speech restricted at many US universities and colleges, the professors are antisemitic? Does the fact that since there are Arabs that are Christian, to be anti-Christian is to be antisemitic? I note that you mention polls of Europeans but not of the immigrants themselves. Having worked with Muslim immigrant populations here, I can assure you that there are a significant number of Muslim immigrants that refuse to accept liberal values of the contemporary West (including Europe). While it may be hard for a Koranic school to be established in Europe (actually your point is in error about French Koranic schools, see <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/21/news/paris.php">French official dismissed over resistance to Muslim school</a>), in fact this has already been done here in the US (there are several in Chicago, Detroit, and the Washington D.C. area).

I wonder if Petemurry even appreciates the irony of his statements. Blind ignorance of what is going on, making false statements easy to verify as false and accusing Diane West of being a Nazi...just like she wrote they would. Sorry Petemurray you have more then adequetly proven Ms. West's point.

"Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, PROVIDED THAT BOTH PARTIES IN THE DISPUTE AGREE TO GIVE IT THE POWER TO RULE ON THEIR CASE".My capitals, the words direct from the article Diana West possibly read. What we have done, we craven Brits, is to make agreements between consenting adults achieved under the authority of an Islamic body (just like Jewish religious courts) legally binding. Is this a problem? Is a court that in six cases of domestic violence, the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders evidence of Islamization or of common sense?