Continued From Page 1 of Islam in Europe

The Islamic War In Europe

The debate over how to integrate Muslims into modern European life, and how much Islam Europe can incorporate into European society without betraying its values, have been tainted by the link to terror that radical Islam have carried out in Europe.. Governments have reacted by tightening controls on Muslim Imams, many of whom do not speak the language of their adopted country. Britain has introduced civics tests for imams. French authorities are planning to set up a school that would also send preachers in training to secular universities. And in Denmark, the right-wing People's Party, a government coalition member, urges a ban on all foreign imams.

The governments have attempted to assimilate Islam as a religious institution into European culture amidst terrorism attacks, A growing radical presence within once Christian dominated communities, and acts of violence protest against the West's lack of understanding of Islam and unfavorable policies toward Muslim nations.  This includes the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the West's support of Israel.

In the midst of this quagmire radical Islam is oiling the axels that will drive the wheels to the Islamic War in Europe.  As George Bush said when the war on terrorism began after 911. 

Many battles will be fought outside the eyes of the public. Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.  We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.  And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

This same statement made to America and to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001 seems like the same play book that Radical Islam is using against us.  Radical Islam usually does not respond with immediate retaliation but rather plans out dramatic attacks that take years to deploy.  The radicals dictate a lengthy campaign by their methods of distribution.  As far as dramatic strikes visible on TV, there are no bigger than the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon or the London Bus attacks or even the Train attacks in Spain.  Starving the terrorist of funding has been converted to Oil rich Muslim nations draining every dime possible out of European and other non Oil producing and non Muslim countries every time we fill up our tank. They sneeze in the Middle East and our stock markets in the West plummet.  I think they know this and have been using it to their advantage over the West. Muslim oil producing nations have become much wealthier since 911 while Europe and America is going broke.  It appears that the world economies are taking huge hits as this decade has included conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as heightened  possibilities of war by Israel and/or the United States against Iran over the Muslim country's nuclear enrichment program.  Europe and West have gotten no rest since 911.  The terrorist seem to be resting in the same places they always have been since the start.  Inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. As far as every nation in every region has to make a decision.  The Muslim world had made their decision decades ago.  They are against the West.

The Major Battles in the Islamic War in Europe.

The first battle front for radical Islam is inside the hearts and minds of the Muslim youth that live in European countries.   Inside the mosques within Europe the violent messages spread by a number of radical Muslim preachers is igniting a unity against Western culture and values.. "I believe the whole of Britain has become Dar ul Harb [land of war]," Syrian-born cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed told followers in a web cast on "PalTalk" in 2005. "The jihad is halal [acceptable] for the Muslims wherever they are." Scotland Yard  investigated Mr. Bakri Mohammed after reporters heard him proclaiming that "death will be inevitable ... if people reject the call of mighty Allah" at a secret rally in London in January of 2005.  Four bombers killed themselves and 52 others in attacks on the London public transit system on July 7, 2005 , followed by an almost identical but failed attack two weeks later.  One of the most striking points of the wave of terrorist bombings in London is that the attackers themselves had been ordinary young men, without police records to associate them in any way with radical Islam.  They were radicalized and indoctrinated easily and so secretly that even their own families apparently did not realize the level of involvement in the movement.  One issue that might create this type of atmosphere where first and second generation Muslims become radicalized in Britain for example is that
among Muslims aged 16 to 24, almost 28 percent were unemployed, compared with about 12 percent of Britons overall in that age group. Many  young Muslims argue that isolation created by suspicion and prejudice as well as overall disenchantment among young Muslims provides a fertile environment for extremist groups recruiting new members. In one of Europe's largest Muslim communities, young men face a lack of jobs, poor educational achievement and discrimination in a highly class-oriented culture It appears that Radical Islam is winning this battle at least for this generation.

The battle in England has been the most volatile at this point within European countries. Britain has become an incubator for violent Islamic extremism, fueled by disenchantment at home and growing rage about events abroad, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

France in control of radical Islam?  The first European country to confront its Islamic terrorists was France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, which faced a series of bomb attacks in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of France’s five million Muslims are Arabs from its former colonies in North Africa, particularly Algeria.  Close to half of them have obtained French citizenship. The attacks on Paris were seen as revenge both for the past colonization of Algeria and for supporting the present military regime.  The French Government clamped down on radical Islam in a way that no other country has. No mosque or Islamic prayer hall is off limits to police. Imams preaching hate are regularly deported. France stopped giving asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in their home country, and was disgusted when many of them were given refuge in Britain. As a result of France’s rigid anti- terror laws, the country was thought to be comparatively free of terrorist operative networks.  The main point to realize in the French model of anti-terrorism is that they were in early.  They received less backlash in creating their policies in how they would deal with threats that did not appear in the mainstream of countries such as England and Germany until later in the 1990's.  France's ban on headscarves, Muslim veils and other religious symbols in state schools in 2004 sparked a heated debate over freedom and equality within the secular republic. The French government adheres to the theory that all French citizens are equal before the republic, and religion or ethnic background are matters for the private sphere.  France is considered a liberal country.  The interesting thing about France's position on assimilation into their country is that you have to leave your conservative Islam back in the country from which one comes from.  It is interesting to see how the French have been able to use conservative Islamic values such as inequality among men and women against radical Islam. France has had problems inside their low income areas. The tide is turning on the streets of Paris and other French suburbs as young Muslims are using extreme violence to put pressure on the French government. We all remember the unrest that displayed young Muslim youths burning cars beginning in 2005  and continuing to the present in Paris suburbs.  The situation resulted,  in the first six months of 2006, of 50,000 acts of urban violence by Muslims. On average 15 police officers, fire fighters or other public officials were attacked per day and 100 cars were set alight per night. The scariest part about the riots in France is that they reappear with regularity.  The violence never stops but the French treat the events as normal.  It is far from normal.  These are street thugs that have beaten and brutalized French citizens. In 2005,  a group of African Muslim immigrant attackers doused a woman, in her 50s and on crutches, with an flammable liquid and set her afire as she tried to get off a bus in a Paris suburb. The bus had been forced to stop because of burning objects in its path. She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns.  The Muslim youths in individual neighborhoods communicated by cell phone text messages or e-mails — arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations. The violence has exposed deep discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.  France is beginning to let it once stringent position on radical Islam  relax and are showing weakness in dealing with the unrest.  If they allow this group of street thugs to overtake them more serious attacks are just around the corner.  France is at risk if it does not return to zero tolerance.   It is time for Muslim immigrants to begin to understand what is meant by the word "guest".  It does not mean to attempt to take over a country and convert it to Islam under Sharia law that is actually called conquest..

Germany is safe for the moment.  While Germany is by no means immune to home-grown terrorism, it is still a fact that the ideologies that spawn terrorism or radicalism elsewhere in Europe have not found fertile ground in the country.  Germany has Europe’s second-largest Muslim population, but 75% are from Turkey, a more secular and Westernized country.  Germany has focused not on these Turkish guests but rather a small Arab community that arrived after the second world war.  Radical Islamists in the Middle East were big supporters of the Nazi regime mainly due to the growing Jewish presence in the former Palestine.  They were attracted by Hitler’s Anti-Semitism.  After the end of Word War II, many sought refuge in Germany and are now in their second and third generations. German intelligence agencies have found little evidence of the association of Islamists with  terrorism crimes, but the local and federal authorities are highly distrustful of Islamism. The Verfassungsschutz (German FBI) keeps a close eye on all Islamist groups, including non-violent ones whom it accuses of fostering radicalization and create a future potential threat. Ever since the discovery of the Hamburg-based terrorist cell at the heart of the September 11 attacks, there has been a growing fear about a perceived Islamist wave sweeping across Germany.  It appears that Germany may become a target in the future after al Qaeda threats against the country as result of Germany's role in the international political arena including sending troops to Afghanistan

Denmark and their cartoon controversy.  Denmark is viewed with hatred throughout the Muslim world ever since the publication of a cartoon series in 2005 that satirized Isam's prophet Muhammad. Under its influence, the government, an unwavering supporter of the US-led "war on terror", has introduced some of Europe's most restrictive immigration laws, which many feel are specifically aimed at curbing new arrivals from Muslim countries.

The cartoons sparked angry and in some cases deadly protests across the Muslim world in early 2006, with demonstrators torching Danish embassies and flags and boycotting Danish companies. Another wave of protests came early this year after the most controversial of the drawings, depicting the prophet's head with a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse, was widely republished. 

On Sept. 5,  2006  the day Danish police arrested nine Muslim suspects in connection with a foiled terrorist plot, a slender book warning of conquest by Islamic fundamentalists in Europe appeared in bookstores in Copenhagen.  As countries across Europe grapple with how to assimilate their growing Muslim populations in the post-9/11 world, Denmark has become an unlikely flashpoint in the escalating culture wars between Islam and the West as a result of the cartoon publication as well as the refusal to provide an apology as support for free speech.  It also has tested the patience of Denmark's 200,000 Muslims. Many of them say the cartoons reflect an intensifying anti-immigrant climate that is stigmatizing minorities and radicalizing young Muslims. Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban, a leader among Denmark's Muslims, bristles at what he calls the "Islam phobia" gripping the country. He asserted that the cartoons had been calculated to incite Muslims because it was well known that in Islam depictions of the prophet were considered blasphemy.

The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult Muslims," said Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, which has declined to apologize for the drawings.  Mr. Rose, once a journalist in Iran, said he decided to commission the cartoons for Jyllands-Posten when he heard that Danish cartoonists were too afraid of the wrath of Muslim fundamentalists to illustrate a new children's biography of Muhammad.  Rose was bothered at the self-censorship he said had overtaken Europe since the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered last year by a Muslim radical for criticizing Islam's treatment of women, Mr. Rose said he decided to test Denmark's free speech norms.

Soren Krarup, a retired priest and leading voice in the party, said the Muslim response to the cartoons showed that Islam was not compatible with Danish customs. He said Jesus had been satirized in Danish literature and popular culture for centuries - including a recent much-publicized Danish painting of Jesus with an erection - so why not Muhammad? He also argues that Muslims must learn to integrate. "Muslims who come here reject our culture," he said. "Muslim immigration is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past 1,400 years."

Europe has been getting a daily dose of radical Islam. Regardless of the face it portrays to the world community Islam is clashing with Western Europe countries with varying degrees of psychological and violent warfare.