Europe and Islam.

Some truths and some silliness about Europe and Islam:

As they publicly advocate integration, many Europeans and Muslims in Europe remain convinced that their respective values are not only incompatible with each other but also that the other’s values directly challenge their own identity. These perceptions thus perpetuate each group’s separate existence within Europe. Although many European Muslims are open to a milder form of integration, overwhelming majorities of Muslims in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany resist assimilation, preferring to be a part of Europe while maintaining their own Islamic identity. . . .

* * * *

The rapidly growing Muslim populations seem to be overwhelming the ability of European governments to draw the lines of tolerance rationally, consistently, and convincingly. Europeans see Muslims as a direct challenge to the collective identity, traditional values, and public policies of their societies . . . . ^[1]

Other than that, it's just great that Muslims have come to live in Europe.

So far so good.

Each side will have to change and move toward the other. [Oh. Why would that be, exactly?] Europe’s Muslims will need to accept the norms, customs, and cultures of the states in which they live and reject efforts to establish a parallel society [ and forswear Islam], while the general European population will need to broaden its horizons to embrace and accommodate diversity, accepting integration and not just complete assimilation as a valid relationship to society. ^[2]

Like hell Europe needs to "broaden its horizons"! Europeans need to rediscover a little of that grit that the entire continent exhibited in the last century. Whatever can be said about the various causes that Europeans served then it nonetheless cannot be said that Europeans were a bunch of pussies.

The centuries-old question of whether Europe and Islam can coexist will have to be confronted. [This just in. They can't.] In the estimates of some, Europe is entering a period of demographic, economic, psychological, and political decline, which will make it all the more difficult to address the additional challenges of integration, tolerance, and identity posed by Europe’s Muslim population. For their part, Muslims in Europe, who must confront poverty, bigotry, de facto segregation, and limited social mobility, are likely to find it difficult to embrace Europe’s liberal democratic views on gender equality; sexual liberalization; and the principles of compromise, egalitarianism, and identification with the state.^[3]

Those jokers would "find it difficult to embrace Europe’s liberal democratic views" even if they were offered cabinet posts when the get off the plane from Archaicistan.

Mr. Savage describes Europe in an academic way. There's been this mass Muslim migration. Conflicts arise. Everyone will have to get along.

Barf. The proposition that integration or coexistence is a hope only of Europeans who have slipped a cog seems not to have occurred to him.

I once wrote an undergraduate paper on the subversive activities of Chinese in Indonesia c. 1963. I was young then but wish I had tried to take what I'd found out and extrapolate from those events to hazard a prediction of the future. Which involved a blood crackdown by the Indonesians, you'll recall. (Check it out on "Ask Jeeves" if you don't believe me.)

Point being that you can accumulate all the facts that you want sometimes but you've still got to make a hard call that rises above "Can't we all just get along?" Especially if you're a leader with responsibilities to your own kind.

We mean no insult to Mr. Savage by this but, folks, it's imperative we take what we know and make some plans instead of just waiting for "events to transpire." Time is flying by and the "tipping point" to which he refers is fast approaching.

What to do? What to do?

Hark! Did some long-dead infidel dog offer us some advice?

Under your pardon. You must note beside,
That we have tried the utmost of our friends,
Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.^[4]

Notes
^[1] "Europe and Islam: Crescent Waxing, Cultures Clashing." By Timothy M. Savage, Washington Quarterly, Summer 2004, p. 43 (emphasis added).
^[2] Id. p. 44 (emphasis added).
^[3] Id. p. 45.
^[4] Brutus in "Act 4, Scene 3. The Life and Death of Julies Caesar." By Edward de Vere, a/k/a William Shakespeare.