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This week’s [UK] Spectator features a trifecta of articles arising from the rioting in France. The cover article by Rod Liddle, entitled "The Crescent of Fear", seems the most sanguine of the three; but even here there is cause for concern. Mr Liddle says that official multicultural policies have brought about a terrible situation in France, but implies that the rest of Europe, and Britain in particular, have little to worry about. He admits that the high concentration of Muslim populations in northwestern Europe is troubling. But, then again, maybe not. France, you see, practices an especially dogmatic form of multiculturalism.
The French, however, remain different. Vive la différence and so on. Of all the countries in Western Europe, they have pursued the most extreme form of that discredited ideology, multiculturalism, and now they are witnessing the result.
Mark Steyn’s "It’s the demography, stupid" is rather more ominous.
Now go back to that bland statistic you hear a lot these days: ‘about 10 per cent of France’s population is Muslim’. Give or take a million here, a million there, that’s broadly correct, as far as it goes. But the population spread isn’t even. And when it comes to those living in France aged 20 and under, about 30 per cent are said to be Muslim and in the major urban centres about 45 per cent. If it came down to street-by-street fighting, as Michel Gurfinkiel, the editor of Valeurs Actuelles, points out, ‘the combatant ratio in any ethnic war may thus be one to one’ — already, right now, in 2005.
For decades to come, the Muslim birth rate will far outstrip the white European birth rate, so it’s only going to get more difficult for the latter.
I’ve saved the most disturbing essay for last. "Will London burn too?" by Patrick Sookhdeo, is framed around four concepts in Islamic thought.
Hijra is the process of migrating and establishing a Muslim community in a non-Muslim context. As we now see in Clichy-sous-Bois and similar suburbs of Paris, this takes the form of a ghetto. When Muslims form a majority in an area, they call for institution of a millet–a state within a state where they can organise their life in accordance with Shariah law.
The concept of "sacred space" insists that any territory once held by Islam belongs to Islam forever. Any such space lost must be regained by whatever means necessary. The final principle is
the classic Islamic division of the world into Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam), where Muslims rule, and Dar al-Harb (the house of war). The sinister name for non-Muslim territory indicates that Muslims have an obligation to wage war until it becomes Dar al-Islam.
As elsewhere in Europe, the Muslim birth rate far exceeds that of native Britons. That combined with hijra, which leads Muslims to concentrate in communities, means that several major British cities will soon have Muslim majorities.
Islamic enclaves would be defined by Islamic values, education, politics, religious practice and above all law. They would be ‘cleansed’ of any non-Muslim presence. This cleansing is already beginning by means of threats and violence to isolated churches in Muslim majority areas. Even Islamic law is already semi-established, in that a multitude of Shariah councils and Shariah courts exist which deal with family issues, effectively creating an unofficial parallel legal system within the UK.Unless the multiculturalist policy — which has been indirectly facilitating the separatist agenda of radical Islamists — is reversed immediately, we shall wake up and find we have sleepwalked into a situation of apartheid and segregation. If we sleep long enough, we may even wake up to find that, like Paris, London is burning. Or that we are living in an Islamic state.
In this view, Islam is a religion that seeks power–both religious and secular–and seeks to expand the area under its control. It could be argued that events in France in the past two weeks support this.
