The Road Labelled Tolerance Leads To The Caliphate
A global ingathering of the needy, a wholesale embrace of refugees from violence; from a religion become corrupted; a culture known for breeding discontent, grievance and revenge; deadly bitter civil wars; dictatorships and despots; Islamist rule brooking no dissent, a vast migration of people looking to have their lives restored elsewhere, to find a surcease in turmoil, to find a future.So Europe has responded, as has North America, and while there were prior waves of emigration out of Muslim and Arab-dominated countries whose peoples sought a different way of life, opportunities to achieve freedom, a modicum of relief from an intolerant past, economic and educational advancement, and in the doing managed to accept the values and mores of their new, host country, times have changed.
The influx of refugees, of fortune-seekers has increased, and no longer do so many of the refugees and immigrants seem to feel the need to integrate their values and traditions into that of the prevailing culture. An enlightened atmosphere born of Western guilt encouraged newcomers to remain distinct, and 'different'; that difference no longer seen as a threat to the monoculture of the greater society, but as an intriguing and exotic plus.
Formerly-querying and querulous Anglo-Saxon majorities in their countries of birth, now accepting landed citizens from the near and far East began to cultivate a sense of pride in their newly-liberated sense of the appropriate welcoming of differences into the melting pot of communalism and global brotherhood. All to the good.
Except, somehow, it would appear that the more peaceful and permissive the atmosphere became, the more demanding and entitled feeling became the newcomers, quick to adapt to their new country's code of humanitarian respect for individuals, different cultures and traditions. And the growing aura of political correctness which forbore to criticize, gulped twice and accepted that social mores and values, religious strictures which grated on their own might be allowed - or ignored.
There were warnings aplenty, but those who warned of what was to come were labelled racist and fascist, like Holland's Theo van Gogh, and Somalian Ayaan Hirsi Ali; like Italy's Oriana Fallaci whose forthright interpretation of the threat of Islamism to the values and the future of the West were steadfastly ignored. We saw what happened with the publication of Britain's Salmon Rushdie's "Satanic Verses", and with the Danish cartoons.
The viciousness of the Islamic response frightened and confused the West, forcing abject apologies for a perceived slight that brought deadly riots into the streets with inflamed Muslims raging death to the West. People died as a result of these bloodthirsty protectors of Islam and Mohammad. When the Pope quoted from an ancient text during an academic symposium, his action was publicly reported and fresh riots broke out.
Oriana Fallaci wrote that Muslim immigration was turning Europe "into a colony of Islam" a place she named "Eurabia", soon to "end up with minarets in place of bell-towers, with the burka in place of the mini-skirt". Islam, she said, has never given up its designs on Europe, beginning with its 7th century siege of Constantinople and the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire that followed. The stealthy invasion of Muslim immigration to Europe would end up, she contended, aspiring to conquest.
The tradition and culture of Islam, she maintained exemplified the "art of invading and conquering and subjugating". In the broadest sense, Muslim immigrants, she said, had no intention of joining the mainstream of the countries they entered; rather through mass migration the intention would be gradually to absorb the host countries with their much lower birth rates than the incoming settlers.
European leaders, she insisted, with their idee fixe of multiculturalism, lifted, doubtless, from the much-lauded Canadian experience, have made absurd accommodations rather than encouraging assimilation. As though early experience of centuries past with European expansionism and its piratical practises leading to empire building, had left current European politicians and their populations with sufficient guilt that they feared being labelled racists.
We now live with those results, with a large and burgeoning population of Muslim migrants newly settled in Europe and North America, the majority of whom are as puzzled at the fanaticism of their militant religious brethren as anyone else. Who fear for their impressionable children succumbing to the allure and popularity of becoming part of a holy mission to bring death and destruction to those very places which have given them succor.
Permissiveness and egalitarianism have resulted not in a globally well-adjusted and forward-looking population joining together in a common effort to bring stability to their countries of adoption and economic prosperity for themselves and their families along with it, but a defensive population of people whose religion and social and cultural mores sets them further and further apart from the norm.
And who now, through the terrorist intent and auspices of the Islamists among them are being increasing viewed with suspicion as potential ill-doers, singled out by public safety authorities for special attention in a manner that labels them suspicious, different and possibly lethal to the society they now inhabit.
Labels: Political Realities, Viewpoint, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 03, 2007
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