Posted on 11/12/2005 3:55:38 AM PST by rhema
So much for the illusion. Just when modern Europe thought itself to have been successfully secularized, along comes a crew of scruffy Muslims to spoil the picture. ("Scruffy" was one of the nicer words used by French leaders last week to describe the rioters.) Both the French people and their overweeningly self-confident government are discovering that religion remains a crucial part of modern life after all.
Historic Christianity, of course, had already become all but irrelevant to many, at least in the big cities and centers of European culture. Most cathedrals have long since been reduced to drafty museums of past superstitions. Serious religious commitments by Christians have been measured recently in single-digit proportions of the population.
But no observers of the European scene last week could deny the strong religious component of what was driving one of the scarier uprisings in the recent history of the continent. Religion wasn't the whole issue, to be sure; class and culture and economics played important roles. Yet the strong Islamic theme was too dominant to be ignored.
But who could explain it accurately? If most politicians and most media people are ignorant of the fine nuances in their own religious traditions, how much more so with reference to Islam? If the differences in explaining evangelical Christianity range from Pat Robertson to Jimmy Carter, isn't it reasonable to expect that differences in explaining Islam are just as broad—and just as ambiguous and confusing?
At first, both European and American media soft-pedaled the religious aspects of the costly unrest. So The Washington Post headlined with discreet political correctness: "Rage of French Youth Is a Fight for Recognition." But, as Canadian columnist Mark Steyn pointed out (Canadians might be a little scared themselves), it wasn't "Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse" who were causing the trouble. It was Mohammed and his friends—who admittedly may have been poor and unemployed members of drug gangs—but who first and foremost found their identity in their relationship to Islam.
So in a front-page story last week, John Carryrou finally wrote bluntly in The Wall Street Journal: "The past year is proving to be a watershed in modern Europe's encounter with Islam. As a number of events have shown—including last year's assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical and the home-grown terrorists who bombed the London tube this summer—Europe has failed to deal with the Muslims within its borders."
In his article, Mr. Carryrou shows how even purported efforts by so-called moderate Muslim groups to restrain violence by young devotees of Islam have tended—inadvertently or otherwise—to highlight and perhaps even encourage ever more violent behavior. Concerning the Tabligh group, he says that while it publicly preaches a peaceful brand of Islam, French intelligence officials claim that up to 80 percent of Islamic extremists in France were once members of Tabligh. French officials call it the "antechamber of fundamentalism."
Indeed, the record shows that the very efforts of groups like Tabligh to work with young people have tended often to heighten their sense of identification with Islam rather than to meld them into the broader society of which they are a part. When unemployment, resulting from a variety of influences, ranges as high as 40 percent among some immigrant groups, such patterns quickly prompt the jobless folk to see their plight as a deliberate effort by society to victimize them because they are Islamic. The fact that Tabligh works out of a mosque all but guarantees that the young people it reaches out to learn instinctively to see the struggle as a religious one.
So it's not so much any specific content that they've been taught. It's not a particularly charismatic brand of teachers who have gripped them with a vision. Nor is it that the Quran has proven so convincing. Instead, it's a grim and empty life experience they've inherited that prompts them to claim a religious adherence whose meaning has primarily to do with what they don't have in life. And now, both oddly and frighteningly, that's how the secularists of Europe see them as well.
"Pot, I'd like to introduce you to Kettle."
The Financial Times has a story about one scruffy youth, kicked out of school, father from Senegal has had 4 wives and 30 children. So how many European women in France have had seven children? In another generation, France will be Senegal.
the last two weeks or so have been like one giant holiday tiem for me. now to top it off with the final wonderful surprise, we can forsee that those who abandoned their god will be forced to adopt the god of others. and who said god doesnt have a sense of supreme humor? france deserves all she will get and then some. scruffy muslims will teach france a basic lesson of life, victory is for those who crave it, not for those who think they deserve it. ce la vie.
Secular societies CANNOT exists for long. Europe will be a religious continent one way or another. Now Europeans can chose which religion it will be, later it the choice will be made for them.
Pray, get on your knees, ask God for forgiveness. Reserve time for the church services each week. Put family first, study Bible/catechism/Fathers of the Church together with your children. Have two children instead of one, three instead of two.
Otherwise, you grandchildren if you have any will study Koran and Hadith
No it wasn't, not by the idiot Lefties on a neutral board I frequent. It's all economics, and Islam has no play in this, to listen to them.
Yes, they are--just as. And, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, in both cases the range stretches all the way from A to B.
What a splendid example of decadent, Leftist (but I repeat myself) gobbledegook.
In the so-called "journalissmmm" of tooodaaay, TRUTH is risibly of no consequence. It's the agennnndaaa that matters.
What could be a more glaring example of decadence? Nothing.
Europe has failed to deal with reality. The consequences are never pleasant.
The church needs a face lift. It needs to rediscover its rootes. It needs to Catch up with the modern digital age and start advertising. Come up with catchy slogans. Become a visible part of the community again. Hold fast to the truth but bring energy, excitement, jubilance and life back into the fold. State a new mission for America and the world redefined perhaps as "bringing the truth to a troubled world and showing why". Or "Christian Character - strength and courage in the face of uncertainty"
very good
"...Christianity, of course, had already become all but irrelevant to many, at least in the big cities and centers of European culture. Most cathedrals have long since been reduced to drafty museums of past superstitions."Spirituality abhors a vacuum."But no observers of the European scene...could deny the strong religious component of what was driving one of the scarier uprisings in...recent history."
Spirituality--communication with God and the desire for oneness with God--is as fundamental to human nature as is sexuality--no, more fundamental--and it and its power can be denied with about as much success as sexuality and its power--no, with less success.
What contemporary, "secularized" Europeans--and their Leftist counterparts in America and elsewhere--do not openly admit is that they are crypto-atheists.
What they do not understand is that atheism is not only untrue but violates the most basic human drive--the lust for God--and for Truth--which are the Same.
If crypto-atheists--in their fatally flawed hubris and denial--deny the existence of God--not to mention the importance of its recognition--the vaccuum that they create will be filled with something; it will not remain a vaccuum.
And that something will quite likely be a horribly flawed grasp for Truth and knowledge of God, because human beings, in their hunger for This, will prefer even a spirituality as misguided as blow-yourself-and-everybody-else-up Islam to nothing.
Human beings will not be aspiritual any more than they will be asexual. If Europeans--or anyone else--have allowed themselves to degenerate into a spiritual vaccuum, this vaccuum is as likely to be filled with Islam--or something equally misguided, if that can be imagined--as anything else.
Secular societies cannot last - you are correct. There will always be a religion of one kind or another either created by God or created by man (see Marx / Engels for further enlightenment).
When you believe in nothing except for yourself (how DO you get up out of bed in the morning), then everyone's belief is as good as yours and just as applicable. The cannibal's viewpoint is as valid as the dinner's. The looter is as acceptable as the creator. The storekeeper is no more moral than the armed robber.
The Church is undergoing its renewal first under JPII and now Benedict. Back, as you say, to the roots. No more wishy washy neo Marxist liberalism. No more abortion clinics operating out of Catholic schools and universities. Immorality is not simply another viewpoint.
Morality is objective. And real. We are paying the cost of ignoring this both here, and even more dearly in Europe.
A case for unity amongst all professing Christians.
At first, both European and American media soft-pedaled the religious aspects of the costly unrest.
What's this "at first" business. I have yet to hear any local news station refer to them as anything but "youths". I've about had it. That's a bit like saying the flu is caused by rioting molecules.
The past year is proving to be a watershed in modern Europe's encounter with Islam
With the USSR gone, Europe has forgotten that they still share a border with anti-civilization.
Too bad there's not a border. The enemy is well-inside the wire.
It needs to instill a fear of damnation and a love for the One who provides salvation.
-I hate to say it but it looks like we need to dismantle the nukes in the Islamic state of france pronto.-
It would certainly be an easier way for them to acquire nukes. Burn a few cars, set a few women on fire, get the politicos to surrender, and there you've got your nukes. France is easy pickins as far as nuclear countries go, as I'm sure the terrorist scum are aware.
The Muslims in France have had a grim and empty life experience for years, but they begin large-scale rioting 2 days after the Iraqi constitution was officially validated
I think the validation of the Iraqi constitution made some of the French Muslims realize how bleak their future is, when it is compared with the more hopeful future of the youths in liberated Iraq. French Muslims have probably figured out that the (racist?) French were willing to have the US liberate them 2 times, but weren't willing to let the US liberate Muslims in Iraq.
Is French Muslims' jealousy of Iraqi Muslims fueling their anger?
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