Israpundit » Blog Archive » “The Lights are going out all over Europe…”

February 20, 2006

“The Lights are going out all over Europe…”

By Jerry Gordon, former US Military Intelligence officer and Middle East affairs Analyst for American Congress for Truth

Andy Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad called me fresh off a plane flight into Boston Logan’s airport from Amsterdam. Andy had been at a conference convened by the Pym Fortune Foundation (named in honor of the memory of the assassinated Dutch Prime Minister candidate) held under tight security at The Hague in Holland during this long Presidents Weekend here in the US.

Andy’s first comment to me was, “its over in Europe.” A reference to encroachment of Islamism across the cultural and territorial landscape in what Bat Ye’or has taken to call Eurabia-the title of her book on the same subject.

She was there at the conference, as were Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer , Paris-Based American ex-pat and writer, Nidra Poller, David Littman , Ibn Warraq ,Bruce Bawer , author of the just published book, “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is destroying the West from Within,” By Doubleday. Bawer is another American ex-pat who has been living in Norway since 1998. Walter Lacquer had just given Bawer’s book a favorable review in the Wall Street Journal in a piece entitled “A Dire Continental Drift.” They were in the Hague to meet with other scholars and analysts and confer with European members of parliament and senior bureaucrats from countries like Holland and Denmark.

Bostom said as courageous as the Danish are, they too have lost. He gave as examples the fact that all meat used in Danish school cafeterias has to be “halal.” Further Denmark has had to segregate all public swimming pools by sex to accede to Muslim demands.

While Bostom believes that fully 50 percent of the population throughout European countries bridles at the loss of western values of tolerance and free expression to the intimidating demands of Muslim minorities, from what he heard these same minorities may be pushing for control of mini-states within these countries-subject to Muslim sharia law.

As Andy noted Melanie Philips in the UK is readying a new book with the working title of “Londonstan” a send up on the obvious Islamization
Going on in Great Britain.

One only had to view the vast crowds converging on London again this weekend for more massive Muslim protests against those now hoary Danish Cartoons. Or the fact that Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi had to sack Minsiter for Institutional reform Roberto Calderoli for displaying a tee shirt with one of the controversial Mohammed cartoons after the Libyans endeavored to destroy the Italian Embassy in Benghazi in rioting that resulted in 11 dead.

But then there was the weekend email from French Documentarian, Pierre Rehov to me about the anguish of his daughter over the barbarous kidnapping, torture and murder of a young French Jew, Ilan Halimi. His closing remark was ‘things are getting worse here everyday.’ Yes, like young French Muslim toughs parading and shouting “Morte aux Juifs” in Central Paris.

A Dutch professor, now living in Malaysia, claimed that Christians in Malaysia have more rights than Muslims in Denmark. He was roundly corrected by the Danish speaker at the Conference, Lars Hedegaard.

Even Dan Pipes, Bostom recounted had to admit at the conference that his previous expectations about fostering progressive moderate Muslims may have been in error and that there are minimal numbers of the umma who would fight for internal reformation. or would be marginalized, at best.

I’m reminded of a cartoon from an ancient edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica 1940 Year Book that graced the shelves in my home as a young kid growing up outside of Boston during WWII. The Cartoon showed a clearly Nazi stalhelm or helmet with SS runes being used to snuff out a single candle. The inscription below, I came to realize later in life was first uttered by British Liberal government Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey on the eve of the outbreak of World War I:

‘the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

Posted by Jerry Gordon @ 11:21 pm |

8 Comments

Eventually the Europeans will grow backbones, decide that they have had enough of Hitler in a Headscarf, and kick these lowlifes out. I think the Danes, Norwegians, and even the French are deciding that they have had enough of this garbage.

Comment by Bill Levinson UNITED STATES — February 21, 2006 @ 1:52 am

At this point Bill, although I hope you’re right, backbone growth in Europe is nothing more than wishful thinking. Backbone is incompatible with leftism.

Comment by Peretz Rickett ISRAEL — February 21, 2006 @ 5:46 am

Backbone is not to be expected. PC is still all the rage. Our politicians pander much much more to muslim ’sensitivities’ than to the loss of the Western way of life.
The general polulation at large also fails to see the problem. Large segments feel that muslims are right to be offended, that ‘we’ should have more ‘respect’ for their beliefs.

I live in the Netherlands. Most people I know have their head stuck firmly in the sand. It really is quite hopeless.

You all talk about Bat Ye’or. If you read her thoroughly, you will remember that there is an active political movement to support muslim immigration, muslim rights, etc, in Europe. Nothing indicates that things have changed. Immigration from Morocco and Turkey is not curbed. At the same time, emigration from Holland (native skilled and educated Dutchmen) is at an all-time high. Our political leaders still feel that there is much to be gained by being friends with the Arabs, at fatal cost to Western Europe.

This is not a conventional war, which we would win in less than a week. This is us destroying ourselves. We are simply too indoctrinated, too polite, too PC to state loud and clear that our civilization is the best there is on this planet, that it is being destroyed from within by another culture, and that ours is worth preserving.

There are far too many people who think that it will go away by itself. That muslims will adjust, integrate, assimilate. After all, black people from Surinam and the Dutch Antilles have, Indonesians from our former colonies have?
There are far too many people still saying “The vast majority of muslims aren’t like that, we all want the same thing.”
And too many people are in fact afraid. In the same way as they are afraid of a bully neighbour who makes too much noise. They will simply learn to live with their diminished freedoms, and they will keep adjusting and adjusting until they live like the Christian ‘Palestinians’: Like Dhimmi’s.

I don’t see it changing for the better. I really do not.

Comment by Daniel NETHERLANDS — February 21, 2006 @ 8:22 am

I think it is really bad news for America if Europe is lost. Without much of a fight. Sad. But if they won’t help themselves what can we do?

Comment by John Sobieski UNITED STATES — February 21, 2006 @ 11:58 am

There is no mystery to all this. It was prophesied. It was prophesied that almost no one would believe it was happening as it is happening. Most here will still be saying it is not possible as they crawl into thier holes and beg the rocks to fall on them.

Comment by Scott UNITED STATES — February 21, 2006 @ 12:49 pm

What if European civilization is dying? If the Europeans want to surrender, maybe that is what they deserve. Maybe European civilization is too weak, too rotten, too decadent, too corrupt, too immoral, and cannot be saved.

They have rejected Christianity, let them have Islam instead.

When Jews being unable to walk the streets in safety occasions less concern from the EU than imaginary discrimination against homosexuals, I have the thought that maybe Europe does not deserve to live.

Who is willing to say that a big part of the problem is feminism? Women don’t want to have children, it is too much responsibility, too much hard work, so Europe lacks children and is flooded with outsiders.

Oh well, if Europe goes Islamic the Americans can still go there and take pictures of the old buildings - until America also collapses that is.

Comment by Joe K. OMAN — February 22, 2006 @ 3:45 pm

Dr. Daniel Pipes was totally misquoted by Andrew Bostom . He set the record straight in his blog.

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/166

“How important are anti-Islamist Muslims? Andrew Bostom and I both attended the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Islam in the Hague on February 17-19 but he apparently heard something different from what I said, at least as reported by Jerry Gordon at IsraPundit: “Dan Pipes, Bostom recounted had to admit at the conference that his previous expectations about fostering progressive moderate Muslims may have been in error and that there are minimal numbers of the umma who would fight for internal reformation. or would be marginalized, at best.” For the record, I repeated at that conference what I have been saying for years, namely that moderate Muslims “are largely fractured, isolated, intimidated, and ineffectual.” There is nothing new here. Further, I continue to see moderate Islam as the solution to radical Islam.” (Feb. 20, 2006)