The Islamic Crusade and the Clueless West

The following review discusses a new book by the German journalist Samuel Schirmbeck, who learned about the process of Islamization first-hand, when he was a correspondent in North Africa. As Western Europe was being Islamized, Algeria was being re-Islamized — that is, rediscovering the “true Islam”.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this article from Deutschlandradio Kultur:

Samuel Schirmbeck: The Islamic Crusade and the Clueless West

Why we need a self-confident Islam criticism

Call for Islam Criticism

by Rebecca Hillauer

“There must be no distinction between ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’’” insists Samuel Schirmbeck in his “Crusade of Islam.”

As a correspondent in North Africa, Samuel Schirmbeck became familiar with a creeping Islamization, and warns of the “Crusade of Islam.” He calls for the courage to criticize Islam openly, and blames leftists for the spread of radical Islam in Western Europe.

“People who are critical of Islam are not Islamophobic. They are just violence-phobic, intolerance-phobic homophobe-phobic. They reject in Islam what we also [once] had: misogyny, intolerance in the name of a philosophy. We have separated ourselves from that with great effort, and now people do not want it to re-enter our land under the cover of religion.”

Samuel Schirmbeck experienced creeping radicalization in North Africa. When he arrived in Algiers as an ARD[1] correspondent in 1990, the beaches were full of women in bathing suits, and the land was full of hopes for democracy. Islamists put an end to that. They threatened alleged “unbelievers” with death. Samuel Schirmbeck stayed, and learned to live with the latent fear. It left him, he says, only when he occasionally flew to Frankfurt for a few days for discussions.

“And then I realized how valuable that is — a public space where you do not need to fear religious madness, where you can step out of your front door without the fear of someone shooting you in the head because you are an “unbeliever.”

”And Then I Got a Terrible Fright”

People whose lives are spent in Muslim lands have no such refuge, and they nonetheless denounce the atrocities committed in the name of their religion. In his book, Samuel Schirmbeck gives voice extensively to these “Muslim freedom-seekers,” as he calls them. For instance, the literary scholar Abdelwahab Meddeb who sees “Islam’s sickness” in violent fundamentalism. Schirmbeck was reminded of that once, when he was flying to Frankfurt, and a young Algerian was sitting next to him.

“We were barely over Marseille, when he began a monologue on how great the Koran is and how Islam is there for humanity and is the best religion, and treats everyone justly, and so forth. An hour and a half. So, when the plane was down on the tarmac in Frankfurt, I said, Here is the end of the Allah zone. And he shot back: No, monsieur, the Allah zone never ends. And I had a terrible fright. What if the Allah zone really would expand and come to Europe? And there was no longer this feeling of security? Et voilá.

Schirmbeck writes, “You can also see it in Western Europe. Demand for prayer rooms outside of mosques, in schools, in businesses, at universities. Protest praying outdoors, if the demand is not met. Refusing to shake hands with women because they are ‘impure.’ Fear of a false word about the Prophet that could have bad consequences. That is how it started in North Africa.”

He describes how stunned he was when he told his friends in Germany of his growing doubts about the peaceful intentions of Islam — and they called him a fascist. In Schirmbeck’s eyes, people like that are “born-yesterday leftists” and complicit in Islam’s ability to expand unhindered in Western Europe.

“There Must Be No Distinction Between ‘Believers’ and ‘Unbelievers’”

“That is the old, leftist ‘Third-World attachment.’ They think there is an ontologically evil part of the world — the West, including America. And then there is an ontological innocence zone — the Third World. And now, out of the Third World comes Islam — and that’s why it shouldn’t be hassled.”

As also responsible, he sees the liberal Muslims and the conservative Islamic organizations in Europe who have thus far taken no clear position against radical Islam. In his book he calls on them:

“Demand number one: Free, independent deliberation about Islam! Number two: Proclaim that there is no difference between ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers.’”

Schirmbeck believes that the separation into “believers” and “unbelievers” is disastrous. Especially for integration. How do war refugees from Syria regard a society they are told is composed of blasphemers? His book is fascinating to read. His lucid style makes for clarity of content. The author has many useful arguments for anyone who has been waiting a long time for such a message.

An Alliance of the Secular

“Our politicians — and I find this essentially racist — consider the Muslims here incapable of tolerating an open discussion about the ‘cursed’ side of Islam, as a Moroccan scholar calls it. They are afraid that the peaceableness they are constantly emphasizing could falter. Naturally, they avoid any criticism of Islam, because that is also criticism of religion, and of course they don’t want that, because Islam has provided them a new significance [for religion]. The re-religionizing of our society — that’s a part of Islamization.”

Schirmbeck firmly agrees with the declaration of secular Muslims from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, demanding a reform of Islam compatible with the European Enlightenment. He says that he learned that, too, in North Africa.

“That the confrontation here is not between Muslims and Europeans. Rather, that there are like-minded people in the Muslim world and the European world — and that they must form an alliance against the others. Sooner or later, I think that will happen.”

Note:

1.   German broadcasting pool.
 

30 thoughts on “The Islamic Crusade and the Clueless West

  1. This is all fair and well until it starts harming you personally. I’ve got a better idea. How about not letting any more of them into Europe and sending those already here back to where they came from. That option or idea suits me MUCH better.

  2. It is a very good book of a very knowledgeable Person, as he live in Algiers for about 10 years. I am reading it at the moment.

    Problem is that our politicians do not listen to such People. They rather listen to the Muslim Central Council (Muslim Brotherhood) and DITIB (Erdogan’s German branch of his islamofascist turkish religious authority).

    I have seen Schirmbeck in a Talkshow this year. I think the topic was the Cologne New Years Eve. He formulated his criticism on the Islamic attitude towards women and the consequences to the German poplulation in the most perfect, modest and non-offending way you can think of.
    Result, not only the representative of DITIB (i.e. the Turkish state) attacked him but also a female German politician of the Green Party.
    At that day I lost hope that we will be able to solve this issue by discussing about it. Our politicians refuse to do just that and obviously the Muslim side does not want do discuss about Islam.

    Frustrating!

  3. The genie is out of the bottle and those whom are not followers of the Genie need to band together asap and get it back into the bottle.

  4. The question is, when you take away violent suppression of criticism, the death penalty for apostasy, violent suppression of any disobedience to sharia, like eating during day Ramadan, violent expansion of Islam, the mandate for an Islamic government enforcing sharia and excluding non-Muslims from power or influence, what do you have? Certainly, not Islam.

    These practices are law. They’re not simply quaint customs which can be discarded like changing from a sari to a dress. And any Muslim who does not keep and enforce the law is himself subject to death.

    Why do enlightened people continue to call themselves Muslim? What is so attractive about worshiping a pirate-slaver-murderer? But, I don’t trust these liberal Muslims. It’s not that I doubt the sincerity of people like Schirmbeck, Zudi Jasser, or others of their ilk. It’s simply safer, far safer, to act as if they are useful agents, but keep them far away from any real power or influence. And certainly don’t allow them to convince you to support liberal Muslims as opposed to fundamentalists. We shouldn’t support any of them, or allow any more inside our borders.

    Will Islam reform? I don’t know. It’s not my affair. If it does, it won’t be because it’s anything a non-Muslim has done. After they’ve existed 50 or 100 years with no religious violence or oppression, we can talk about considering Islam, or a portion of it, reformed. It’s a siren song to call for material support of moderate Muslims. The support simply goes to support Muslims in favor of non-Muslims.

    Do we need Schirmbeck? Absolutely not. As liberal, as good, and as knowledgeable as he is, the entire body of facts about Islam are already very freely available for anyone who wants to read a book or the internet or visit the Gates of Vienna or Jihad Watch or any of dozens of others. I take it from the article that what we’re hoping is that hearing it from a Muslim like Schirmbeck will awaken the ruling classes. See how well that turned out for Zudi Jasser.

      • I think you’re right. I misread that he was a Muslim. He talks about the issues like a Muslim reformer, but that doesn’t mean he is a Muslim. He talks about being shot as an unbeliever, so I missed that.

      • No, he isn’t. But this is a naive stance: “Schirmbeck firmly agrees with the declaration of secular Muslims from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, demanding a reform of Islam compatible with the European Enlightenment.”

        That is naive. As Ronald says, there wouldn’t be much islam left. Hamed Abdel Samad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other EX-muslims should be the guiding lights for muslims considering themselves ‘enlightened’. Time to leave the islamic ideology and seek a kinder belief system.

    • I don’t think Islamic people would ever reform in any real sense because their Islam and their mosques gives them so-called status that enable them to expand their “social”, “economic” and “political” activities by the imposition of their totalitarian(which is even worse than authoritarian) Islamic ideology and thus infect every place that they migrate to with their oppressive and violent Islamic ideology.

      I have noted the cancerous growth of Islam in South East Asia(I am living surrounded by them and I have to say I hated their unhelpful, inferior “rule”, their so called grandeur and their too many irrational imposition) as well as in some parts of Europe. Like other Orientals, whenever their communities grew more “powerful”, their Islamic infested place would grow more nasty, would deteriorate in various ways, they would demand endless special privileges, become more oppressive or oppressed us disadvantaged nonbelievers who are less “wealthy” than them.

      Hopefully, more people would stop investing in predominantly Islamic countries and Europe can be saved.

  5. Stephen Pollard in the Spectator reckons in Algeria when the 79 year-old, wheelchair-bound “President Bouteflika dies, the Islamists will try to seize power, and Europe will face another refugee crisis” and would likely destroy the EU.
    http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/how-algeria-could-destroy-the-eu/
    He notes as above, the re-Islamification of Algeria and that some Western observers are fooled by Islamists changing tactics and the mirage of the ‘Arab Spring’.
    Along with the almost inevitable escalation of jihadist violence in Europe, I imagine politicians that desire strong borders and are prepared to not only defend their countries against Islamic jihad but will tackle it at root, are likely to become increasingly successful.

    The alternative is too grim to bear.

    • there is a historic precedent case: 1803/4 and1813/14, when the US Marine corps was deployed on the coasts of Algeria and Libya. In case of an islamist takeover,the north african coast must be sealed and flights cancelled.Eventually, vessels or any kind of raft must be sunk.

    • Pollard and his sources are woefully uninformed.

      Yes, Bouteflika is not capable of fulfilling his official duties.

      However, his younger brother and entourage are the people actually running things here. This includes many generals in the army and the head of the intelligence apparatus. They are not going to shrivel up and go away when the president passes.

      Also, Algeria has a huge army, gendarmerie, and police force that are all very well-paid. They are hardly going to roll over if the Islamists try to reassert themselves.

    • Pollard’s mosque comments are also misinformed.

      They are actually spending US $2.5-3 billion on it. It is a pet project of the president, and the imams would be tightly controlled by the Ministry of Religion.

      Many common people are not in favor of the mosque, and feel that the money could have been better spent on infrastructure projects like hospitals and schools.

  6. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/ The Archbishop of Canterbury, an Establishment figure if ever there was one, has now spoken out against Islam as reported in this excellent Gatestone Institute article. Others will follow, I’m sure. Note the criticism of Islam by the military head of Egypt.

    That Muslims feel anger is perfectly understandable as they are insanely confined within a sclerotic, repressive culture. But their anger is misdirected. The mistake they make is to lash out at us in the West, instead of permanently stopping up the mouths of their sanctimonious, intolerant imams!

    As the writer points out, the tragedy for the West is that the violent Muslims have found a receptive welcome among our elites who are busy at the deconstruction of Western civilization – and this is the far greater danger.

    Once the foundations of Western civilization are gone (with the help of the barbarians), we will have nothing left to stand on. It is the elites we must fight with vigor!

    • Are we supposed to be afraid of them just because they are angry about their inferior Middle Eastern/Islamic/Asian culture that they foolishly cling to?

      They should be very angry with their own Islamic leaders(who failed to deliver) instead of the West.

      They would not even have a so called Islamic civilization without the aid from the West.

      We need to protect our beautiful Western civilization from being infected by Islam and other Oriental nonsense.

      • Unfortunately, the West has interjected itself continually in Middle Eastern and Muslim affairs, so it is impossible to know what Muslim countries would look like without Western intervention.

        The CIA engineered a coup in Iran in 1953, deposing a popularly-elected, secular prime minister in favor of a heredity Shah, himself replaced by a vicious Islamic theocracy. Who knows what US interventions took place up to 2003, but we know the US was responsible for the displacing of Saddam Hussein, Mubarek, and Gaddafi, and attempted to engineer the toppling of Assad. All these were dictators who were relatively successful in suppressing the worst aspects of Islam through vicious police and occasional terror.

        • That just reinforced the reality that there are actually no difference between those so called moderate Muslim dictators and those extremist Muslim dictators.
          Islam tend to breed bad leaders. Even many Christians under Islamic rule became as bad as those Muslims.
          By now the West should realized the futility of supporting any Islamic faction.

          • “By now the West should realized the futility of supporting any Islamic faction.”

            I totally agree with that statement.

            However, my point is that in Muslim countries, the only way to maintain a semblance of safety for Muslims, and for non-Muslims especially, the ruler has got to be a dictator with a strong police willing to use brutal methods when necessary.

            The exception to that rule is when a Muslim country or entity expands its boundaries. It is sometimes in the interests of the physical safety of Muslim countries that they intervene in cross-national Muslim aggression. Desert Storm was actually quite workable. Saddam Hussein would have been far wealthier with Kuwait under his control George HW Bush took the advice of his Saudi paymasters, and went in for a quick in-out: kick Hussein out of Kuwait, smash his army, leave him in power, and set up an autonomous Kurdish territory to give a tweak to Iraq and Turkey. What’s not to like?

            Our problem comes when we try to interfere in the internal affairs of Muslim countries. First, our standards don’t apply to them. Muslims are extremely hostile to democracy, especially those Muslims who understand it. And second, it’s morally and ethically wrong to interfere with another country for the sake of profits or even for the sake of alliances.

            I hope Trump shares this opinion and will leave other countries, including Muslim countries, alone when they do not present a physical threat.

    • Islam is a disease and its brainwashed communities would alienate anyone they can’t enslave or profit from.

      They are spreading their Islamic disease to the West.
      All welfare money should be stopped. Only limited voucher should be given out. All of them need to be deported back in stages.

  7. People too self centered and oblivious to the dangers posed by the ” historically proven ” fourteen hundred year blight on Humanity….deserve to die. Most Europeans are not reproducing…so the victims { their offspring } are not that numerous so as to have the ” bleeding hearts ” cry out about the plight of a relatively small number of civilized people. The so called leadership attained power by making stupid promises about a State that would coddle the stupid voters that put them into office. Mongrel politicians leading mongrel { cur dog } people. Why would anyone feel sorry for the majority who asked for their own demise ??. Islam is SCHEISSE. Get fined for telling this obvious truth. Merkel is non Human…lacking love..empathy.. honor..intelligence ..or even offspring. A barren humanoid who is too stupid and self hating to care for the Nation she is purported to rule. The Muslims will destroy the area. Pray for the handful of real human beings who are standing up to this looming disaster…and hope that Vladimir Putin glances in the direction of Western Europe. You need him now…more than ever .

  8. Here in the US I fully expect the Democratic Party, in order to regain power, to openly join forces with jihadists, drug lords and criminal gangs.

    Sadly for Europe, there’s little hope of the invaders will will leave peacefully. The benefactor to all the chaos will be North America, Russia and China.

  9. There is one way and one way only to prevent a bloodbath in Europe in the near future: end all immigration from Muslim societies immediately and begin the peaceful repatriation of Muslims already here. That, of course, is never going to happen, given the mire of cultural Marxism into which Europe has sunk. Therefore, future carnage is inevitable.

    • I would like to thank you for the article. It’s great to have a historical perspective, especially one so uncannily close in nature to the present situation. It’s generous for a historian who has studied the past facts closely to contribute his knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t guarantee victory, but ignorance guarantees defeat.

  10. the west is not clueless that it is being Islamized. it is clueless that it is being done deliberately by their leftist politicians.

  11. Most people in the West still have a choice and freedom to avoid the totalitarian imposition of Islam but many of us nonbelievers who are permanently or temporarily stuck in the Islamic hell hole in South East Asia have no choice but to live uncomfortably with the totalitarian imposition that their Islamic Asiatic hellhole tend to breed.

  12. Convert all passports of Muslims to permanent residents renewable every 5 years. That way they do not vote and should not get benefits. They can easily subvert the state and even take it over by voting.

    In Arabic countries Non Muslims are not given passports. In Myanmar they do not allow Muslims present in the country to vote they are not that stupid.

    Male children of resident foreigners are not allowed to become residents in Muslim countries if above 18.

    They understand these things much better.

    Then stop new Muslim immigrants. Then gradually reduce the already present immigrants Numbers by making more and more conditions to renew residence like they have in Muslim countries. Such as job, degree, etc etc.

    Finally whites need to get more warlike. Learn martial arts etc. So they are not easily wiped out.

    Remember the Haitian Holocaust where 40000 whites were massacred mostly with knives and clubs in 1791 – 1803. Don’t be too complacent about self defense. In the Haitian Holocaust the French Revolutionary government sided with the blacks and the white citizens were on their own.

Comments are closed.