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.
©2002 FrontPageMagazine.com
Excerpts from Will Durant's The Age of Faith Pages 162-186 Pub. 1950
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