Clashing worlds - Europe and Islam

From: San Fransisco Chronicle

By: Joel Brinkley
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Europe and the Islamic world are at war. It's a proxy conflict, fought in European capitals and on the Arab streets. But people are being killed.

Earlier this month, Islamic gunmen slaughtered six Christians as they left church in southern Egypt on Coptic Christmas Eve, setting off a week of retributive violence. This was just the latest incident in a cascading series of repressive and violent acts against Christians living in numerous Arab states, including the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Morocco, among other places.
Meantime, across Europe, government leaders are contemplating or enacting ever-more repressive rules on Muslim residents and citizens, who are carrying their lifestyles and grievances into unforgiving societies.

The most famous example: The Swiss electorate voted last month to ban the construction of new minarets. Then, early this month, a fiery Islamic cleric in England announced that he would organize a large protest march through the streets of a town near London that regularly honors passing hearses carrying British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "personally appalled," and then on Tuesday Britain banned the group.

In both worlds, the conflicts result from misunderstanding and outright intolerance, fanned oftentimes by extremists, like Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament. He travels the Western world preaching an anti-Islamic screed. Wilders has hit a chord, and the transcript of one speech he gave in New York last year has gone viral, landing in millions of e-mail in-boxes and watched on YouTube nearly 1 million times.

Wilders likes to note that "it is not a coincidence that every terrorist act is based on this fascist book the Quran, this wrong ideology, and unfortunately has been done by people from the Islamic world. I don't believe that cultures are equal. I believe that our culture is much better than the retarded Islamic culture."

In England, meanwhile, Anjem Choudary, leader of the banned Islamic group, posted his view on his organization's Web site recently, saying the march (now canceled) would be in honor of "the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were, and continue to be, horrifically murdered in the name of democracy and freedom: the innocent Muslim man, women and children."

An estimated 20 million Muslims now live in Europe. Many emigrated to take menial jobs that Europeans were no longer willing to do. The problem for Europeans is that these immigrants tend not to assimilate. They live in their own communities where some of their leaders enforce elements of Shariah law.

In some major cities, including Amsterdam and Marseille, France, they now comprise 25 percent of the population, and the anti-Islamists decry an alarmingly high birthrate among the Muslim residents, though the statistics are questionable at best. But all of that is engendering panicked talk about the possible death of European civilization.

So Switzerland banned minarets, France forbade women to wear head scarves and, across Europe, newspapers are constantly reporting controversies and court cases over honor killings, forced marriages, female circumcision and terrorist threats. Europeans, put simply, are afraid - for themselves and for the future.

No one can say with any certainty what drives the rash of assaults and murders of Arab Christians in Islamic states. But for many Muslims, Christianity is a Western religion, though it was born in the Middle East. I am guessing that some Arabs see their Christian neighbors as proxies for their grievances with the West - including the way Muslims are treated in Europe and the United States.

Thousands of Christian families have lived in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, since the faith was born. In the mid-20th century, 80 percent of the town's population was Christian. But in recent years, murders, firebombings and constant, brutal intimidation has driven away most of the Christians. Now they represent just 20 percent of the population.

Mosul, Iraq, has among the oldest Christian populations in the world. The Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Thomas, built in 770, was damaged in a bombing last month. That was the sixth attack on Christians there in less than a month, the New York Times reported.
"Christian leaders inside and outside the country reported that members of their communities" in Iraq "received threatening letters demanding that Christians leave or be killed," the State Department said in its 2009 report on religious freedom.

On both continents, anger is rising; the conflicts are growing more frequent and violent. Thanks to extremists on both sides, I don't see a good end.
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/16/INJN1BH44G.DTL#ixzz0cyIXmzp5

Blogger Comment:

These are the Muslims groups now in our world:

1- The poor and oppressed Muslim masses in Europe and more so in their own countries. The west and no doubt USA are standing with the tyrants. Their politicians do not even care about their own people. They are fine, rich, smooth and corrupt except for some stand up guys.

2- The Araby tyrants who gave up their religion of Islam. They know that I am Al Mahdi and they elected to stand against me.

3- The Muslims scholars who follow the tyrants and forget about their responsibility to the Mahdi and the poor and oppressed Muslims.

4- The Soso, Lolo and Toto Muslims the nice and kind Muslims who try to stand with the west and lick their feet so they can be left alone or for personal gain.

5- The crazy Muslims who display their anger against Christians in our land. Prophet Muhammad recommended best treatment to them. These people are in our protection and actually have to have presentation in the government by a percent equal to their percent in the population.

6- The Al Qaeda like who is being agitated by the west and more of them join the fight. I contacted their websites to join me in more of smart political struggle and they refused though my door is still open. I do not work to the USA and the CIA I love the American people and in large part I did not find an American politician that can be brave to sit with me and smart Muslims to change the world of Muslims.

7- The many more waking up Muslims now who want to stand and change their destiny. I invite them to talk to me and have new front contact me in magedtaman@yahoo.com . Do not be afraid of the west, tyrants or extremists. God promised me victory and I will win. A lot of good Christians and Jews want new change in the world. Obama proved to us he is not that what he was let us to think he is. He is a regular politicians who stand more with the strongest. Compare that with our first Muslim Chalifa Abu Baker who would stand with the weak against the strong and would not care of any percussion. Obama is same like Bush they bailed out the corrupt Bankers and wall street care much less about the Americans and the veterans, they need them mainly when they are killing for them. We need a strong stand up guys now that can stand with the weak in America. I have Taman Health Plan much better than Obama health plan and will save billions of dollars to America. Let us start the peaceful revolution and change the world.
Forget about Muslim, Chrisitan and Jew and remember the two groups the oppressor and tyrants against the oppressed and real freedom seeking citizens.