"Islam and the West at War" - NY Times

Islam and the West at War

By: Roger Cohen – Feb. 16, 2015

After a Danish movie director at a seminar on “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” and a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue were shot dead in Copenhagen, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark, uttered a familiar trope:

“We are not in the middle of a battle between Islam and the West. It’s not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s a battle between values based on the freedom of the individual and a dark ideology.”

This statement — with its echoes of President Obama’s vague references to “violent extremists” uncoupled from the fundamentalist Islam to which said throat-cutting extremists pledge allegiance — scarcely stands up to scrutiny. It is empty talk.

Across a wide swath of territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, the West has been or is at war, or near-war, with the Muslim world, in a failed bid to eradicate a metastasizing Islamist movement of murderous hatred toward Western civilization.

To call this movement, whose most potent recent manifestation is the Islamic State, a “dark ideology” is like calling Nazism a reaction to German humiliation in World War I: true but wholly inadequate. There is little point in Western politicians rehearsing lines about there being no battle between Islam and the West, when in all the above-mentioned countries tens of millions of Muslims, with much carnage as evidence, believe the contrary.

The Danish filmmaker Finn Norgaard was killed a little over a decade after another movie director, Theo van Gogh, was slain in Amsterdam for making a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women. The Islamists’ war is against freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of blasphemy, sexual freedom — in short, core characteristics of democracies seen by the would-be rebuilders of the Caliphate as signs of Western debasement.

Do not provoke them with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, some say, show respect for Islam, the peaceful faith of some 1.6 billion people. But what, pray, was the “provocation” of Dan Uzan, the Jewish security guard outside the Copenhagen synagogue?

Islam is a religion that has spawned multifaceted political movements whose goal is power. Islam, as such, is fair game for commentators, caricaturists and cartoonists, whose inclination to mock the depredations of theocracy and political Islam’s cynical uses of the Prophet cannot be cowed by fear.

Over the more than 13 years since Al Qaeda attacked America on 9/11, we have seen trains blown up in Madrid, the Tube and a bus bombed in London, Western journalists beheaded, the staff of Charlie Hebdo slaughtered, Jews killed in France and Belgium and now Denmark. This is not the work of a “dark ideology” but of jihadi terror.

On the right of Europe’s political spectrum, anger is rising against Islam, against marginalized Muslim communities, who in turn feel discriminated against and misrepresented, with cause. Several thousand young European Muslims troop off to join ISIS. Europe’s Jews are on edge, with cause. Israel calls them home. In the United States, three Muslim students were killed this month by a gunman in a possible hate crime denounced by Obama as “brutal and outrageous.” A tide of retaliatory menace rises.

Who or what is to blame? There are two schools. For the first, it is the West that is to blame through its support for Israel (seen as the latest iteration of Western imperialism in the Levant); its wars (Iraq); its brutality, (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib); its killing of civilians (drones); its oil-driven hypocrisy (a jihadi-funding Saudi ally).

For the second, it is rather the abject failure of the Arab world, its blocked societies where dictators face off against political Islam, its repression, its feeble institutions, its sectarianism precluding the practice of participatory citizenship, its wild conspiracy theories, its inability to provide jobs or hope for its youth, that gives the Islamic State its appeal.

I find the second view more persuasive. The rise of the Islamic State, and Obama’s new war, are a direct result of the failure of the Arab Spring, which had seemed to offer a path out of the deadlocked, jihadi-spawning societies of the Arab world.

Only Arabs can find the answer to this crisis. But history, I suspect, will not judge Obama kindly for having failed to foster the great liberation movement that rose up in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Inaction is also a policy: Nonintervention produced Syria today.

I hear the words of Chokri Belaid, the brave Tunisian lawyer, shortly before he was gunned down by Islamist fanatics on Feb. 6, 2013: “We can disagree in our diversity but within a civilian, peaceful and democratic framework. Disagree in our diversity, yes!”

To speak of a nonspecific “dark ideology,” to dismiss the reality of conflict between the West and Islam, is also to undermine the anti-Islamist struggle of brave Muslims like Belaid — and these Muslims are the only people, ultimately, who can defeat the black-flagged jihadi death merchants.

Europe Volunteers Churches to Become Mosques

More than a little troubling, to say the least. What does this mean for the future of Europe? -R.O.

Europe Volunteers Churches to Become Mosques
Wed, October 24, 2012

by:  Giulio Meotti

The writer Emile Cioran cast a sad prophecy on Europe: “The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque.”

This is now a reality. But unlike the Middle East, where non-Muslim sites were razed or violently converted to Islam, in Europe this process is voluntary.

The church of Saint-Eloi in the French region of Vierzon will soon become a mosque. The diocese of Bourges has put on sale the church and a Muslim organization, l’Association des Marocains, made the most generous offer to buy the site.

The church of Saint-Eloi is located in an area inhabited by Turks and Moroccans. It’s the “de-Christianization” of Europe, which is naturally followed by its gradual Islamization and increasing anti-Semitism. Of 27.000 inhabitants in the town of Vierzon, only 300 go to church once a week.

In the past decade, French Catholic bishops formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to the research conducted by the newspaper La Croix.

According to a recent report of the U.S. Pew Center, Islam is already “the fastest-growing religion in Europe,” where the number of Muslims has tripled over the past 30 years. One-third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025.

Demography is the most important symptom of exhaustion: Without a cradle, you can't sustain a civilization.

To understand this historic process, one has to see the number of churches converted into mosques.

In the Netherlands, more than 250 buildings where Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists have prayed for centuries, have changed owners. Like the Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam, which once was Saint Ignatius, a Catholic church. Or the church of S. Vincentius, which was put on sale along with the benches, the crucifixes and the chandeliers. Today more than half of the Dutch population is buitenkerkelijk, free from any religious affiliation. Catholics have decreased by 70 percent.

Islam is now considered the “most widely practiced religion” in the Netherlands. The Oude Kerk, the oldest church in Amsterdam, built in 1309, stands solidly in the heart of downtown. Around it is the red-light district with the South American and Eastern European prostitutes knocking on the glass to attract the attention of passersby.

The Neuwe Kerk, the church where the Dutch kings were crowned, is a museum. The only "church" in the city that is crowded is that of Scientology, which offers free stress tests.

4,400 church buildings remain in the Netherlands. Each week, two close their doors forever.

In Duisburg, Germany, the Catholic church closed six churches. In Marxloh, the only church that survives, that of St. Peter and Paul, will close at the end of 2012. In Germany 400 churches have been closed.

The municpality of Antwerp, Belgium proposed to transform the empty churches into mosques. Scandinavia lives the same phenomenon. To cite one case, the Swedish church of St. Olfos is used by the Muslims. The main mosque in Dublin is a former Presbyterian church.

In England, 10,000 churches have been closed since 1960. By 2020, another 4.000 churches will close while another 1,700 new mosques will be built, many of which will arise on sites of former churches.

“God is dead” declared Friedrich Nietzsche and Europe obliged. Now, Europe is poised to adopt the Koranic, “There is no God but Allah.” And the old Gregorian chants will be substituted by the muezzin.

Europe's tragedy is embodied by the sterile blocks of concrete and glass of the European Union in Bruxelles. Symbols of the moral emptiness within. Meanwhile the top seven baby boys’ names in Brussels are Mohammed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

A couple of years ago I visited Rotterdam, the Dutch industrial polmon. Everywhere are casbah-cafes, travel agencies offering flights to Rabat and Casablanca, and posters expressing solidarity with Hamas. Most of the population are immigrants, and the city has the tallest and most imposing mosque in Europe.

When arriving in the city by train, most striking are the mosques framed by the green, luxuriant, wooded, watery countryside. Rotterdam has the tallest minarets in Europe. The city was buzzing when the newspapers published a letter by Bouchra Ismaili, a city councilmanwho declared, "Listen up, crazy freaks, we're here to stay. You're the foreigners here. With Allah on my side, I'm not afraid of anything. Take my advice: Convert to Islam, and you will find peace."

A French friend showed me one of Rotterdam's main squares, where there is a mosque with Arabic writing outside proclaiming, "This used to be a church.”

Is Islam the destiny for the world's most affluent, relaxed and pacified societies which opted for self-liquidation?

Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio. He is the author of the acclaimed book, A New Shoah, that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims (published by Encounter). His writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage, Makor Rishon and Jerusalem Post. He is working on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

Syria's slaughter is the real insult to Islam

A worthy read. McParland states that since it is Muslims killing Muslims in Syria, while the Arab world sits back and does nothing, this is the real insult to Islam - not some obscure video produced in the United States. - R.O.

Kelly McParland: Syria’s slaughter is the real insult to Islam

Kelly McParland, National Post
Friday, Sept. 28, 2012

The UN General Assembly is a talking shop, where calling for action takes the place of actual action, but sometimes the talk becomes so opaque that even sorting out what the words mean becomes a challenge.

Such is the case this week in New York, where the world’s leaders met for their annual opportunity to lecture one another. Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad wasn’t there, because he’s still at home directing the slaughter of his countrymen. But his spirit was on hand, as a British organization announced that 305 people has been killed in a single day if fighting, the bloodiest day so far, and the UN’s own High Commissioner for Refugees warned that 700,000 refugees may have fled the country by year-end.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the daily death count included only victims whose names had been documented. “If we count the unidentified bodies, the figure will be much higher,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, according to Reuters. The group said 199 of the dead were civilians.

By some counts, the monthly carnage in Syria has now surpassed the highest levels reached during the Iraq war. There is no similar international effort in the works to oust Assad, probably because the U.S. organized the last one, and isn’t about to blunder into that hornets nest again. President Barack Obama ran on the promise he’d get U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, not into new foreign adventures. And the U.S., for all the talk of its global influence having diminished, is still the only power that organizes these things.

That leaves the diplomats to demand action, without explaining what that might mean. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, told the assembled worthies the Syrian revolt is “a regional calamity with global ramifications”.

“This is a serious and growing threat to international peace and security which requires security council action,” Ban said. “The international community should not look the other way as violence spirals out of control.”

He also called for those responsibility for atrocities in Syria to be held accountable, noting “there is no statute of limitations for such extreme violence”, and placing most of the blame on the Assad regime.

“Brutal human rights abuses continue to be committed, mainly by the government, but also by opposition groups. Such crimes must not go unpunished,” he said. “It is the duty of our generation to put an end to impunity for international crimes, in Syria and elsewhere. It is our duty to give tangible meaning to the responsibility to protect.”

In the world of diplomacy, these are unusually blunt words. But what exactly does Ban want? He didn’t say, exactly. He urged “the international community – especially the members of the Security Council and countries in the region – to solidly and concretely support the efforts” of a UN special envoy seeking to end the violence. “We must stop the violence and flow of arms to both sides and set in motion a Syrian-led transition as soon as possible.”

Well and good, but those efforts are going nowhere. Mr Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, walked away from the job of special envoy, declaring it a hopeless task. His successor, Lakhdar Brahimi, lacks his stature and hasn’t made any headway. He says he’s working on a new plan, but won’t say when it might be ready.

Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, said the conflict is “the tragedy of the age,” and must be brought to an end. How? Again, he didn’t say, except that the West should keep its nose out of things and leave it to regional powers like Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

“I am against foreign intervention by force in what happens in Syria,” Morsi said. “I do not condone this and I think that it is a big mistake if it happens,” he added through an interpreter. “Egypt does not agree to this.”

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has blocked earlier UN peace efforts and also thinks the West should [external] mind its own business.

“We are not imposing – especially by force -what we believe in, but we want to stimulate the internal development,” said Putin. “We have warned that we must act with caution, without imposing by force in order not to cause chaos. And what do we see today? We see a chaotic condition.”

So, everyone wants action, but not by Western powers that have the military muscle to force a climax. The regional powers that demand jurisdiction have done nothing to stem the spiraling body count. They want it ended, but are either incapable or unwilling to end it themselves and don’t want anyone else stepping in to try. Despite the hollering of domestic critics, the U.S. president seems disinclined to defy them, and has the body of the murdered Ambassador to Libya as a evidence of how good intentions often go off the rails once military action is put into play.

The truth seems to be that, despite what Mr. Ban and Mr. Morsi have to say, intervention in Syria doesn’t suit anyone’s purpose just now. No enough to risk their own skins, or those of their countrymen, anyway. If the Turks and the Egyptians and the Saudis want a solution, no one is going to block them from formulating one. For all the outrage over insults to Islam that have played out over an amateurish film on the Prophet, it’s Muslim corpses that are piling up in Syria, Muslim refugees who are fleeing for the border, and Muslim countries that are standing by. If Mr. Ban is increasingly frustrated about it, let him talk to Mr. Morsi.

National Post

Middle East Spirals Out of Control

Middle East Spirals Out of Control
By Arnold Ahlert

Must read. Here's a snippet... -R.O.

"A New York Post editorial best expressed this reality. “This week, Barack Obama got a life lesson: There is no dealing with the 9th century. It can be held at arm’s length, and beaten back when necessary, but it has nothing in common with the 21st century–that is, with civilization.” They further noted that the administration’s aforementioned crutch is exactly that. “Ostensibly, the week’s rioting has been over a mindless bit of videography clearly meant to defame Mohammed and, by extension, Islam. In the modern world, blasphemy is shrugged off. In the 9th century, it warrants mayhem. And in the Obama White House, it’s cause for compromising a fundamental principle, the First Amendment,” it states."