AMERICAN FUTURE

Earlier this month, I linked to a commentary by Hassan Butt, a former member of Al-Muhajiroun, an Islamist group that, before being banned by the UK government, raised funds for extremists and called for attacks on British citizens. Butt has authored another commentary, an excerpt from which follows:

Only when Muslims admit that 9/11 and 7/7 were the work of Muslim terrorists can we move forward to the next juncture: which is recognising the hard truth that Islam does permit the use of violence. Muslims who deny this, preferring instead to mouth easy platitudes about how Islam is nothing but a religion of peace, make the job easier for the radicals who can point to passages in the Koran, set down in black and white, that instruct on the killing of unbelievers.

I disagree with those who say the pressing problem is simply how do we deal with an aberrant, extreme minority who have unleashed a reign of terror on Britain � rather, I believe the heart of the matter is Islam itself and how its teachings are interpreted. If we isolate the problem to that of the extreme fringe, then we are merely skimming the surface.

What we Muslims need to do is go back to our books: we need to debate the teachings that are used to radicalise young men and legitimise the killing of innocent people. We need to discuss and refashion the set of rules that govern how Muslims � whose homes and souls are firmly planted in the West � live alongside nonMuslims. Only when we do this can we successfully dissect the radicals’ interpretation of Islam and fight back against terrorism.

We can no longer turn a blind eye to the driving force behind terror attacks both at home and abroad. It should not matter how painful or embarrassing this admission may be, and nor should it matter how taboo this subject is.

H/T to reader rich.

Theodore Dalrymple flew into the Glasgow airport two days after the recent terrorist attack. Here’s most of his op-ed from today’s Los Angeles Times:

One of the most sinister effects of the efforts of the bombers and would-be bombers is that they have undermined trust completely. This is because those under investigation turn out not to be cranks or marginals but people who are either well-integrated into society, superficially at least, or who have good career prospects. They are not the ignorant and uneducated; quite the reverse. Seven people detained in the latest plot worked in the medical profession.

The perpetrators do not bomb because of personal grievance but because they have allowed themselves to be gripped by a stupid, though apparently quite popular, ideology: radical Islam. Nor are they of one ethnic or national group only: We have had Somali, Pakistani, Arab, Jamaican, Algerian and British Muslim terrorists. This means, unfortunately, that no one can ever be quite sure whether a Muslim who appears polite and accommodating is not simultaneously contemplating mass murder. Deceit, after all, is one of the terrorists’ deadliest weapons.

Mistrust of Muslims in Britain has developed quite quickly and could develop much further. In my youth, I traveled extensively in the Muslim world and lived for a time in Africa with a Muslim family without being aware of any hostility or antagonism on my part toward the religion or culture (had I been a woman, it might have been different, of course). Contrary to what the late Edward Said, author of the anti-Western “Orientalism,” might have thought, I had inherited no anti-Muslim prejudice.

Now, despite friendly and long-lasting relations with many Muslims, my first reaction on seeing Muslims in the street is mistrust; my prejudice, far from having been inherited or inculcated early in life, developed late in response to events.

The fundamental problem is this: There is an asymmetry between the good that many moderate Muslims can do for Britain and the harm that a few fanatics can do to it. The 1-in-1,000 chance that a man is a murderous fanatic is more important to me than the 999-in-1,000 chance that he is not a murderous fanatic: If, that is, he is not especially valuable or indispensable to me in some way.

And the plain fact of the matter is that British society could get by perfectly well without the contribution even of moderate Muslims. The only thing we really want from Muslims is their oil money for bank deposits, to prop up London property prices and to sustain the luxury market; their cheap labor that we imported in the 1960s in a vain effort to bolster the dying textile industry, which could not find local labor, is now redundant.

In other words, one of the achievements of the bombers and would-be bombers is to make discrimination against most Muslims who wish to enter Britain a perfectly rational policy. This is not to say that the government would espouse it, other than surreptitiously by giving secret directions to visa offices around the world. But why should a country take an unnecessary risk without a compensatory benefit?

I share the discomfort he describes here:

The problem causes deep philosophical discomfort to everyone who believes in a tolerant society. On the one hand we believe that every individual should be judged on his merits, while, on the other, we know it would be absurd and dangerous to pretend that the threat of terrorism comes from sections of the population equally.

History is full of the most terrible examples of what happens when governments and peoples ascribe undesirable traits to minorities, and no decent person would wish to participate in the crimes to which this ascription can give rise; yet it would also be folly to ignore sociological reality.

All that is needed, then, to deal with the present situation is the wisdom of Solomon.

A revealing article in The Spectator.

Hassan Butt, the author of this commentary, is a former member of Al-Muhajiroun, a Isamist group that, before being banned, raised funds for extremists and called for attacks on British citizens.

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

Friday’s attempt to cause mass destruction in London with strategically placed car bombs is so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that it is likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, yesterday on Radio 4’s Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: ‘What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.’

He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam.

I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I’d be laughing once again. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombings, and I were both part of the BJN - I met him on two occasions – and though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.

Prospect interviewed Hassan Butt in August 2005.

His unambiguous response when asked for his position on polygamy:

I respect all cultures throughout the world, but so that it is quite clear: if I am elected President of the Republic, I will not accept women being treated as inferior to men. The French Republic holds these values: respect for women, equality between men and women. Nobody has the right to hold a prisoner, even within his own family. I say it clearly, that polygamy is prohibited in the territory of the French Republic. I will fight against female genital mutilation and those who do not wish to understand that the values of the French Republic include freedom for women, the dignity of women, respect for women—they do not have any reason to be in France.

If our laws are not respected and if one does not wish to understand our values, if one does not wish to learn French, then one does not have any reason to be on French territory [emphasis added].

In the original French, from his website:

Je respecte toutes les cultures à travers le monde, mais qu’il soit bien claire : si je suis élu Président de la République, je n’accepterai pas que la femme soit traitée à l’inférieur de l’homme. La République française ce sont des valeurs : le respect de la femme, l’égalité entre un homme et une femme. Personne n’a le droit d’être prisonnier, y compris dans sa propre famille. Je le dis clairement, que la polygamie est interdite sur le territoire de la République Française. Que l’excision je la combattrai et que ceux qui ne veulent pas comprendre que les valeurs de la République française c’est la liberté de la femme, la dignité de la femme, le respect de la femme : ceux là n’ont rien à faire en France.

Si on ne respecte pas nos lois et si on ne veut pas comprendre les valeurs qui sont les nôtres, si on ne veut pas apprendre le français, alors on n’a rien à faire sur le territoire de la France.

The German newsweekly Der Spiegel has long been sharply critical of the United States (and Israel), as exemplified by this recent magazine cover:

For this reason, an article recalling the Mohammed cartoon controversy published today on Der Spiegel’s website is particularly noteworthy. The article was written by Henryk M. Broder’s, whose book “Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren,” (“Hurray! We’re Capitulating”) was published last year and spent a number of weeks atop the Der Spiegel bestseller list. The following are my excerpts from Broder’s article.

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The controversy over the 12 Muhammad cartoons that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 and led to worldwide protests and unrest among Muslims was merely a taste of what is to come, a dress rehearsal for the kinds of disputes Europe can expect to face in the future if it does not rethink its current policy of appeasement. As was the case in the 1930s, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed in the interest of peace under the Munich Agreement—a move that ultimately did nothing to prevent World War II —Europeans today also believe that an adversary, seemingly invincible due to a preference for death over life, can be mollified by good behavior, concessions and submission. All the Europeans can hope to gain in this asymmetric conflict is a temporary reprieve, a honeymoon period that could last 10, 20, or maybe even 50 years.

[ . . . ] A year ago on Feb. 3, 2006, a “Day of Anger” was proclaimed. Across the Muslim world, the Muhammad cartoons were the focus of Friday prayers. Millions of Muslims who couldn’t even locate Denmark on a map demonstrated against these insults to the Prophet, incited by their imams. The embassies of Denmark and Norway were set on fire in Damascus, the Danish embassy was torched in Beirut, firebombs were hurled at the Danish consulate in Tehran, and Danish and Norwegian flags were burned in Nigeria and Algeria.

In the past, an attack on an embassy would have been reason enough to go to war. But this time the affected countries did their utmost to “de-escalate.” The victims were repentant and begged the perpetrators for forgiveness. Indeed, the West was intent on not doing anything that could possibly give offense and cause these fanatical Muslims to become even angrier.

Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the “clash of civilizations,” a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how quickly and effectively they can mobilize the masses, and the free West showed that it has nothing to counter the offensive—nothing but fear, cowardice and an overriding concern about the balance of trade. Now the Islamists know that they are dealing with a paper tiger whose roar is nothing but a tape recording.

As different as the West’s reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the people suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself.

[ . . . ] The discussion over which provocations WE should put an end to so that THEY do not feel upset inexorably leads to the realm of the absurd.

Should devout Jews be entitled to demand that non-Jews give up pork? And should they have the power to impose sanctions if their demands are not met? Can a Hindu in India run amok because the Dutch do not view cows as sacred beings? Those who believe Muslims have the right to be outraged by the Danes failing to abide by an Islamic prohibition—especially when it’s not even clear that such a prohibition even exists—must answer such questions clearly in the affirmative. Even illiterates must then be allowed to ransack bookstores; in a world in which anyone is entitled to feel offended and humiliated, anyone can also choose which provocations he is unwilling to accept.

[ . . . ] The Europeans’ wishful thinking stems from their need to avoid conflicts, coupled with a strong survival instinct. They may perceive reality, but they do so selectively.

The Berlin office of the “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War” has published a paper describing the consequences of an American nuclear strike against Iran. According to its scenario, more than 2 million people would die within the first 48 hours, and another million would suffer serious injuries. Ten million would be exposed to high levels of radiation. But one question the paper neither poses nor answers is this: What would be the consequential damage of an Iranian nuclear attack once the country is capable of producing and using a nuclear bomb?

No one wants to address this question, and for good reason: No one knows how to prevent an Iranian nuclear attack, or even how to influence the Iranians’ policies. In contrast, there is a very small but real possibility that public pressure can be used to influence the American government to move in one direction or another. The proponents of peace whose protests are directed against America’s plans to attack Iran and not against the mullahs’ nuclear policies are well aware of this difference.

[ . . . ] All the events of last spring are only a foretaste of something much bigger, something still unnamed. And when it ends, those who have managed to escape will ask themselves: Why didn’t we see the handwriting on the wall when there was still time? If Muslim protests against a few harmless cartoons can cause the free world to capitulate in the face of violence, how will this free world react to something that is truly relevant? It is already difficult enough to see that Israel is not merely battling a few militants, but is facing a serious threat to its very existence from Iran. All too often it is ignored that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already taken the first step by calling for “a world without Zionism”—a call that pro-Israel Europeans only managed to condemn with a mild, “unacceptable.” How would they react if Iran were in a position to back up its threats with nuclear weapons?

Anti-papal posters in Istanbul calling him ‘insidious’ and ‘ignorant’

As if there isn’t enough to talk about and worry about, the long-awaited visit of Pope Benedict to Turkey starts on Tuesday. The Telegraph describes the security precautions:

An army of snipers, riot police, secret agents and bomb disposal experts has been mobilised for the Pope’s four-day visit to Turkey. Naval units will patrol the Bosphorus armed with machine guns after warnings to police and security services that the life of Benedict XVI may be threatened by Islamic extremists after he arrives on Tuesday. Celalettin Cerrah, the police chief in Istanbul, said that the city would have maximum security and warned that he would “call for reinforcements from nearby cities” if needed.

There’s no shortage of protests:

The strongly Islamist Saadet political party is organizing what it hopes will be a million-man march today against the visit. On Friday, it distributed leaflets to mosques inviting worshipers to the event. “We don’t want to see him on our soil because of his remarks, and for not apologizing afterward,” said a spokesman. Its campaign has been backed by more than 60 Turkish Muslim associations. Posters have been pasted across the country telling the Pope not to come, while Milli Gazete, an Islamic newspaper, has run a banner across the top of its front page every day for the past week with the same message.

Remember that Turkey is a secular state with a population of “moderate” Muslims. Maybe “is” should be changed to “was.”

In The Telegraph, author Michael Burleigh writes about a poll by the new public theology think tank Theos. The results, he says, “reveals public confusion.” What he’s referring to is that, while 42 percent of those polled concur with the statement that religion is like “the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate”, 53 percent claim that “religion is a force for good in society”, with a slightly higher percentage agreeing that Christianity had an important role to play in public affairs.

Here’s how Burleigh explains this “confusion”:

Perhaps some strange dialectic between rabid Islam and the militant secularists is partly responsible for these mixed messages? The more secularists hear from those like Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, the “Aussie imam” of Sydney, who thinks that underclad women are like displays of meat for predatory men, the more they feel entitled to lash out at religion in general.

However, daily Islamist provocations, a wider fatigue with consumerism and a popular culture in which a scion of the Victorian dynasty that built London’s sewers brings us Big Brother could equally be fuelling a recrudescence of cultural Christianity, in which many people see personal or social benefit in the old faith of our Continent.

In his article, Burleigh writes extensively about a Theos report (expected to be downloadable later today) titled “Doing God.” He summarizes one part of this report’s argument in the following manner:

It is also probable that infantile Islamic enragement, and the sillier provocations of “diversity” officers in local government, will sooner rather than later trigger a much broader revival of cultural Christianity, as people balk at the insensitive disregard of this country’s two-millennia-old religious traditions, which are far from defunct in the moral imaginations of many.

As I’ve noted on several occasions, the multiculturalism debate in Britain is now in full flower. And it’s about time.

UPDATE: The Times reports that Abduljalil Sajid, a senior figure in the Muslim Council of Britain, offered support for Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali’s views. After meeting Hilali yesterday, Dr Sajid said: “As far as I am concerned he is a great scholar and he has a great knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence.”

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“the one thing tolerance cannot tolerate is intolerance.”

I’ve already posted twice on Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, and you may rightly ask why I’m doing so for a third time. The answer is the same as the one I gave for my recent posts on the recent multicultural uproar in Britain: something similar could happen here in the future. Because of this possibility, it’s important to expose the thoughts of some of the Muslim clerics in our midst and to be aware of the reactions of our English-speaking breathren.

The latest editorial in The Australian fills us in on the Grand Mufti’s thoughts on subjects other than women:

Sheik Hilali’s vile anti-Semitic rants are well documented and read like the most crude propaganda from Nazi Germany or Tsarist Russia. The cleric has also condoned suicide bombing and celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And in shouting anti-American slogans outside his mosque on Thursday evening, Sheik Hilali has reduced himself to clumsily playing to other extremists, such as the members of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir – which is banned in many countries – who leafletted outside Lakemba Mosque yesterday. There is no doubt that his words as reported in this newspaper on Thursday are Sheik Hilali’s true feelings, despite his two-decade-long history of offering lame excuses and apologies each time his inflammatory remarks are, as his dwindling numbers of supporters put it, misquoted, mistranslated or taken out of context. Such defences are particularly ironic when they come from Sheik Hilali’s spokesman, Keysar Trad, a man who once did translations for Sydney’s radical Islamic Youth Movement. That now-disbanded organisation advocated “martyrdom operations” and was founded by terror suspect Bilal Khazal.

The Australian sees a “glimmer of hope” from the controversy, and in this they are right:

His words, and the publicity surrounding them, have provided Australia with a bright-line test that separates those who share our common values from those whose views are beyond the pale. The friction between Islam and modernity looks to be the defining feature of the 21st century, and Sheik Hilali’s rants provide the necessary jumping-off point for the conversation that needs to be held about Islam in Australia.

The editorial also criticizes the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, who in claiming that in reporting stories such as this one, the media incites the vilification of Muslims, potentially triggering a terrorist backlash – has it exactly backwards. The Commissioner’s position

is ultimately illustrative of an unhelpful and morally arrogant form of tolerance that seeks to restrict knowledge for some greater good. Yet his view is ultimately most insulting to Muslims, in that it suggests that followers of the Koran are quickly provoked to violence and are unwilling to use the various levers of a democratic society to air and address their grievances.

The Commissioner’s stance reminds us of the apologists for the “Cartoon jihad” and, more recently, the critics of Pope Benedict’s address at Regensberg University.

As to the Sheikh’s anti-Americanism, The Australian reports that he shrugged off widespread condemnations of his women-as-meat remarks—some of which came from large sections of the Muslim community – and said he would resign from his position only when the world is “clean of the White House”, a salvo aimed squarely at President Bush. I wish I could say this surprises me.

In an op-ed, Caroline Overington relates the views of Tanveer Ahmed, a Sydney psychiatrist who is writing a book about Islam in Australia:

He says the great shame is that “many, many” Muslim men, young and old, regard women – particularly Western women – as “less than ideal”.

“The mufti meant exactly what he said, and those views are widely held,” Dr Ahmed said. “I did my own little poll this morning, of a security guard and others who are Muslim, and all said they agreed with the mufti, that he is absolutely right. It comes from households, where young Muslims get the message that white girls are different, and that women in general are a corrupting influence.”

Dr. Ahmed said it was “an opinion I’ve heard throughout my life, that women can tempt you into trouble. Even otherwise sophisticated people will say this, and slur white women. My own theory is, when they are growing up, they are told they are not allowed to participate in much of Western life, they cannot drink, they cannot go to parties. And when they are very young, I think they would love to participate – but then they get older, and suddenly, they find they have developed a contempt for the society in which they live.”

Dr Ahmed rejects the argument that women wear the veil because “it’s their choice”. “You see children aged five wearing it. Are we seriously arguing there is an element of choice, when you sexualise a child in that way?”

. . . but the Grand Mufti of Australia, pictured here, is so upset about the reaction to his depiction of women who do not wear veils as uncovered meat that he spent yesterday in bed, breathing with the aid of oxygen. What a pity.

Pru Goward, the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner, said that Sheikh al-Hilali should be removed. “I think it’s time he left,” she said, adding that the Sheikh’s remarks were “an incitement to a crime. Young Muslim men who now rape women can now . . . quote this man, their leader, in court.”

And what of the Muslim community? The board of the Lakemba Mosque said early today that it would not censure Sheikh al-Hilali, but that he would not give sermons for three months. Now there’s a punishment for ya!

SOME FACTS ABOUT MUSLIMS IN AUSTRALIA

In the 2001 Census there were 281,578 Muslims in Australia — about 1.5 per cent of the population. Of these, 64 per cent were not born in Australia

Approximately 30,000 were born in Lebanon, many of whom arrived during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. Of the others, 24,000 were born in Turkey and about 9,000 each in Afghanistan and Pakistan

There are more than 100 mosques, most in Melbourne and Sydney

Every woman who joins in a protest against the demonization by Westerners of certain Muslim clerics should read an article in The Australian that’s excerpted here:

The nation’s most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don’t wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned “meat” that attracts voracious animals.

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

“The uncovered meat is the problem.”

The sheik then said: “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

He said women were “weapons” used by “Satan” to control men.

“It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa).”

Happily, Muslim community leaders were yesterday outraged and offended by Sheik Hilali’s remarks, insisting the cleric was no longer worthy of his title as Australia’s mufti.

From an editorial in The Australian prompted by the veil controversy in Britain:

. . . when women wear headcoverings that hide the face, they are committing a powerful act that has political as well as religious overtones and which sends a message that many people find threatening.

Many justifications have been offered for the veil:

Speaking recently in Sydney, Munira Mirza, a young British Muslim woman, told The Australian that schoolgirls were wearing head coverings as a statement about Western oppression. On the other side of the spectrum, the veil can be worn as a mark of superiority that makes women who dress less modestly by the standards of the veil-wearer seem less moral, or as a way for men to control their wives and other women in their families. At its most dangerous, this thinking can be seen in the Sydney gang-rapes crisis, when Muslim youths felt their victims deserved their fates because of the way they dressed and behaved. It can even be used as a justification for terrorism. The philosophical basis for groups such as al-Qa’ida largely hinges on the idea that non-Muslims must convert or die to hasten the advent of an entire world under Islam, and veils are one way of indicating who is in the elect. Finally, some Muslim women claim that the veil is a liberating force, or that it is an inherent part of their cultural identity. [emphases added]

But no matter the justification, the question remains whether a practice with its roots and justification in medieval Arabia has a place in a postmodern secular society such as Australia. Religious beliefs are by definition sacred, and as much as possible they should be a private matter. But when an individual or a community feels that their personal practices should trump widely held values while also setting themselves apart, the question arises as to whether those people would not be more comfortable in a place where such behaviour is the norm.

The heart of the matter is where tolerance should end and the old adage, “When in Rome, do as the Romans”, should kick in:

While tolerance is certainly a positive virtue that should be strived for, it cannot be a cultural suicide pact. A culture that is tolerant of those who are intolerant of its freedoms is ripe for destruction, and bit by bit will see all it values eroded. And radical Islam knows this. Just as an Australian wouldn’t go to Saudi Arabia to wear a bikini on the beach and drink beer in the corner pub, those who see the proper role of women as subservient, anonymous and under cover should not expect a postmodern secular democracy such as Britain or Australia to accommodate these beliefs. Australians, who quite properly want their daughters, sisters, wives and mothers to be able to achieve anything, are right to feel uncomfortable about religiously mandated coverings and the limits they imply. We do not allow practices such as female genital mutilation simply because they are practiced by an immigrant “other”. Disappointingly, those who have traditionally been a positive force for the liberation of women against oppression in other spheres have here largely been silent on the question of Islam’s beliefs concerning half of humanity.

The West is confronting a clash of centuries:

If it is true that the past is another country, then what confronts the West today is not so much a clash of civilisations as a clash of centuries. The jumbo jets that have enabled the mass immigration from Muslim countries to the West are, in effect, time machines that have brought millions of people from a pre-Enlightenment world . . . to secular, liberal and postmodern democracies such as ours.

The news about terror groups operating at British institutions of “higher” education just keeps on coming.

This is part of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Anthony Glees, director for the Brunel Center for Intelligence and Security Studies:

At least 13 convicted Islamist terrorists and four suicide bombers have been students at British universities. Radical Islamist student societies make full use of university resources. They operate Web sites, hosted by university servers, which direct visitors to organizations that glorify jihad and terror. These “religious” groups are given “prayer rooms” on campus, which are also used to disseminate extremist literature and DVDs. Muslim students concerned about these developments tell me that at many of these Islamic societies terrorism is portrayed as justified acts of “resistance.” A leading imam in Birmingham often preaches on British campuses that the London bombers have to be seen as “martyrs.”

Organizations like Hizb Ut Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun, which advocate a world caliphate, demand that Britain adopt the Shariah and express a violent hatred for the West and Jews, have repeatedly tried to gain student converts at the University of East Anglia. It is only thanks to a courageous campus imam that their infiltration attempts have been thwarted so far. His colleague at London Metropolitan University, Sheikh Musa Admani, repeatedly warns about Islamic radicalization at his and other London campuses. Just two months ago, the head of an Islamic student society and several fellow students at London Metropolitan were charged with planning to smuggle explosives on a plane bound for America. Yet university authorities usually consider these societies as “religious gatherings,” and thus off limits.

Government minister Ruth Kelly two weeks ago urged universities to monitor their students more carefully and report signs of extremism to the security services. But many British universities are reluctant to step up security. Universities U.K., an association of British universities, criticized Ms. Kelly’s proposals as “unreasonable,” saying “there are dangers in targeting one particular group within our diverse communities.” When I suggested last year similar measures the government now proposes, I was myself attacked by Universities U.K. The vice chancellor from the University of Sunderland asked my own vice chancellor to “shut me up.” I was threatened with legal action if the name of a particular university was mentioned in connection with terrorism. Unfortunately, my research showed that Islamic radicalization is a threat on campuses nation-wide.

But British universities prefer burying their heads in the sand of political correctness. When the Foreign Office invited 100 academics to bid for £1.3 million of government funds to participate in a counter-radicalization program, the academics said no. John Gledhill, chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists, welcomed their move, saying last week that “it did appear to be encouraging researchers to identify subjects and groups involved with terrorism . . . that could be interpreted as encouraging them to become informers.” Martha Mundy, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, dismissed the government plans as having “an overtly security-research agenda” starting from the (false) premise that there is a “link between Islamism, radicalization and terrorism.”

Is Ms. Mundy seriously saying there is no connection between Islamism and terrorism? “Security” is not a dirty word, even if totalitarian regimes have abused it. Every British university subscribes to the 1997 Dearing Report, which states that the “aim of higher education is to play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilized and inclusive society.” This is the basis on which the British taxpayer agrees to fund them.

Academic institutions should surely help protect Britain from those who clearly do not believe in democracy, are not civilized, and who try to harm us. Now that we are the prime target for Islamist terror, Britain’s universities must get real.

It’s not the one fought in 1940 against the Nazis. It’s the one being fought now against al-Qaeda.

British Home Secretary John Reid, whom I quoted at length in a recent post, has “issued a dire warning” that the Government risks losing the “battle of ideas” with al-Qaeda. According to The Telegraph, he spoke out at an emergency meeting of ministers and security officials amid an ever-growing threat from home-grown Islamist terror groups. At the meeting, he called for an urgent but controversial escalation in the propaganda war and said al-Qaeda’s so-called “single extremist narrative” was proving ever more attractive to young British Muslims. Government Ministers have told The Telegraph that 30 terror plots are being investigated and that 1,500 young Muslims — many more than previously estimated — are suspects. [emphasis added]

A key government weapon in the struggle to win hearts and minds is the decision to fund covertly an Islamic website, called The Radical Middle Way, appealing for moderation. Government documents disclose that the site is “run as a grassroots initiative by Muslim organisations”. However, it has “most of its financial backing from the Foreign Office and Home Office”. The site uses video and podcasts to spread an “alternative message” to young Muslims. Some content is available through the iTunes website with no indication that it is effectively an arm of Government. Its home page says that

The Radical Middle Way project is a Muslim grassroots initiative aimed at articulating a mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, pro-active and relevant, particularly to young British Muslims. The project is managed by young British Muslims themselves, in a unique partnership between FOSIS (Federation of Student Islamic Societies), Mahabba Unlimited, Q-News and YMOUK (Young Muslim Organisation UK). The project will make every attempt to answer questions pertinent to what it means to be young British and Muslim. The project has its roots in Islamic history, being an organic response by traditional Islam to challenges poised by extremist ideas. The project seeks to combat ignorance by spreading and empowering arguments for the ‘middle way’ and by the consolidation of the mainstream Muslim community.

In addition, about 100,000 CDs promoting moderation have been funded and distributed free to Muslim students as an “antidote”, apparently, to the jihadist CDs circulated at universities and colleges.

The emergency meeting was held at the Home Office 10 days ago and addressed by Mr Reid, Miss Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, and Sir Richard Mottram, the permanent secretary for security, intelligence and resilience at the Cabinet Office. Other ministers and many of the nation’s top security service personnel were present.

The emergency meeting discussed failings in the Government’s “Contest” strategy — its program for combating Islamist terrorism — and, in particular, measures to stop young Muslims following the jihadi path. After the meeting, a minister said the foiling in August of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners had led to an order from Tony Blair for a tougher stance. The minister said: “The approach is to bolster the moderate voices and isolate and attack the extremists.” Blair was said to have ordered colleagues to start working with “the leaders, not the panderers” in the Muslim community, pointing to a more critical approach to groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain.

In an editorial, The Telegraph said

The Prime Minister is known to be increasingly frustrated by the failure of the Government’s existing strategy for ensuring that Muslims in Britain understand, absorb and adopt British values, especially those of tolerance, and the renunciation of terrorism. That strategy, whose ethos is summed up by the broad banner of “multiculturalism”, has been a spectacular failure.

The editorial is skeptical that the website and the CDs will be efficacious and says that

Much more alarming is the fact that the security services are still chronically under-resourced. In the immediate future, the only way to prevent an appalling terrorist outrage in this country is to infiltrate militant Islamist groups, and to monitor those individuals who are suspected of involvement with them.

As to multiculturalism, the editorial doesn’t pull any punches:

Multiculturalism has been a social and cultural catastrophe. The sooner it is abandoned, and we instead encourage all groups to commit themselves to a core of liberal values, the better. An education system, and a Government, that are ashamed of Britain’s past and of its institutions, and feel that they must apologise at every turn for both, will never succeed in recruiting anyone to the cause of democracy, toleration and peaceful co-existence. [emphasis added]

In another development, The Telegraph reports that university officials are launching a “counter-terrorism” group to tackle the spread of Islamic fundamentalism on campuses. Officials at every university will work with the Government, the police and the security services to monitor the activities of Islamic student societies that might be targeted by extremists. The new group, set up by the Association of University Chief Security Officers, will include officials from the Home Office’s counter-terrorism department, and Scotland Yard’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit and Special Branch. It will meet for the first time in January, but members are already in daily contact, exchanging information and intelligence on potential security threats to universities.

Student Islamic societies have been subject to increasing scrutiny after it emerged that Waheed Zaman, a 22-year-old student and one of the 12 men charged in connection with the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, was the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University.

From an editorial in The Times:

As Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, observed, the ruling by an employment tribunal upholding the dismissal of Aishah Azmi for wearing a full face veil while teaching children in a primary school was “spot on” . . . Malik, himself a Muslim, also made the wise recommendation that Ms Azmi should not now pursue an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. He said Muslim parents among his constituents had themselves objected to having their children taught by a veiled teacher, and that Ms Azmi had isolated herself. The danger goes farther than this. By pursuing an appeal, she would further politicise a case that has already provoked widespread controversy and could have damaging consequences for all Britain’s Muslims. As the head of the family affairs unit at the Muslim Council of Britain remarked, her stance was “exacerbating the misunderstanding” of Islam in Britain. The council, however, should not be allergic to public discussion of these complex issues — it is not Islamophobic to discuss the role of the veil in contemporary Britain . . . Politicians have every right to comment on issues of national importance, and the integration of Britain’s Muslims is indeed such a case. It is wrong to denounce Tony Blair for voicing his concern that the veil is a “mark of separation”. It is a mark of separation. But these are sensitive matters that should not be sensationalised.

The New York Times could learn a thing or two from the London Times.

Her name is Aishah Azmi. In September, she was suspended from her job at Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury for refusing to take off her veil during English lessons. Azmi was allowed to wear her veil in the corridors and staff room of the school but ordered to take it off so her students, many of whom do not speak English as their first language, could watch her lips during lessons. She challenged her suspension before an employment tribunal.

Yesterday, Azmi was awarded £1,100 by an employment tribunal for victimization – effectively, in the words of The Times, “for her hurt feelings.” Her legal team is now preparing to take the case to the European Court of Justice. They are also applying for legal aid.

Despite the inability of her students to read her lips, she told a press conference (at which she was dressed from head to toe in black, her face obscured but for a narrow slit at the eyes) that she was able to do her job “perfectly.” In a contradiction undoubtedly lost on her, she added that “Integration requires people like me to be in the workplace so that people can see that we are not to be feared or mistrusted.” [emphasis added]

In an editorial, The Telegraph summed up the situation:

The cult of victimhood has a new heroine . . . Mercifully, her claims of religious discrimination and harassment were thrown out. Yet that is unlikely to prevent Miss Azmi and her “supporters” proclaiming this as some sort of victory in an undeclared Holy War. It is nothing of the sort. The wearing of a veil is a political and cultural statement, not a religious one, and the sooner this is more widely recognised, the less likely it will be that we have a repeat of this nonsense.

In Britain, the debate over multiculturalism has really heated up in recent weeks. Fueling it have been speeches by four prominent members of the Labour party—John Reid (the Home Secretary), Jack Straw (the former Foreign Secretary and current House of Commons leader), Ruth Kelly (the Communities Secretary) and Prime Minister Blair. Adding fuel to the fire have been comments by the Church of England. The war of words, which has included numerous editorialsⁱ and op-edsⁱⁱ, has focused on greater Muslim involvement in fighting terrorism, the wearing of the veil by Muslim women and the public funding of faith schools.

WHY WE SHOULD CARE

There are several reasons why Americans should be paying close attention to the British debate:

• While the strains that are so readily apparent in British society are not nearly as severe here, it would by foolish to assume that we may not face similar problems in the future. As I noted in March, Muslim groups in the U.S. are attempting to establish enclaves in which they can uphold and enforce greater compliance to Islamic law. In Little Rock Arkansas, they have succeeded.


• What is happening in Britain is also taking place in other European countries. But because of language barriers, we (or, at least, I) know far less about the continental debates. If history is any guide, however, the debates of which we are far less aware are probably more vituperative than Britain’s. By reputation, at least, the Brits are a more tolerant people.


• Earlier this month, MSN Money and the Financial Times reported on research conducted by Harvard’s Robert Putnam, currently teaching at Manchester University in the U.K. and the author of Bowling Alone. The FT summarizes Putnam’s argument this way:
  

  in the light of “home grown” Islamic terrorism in Europe, and evidence that some immigrants feel alienated by western society, academics and politicians are rightly thinking how to adjust the compromise on which a multicultural society is based. That compromise means neither forcing immigrants to abandon their culture nor the acceptance of separate communities living in the same land. It must be built instead on universal acceptance of some basic principles: democracy, the rejection of violence, and equality of gender, sexuality, race and religion. But multiculturalism also needs trust, and that requires different communities to meet each other and communicate.

  
  MSN’s summary is bleaker:
  

  The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” MSN adds that British Home Office research has pointed in the same direction and Prof Putnam said other European countries would be likely to have similar trends.



• In his recent and provocative book, The War of the World, noted historian Niall Ferguson describes the German diaspora that existed before World War I:
  

  In 1901 there were more than thirteen million Germans living beyond the Reich’s eastern frontier. Around nine million lived in Austria, but around four million lived further east, principally in Hungary, Romania and Russia. There were substantially German communities along the Baltic coast, in Poland, Galicia and Bukovina, as werll as in Bohemia and Moravia. There were also Germans to be found in Slovakia, Hungary, Transylvania and Slovenia. Nor were these settlements to be confined to the Hapsburg Lands. There were German populations in Russian territory, too . . .

  
  The forces of nationalism unleashed and sanctified by the Versailles Treaty brought the German minorities into ethnic conflicts with the majority populations of the nations created at World War I’s end. Hitler transformed the German minorities into Fifth Columns, the best known of which was the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovokia.
  
  In his epilogue, Ferguson says that, a hundred years ago,
  

  the frontier between West and East was located somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now it seems to run through every European city.

  
  The frontier he’s referring to is the one created by the mass migration of Muslims into European population centers and the multicultural policies enacted by their host governments. As evinced by the atrocities in Madrid and London involving the participation of second-generation native Muslims, the seeds of twenty-first century Fifth Columns have started to sprout. Bin Laden and other fanatical Islamists are to the Muslim diaspora in Western Europe what Hitler was to the German diaspora in Central Europe.

It’s not a pretty picture, and some key leaders of the Labour party have recognized it.

THE LABOUR PARTY AWAKENS

John Reid

After a recitation of platitudinous truths (“It is not a war on Islam; it is a struggle against extremism, against terror and against intolerance”; “Our fight is with those who do not share our values and who use terror to force us to accept theirs”) —Home Secretary John Reid laid it on pretty thick during his September 20th speech, attempting to turn his Muslim audience against those who reject values shared by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.ⁱⁱⁱ

After telling his audience that

They believe (and would have you believe) that the West is evil and that all modern values are corrupting to Muslims, when in fact, it is they who are wicked and ruthless and they who are corrupting young Muslim minds. They would have you believe that we are the enemy, when it is they who seek to destroy the peace and understanding that we have sought so hard to achieve between different faiths and ethnic groups in this world.

And that the fight against terrorism is

a conflict of values and not of religions. It is a conflict between modern Islamic values versus archaic and intolerant values. It is a conflict within Islam as well as outside of it. It is a fight against extremism, intolerance and terror – and not Islamic values and teachings. 9/11 in the US, 7/7 in the UK, 11/3 in Madrid, the attacks in Indonesia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the conflict in Iraq are all part of the same struggle . . .

Reid then announced his purpose:

I came here today because I believe the message that this is a struggle against terrorism and intolerance and not Islam has become drowned out by the volume of accusation and counter-accusation. And I have come here today because I need your help to defeat these extremists. I cannot do this on my own, and Government cannot do this on its own; it’s going to take all of us.

Next, he admonished his audience, depicting the extremists as Fifth Columnists:

The days of burying heads in the sand are over. Extremists have to be stood up. And they can be: the pattern by which they take control is not new . . . They come into our organizations, intimidate good people away from meetings and from being involved in the movement. They try to change the very nature of what you stand for. Many good people believe that by accommodating them you can influence them for the better. That is not the case. You cannot and must never compromise with fanatical beliefs.

He told the audience he understood that the task confronting Muslims was a difficult one:

I know your task is so much harder [than the Government’s]. This is the dilemma you face in some of your communities where they come with their hate filled thoughts, they start by banishing the women, intimidating the moderates and then brainwashing the young.

That was made more difficult by distrust:

I am acutely aware that many of you might think I, and this Government, are not in a strong position to ask for your help. Not because – as the terrorists would have you believe – that we are fighting an unjust war – but because many members of your faith and communities are in the front line in the western response to Muslim terrorism.

The distrust must be overcome, as it’s necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, not just respond to them:

We must all be attentive and we must help to prevent any future tragedies. And that means we must be more vigilant and more attuned to signs of terrorist activity and support – within our own communities and – yes – within our own families. And that is why we must all be vigilant and have the strength to speak out.

Then, in the most memorable part of his speech, Reid said:

There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brain wash children, including your children, for suicide bombing. Grooming them to kill themselves, in order to murder others. Look for the tell tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever.

Jack Straw

I’ve already posted on Jack Straw’s criticism of the Islamic custom of wearing a full facial veil and urging of Muslim women to remove it when talking to him in his district office. The veil, he wrote in his local newspaper is “such a visible statement of separation and of difference” as to jeopardize British social harmony. Speaking to the BBC, Straw said “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers, people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able to pass the time of day. That’s made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That’s just a fact of life.”

Ruth Kelly

Like the Home Secretary’s, the Communities Secretary’s speech, delivered on October 11, was intended to assist “the fight within Muslim communities against terrorism.” Citing the debate over the veil, she said she was certain that “trying to sweep disagreements under the carpet will ultimately be more dangerous than discussing them openly.”

Kelly insisted that

on one thing we can be clear. There is more that holds us together than divides us. I believe there are some cultural aspects we should share – speaking English and having a sense of British history and traditions for example. And all of this needs to be grounded in a set of non-negotiable values. They belong to us all. They are found in Islam as . . . other traditions: respect for the law, freedom of speech, equality of opportunity, respect for others, and responsibility towards others.

While she differentiated these non-negotiable values from political issues, Kelly said that “even here there are dangers that differences become exaggerated and exploited.” The example she gave was support of the newly-elected governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. On these issues, a “full and frank” debate is needed. However, she averred that there “is a danger . . . if in debating them, that is used to suggest foreign policy here is anti-Muslim overall.”

Next, Kelly noted the Government’s support of the Religious Hatred bill, which provoked controversy. She defended the bill, saying that

it is designed to tackle those who incite hatred, not just those who cause offense. If we value free speech and freedom of religious expression, we will all have to accept from time to time we will feel insulted or offended by other people’s actions or comments.

She also said that

we also have to stand together to tackle those fomenting divisions and extremism within Muslim communities . . . Al Qaeda’s political ideology was being used to radicalise and groom vulnerable young people long before [the British interventions] in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As did Reid, Kelly told her Muslim audience that

All of us must play a part. That means government. And it also means communities and individual citizens themselves . . . without you fully [on] our side we will fail. Your voice is more powerful than mine. And your actions can be more effective . . . It is not good enough to merely sit on the sidelines or pay lip service to fighting extremism. That is why I want a fundamental rebalancing of our relationship with Muslim organisations from now on.

Tony Blair

In the House of Commons on October 17, the Prime Minister was asked whether British children should be taught by teachers who wear a veil in the classroom. His answer:

I think there is a debate that we need to have and it is a debate that has got two aspects to it in my view. One is the relationship between our society and how the Muslim community integrates with our society, which is an important debate that non-Muslims need to have with the Muslim community, and difficult though these issues are I think they have to be raised, and confronted and dealt with. And then there is a second issue, which is about Islam itself and how Islam comes to terms with and is comfortable with the modern world. And you know the fascinating thing about this debate, I just asked before I came here since I thought I might be asked about it, for just an analysis of what is going on around the whole of Europe and then in the wider world, and basically in most major countries in Europe today a debate similar to the one we are having now is going on there, in Germany over the opera, in France over I think the academic who wrote the polemic about Islam. It is interesting if you look at the front page of Le Monde this morning it has actually got a picture of a woman in a veil, and with the British issue this is reverberating right round. If you look at Holland, Denmark they are having the same arguments.

There has been apparently an incident in Belgium over the same type of thing, in Italy they have just published I think yesterday a set of values, which is meant in part to try and deal with this issue. There is a whole question to do with integration, and my view is that we try and deal with this debate sensitively, but we have to deal with the debate. This is an issue for the British people now. People want to know that the Muslim community in particular, but actually all minority communities, have got the balance right between integration and multiculturalism, and people want to see that that balance is got right. Now we need to conduct this debate in a sensitive way, but it needs to be conducted and it needs to be conducted in part because then round the world there are people in Islam, Muslims who are also engaged in the same type of debate about Islam, and again it is fascinating. If you look at what is happening out in the Gulf at the moment, precisely the same types of debate are going on, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Singapore.

. . . I think we need a way of having this debate because I am sure it is there, in fact it is there in every village, town and city of the British nation at the moment, and also in other European nations and worldwide, and so we need to have it and we can have it I think in a sensitive way, but it is about as well as people preserving their own distinctive identity they integrate with British society. And that is the reason why it is important in my view that people who come into the country and settle here, learn to speak English. It is about getting the balance right between integration and your distinctive identity and we need to have that debate in a sensible and serious way. And even though probably most people wouldn’t have chosen that the debate started in this way, it is under way so we should engage in it.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CHIMES IN

In what The Telegraph describes as an “astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society,” the Church issued a report (“Cohesion and Integration”) saying that the attempt to make minority faith communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society “more separated than ever before.” It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

Written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, “preferential” treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

The report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the London bombings in July last year to win favour with Muslim communities. These include “using public funds” to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, shelving legislation on forced marriage and encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements. These efforts have undermined its interfaith agenda and produced no “noticeable positive impact on community cohesion”, the Church document says.

1. The Times, “Veiled Threat,” October 7; The Times, “A Class Apart,” October 12; The Guardian, “Speak Freely But Carefully,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Labour Loses Faith in Multi-Culturalism,” October 18.↩
2. The Guardian, “Take Off the Veil Says Straw—To Immediate Anger from Muslims” October 6; The Guardian, “Blaming the Veil Is Wrong,” October 6; The Times, “Cameron Dilutes Call for Inclusive Muslim Schools,” October 6; The Times, “Why Mix? Parallel Lives Do Us Fine,” October 7; The Times, “One Glance Took Away My Freedom,” October 7; The Times, “Anger and Headscarves on Streets of Clackburn,” October 7; The Times, “Integration the Pick’n’mix Way,” October 8; The Times, “Focus: A Veiled Threat?,” October 8; The Times, “Race Quotas ‘Needed to End Divide in Schools’,” October 12; The Times, “Muslims Are the New Jews,” October 15; The Times, “New Faith Schools Must Take Outsiders,” October 15; The Times, “Teachers Asked to Root Out Islamic Extremists,” October 16; The Guardian, “Muslim Leaders ‘Risking Voluntary Apartheid’ as Veil Row Escalates,” October 16; The Times, “Islamic Militants Face Purge in Schools and Universities,” October 16; The Times, “A Proper British Veil-Wearer,” October 17; The Times, “A Safe Haven for All Our Crackpot Beliefs,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Our Failure to Confront Radical Islam Is There for All to See,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Search for the Radical Campus Groups That Operate Under a Veil of Secrecy,” October 17; The Independent, “Labour Accused of Aiding Extremists by Its Focus on Muslim Issues,” October 17; The Guardian, “If This Onslaught Was About Jews, I Would Be Looking for My Passport“, October 18.↩
3. The rights to life, respect and equity, justice, liberty, acquire knowledge, work, basic necessities, and privacy.↩

I’ve just received my copy of Michael Burleigh’s “Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to al-Qaeda” from amazon.com.uk (It has yet to be published in the U.S.) This book is a follow-on to his exceptional “Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, From the French Revolution to the Great War.” Burleigh is also the author of “The Third Reich: A New History.” In a recent post, I quoted liberally from his op-ed in The Times, which begins this way:

Nothing much separates the horror that modern Islamists express towards western urban industrial society and the cultural pessimism that was pervasive on the European right in the late 19th century — the toxic pool from which fascism emerged in the aftermath of the great war.Most European fascist movements were products of visceral national grievance; a colossal sense of collective victimhood at the hands of the Israeli David or the western Goliath is also a key motivating force behind radical Islam.

In the preface (written in January 2006) to “Sacred Causes” (the only part of the book I’ve read), Burleigh cites some reasons for optimism:

. . . whether in Britain or once-liberal Holland, there are definite signs that the worm has turned, suggesting that ordinary people—as opposed to politicians with inner-city Muslim constituents—are not ready to tolerate indefinitely those who wish to eradicate homosexuals, reduce women to second-class citizens, or openly call for the murder of Danish carttonists, Dutch politicians or Jews and Israelis . . . Anyone with those views is irreconcilable with our civilisation and should take the opportunity to leave before history repeats itself. There are encouraging signs that the Churches—and in particular the Catholic Church of Benedict XVI —are ready to make certain non-negotiable positions clear rather than to mouth the platitudes of a discredited multiculturalism that only exists in the Left university and within local government, neither of them at the cutting edge of European thinking.

Burleigh is also encouraged by the fact that “it is increasingly secular intellectuals, like Regis Debray or Umberto Eco, who are mounting the defence of Christianity against silly politically correct attempts to deny or marginalise it.”

Whew! I’m looking forward to what promises to be a great read.

After having come close to ignoring the subject, the New York Times has published a lengthy article on the growing tensions in Europe. These are excerpts from an article titled “Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center”.

____________________

“. . . centrists across Europe [are] angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence. For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits . . . Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.”

Denmark

Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam: “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme . . . It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.”

The Netherlands

So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.

Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party: “A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s’. So there is this fear that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”

Great Britain

Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”

France

In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.”

Germany

In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”

Belgium

The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking. Vlaams Belang suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.

Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”

Austria

In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Austrians complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.

Thanks to reader Michael B for providing me with links to two important links to Melanie Phillip’s blog.

In the first, she provides further information on, and an interpretation of, Jack Straw’s objections to the wearing of the Islamic full-face veil in Britain:

It is in itself a commentary on how far the British have already slid into cultural servitude that asking someone politely if they wouldn’t mind removing the black shroud from their face before having a conversation should have provoked such a storm of controversy over whether or not this was an infringement of personal and religious liberty. We communicate with each other not merely through speech but by looking at the other person’s face. People expect to be able to see others as people, not depersonalised shrouds with eyes. Such concealment diminishes the sense of human community, the feeling that we share the world with other beings like us. It creates a profound sense of anomie and unease.

But more significantly – and Straw did not say this – this type of veil is itself a direct threat to liberty. Clearly, it is a matter of debate within the Islamic world whether it – or, indeed, any type of veil – is necessary to satisfy the injunction upon women to preserve their modesty. What is beyond doubt is that the blackout veil is associated with most extreme interpretation of Islam, which holds that Islamic values must supersede all other values, including those of the secular state. Wearing this veil is thus a political statement of cultural and religious hostility to the British state. Objecting to it, therefore, is not an example of intolerance or religious discrimination. Religious garb should certainly be tolerated, even if it is outlandish; what people wear is their own affair. But this veil is not their own affair. It affects the rest of us because it is inherently aggressive and intimidatory. That is why it is unacceptable.

In the second, Phillips cites this article in The Telegraph about the current violence in France:

Radical Muslims in France’s housing estates are waging an undeclared “intifada” against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day. As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were “in a state of civil war” with Muslims in the most depressed “banlieue” estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin. It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.

Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an ‘intifada’ on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas. He said yesterday: ‘We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails.’

Her take on the situation:

It seems that other police officers, and other parts of French society, are even now still in a state of denial over what they are facing, insisting this is some kind of class war rather than what it really is, a religious war. They said the same thing about last year’s riots, ignoring clear signs of religious activism and incitement— along with the fact that the French government in desperation drafted Muslim Brotherhood imams into the banlieues to quell the disorder, thus giving the lie to the claim that these were merely ’secular’ disturbances, all about poverty and unemployment and other such sub-Marxist claptap. They were anything but; they were actually all about French Muslims declaring their turf to be no-go areas for the French state.