[CS-FSLUG] Why Europe Is Starting To Lose Its Faith In Islam

[Fred A. Miller]

December 04, 2004

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1387077,00.html

Stoned to death... why Europe is starting to lose its faith in Islam
By Charles Bremner

Islamic fundamentalism is causing a 'clash of civilizations' between liberal
democracies and Muslims

DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the
advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near 
her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, 
her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to 
police.

Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific
"lapidation" of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can 
no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.

A few days ago, pop celebrities joined 2,000 people in a march through
Marseilles denouncing violence against women, particularly in the
immigrant-dominated housing estates. The protest against Islamic 
"obscurantism" and the "fundamentalism that imprisons women" was led by a 
group of Muslim women who call themselves Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither 
Whores nor Submissive).

The movement, which emerged three years ago to defend Muslim women, is 
spawning similar groups across Europe, supported by a mainstream opinion that 
has recently abandoned political correctness and wants to halt the inroads of 
Islam.

From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside
their doctrines of diversity and insisting that "Islamism", as the French call
the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is incompatible 
with Europe's liberal values.

The shift is not just a reaction to exceptional violence such as the Madrid
train bombings, or the murder of Theo van Gogh, the anti-Islamic Dutch
film-maker, by a Dutch-Moroccan. It stems from a belief that more muscular
methods are needed to integrate Europe's 13-million strong Muslim community 
and to combat creeds that breed extremists and ultimately, terrorism. With 
mixed results, governments are trying to quell the scourge by co- opting 
Muslim leaders to promote a moderate European Islam.

In Germany, with its three million - mainly Turkish - Muslims, and France, 
with its five million of mainly North African descent, television viewers 
were shocked when local young Muslims approved of Van Gogh's murder. "If you 
insult Islam, you have to pay," was a typical response.

"The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart," said Angela Merkel, leader 
of Germany's Christian Democrat opposition. "Anyone coming here must respect 
our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots." Italy's 
traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of Islamism. 
An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians believed that 
a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West was under way and that 
Islam was "a religion more fanatical than any other".

Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia - and no
longer just from the populist rightwing party's such as Pia Kjaersgaard's
People's Party in Denmark. The center-right Government of Anders Fogh 
Rasmussen, has equipped Denmark with Europe's toughest curbs on immigration, 
largely aimed at people from Muslim countries. In Sweden, where anti-Muslim 
feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been 
authorized to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the 
measure comes nowhere near France's new ban on the hijab in all state 
schools.

In Spain, with a rapidly rising population of nearly a million Muslims, the
backlash has been less visible despite the bombings, but thousands 
demonstrated in Seville this week against plans to build a mosque in the city 
center. The Government has also won approval by sending 500 extra police to 
monitor preachers and Muslim associations.

Police across the EU are closely watching prayer meetings in makeshift mosques
in cities and housing estates, and media accounts of the jihadist,  
anti-Western and anti-semitic doctrines of the imams are fueling public 
anger. In Germany, pressure is growing for sermons to be preached in German 
rather than Turkish or Arabic. Hidden TV cameras recently broadcast an imam 
in a Berlin mosque telling worshipers that "Germans can only expect to rot in 
the fires of hell because they are nonbelievers".

The debate over the limits to free speech is loudest in France, which now
acknowledges the failure of its "republican" approach to integration whereby
immigrants were supposed to blend harmoniously into society and not exist in
separate communities.

Dominique de Villepin, the Interior Minister, is deporting foreign imams who
support wife-beating and other uncivilized practices. This week the Government
moved to ban a Lebanon-based television channel for anti-semitic broadcasting.
The left wing, which long shunned criticism of Islam as the stock-in-trade of
Jean-Marie le Pen, the far-Right leader, now denounces the "totalitarian",
anti-feminist, antisemitic doctrines of the fundamentalists. Jacques Julliard, 
a leading left-wing commentator, said the Left's longstanding tolerance had 
been used as "an agent for the penetration of Islamic intoleranceM".

Some on the Left have also taken strong exception to the concept of
"Islamophobia", a supposed sin defined by EU anti-racism watchdogs as akin to
anti-Semitism.

The French consensus was symbolised by the 80 per cent public support for the
head-scarf ban, which started with little trouble in September. While many
Muslims felt stigmatised, the Government took comfort from the approval of the
ban by a substantial minority of the 10 per cent of the population that is of
immigrant origin.

Among them is Fadela Amara, a Muslim town councillor from Clermond Ferrand, 
who heads the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement. "The veil is an instrument of
oppression that is imposed by the green fascists," she says. Mme Amara, who 
led the Marseilles march, advocates an "open Islam, an Islam of French 
culture a bit Gallic around the edges". This is also the aim of the state, 
which two years ago created a national Muslim Council to promote moderate 
mainstream Islam. The council was set up by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then 
Interior Minister, who now heads the UMP, President Chirac's center-right 
party.

M Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that
France's rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques. "Whether I 
like it or not, Islam is the second biggest religion in France. So you have 
to integrate it by making it more French," he said. To general dismay, 
however, the national council is coming increasingly under the effective 
control of radicals.

Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for 
Europe should be the US. On Tuesday a writer for Libération, the French 
left-wing daily, noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves into "the 
American dream" and prospered. "There is no French, Dutch or other European 
dream," she noted. "You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing more."
        

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