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The future of Europe?
Posted on 11/14/2004 1:49:34 AM PST by Eurotwit
What's wrong with this picture? The airspace over the city is declared off-limits to all unauthorized aircraft. Some 200 police, including rooftop snipers and antiterror forces in balaclavas and bulletproof armor, descend on a neighborhood near the main train station..."We cannot let ourselves be blinded by people who seek to drag us into a spiral of violence," the prime minister tells a shaken nation.
So what's wrong? The city is The Hague, and the country is the Netherlands—famed for tidy bicycle lanes, a well-mannered citizenry and the court where Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes. It underscores the fact that the clashes of civilization taking place at the global level—between Muslims and Christians, between religious fundamentalism and secularism—are also unfolding inside individual communities and countries on a smaller but still dangerous scale. And it shows that the war on terror is sometimes just down the street... Watching events unfold in the Netherlands, the rest of the region knows it's looking into a mirror. The once admired Dutch "polder model" has grown increasingly ill suited to today's Europe, much less tomorrow's. Already the Netherlands has the second largest Muslim population in Europe in percentage terms (6 percent, compared with 7 percent in France). Britain, Denmark and Sweden all have just over 3 percent. Norway, Finland and Ireland have among the smallest Muslim populations in Western Europe, under 1 percent. But even in such countries, tensions often run high because of the speed at which the Muslim community has grown.
The fanatical blow of an assassin against a filmmaker on a busy Amsterdam street thus, rightly or wrongly, becomes part of a chain stretching from the World Trade Center and Bali through the Madrid train bombings to Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Oh yeah. The equine fecal excretia is about to violently collide with a rotory oscillator.
Van Gogh's murder should wake up the whole world. It was just as much of a threat to freedom of expression as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I put it on a level with our 9/11 because they singled out one artist. How can the world sit idly by with fascists running around killing people who merely comment on the dangers of religious intolerance?
A nation that capitulates to petty street criminals isn't going to have much success against organized terrorism. Not to worry, however. If the quality of life deterioriates too badly they can all be euthanized.
One way to root out the problem would be going door to door with a can of Spam a fork and a pistol.
Because the world is full of stupid, cowardly Leftists who never met a decisive action they could support.
Suddenly we seem to have communicated with Mars. The media "gets it" now that one of their kind was unjustly taken. "WOW", they replied. "There is really something going on here!" ..........HELLLLOOOO!! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
"(6 percent, compared with 7 percent in France). Britain, Denmark and Sweden all have just over 3 percent. "
I have hear percentages much higher.
Americans better wake the f*ck up! (Awake, armed and ready Freepers excluded, of course).
Yes...Western Europe led by France now faces the mother of all problems...to many Muslims. The fuse has been lit. The Euroweenies are going Oh!Oh!..now what???
Sounds frighteningly familiar to me.
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The future of Europe?
If we had done that in the US after 9/11, the UN and the rest of the world would have called us intolerant. In Holland, it's barely worth a mention by Newsweek. The hypocrisy is astoundingly obvious.
Spam is too good for them. How about over boiled, unseasoned chitlins?
Oh, you've got that right. It's getting tiresome.
This is a very good point and one worth repeating. At the time, the Iranian fatwa against Rushdie was seen as a one-off, but now even Sunni Moslems have taken up the Iranian Shiite radicals' tools, and they make bold to assassinate Westerners in their own cities, for expressions of view uncongenial to the muftis.
Supporting your point, Daniel Pipes concluded his 1990 book The Rushdie Affair with the following thoughts:
At the same time, the ayatollah's [Khomeini's] accomplishments must not be exaggerated. The global fear of early 1989 is not likely to be soon repeated. Khomeini was a unique ruler and the furor surrounding The Satanic Verses is likely to remain without match. In theory, while many of Khomeini's tactics can be imitated by anyone, Iranian prototypes tend rarely to be imitated, so this incident may well turn out to be a one-time affair. The Iranians institutionalized and systematized the recruitment of suicide bombers, but few states availed themselves of this powerful tool. Seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran proved to be a brilliant tactical innovation by the Iranian radicals in 1979, but it has not been emulated even once [as of 1990 -- this was before the Guevarist MRTA seized the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1996]. Taking such a step requires a radicalism, an ideological devotion, and a personal commitment as deep as that of Khomeini and his followers. In the Rushdie case, Khomeini managed to impose an unprecedented form of trans-border censorship precisely because no one is like him. No other leader challenged the existing order in so profound a way or had a vision of the just society that differed so fundamentally from the prevailing models. Accordingly, conventional dictators typically find that following in the ayatollah's footsteps is beyond their capabilities.Moreover, even his achievement was less than complete. It should be remembered that it was the Saudis who got the book banned in most Muslim countries; Iranian efforts to extend censorship to the West failed. For all the fear Iranians created in the West, their attempts at intimidation turned The Satanic Verses into a spectacular commercial success. Despite and because of the Muslim efforts, The Satanic Verses became the book of the year. Boastful claims that protests would continue until the book was recalled and the author and publisher apologized came to naught. The controversy caused many Westerners to feel a highly unusual sense of solidarity, seeing themselves again as the only civilized people and recalling old animosities toward Islam. In many ways, the ayatollah not only did not get his way but he stirred up antagonisms taht will harm his cause for years to come.
Is the power that Khomeini achieved an aberration or the beginning of a subtle shift in norms? While it is too early to say, it is clear that the answer depends far more on the West than on Khomeini and his ilk. The West has to make it clear that the fundamentalist Muslims will gain nothing through threats and intimidation. [Quoting The Times of London] "The only acceptable way to end The Satanic Verses affair is to go on repeating that until the message is heard and believed."
-- Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair, pp. 250-251. (Emphasis added.)
I don't know about you, but everytime I see this word my mind automatically reads its as baklavas, and I see people with pastry on their head.
How long will it take European nations to understand that the only way out of this mess is to begin deporting muslims? Further, how long will it take U.S. citinzenry and their PC government to realize that option is the best for America?
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