The following grim assessment of the Islamization of Europe by Michael Ley was published in the Austrian daily Die Presse. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:
The Islamization of Europe: No, I Do Not Have Visions
by Michael Ley
June 19, 2015Orthodox and radical forms of Islam are a scourge of humanity. The historian Egon Flaig calls sharia Islam “the greatest danger to democracy and human rights in the 21st century.” Only an Islam without sharia is compatible with human rights. But this vision is pie-in-the-sky. Reality looks different.
The Islamization of Europe is the most visible change in most European societies. There is a parting of the ways concerning this development. Liberal and educated citizens harbor great misgivings at the increasing influence of conservative and radical Islam, and regard the future of the continent with pessimism. Their so-called progressive opponents interpret Islamization as a cultural enrichment and the conquering of the obsolete national state. The battle of the leading thinkers of a radical, post-national Europe is applicable to every national identity. Autochthon Europeans are apparently expected to forgo every national, cultural and religious identity, as well as any traditional sexual identity.
Well-intentioned compatriots try to find a mediating position, by judiciously weighing the arguments from contending cultural warriors and regretfully taking notice of the non-integration of many Muslim immigrants, but simultaneously pointing out the presumptive traditions of an Islam that is open to the world, and is expected to undergo a post-modern renaissance. Christians offer a dialogue of religions, setting pre-judgments aside and admitting their shame at the crusades of an imperial Christianity. Greenies praise their Muslim greengrocers as icons of successful integration. Feminists do not want to talk about the machismo of young, immigrant, Arab males. Purchased brides and honor killings are not among the favored subjects in their critique of society. Educational researchers brag that the number of Muslim graduates is increasing, while their critics point to the rising number of crimes committed by Islamic immigrants.
Defenders of Islam relativize many Muslims’ excessive hatred of Jews and their contempt for Christianity with the ritualistic complaint of an anti-Islamic racism in the indigenous population. The political and intellectual elites are helpless in the face of integration problems, and would prefer not to talk about the shambles they have made of it. Insofar as possible, they want to avoid a public debate about the future of European “immigration countries.” A look at the real world of Islam could open these dreamers’ eyes.
Europe did not simply spring from the Middle Ages into the modern age. It required mediating instances and fortuitous happenstances. Absent the acquisition of our classical heritage, the emergence of the Renaissance, the Reformation, Humanism and, above all, the Enlightenment, in their diverse facets, no European modern age would have occurred. The religious, intellectual, cultural, social and economic developments in Europe were exceedingly diverse and in no way trending in the same direction. The crises and catastrophes of the European modern age in the 20th century almost led to self-destruction.
An Islamic modern age could not arise, because by the10th century — that is, with the implementation of Islamic theology — the gateway to interpretation of the Koran was completely closed. As late as the 9th century, theological representatives of Mu’taziliten — which was influenced by Greek philosophy — were discussing free will and personal responsibility. After that, and until the present day, Islam largely closed itself off from the outside world. This development closed Islam to European rationalism and sealed its potential spiritual and intellectual development. That is why Islam knows only a theologically-based sacred history, and no secular history. Since Augustine, Christianity has distinguished between a divine history and a secular history, made by people. Accordingly, human beings are required to shape their own social and political future. In modern terms: God gives no specific directions for political structure.
By comparison, the God of Islam controls everything mundane. He intervenes in political events, personally kills the enemies of the true belief and punishes sinful Muslims. Muslims must fulfill the goals of Islam: the battle against the infidels. Coexistence is only allowed for a time. Rejection of secular law means rejection of the democratic rule of law and of human rights. Thus, Islam does not fulfill even the least requirement of a modern, democratic society. Islam knows no religious and political pluralism.
We are experiencing the grotesque revival of the Thirty Years’ War, which raged in Europe from 1618 to 1648, but this time under Islamic auspices. Islam, however, lacks those reforming personalities that make the Thirty Years’ War comprehensible. Islam has no historic Martin Luther, no Ulrich Zwingli or John Calvin — theological and political reformers who in varying ways fought the power of the Catholic Church and the Popes, and reformed Christian theology. The end of the Thirty Years’ War not only created a fragile religious peace, but ushered in the modernization of Europe.
The destruction of Islamic civilization cannot be traced to post-modern crusades, neocolonial or latter-day imperialistic efforts of the West. The causes must be sought in the religion and the civilization of Islamic societies themselves. The warlike confrontations in the Near East and in North Africa document the disintegration of a political order artificially established after WWI.
The contemporary Thirty Years’ War is taking place in the Islamic world, between Sunnis and Shi’ites, urban modernists and a corrupt semi-secular power elite, among various radical Islamists, as well as between Muslims and non-Muslims on a global scale. The puppet-masters in the background in the Near East are the regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, each pursuing hegemony and hatching its own plots. The Islamic agony is predetermined, because no one has a religious-political exit strategy in the form of an Islamic reform.
The lack of any political perspective is the greatest impetus for radical Islam. The more incapable reactionary Islam is of finding its own political and social solutions, so much stronger does the hatred of the West become. This political strategy is promising. Islam can only triumph if it plunders old Europe. By colonizing Europe, it gains an economic future. It is looming civil collapse that is forcing the conquest of the infidels.
Against this background of its own cultural and social self-destruction, Islam poses the greatest danger. The demographic displacements between the indigenous population and Muslim immigrants will lead to most European societies being unable to correct these developments. Collective aberrations like Communism, Fascism or National Socialism were reversible. After their failure, Europe’s cultural and religious heritage could be re-acquired, and new, civilized, democratic communities arose. Once the indigenous populations become minorities, this path to civilizational regeneration will be closed.
Orthodox Islam is compatible neither with democracy nor with European civilization. Sharia and the democratic constitutional state, individualism and collectivism are mutually exclusive. The oft-uttered objection that many Muslims are well-integrated and value the advantages of an open society is an unconvincing political argument. The most important Islamic institutions are orthodox and largely infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups. Institutionally, liberal Muslims constitute a tiny minority within Islamic societies, and are ignored by the ruling elites.
The Islamization of Europe has many faces. For one thing, nations are not affected in equal measure by Muslim immigration. For another, the regional distribution of Muslim communities is quite diverse. Mark Steyn aptly describes this development: “Much of what we vaguely call the Western world will not survive this century. Perhaps there will still be a region designated on maps as Italy or Germany, just as there is a structure in Istanbul called St. Sophia Cathedral. But it is no longer a cathedral — just a property. Likewise, Italy and Germany will be the names of properties.”
Italy and Germany will continue to exist as divided nations. Alongside the indigenous population will be a large Muslim contingent, which will of course be neither ethnically nor religiously homogeneous. This means that many regions will have no purely secular legal system, but a mixture. Where there is a preponderance of Muslim citizens, parts of sharia law may gain entry into the constitution and the legal system.
Modern Islamists such as Tariq Ramadan demand a European sharia law that takes European conditions into consideration. In other words: Islamization is advanced by means of a “reform Islam,” which will step-by-step replace secular law with divine law. The Islamization of the legal system can vary in extent. These developments, however, will be irreversible, since, as noted, they cannot be undone, due to demographic changes.
In all probability, the multicultural utopia will become a religious-political nightmare. Homosexuals, transsexuals, genderists will disappear and flee to regions that will protect them from a threatening Caliphate. Many south-, west- and north-European societies will suffer this fate. Bi-national states will arise, consisting of Muslim and non-Muslim parts.
National governments will be very weak, so shifts in governments and in coalitions will be the rule. The acceleration and intensification of various conflicts will be accompanied by the risk of failing states. Examples of this process are Lebanon, the erstwhile Yugoslavia, the present states of the Near East and parts of Africa. These societies were not and are not capable of living together in multi-religious, democratic cultures. Consequently, civil war becomes a lasting, latent phenomenon. Over time, these multi-religious societies cannot exist and will descend into a lingering demise.
In Muslim-majority regions, there will be a demand for political and cultural autonomy. These Muslim-ruled territories, however, will almost certainly hang on to a national state, because they will be economically inferior. Many indigenous Europeans will have the experience of being minorities on their own soil.
Divisions of nations, i.e., territorial splitting off of entire regions and the emergence of new national states along religious-ethnic lines, are conceivable. These aspirations will more likely come from the indigenous populace, to preserve their own culture and living standard. Should these developments take place in great measure, the Europe of nations could devolve into a Europe of regionalism. This would be the consequence of a European balkanization — of a politically disintegrating continent, which would not only lose its inner cohesion, but would also become a political football. European cultures would be determined by set borders and would be under threat from advancing Islamization.
The answer to this crash of civilization, therefore, must lie in the recollection of the basic elements of European culture: its national, ethnic, religious and cultural variety, and the European values of humanism and the Enlightenment. The future may seem gloomy. Europe finds itself facing a choice between a “reconquista,” a re-conquest of its civilization — or suicide.
(Photo: Well-intentioned Christians praise the “dialogue,” well-intentioned Greens praise their greengrocer. Only the Feminists prefer to say nothing. The Islamization of Europe. A grotesque.)
Very, very, very scary. It is virtually impossible – in my view – to find a single substantial counter-argument making author’s views less grim, let alone refute his argumentation completely.
Dark ages are descending on my home continent – which hardly disputable fact again and painfully brings up to my imagination Marseillaise and its “Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons! Marchons! Marchons!” …
We will need that sipirit of the French: rather sooner than later.
In the meantime, our elected politicians force feed us with ever increasing doses of bromide.
Precise analysis, accurate predictions.
The opening graphic reminds me of a final exam question I had once. It was an engineering class which focused on transform theory. One question had a graph that looked very much like the green line in the graphic. We were asked to calculate the LaPlace transform. About 40 minutes into the final the Teaching Assistant proctoring the exam called for every one to stop a minute while he said “I just have to mention that the graph in question #x is an actual EKG of a dying patient.”
Something about seeing an EKG going flatline over Europe prompted the memory.
This is a bit off topic, so apologies for that, but I watched an interesting BBC current affairs programme this morning that it well worth watching – Sunday Morning Live 10am. A couple of the BBC’s pet moderate Muslims step out (unintentionally) from behind their moderate masks.
The BBC interviewer must have unintentionally asked the right questions then.
No it wasn’t that that interested me. It was a discussion (please watch it, anyone and everyone – it can be seen on the BBC iplayer) about Islam and its relationship (or not ;0) to terrorism. The panel included two ‘moderate Muslims’ whose stated intention was to portray Islam in its true peaceful form. Yet despite their peaceful proclamations, they did their best to shout down the director of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre when she tried to focus on what the Koran said.
The panel consisted of a media type British guy with a normal British attitude, an enthusiastic Christian and two “moderate” muslims.
When the Christian lady mentioned the verses of the Koran that she rightly identified as being the root cause of Islamic violence she got shouted down within moments and got no further chance to speak.
Typical muslim response to criticism. Aggression, Taqquiya, and abrogation as defences.
“BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only.”
In this article Douglas Murray talks about a similar experience he had recording a discussion on Islam on BBC radio after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The “moderate” Muslim forced the producers to cut a line of scripture Douglas quoted regarding Mohammed having someone murdered for criticising him. These moderates are generally lie it seems to me.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/religion-of-peace-is-not-a-harmless-platitude/
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Our response to this threat is growing. Cracks are appearing in establishment walls.
Agreeing with Mariadee, manatthepub
Your comments are always interesting
It looks like it will take another “Gates of Vienna” to stop this. But today’s politically correct liberals are unwilling to face the facts. If we want a western civilization, we will have to fight for it. But with the current government leadership, both here in America and also in Europe, it will not happen.
To me, it seems like western values, the enlightenment, and such are in great peril. Do we really want to live by backward uncivilized values, such as the Muslims wish? I think the answer should be a resounding NO. However, this multi-culti weirdness seems to prevail and the people in general will be very sorry — but by then it will be too late. Read your history, but I’m talking to the converted. Where should I go to tell people to read their damn history? Sorry. . . just had to say it, just to get it off my chest. I wonder if my children and grandchildren will live in a free country?
Yes – the values of Enlightenment is what I am – and we all taking this stand – concerned about the most. Europe sacrificed too much throughout several generations to get where we are now: democratic society, with a rule of law and with guaranteed freedoms the French philosophes of Enlightnement could only dream about. All is at stake now.
“If we want a western civilization, we will have to fight for it. But with the current government leadership, both here in America and also in Europe, it will not happen.”
That is why La Marseillaise says, “Aux armes Citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!” as indicated by Lu above.
Any such changes will not be implemented by governments and their politically controlled armies.
There’s a lot of opposition to what’s going on. And those that lead are living on shaky support. Nobody is going to lay their life down for the establishment’s multiculti – they’re out on a limb (or going on that way). When the questions are asked they will fall.
P.S.
Man at the pub, your comments are always interesting and on spot. Thank you.
Have a pint on me…
Islam has changed bigotry into an essential virtue.
History shows that wherever civilizations decayed the malaise always started internally thus inviting conquest from outside. The most vital pulse of the West was the Christian religion and belief system around which western art, society, ideology and purposeful living seems to have flourished for two millennium. With that life-blood long having ebbed out, taking with it a population’s purpose-of-life, the body is just food for carrion. Will the Cynics and Intellectuals who shrugged Christianity into obscurity dare try the same tactic with the Religion-of-peace ?
An Islam without Sharia? Pie in the sky most certainly.
“Islam is Sharia and Sharia is Islam: they are the same.”
Fouad Belkacem, Sharia4Belgium
Our leaders are infcted with the nihilism of Marx and his supporters. They believe that there is nothing worse than western culture and it must be destroyed by any means available, including Islam.
However, Islam pre-dates Communism and is far far stronger because it is inclusive not exclusive, so if the elites believe that the ‘thesis’ is western culture, and that the ‘antithesis’ is Islam, then the conflagration that permits the Hegelian ‘synthesis’ and the resulting world communist state will not happen as planned and predicted, Hegel’s theories do not work in large scale reality.
The scenario described in the article is the resulting failure of the synthesis stage; political and economic chaos and mass starvation If the elites and the useful idiots are allowed to continue there is no going back. Mussolini got what they deserve!
Yes, exactly. They think they can “synthesize” with Islam. Yet it seems that they haven’t bothered to wonder exactly what the result of that would look like, even assuming it was possible.
It is a foregone conclusion that Europe will fall to Islam. What Islam does with their newly won nuclear weapons of mass destruction will be interesting. I am thinking they will first be aimed at Israel since their hatred of the Jew is their first love. They will forebear against nations like Australia, America and other nations they are colonizing because of the riches they stand to gain. Goodnight western civilization. It was a good run.
Not yet. Swift to praise slow to chide… We don’t go to war easily or fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, but the realisation of the predicament is gathering pace. Snowballing is the cliche – but it’s an accurate one.
Either way – our Western political leaders have been idiotically incompetent in foreseeing or forestalling a clash of cultures. Islam, by its most intrinsic nature is completely and utterly incompatible with the societies we have created and spread outwards from Europe.
Allowing our nations to suffer from Islamic population jihad has proven to be beyond stupid – it is suicidal to indigenous populations and their culture.
You can’t blame Islam for being a supremacist, colonising entity that will take over any other cultures it encounters – that’s clearly what it does and this has been evident from its inception. I have a problem with OUR own people who have either facilitated this or been so stupidly ignorant that they have empowered Islam to the point where it threatens us and the result will at least be a civilizational war.
All may not be lost – but it will take a war to sort it out. This will be the worst war in the history of our species.
We don’t have ourselves to blame – that lies at the door of our politicians and establishment who as usual have only been concerned with steering our nations for self gain.
Not all is grim in Europe, there are still remnants of sanity. 🙂
In Czech Republic we were able to elect president who is strongly against islam and who is not afraid to say it publicly, like in this interview:
http://www.parlamentnilisty.cz/arena/rozhovory/Milos-Zeman-pro-PL-Ja-take-nechci-islam-v-Cesku-pane-Konvicko-Agresor-je-ten-kdo-napadne-nejakou-zemi-drive-nez-USA-Americane-by-mohli-vyhynout-jak-brontosauri-381678
Journalist: How do you evaluate activity of Martin Konvička (leading figure of activity agains islam in Czech Republic) against islam or islamism?
President: “I also do not want islam in Czech Republic, but I am just saying that if I considered establishment of political party, every political party aiming for success in elections needs not just negative political program, but positive as well.”
Just recently we were able to gather almost 150 000 (if already not more) signatures for petition against mandatory allocation of “refugees” and all of that during little bit more than one month. So eastern Europeans have still some backbone in this sense.
Of course we have our own sort of politicians blindly following suicidal paths, but it is definitely not so dire like in western Europe and there is still much hope.
I think Hungary is also considering a wall between itself and “refugee” pathways from the south?
Islam and all its hordes will attack Israel to remove ‘the thorn from its side’ as it were before going on to conquer Europe. However, the hordes will fall on the Judean mountains and their swords with the battlefield mess taking at least seven months of ABC war cleanup. (Ez. 38-39)
Then Europe will fall at the feet of their ‘savior’ who will give them everything they want, for a price. Stay tuned for the previews. US is in a jam, and Europe is toast, all we need is coffee (arabs?) to round out the breakfast. 🙂
“Europe did not simply spring from the Middle Ages into the modern age. It required mediating instances and fortuitous happenstances. … An Islamic modern age could not arise, because by the10th century … the gateway to interpretation of the Koran was completely closed”
I think Mr. Ley goes a little off-track by implying that the main difference between the development of Europe and that of the Islamic world is that Europe threw off its bad old medieval ways and mindset to travel along a new path. But the two civilizations were developing along divergent paths from a much earlier time – before the Renaissance revival of the classical heritage and the “reform” of Christian theology — because of fundamental, congenital differences between Christianity and Islam. Their founding figures were polar opposites; the core ideals are starkly different; the relationship to power was different in the earliest phases of development, as was the means of growth.
Ley does acknowledge the Augustinian distinction between divine and secular history, but Augustine gave philosophical form to a division that Christians had long dealt with in practice. Islam, by contrast, never had a “Render unto Caesar” doctrine.
Ley recognizes that “orthodox Islam” is incompatible with modern Western civilization, but the emphasis he puts on Europe becoming “modern” through a turning away from the past and a “reform” of theology (followed by a rejection of theology) tends to invite the conclusion that Islam could plausibly go through the same kind of modernizing reformation, if only the gateway to Koranic interpretation would be reopened. That hope seems difficult to sustain in light of either history or doctrine. The Mutazili school was suppressed because what it rejected was too close to the heart of Islam.
Also, the earliest Protestants who “reformed Christian theology” wanted to cultivate societies in which everyone subscribed to true doctrine as they understood it. Religious pluralism was an accidental result of their efforts, and it probably contributed more to “modernization” than did the content of their theology.
R=
Some important points here: for example, Reformation theology was still stuck in the one true doctrine. That is the Achilles Heel for all Christian denominations and one that must be dealt with by individuals as well as institutions.
Augustine’s work on the sacred vs the secular would turn out to be crucial long after his city, Hippo, had been run over and submerged. Without him we’d be missing an important link to the Greeks and Romans, whom he admired.
Thanks.
There is only One, True, and Eternal Doctrine. Rome had clouded and covered it up so badly that the Church was unrecognizable from the roman paganism that preceded it. “Reform” was what the accepted narrative called it, “Return to you First Love” as per Jesus’ letter to the Ephesians was actually what it was. The Puritans wanted nothing to do with a fight that used carnal weapons in a war that challenged Hell’s attempted takeover of the Church. The Puritans, who weren’t very welcome in Europe anyway, left for America and established here what they had been prevented from establishing in Europe.
Now we (as a country) are sliding down the same sewer pipe the Europe is, and following right after them. God only knows why, Europe has yet to get it truly right, and until recently, has been more of a proverb and byword in this country than anything else. Maybe the liberals had something to do with the paradigm shift, but you never really know, do you?
Um…Paul wrote the letter(s) to the Ephesians. Jesus, so far as anyone knows, left no *written* works. His life and example WERE His Work.
What do muslims in general understand of islam, and how well do they know their founder?
What would it take for the mohammedans in the West, to turn their back on what they were brought up in, and think for themselves and finally leave this totalitarian ideology? What would it take for strong individuals to raise against the teachings of their family, and start fighting down the whole consept?
Quite a few of the mohammedans’ families were Christian, or had some other faith, only one or a few, generations back. How might they – living in the West – break free and re-attach to civilization?
This madness has gone far enough now. Time to end it.
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19)
This may count for the success of Northern Europe over the centuries, as opposed to the islamic failed cultures.
“Thirty Years’ War, which raged in Europe from 1618 to 1648, but this time under Islamic auspices.”
It was, actually, during this period Iceland, also, was attacked by mohammedan pirates that came to capture European slaves as far North as Iceland.
“The Turkish Abductions (Icelandic: Tyrkjaránið) were a series of slave raids by Barbary pirates that took place in Iceland between June 20 – July 19, 1627“
We have to change the minds of millions of Muslims*. We have to be shrewd and think and study this problem in several ways as in the Manhattan project…and get going. The longer we wait, the more Muslim brains we will have to change.
The effort will amount to the world’s largest propaganda operation and will cost billions. Our leaders will have to be in the forefront.
*I don’t think we can win by doing it only by the kinetic way. But we may have to if we can’t produce enough apostates.
This won’t happen.
Not possible because the current approach to pluralism is radical subjectivism: All beliefs are equally valid because beliefs are all as superficial as spices for cuisine and cloth patterns. If some people think something is good then it must be good, at least for them, because everything is just subjective.
Someone might have to admit that beliefs affect actions and actions affect survival which is constrained by reality. There won’t be enough people who figure this out in time.
Leaders? What leaders? Do you see any around America at this point?
William, if this were feasible I would be all in! But how can it be when the Prez of USA thinks Muslims are cuddly?
P.S. This entire discussion has been most interesting. This is why Gates of Vienna is one of my most favorit threads.
Thanks!
Yes ‘Render unto Caesar what is his and unto the Lord…….’ This is Secularism writ small. Sadly we do not promote let alone enforce it adequately.
I am afraid that as our governments continue to fail us we will need to defend ourselves at the regional , urban and family levels. Although I am advocating militias it is also important to recruit the army and police. If this comes to war, also take control of and, or deny Muslims access to the navy airforce and nuclear weapons. I believe Europeans an wage regional wars
Successfully. However do maintain contact with other regions.
The same is also going to happen through North America and Australasia
Sadly.
Time to get busy.
I’d just like to add one caveat to your predictions: the next great migrant crisis.
This will be the mass migration of white Europeans to the US, Australia, Canada, and Argentina.
They’ll be forced to leave their homelands to avoid rape and plunder by Islamist barbarians.
On the one hand, these countries will benefit from a large influx of productive, like minded people.