Bernard Lewis: Muslims to Take Over Europe

Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe,” which has "given up” efforts to maintain its culture, said world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis.

Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, told the Jerusalem Post that soon the only important question regarding Europe’s future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?"

Lewis, whose many books include the recent "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East,” said the Islamic takeover of Europe would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he added, Europeans had given up.

"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement, political correctness and multi-culturalism.”

Turning to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Lewis said the Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction, which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using nuclear weapons, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. "For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. If [Iran's ruling ayatollahs] kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming.”

Lewis said Israel and the West should work to strengthen moderate forces within Iran via an aggressive propaganda campaign.

"All the evidence is that the regime is extremely unpopular with their own people," he told the Post. "I am told that the Israeli daily [radio] program in Persian is widely listened to all over Iran with rapt attention."

"I was just thinking that if a so called moderate Muslim rejects Sharia law and the congquering and subjugation of the infidel, all they may as well convert to Judaism, because everything else Mohammed adopted from the Jews."

- I get your point and an interesting one it is too.

Without a doubt, Sharia laws are a central part of the traditional teachings of Islam.

Yet, many Muslims say they don't want to live under Sharia laws. In the UK, a recent survey concluded that a majority of the British Muslims do not want to live under Sharia laws - However, it is likewise notable that 37 per cent of the 16-24 age DID, compared to only 17 per cent of those over 55.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20070129/ca_pr_on_wo/britain_muslim_poll

Furthermore, a Muslim nation like Turkey has actually prohibited Sharia law as well as political campaigning for the introduction of Sharia law.

Still, most Turks call themselves Muslims, just like British Muslims who don't prefer Sharia law to British law still view themselves as Muslims.

Are Sharia laws necessarily incompatible with democracy?

Some views on this I found through wikipedia.org ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#_note-43 );

Ass. Professor Liaquat Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law, Topeka (Ks), claims that

"(...) constitutional orders founded on the principles of Sharia are fully compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to the right to recall"

However, Christian Pippan, lecturer and researcher with the Institute of International Law and International Relations at University of Graz, Austria, is probably right in pointing out that (excerpt from Wikipedia's main article on Sharia):

"While constitutional arrangements to ensure that political authority is exercised within the boundaries of Sharia vary greatly among those nations", most existing models of political Islam have so far grossly failed to accept any meaningful political competition of the kind that Khan himself has identified as essential for even a limited conception of democracy."

(Pippan's review of Khan's "A Theory of Universal Democracy": http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol15/No1/ehh112.pdf )

I guess there are several well educated Muslims who say Sharia is compatible with true democracy and Muslim scholars etc who say it's not.

In any case, even though I'm far from an expert on Islam, I'd say many Muslims believe you don't have to interpret Sharia laws in a strict fundamentalist manner in order to be a Muslim.

Cheers!

No, the fundamental heart of Islam may not be the subjugation of women and infidels. That's not what I said. Islam is a political philosophy that uses religion to unify its adherents , behind the belief in the superiority of the believer and the need to spread the doctrine throughout the world. If you remove the hate and the subjugation of women and infidels, along with sharia law, you get Judaism. Mohammed added nothing new to Judaism, but the hate, and the Arabs in all the starring roles. It's as if Mohammed was the first post modernist, deconstructing the metanarrative of Judaism to reflect the Arab persecution. There is nothing new under the sun.

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