European Fears of the Gathering Jihad

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European Fears of the Gathering Jihad

By Bat Ye'or

The pro-Saddam Hussein European manifestations of February 15th that brought millions into the streets of European capitals are the culmination of Charles de Gaulle's political vision of a European destiny led by France. During World War II de Gaulle was the leader of French resistance against the Nazis, but his post-war anti-Americanism rallied many of his previous enemies.

Hostility to America and antisemitism were strong in various French circles: the communists, the left, and particularly among the numerous politicians, civil servants, intellectuals and businessmen, who had willingly collaborated with the Germans. Those political currents had important links with the Arab-Muslim world.

De Gaulle's vision intended to restore to France a dominant role in international affairs by the construction of a strong and united Europe as a counter-weight to American power. After the loss of Algeria in 1962, France's last Arab colony, de Gaulle oriented his policy toward the Arab-Muslim world.

During the 1960s, a French Mediterranean policy was elaborated, which would link as an economic and political geostrategical unit the European Community (EC) and the Arab League countries. But Arab collaboration had a price: the elimination of Israel. In spite of France's efforts to bring its European partners closer to Arab views, many countries were reluctant to follow this path. At that time, the Arab-Israeli conflict didn't provoke any interest or declaration from the EC.

After the Syro-Egyptian October 1973 war against Israel, and the third Arab defeat, the Arab oil producers proclaimed an oil embargo, increased the oil price four times, lowered the production, and classified the consuming countries into friends, enemies, or neutrals.

Now, France's maneuvers to align the EC on the Arab anti-Israeli policy in order to create a strong Euro-Arab bloc succeeded. The nine countries of the EC, meeting in Brussels (November 6, 1973) issued a joint Resolution, which endorsed the Franco-Arab policy in respect to Israel.

In 1974 the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was founded to strengthen the political, economic and cultural co-operation between Europe and the Arab world. The Association had about 600 members in 18 national Parliaments of the countries of the enlarged European Union (EU), as well as in the European Parliament - and all the major trends in European politics were represented.

This Association organized regular meetings with Arab leaders and politicians and served as a channel between them and the European governments, the Presidency of the European Council of Ministers, and the Commission of the European Communities. In other words, it was a most powerful Arab lobby functioning through European functionaries, built into the European institutions to influence European policy at its summit.

In the following years, this body was reinforced by a political, economical and cultural structure, named the Euro-Arab Dialogue, which united at the highest level the EC - later to become the European Union - and the countries of the Arab League.

The Europeans tried to maintain the Dialogue on a base of economic relations, while the Arab countries tied the oil and business markets to the European alignment on their anti-Israeli policies.

Even though some countries were reluctant to follow this path, the joint proclamations of the EU concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict endorsed the anti-Israeli points established previously by the Second Islamic Conference in Lahore, Pakistan (February 1974).

Henceforth, an associative diplomacy binding the Arab-Muslim countries and the EU developed in international forums and especially in decisions concerning the Middle East conflict. During Euro-Arab symposiums the oil threat was brandished and pressure was exerted on the EU, as a reminder that economic relations were inexorably tied to Europe's political alignment with Arab anti-Zionist policy.

However, the Dialogue was not restricted to influencing European foreign policy against Israel and detaching Europe from America, it also aimed at establishing permanently in Europe a massive Arab-Muslim presence by the immigration and settlement of millions of Muslims with equal rights for all, native-born and migrants alike.

This policy endeavored to integrate Europe and the Arab-Muslim world into one political and economic bloc, by mixing populations (multiculturalism) while weakening the Atlantic solidarity and isolating America.

To facilitate Muslim settlements in the West, cultural changes in school teaching, universities and social life were imposed. Textbooks were rewritten in view of allaying Muslim susceptibilities, and university teachings in Middle East and Islamic history soon conformed to Arab-Muslim norms and their worldview.

Recommendations were emphatically and repeatedly imposed for spreading the knowledge of the Arabic language in Europe, and the learning about the superior Islamic history and civilization.

As these decisions were taken, and then implemented through the mechanism of the Dialogue that covered every country of the EU, a profound cultural Islamization - through the network of schools, universities and the blessing of Islamophile clergymen - conditioned the mentalities of two generations of European youth.

To this cultural transformation was added from within the demographic pressure of an ever-increasing Muslim immigration and, from without, an all-encompassing symbiosis on every level with the Arab-Muslim world.

This symbiosis built on the system of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, and hence approved by the higher political authorities of the EU, covered book publishing, university exchanges, television, press and radio collaboration, theological rapprochement, youth meetings, and intense collaboration between numerous ONG organizations, humanitarian activities, workers unions, economical and financial relations.

Scientific, nuclear and military training were provided as, for exemple, France's nuclear program with Iraq, culminating in the construction of the nuclear reactor Osirak, destroyed by Israel in 1981.

The development of those complex ties between the Arab-Muslim world and the EU was, at its core, conditioned by an anti-Israeli and anti-American policy, the Arab ambition being to detach Europe from its Atlantic ally.

As Palestinian and Islamic terrorism developed, the EU - anxious to save its growing and multiple interests in the Muslim world - accused Israel and U.S. policy of provoking it. Rather than confronting Islamic terrorism, European leaders resorted to appeasement by condemning Israel.

Anti-Zionism, integrated into the developing Euro-Arab relations became a European sub-culture of hate, denigration and disinformation, nourished by the inner dynamic of the Euro-Arab Dialogue that led to the rise of Eurabia.

Opposing views were silenced to maintain a monolithic façade of Islamic correctness in the press and publications. From September 2000, the outburst of Palestinian terrorism within Israel triggered a violent antisemitic wave in Europe as if it had become the heart of Arabism.

France, Germany and Belgium, the troika leading Eurabia, imposed monolithic orders for the EU and their African satellites. An alliance with the Organization of the Islamic Conference, comprising 56 countries, would provide world supremacy at the UN in some issues.

The Euro-Arab bloc's reliance on UN international legitimacy" is based on its virtual control of this forum. Essential to the Arab League's policy in relation to Israel, Arafat - the godfather of international terrorism - became the key regulator between the EU and the Arabs.

The EU assumed the main funding of the Palestinian Authority, and until now the European Parliament refuses any investigation of how more than a billion euros of European taxpayers' money, transferred to Arafat, has been used.

Today the Iraqi crisis confronts the EU governments with three decades of pusillanimous policy based on oil, markets, short-term economic gains, and an imperialist ambition of domination.

It is practically impossible now in Europe to control Islamic terrorism either from within or without. Nor can the EU accept the destruction of the multifarious symbiosis created by all European political parties with the Arab and Muslim world, to the detriment of their own country's security.

Europe has undergone a profound structural and demographic change, which is not yet fully perceived by Europeans, even less by Americans.

This transformation of a Judeo-Christian based-civilization and culture by strong trends of Islamization is creating social, political and cultural grounds for confrontations that could provoke dangerous social implosions.

The drifting away of Europeans from America is not, therefore, due to their superior moral exigencies, as some superficial analysts write. Rather, this drift reveals a traumatic fear of a terrorism that the EU always refused to acknowledge, scapegoating instead Israel and America.

It reveals the preservation, at all costs, of Arab and Muslim corrupt dictatorships, including Arafat, with whom the EU has built its economic and international political strategy, power and security. And, more threatening, it indicates a profound transformation, a mutation, whereby a civilization is drifting toward 'dhimmitude.'*

Author's note: Dhimmitude derives from the surrender of the Christian clergy and political leaders to the Muslim jihad armies, and their submission to Islamic domination of both their lands and peoples.

In exchange, they received a pledge of protection ('dhimma') from the Muslim sovereign - and the cessation of the jihad war. This "protection" was conditioned on a ransom payment (jizya) that was extorted from the vanquished Christian and Jewish populations (dhimmis).

Sometimes, Christian submission to Islam was rooted in personal ambition. Dhimmitude often induced self-hatred, and hatred against Jews and Christians who resisted the jihad and Muslim domination. Christian dhimmitude has been a world force for Islamization throughout history.

Bat Ye'or is the author of three books on Jihad and dhimmitude (www.dhimmitude.org and www.dhimmi.org). Her latest study is Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide (2002); see her "Eurabia: The Road to Munich."

National Review Online, October 9, 2002.

Excerpts from Will Durant's The Age of Faith Pages 162-186 Pub. 1950

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