SAVING FRANCE FROM THE FRENCH?:

Is France on the way to becoming an Islamic state? (Barbara Amiel, 26/01/2004, Daily Telegraph)

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority. [...]

Tribal friction has only two solutions: groups will either unite in the manner of Normans and Saxons, melding into a society that may have different religious practices but subscribes to the same laws and values - in which case headscarves, beards and demographics don't matter a fig. Or they will follow the pattern of warring tribes throughout history.

The question is not whether French and Muslims can co-exist with each other so long as Muslim schoolgirls are bareheaded. Rather, it is the fundamental question of whether Muslim groups will become part of the French nation. This is not one of those old "querelles gauloises" that Barzini so loved. It is the fundamental dilemma of the new century.

Actually, the question is a bit different: it is whether an Islamic France is not preferable to a secular one.

MORE:
Europe Resisting Islam's Dark Ages (Alexis Amory, January 28, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

The first international figure to vocalize the threat of fundamentalism to his own country was Holland’s Pym Fortuyn, a flamboyant millionaire businessman turned politician.   Holland had long been the ne plus ultra of a tolerant, libertarian society preaching a multicultural message that was not necessarily endorsed by its citizenry.  

Despite the “tolerance” required of the Dutch themselves, the Muslim immigrants were granted special rights and favors that did nothing to encourage assimilation.  The government encouraged immigrant children to speak Turkish, Arabic or Berber in primary schools rather than insisting they learn in Dutch.  Funding was provided for “ethnic diversity projects”, including 700 Islamic clubs that were sometimes grabbed as showcases by radical clerics.

Assimilation?  Forget it!  Even now, 30 years later, between 70 and 80 per cent of Dutch-born members of immigrant families import their spouse from their “home” country, mostly Turkey or Morocco, perpetuating a fast-growing Muslim subculture in large cities, according to London’s Daily Telegraph.  This means Dutch Muslim men are rejecting Muslim women born in Holland and trawling for someone more ignorant and more obedient from their “home” country.   The ones marrying female Dutch-born Muslims are foreign males who pay the girl’s family to use marriage as a ticket into the West .

Fortuyn played a strong hand.  A homosexual with a multi-hued history of amours, and with a deputy party leader who was not just black, but an immigrant,  the left couldn’t credibly accuse him of racism.  He was the first to understand that the rigid and conservative immigrants, who kept themselves apart, wished to demolish the freedoms and tolerance of which Holland was so proud and were thus a threat to Dutch liberal society.   He spoke to the fears of a large number of the Dutch who had kept quiet for fear of being branded “racist”.  Within a scant three months of forming his conservative party, which called for a moratorium on all immigration until those already in situ were assimilated, the party had already laid claim to 26 of Holland’s 150 seats.

Had he lived, it is likely that he would have won the upcoming election and been Holland’s prime minister today.  But he was murdered almost two years ago – ironically, by a leftie animal rights activist, although what animal rights had to do with anything was never explained.  So great was the sense of loss, that Fortuyn’s funeral in Rotterdam drew vast crowds and outpourings of grief in an eerie echo of Princess Diana’s funeral in Britain three years previously.

The election of Mr. Fortuyn, an advocate of pedophilia, illustrates the question nicely. In what sense would his morally debased Holland have been preferable to one dominated by Islam?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 28, 2004 9:21 AM