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September 7, 2006
European Elites Cowed by Radical Islamists
... and here in America, "we (also) have more than our share of spineless elites who're only too happy to cave in to the demands of radicals."
Winfield Myers, writing at The Examiner, takes a look at the ability of Islamists in Europe to intimidate their opponents into silence, in what he calls a frightening method by which they hope to gradually implement sharia (Islamic law). In the UK, Islamic MPs are making demands that, they warn darkly, are a means to prevent future terrorist acts. Give us what we demand, they say, and we won't kill you.
[...] When Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against "Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie in 1989 for "blasphemy" against Islam, the reaction was swift: Rushdie repented and killed the paperback edition of his novel, lest he be killed himself. As the BBC put it in 1990, "He renewed his faith in Islam on Christmas Eve and disassociated himself from the anti-Muslim sentiments expressed by characters in his book."Not that his obsequiousness did him any good. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor, pronounced the fatwa a "divine ruling" that couldn't be withdrawn even if Rushdie "repents and becomes the most pious man of his time."
Since then, intolerance among Islamists in Europe has grown to the point that public figures are cowed by the constant threat of violence, often acted upon, should anyone insult the faith -- "insult" being defined as disagreeing with its precepts or refusing to live by its mores.
Just last month, Muslim leaders in the U.K. demanded public holidays to mark religious festivals and to implement Islamic family law; they warned government officials that they wouldn't be treated like "patsies" to publicly defend the war in Iraq or Britain's policies in Lebanon.Let's call this a must read because the phenomenon is also ongoing here in the U.S. as well, where, as Myers says in his post at Democracy Project, "we have more than our share of spineless elites who're only too happy to cave in to the demands of radicals." Be sure to read it all.Worse, this effort to legitimize the implementation of sharia (Islamic law) in a Western country was proclaimed as part of an effort to prevent further terrorist acts. Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said of his talks with Ruth Kelly, the government's communities secretary: "We accepted on our side there are issues with extremism. However, we need better to understand how it is otherwise ordinary young minds are becoming radicalized."
All of which is to argue that the disease is the cure: Give us radical Islam, which drives young people to blow themselves up in order to indiscriminately kill innocents, and we'll stop the killing. And pneumoconiosis is the cure for coal mining.
Such bravado is encouraged when so many of Europe's intellectual and political elites, steeped in philosophical nihilism and ridden with guilt for their own nations' bloody histories, prove themselves incapable -- or at best unwilling -- to fight for the survival of liberal democracy.
Two related must reads:
Symposium: The Death of Multiculturalism?
Symposium: The Death of Multiculturalism?: Continued
Cross posted from Hyscience
Posted by Richard at September 7, 2006 7:32 AM
