May 11, 2004
THE FASTER THE BETTER:
The human comedy of the coming Muslim Europe (Daniel Pipes, May 11, 2004, Jewish World Review)
"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam." So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione ("The Force of Reason"). And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity's ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam.
Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development.* The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition or its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the "new dark continent." Already, analysts estimate Britain's mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England.
* An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is a one-third short, at 1.5 per woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, today's population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075. To keep its working population even, the EU needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually.
Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans under-reproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young.
Some 5 percent of the EU, or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10 percent by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades.
The slippery slope of secularism: Are secular attitudes hurting Judaism? (Rabbi Daniel Lapin, May 11, 2004, Jewsweek)
For a while now America has been trending secular. Prior to that time, being wise and educated meant knowing God. That is why most universities and schools of earlier periods were established and attended by religious Christians. The same is true in Jewish history. Until the 19th century education and knowledge were inseparable from religion. Even the etymological origin of the word "secular" is linked to the Hebrew word for a fool ("Am sacal -- oh foolish nation" Jeremiah 5:21).This obvious link between God and education was clearly recognized in the wording of that great document that accelerated the westward expansion of the United States, the Northwest Ordinance of July 1787, which included this phrase: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
It never occurred to Thomas Jefferson and the other authors in the Congress of the Confederation, that schools would not teach religion and morality and certainly not that one day American schools would proudly proclaim themselves free of religion and morality.
Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world." Why did he include 'a place to stand' in his pithy little aphorism? Why didn't he make it even pithier by saying merely, "With a lever I could move the world"? Obviously because when one pushes against something without a firm and immovable platform on which to stand, one's effort results in a reaction. Instead of moving the world, no matter how long his lever, Archimedes would have succeeded only in propelling himself backwards. A firm base allows one to apply the action. Without it, one's effort merely produces a reaction which will slide one backwards. This is Newton's Third Law of Motion.
Trying to become educated without first acquiring a foundation of moral certainty is futile. It resembles trying to push a Zamboni machine off an ice rink while wearing dress shoes. One would only slip and slide, make a lot of noise and fall on one's face.
Europe having already slid into the pit of secularism, its Islamicization will be a blessing. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 11, 2004 7:49 PM
I'm not so sure Islamicization will be a blessing to Europe. At this point, it seems like a religion of death and evil - can it even be reformed?
Posted by: Kay at May 11, 2004 7:58 PMWaggishly, what Europe's got now is "a[n] (ideology) of death and evil - can it even be reformed?"
Posted by: Twn at May 11, 2004 8:05 PMKay:
That's the interesting thing--those who think not seem to lack faith in the capacity of our ideas to succeed over theirs.
Posted by: oj at May 11, 2004 8:40 PMThis is just silly. Human's are defined by what they struggle against, Europe is in comfortable, decadent decline because it has nothing to make war on.
The new European Muslim populations will be utterly unable to live in peace with their neighbors, they will create sprawling slums, attack democractic institutions and use sickening violence to further the overthrow of the secular order. We know this because it's what they've done everywhere else.
What they utterly fail to understand is that it's the secular state that protects them from their neighbors, the day they suceed in destroying it is the day they are annialated like the Albanians of Kosovo.
The fact is, Muslims can't fight. They can rape, murder, terrorise, whine, lie and bully, but they can't fight a proper army or even a motivated Christian militia. When Europe finally faces the real possibility of it's overthrow it will return with relish to it's old habits, it will commit genocide.
Lessee... islam (you won't ever catch me capitalizing that filthy word) is a cult down there with jonestown and heaven's gate.
It will be a blessing to europe only in the sense that purple koolaid was a sacrament in Guyana.
Posted by: M.Murcek at May 11, 2004 10:30 PMOJ, do you know of anyplace that once Islamicized has later relinquished it? I can't think of any, but I assume it has happened at least once...
Posted by: carter at May 12, 2004 12:50 AM
carter - Once these countries are free, you'll see Muslims converting to Christianity. And we're starting to bring freedom to Muslim lands.
Carter:
Do you mean just an Islamic state that has evolved into democracy? Turkey did that.
Or do you mean moved from a radical Islamic state to liberal democracy? Iran's in the process, but there haven't been many such states. We dealt with the Taliban ourselves.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 7:50 AMOJ:
Turkey evolved into a democracy by subjecting Islam and officially repudiating its Islamic past. And of course Turkey was Christian long before it was Muslim.
There is no hope for Europe in Islam; there is only hope in repentance.
PJ:
I can't share your optimism about the prospects of mas conversions of Muslims to the Cross, but it is a thing fervently to pray for.
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 11:30 AMI have many friends that have served missions for the Mormon church in Europe. For those that served recently most of the converts were among the immigrant population, rather than the native-born Europeans.
I have no idea what proportion of these were originally muslim.
Posted by: Jason Johnson at May 12, 2004 11:45 AMPaul:
So Turkey isn't Muslim? It will come as a shock to them.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 11:58 AMAfter Ataturk, Turkey was Muslim only in the "Sunday Christian" type of sense. Ataturk after all ended the Caliphate, banned the fez, changed the alphabet from Arabic to Roman, and the army has defended "secularization" ever since.
"Kemalism" to quote Samuel Huntington's phrase is an option, but it's one hard to duplicate.
I don't think there is anything within Muslims that stops them from wanting freedom, but Islam has certain doctrinaire issues that causes problem for them to advocate any "Islamic democracy" comparable to the European concept of Christian Democracy. Even if there is nothing in Islam that absolutely prevents a homegrown ideology of democracy, it hasn't happened yet. What ideas, institutions, and doctrines they do have is all taken from the West. I find OJ's relish at the idea of an Islamic Europe quite strange.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at May 12, 2004 12:08 PMOJ:
It is Muslim, but democracy endures there precisely because it has repressed Islam. And it will come as a shock to St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and many others to hear that Asia Minor has no Christian roots.
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 12:12 PMChris/Paul:
You're arguing how easy it was to liberalize the great Islamic state. I agree entirely. Islam will need to change, as it has in Turkey, but the precedent is promising.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 12:15 PMChris:
I find OJ's relish of sad decline of the homeland of his fathers a very strange thing. When Chartres is replaced by a mosque, will this defender of Western civilization cheer?
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 12:17 PMEurope isn't Western.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 12:21 PMOJ:
In fact, we're argued how hard it is. First, said state must have Christian roots. Then it must undergo a deliberate, systematic and shrewdly conceived repression of Islam -- from a leader who emerges from within.
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 12:23 PMPaul -- Can't we all find something to cheer when a museum turns back into a place of worship?
Posted by: David Cohen at May 12, 2004 12:23 PMThe Islamicization of Europe will not be a blessing. It means millions more Orcs against the West, this time with pre-existing Nuclear Rings of Power (Frogistan).
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Something I've picked up on other blogs and news services is the reason young Brits (from non-Islamic backgrounds) are converting to Islam -- often the Wahabi or similar extreme forms.
They came from the "anything goes" school of child-raising, where the child (them) was on their own almost from birth, and are now looking for the structure and discipline they never had. And they find it -- in Islam, the more extreme and rigid the better.
Posted by: Ken at May 12, 2004 12:36 PMIt must have been Easterners who built those towering cathedrals.
And it was Easterners who pushed the Moors out of Spain; and Easterners who drove the Turks from Vienna; and Easterners like the Pope who remembered Poland even when she was crushed under the jackboot of Modernism on the march.
Easterners all.
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 12:49 PMCharles Martel was a man of the West. Jacques Chirac is not.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 12:57 PMNeither is Kerry a man of the West. Yet would you say, "America can burn for all I care" if her people elected him?
Posted by: Paul Cella at May 12, 2004 1:10 PMFunny to hear people who, in other contexts, argue for the evolution for Christian morals (and, less explicitly, behaviors) saying now, in effect, 'Oops! gotta stop now, went too far!'
It may be -- I think it is -- that Europeans are not nostalgic for the more conventional Christian centuries because they have a folk memory of what they were like. They don't wish to go back.
That Europe is under attack from Islam is nothing new. Been going on for 1,400 years.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 12, 2004 2:12 PMYes, but now they're losing and deserve to.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 2:19 PMThat's very darwinian of you.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 12, 2004 10:07 PMI am a darwinian.
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 11:24 PMAlas, the good Rabbi Lapin ought to think twice before peddling such etymological claims as the Hebrew word "sakhal" (from the tri-letter root samech-khaf-lamed) is in any way related to the Latin word "secular," even if such an assertion "sounds good" or "seems possible or likely" or otherwise satisfies those with certain world views and agendas.
"Secular" originally denoted a long period of time, an "age," an "era," a "century"--some might say 120 years (e.g., the French, "siecle").
"Sakhal" indeed means foolish. Rabbi Lapin, take note.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at May 13, 2004 3:49 AMShould be "...Latin-based word "secular,...."
Posted by: Barry Meislin at May 13, 2004 3:52 AM