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| Peace, love and submission |
I previously wrote that Western Europe would not go Muslim.
The argument was that the vast majority of Western Europeans, even among those on the left, do not want to live under sharia or quasi-sharia law.
So, since the Islamic tide was rising and will continue to rise, the only question (so I wrote previously) was when that tide would be resisted. Things have gone far enough in most Western European countries that opposing Islam now would probably involve low-level civil war. However, opposing it in ten or twenty years will involve full-blown civil war - a conflict that would make the breakup of Yugoslavia look like a picnic.
The choice, I wrote then, was not whether it would be resisted, but when.
I was wrong.
France will go Muslim, probably in a manner not unlike that described in Michel Houellebecq's recent novel Soumission.
And no doubt, a number of other Western European countries - Sweden certainly - will also fall.
Here is why I was wrong: though the long-term choice is between accepting Islam or resisting it, the short term choices are not as obvious or stark. Or at least they seem not to be.
And human beings are very good at avoiding difficult choices until it's too late to make any choice.
Liberties are being lost, but they're being lost gradually. Crime is rising, but it's rising gradually. Secularism or humanism (in the good sense of those terms) is losing force at a steady rate, but it's nothing dramatic. Our at least it doesn't seem so.
At each point, and for most people, doing nothing doesn't and won't seem so bad. Things will go on as before, at least for the time being. By the time a leftist-Muslim coalition government is poised to take control, even then, that won't seem like such a dramatic change - since people will have gradually become accustomed to it.
What do you prefer (the question will appear to be) a bloody civil war or just a bit more Islam?
Or (some might even feel), wasn't it all inevitable anyway?
The engine for this is of course demographics. France is said to have a population of 5 million Muslims, or 7.5% out of a population of 60 million. But many believe the true number is actually much higher - one estimate puts it at 15-20 million. While that claim might be on the high side, the fact is that no one really knows the true figure. It's not as if there are statisticians in the growing "no-go" zones of Paris and other cities, knocking on doors and counting heads.
The only thing that is certain is that the number is rising quickly, even without taking immigration or the recent "migrant" phenomenon into account.
For the recent "remembrance" observances of the November Paris attacks, people made little paper "peace lanterns" and sent them floating down the Seine. The "enemy," such as there was one, was not Islam or Islamism or Islamic terror or even terrorism, but the even more general (and meaningless) "hate" or "violence" - labels that could be (and are) conveniently applied to those who oppose Islamic terror.
On the stage of the Bataclan where Muslim soldiers tortured and murdered 89 people, The English singer, Sting proclaimed that “Inshallah (God willing),” was “a magnificent word.” The audience applauded, standing literally on the spot where that word was used to justify the slaughter of innocents.
The musicians who had played on that night (they escaped but one of their managers was killed) were treated as personae non grata because one of them had said some things which just might be interpreted as contrary to the accommodationist mood.
The spectacle was grotesque. But it summed up the contemporary situation in France quite well.
France will become an Islamic state, in effect if not in name.
Obviously, I hope I'm wrong.
Tell me why I am wrong.
Or tell me what can be done to make it so.
