News Perspectives --be heard-- or click the graphic for other topics. -Rules-F.A.Q.- News Policy The Islamization of Europe - UnitedStates.com FOREIGN* & DEFENSE - NEWS - Forums
Forums Home We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... -Charter
Forums > NEWS > UnitedStates.com FOREIGN* & DEFENSE > The Islamization of Europe

 Moderated by: VT-R, TD, Paula Ticks, mb, Lynne, kC, Jeƒƒro  
AuthorPost
Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
"Do we want the River of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?" France's prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said in September, alluding to the prospect of Turkey joining the European Union. Raffarin's question is a little late. The river of Islam is already gushing through Europe -- and secular France, home to over 5 million Muslims, released the floodgates.

The question now is: When will the river of Islam swamp secular Europe? Historian Bernard Lewis predicts that Muslims will dominate Europe before the end of this century, turning Europe into an appendage of North Africa and the Middle East.

"Europe will be a part of the Arab West," he said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt during the summer. "Europeans marry late and have few or no children. But there's strong immigration: Turks in Germany, Arabs in France and Pakistanis in England. At the latest, following current trends, Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population at the end of the 21st century."

As Raffarin should know, France steered the river of Islam into Europe's riverbed of secularism, arrogantly assuming it would come out secular on the other side. It hasn't. France is not changing Islam; Islam is changing France. France's desperate project to spread a "French Islam" is an admission of this crisis, not a solution to it.

France's ban on Islamic headscarves in public schools is a clumsy and last-ditch attempt to control an ascendant religion that threatens French secularism. So far it has produced a dramatic backfire in the kidnapping of French journalists Christian Chesnot and George Malbrunot by Muslim terrorists who demand that the ban be rescinded. The terrorists succeeded in driving Jacques Chirac into the arms of Hezbollah, Hamas, Yasser Arafat, and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as he asked them for help in rescuing the journalists. This was itself a measure of Islam's hold on France and a sign that the terrorists had already won.

Muslims aren't fooled by "French Islam." They know that Frenchifying Islam means removing Islam from Islam, and they are resisting it. Some have taken to the streets to protest the ban on headscarves; others are simply turning to global Islam for money to finance private schools.

France established the "French Council for the Muslim Religion" in 2003. Its stated purpose was to bring Islam into line with "French values." In other words, secularize it. Former Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said no Imams who held views "contrary to the values of the Republic" could serve on the council. Consequently, most Muslims regard the council as a stooge-ridden joke. Very few of them vote in the council's elections, and those who do tend to favor the extremists, which has led Time to conclude the "council could present as many problems as it solves."

That is, France formed the council to take Islam out of the "cellars and garages," and it has. Now radical Islam can operate out of the French government. After the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF), which is associated with terrorist groups, picked up a sizable number of seats on the council in 2003, French officials were left sputtering that they didn't like the election results. Sarkozy "reaped jeers and whistles," according to Time, when he "used a speech before more than 10,000 Muslims at an UOIF convention… to vow that women must remove their veils for the photographs on their French identity cards." The UOIF, said Malek Chebel, a Muslim anthropologist, to Time, "has endless money, great numbers of the faithful on their side, and they have time… The fundamentalists are working toward a shock, one that is dangerous for the equilibrium of the state."

French rationalism is justly famous for producing irrational outcomes. The thinkers of the French Revolution thought that they could rearrange class according to "reason." They only caused bloodshed. Modern France carries the same attitude to Islam, imagining Parisian muftis issuing Voltairean fatwas and Muslims replacing their headscarves with berets, and when they don't, tolerance gives way to force. Bringing millions of Muslims into the country (against conservative criticism deemed "intolerant"), then criminalizing Islamic headscarves fits the pattern of French history since its Revolution: "Reason" produces chaos, the chaos then justifies the suspension of reason in favor of Napoleonic force.


RAFFARIN CAN PLAY DUMB AND ACT like secular France didn't flood Europe with Islam. But historians will record that it was French secularism that created the conditions for secular Europe's demise by insisting that Europe embrace millions of Muslims who had no intention of embracing secularism. As mosques spread and Gothic cathedrals emptied, French secularists fined authors who warned of the coming crisis and consigned to cultural oblivion the traditional protector of Europe -- the Catholic Church.

The religion that inspired Charles Martel to protect France against the Islamic invasion of the eighth century at the Battle of Tours was denied by Jacques Chirac even one historical mention in the founding documents of the European Union. When Pope John Paul II mildly suggested to him and other European leaders that the European Union constitution should acknowledge Europe's Christian roots if only as a matter of history, Chirac haughtily responded, "There has never been that kind of reference in the treaties. As the representative of a secular state, I am not in favor of religious references." The final text contains only the most oblique reference to religion. It was slipped into a phrase about Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist heritage."

Europe's secular decadence is so advanced and comic that its only real objection to Turkey entering the European Union is that it might raise the continent's moral standards. The fear among European diplomats is not that an Islamic country of 70 million people might hasten the Islamization of Europe but that Turkey might criminalize adultery. No joke. "Turkey Moves Closer to EU After Retreat on Adultery Law" and "A Tough Adultery Law Could Block Turkey's Entry to EU" were a few of the non-satirical September headlines in European newspapers. The "Copenhagen criteria" is the EU's non-satirical measure for determining whether Turkey possesses the cultural qualifications to enter Europe.

Vatican Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has warned that Turkey's entrance into the EU could supply one of the final nails in Christian Europe's coffin. Turkey, he said, "has always represented another continent in the course of its history, in permanent contrast with Europe." But Chris Patten, the European Union's external affairs commissioner, says that Christian Europe is already dead. So how can Europe object to Turkey joining it? "I certainly don't think we can say no to Turkey on the grounds that we are a Christian club," he has said.

Frits Bolkestein, a Dutch European Union official, said in September that Turkey's joining the EU would mean a Europe "Islamized" and likely to "implode." Bolkestein noted that in 1683 at the battle of Vienna Europeans defeated the Ottoman Turks. If Bernard Lewis is right about Islamic demography, he said, lifting the Islamic siege of Vienna will "have been in vain." To which the European left responded: So what? One European editorial savaging Bolkestein for this speech was titled, "Open the Gates of Vienna."

Ratzinger calls this "self-hatred." It is certainly self-delusion. The European secularists like Chirac who think that they can ride the tiger of Islam will be eaten by it.

NiteHawk
Member


Joined: Fri Dec 31st, 2004
Location: Laying Back, Life's A Breeze, Liechtenstein
Posts: 15087
Status:  Offline
Someone once said something like "As you sow, so shall ye reap". They're getting exactly what they deserve.

On the brighter side, when France is finally overtaken and controlled by the Muslims, at least they'll cease to be the surrender monkeys that they have always been. Muslims have alot more in the "ballbag" category than any Frenchman has ever even thought of having.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Actually, French research has shown that while some French Muslims are accepting radical Islam as their way of life, a much larger part of the young Muslim population throughout Europe is accepting secular lifestyles rapidly. Mosque-attendance is dropping, birth rates are dropping, mixed marriages are increasing. The birth rate in Turkey (1.98 children/woman) is not much different compared to other European countries like Iceland (1.93 children/woman) or Ireland (1.87 children/woman). In fact, Turkey has a lower birth rate than the US (2.07 children/woman). I think we are overexaggerating a bit.

Source: CIA Factbook

Last edited on Sun Jan 30th, 2005 07:31 pm by Dutch

NiteHawk
Member


Joined: Fri Dec 31st, 2004
Location: Laying Back, Life's A Breeze, Liechtenstein
Posts: 15087
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: Actually, French research has shown that while some French Muslims are accepting radical Islam as their way of life, a much larger part of the young Muslim population throughout Europe is accepting secular lifestyles rapidly. Mosque-attendance is dropping, birth rates are dropping, mixed marriages are increasing. The birth rate in Turkey (1.98 children/woman) is not much different compared to other European countries like Iceland (1.93 children/woman) or Ireland (1.87 children/woman). In fact, Turkey has a lower birth rate than the US (2.07 children/woman). I think we are overexaggerating a bit.

Source: CIA Factbook

They'll eventually learn of the problem they have the hard way. The French always learn the hard way.

It's the "enemy within" stupid. Great campaign slogan!

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
NiteHawk wrote: Dutch wrote: Actually, French research has shown that while some French Muslims are accepting radical Islam as their way of life, a much larger part of the young Muslim population throughout Europe is accepting secular lifestyles rapidly. Mosque-attendance is dropping, birth rates are dropping, mixed marriages are increasing. The birth rate in Turkey (1.98 children/woman) is not much different compared to other European countries like Iceland (1.93 children/woman) or Ireland (1.87 children/woman). In fact, Turkey has a lower birth rate than the US (2.07 children/woman). I think we are overexaggerating a bit.

Source: CIA Factbook

They'll eventually learn of the problem they have the hard way. The French always learn the hard way.

It's the "enemy within" stupid. Great campaign slogan!

If you think that an entire group of people called Muslims - which only major thing they share is their faith (or heritage) - is an "enemy within" ... I don't know whom I'm should be scared of more: those few fundamental Muslims or you.

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
These EU humanist politicer are whores!!Because them,Zeus' little cow gonna be raped by desert camel.Pope shall excommunie all these pagan lover!!KICK THEM OFF THE SOCIETY!!If they dare to keep supporting the turks into eu. :( THOSE TURKS CAN'T TAKE OUR LAND WITH HUNDREDS THOUSAND OTTEMAN BARBARIOUS!!WHY LET THEIR DIRTY PAGAN FOOT STEP ON CHRISTIAN'S LAND BY MIGRATE?!Euro was portected by crusader's blood,now we need to protect them by vote!!!!!!!!

King Clinty
Member
 

Joined: Fri Dec 10th, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 5188
Status:  Offline
:shock::shock::shock:

Oneironaut
Member


Joined: Mon Jul 26th, 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 2311
Status:  Offline
King Clinty wrote:
:shock::shock::shock:

seconded

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
Europa was a pretty woman which enticed Zeus,and Hela evny she,Zeus use magic to make her become little cow,and escape Hela's suppress,and finally,she become the land of europe. <- Don't u read Homer's greece mytic story?

Irukandji
Member


Joined: Fri Jan 14th, 2005
Location: You Know It Makes Sense..., Australia
Posts: 1654
Status:  Offline
betchamad wrote: These EU humanist politicer are w****s!!Because them,Zeus' little cow gonna be raped by desert camel.Pope shall excommunie all these pagan lover!!KICK THEM OFF THE SOCIETY!!If they dare to keep supporting the turks into eu. :( THOSE TURKS CAN'T TAKE OUR LAND WITH HUNDREDS THOUSAND OTTEMAN BARBARIOUS!!WHY LET THEIR DIRTY PAGAN FOOT STEP ON CHRISTIAN'S LAND BY MIGRATE?!Euro was portected by crusader's blood,now we need to protect them by vote!!!!!!!!
 Sail on silvergirl. Sail on by.

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline


We French christians warn you : --islamic migrater means betray(to church),hopeless(to Christ),hatre (to christians)..

 

WE WILL KICK YOU AMERICAN'S ASS IN UN,BECAUSE OUR MUSLIM COMPATROIT WOULDS US!!!!


Last edited on Mon Jan 31st, 2005 10:49 am by betchamad

Zico
Member


Joined: Wed Nov 17th, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 178
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: NiteHawk wrote: Dutch wrote: Actually, French research has shown that while some French Muslims are accepting radical Islam as their way of life, a much larger part of the young Muslim population throughout Europe is accepting secular lifestyles rapidly. Mosque-attendance is dropping, birth rates are dropping, mixed marriages are increasing. The birth rate in Turkey (1.98 children/woman) is not much different compared to other European countries like Iceland (1.93 children/woman) or Ireland (1.87 children/woman). In fact, Turkey has a lower birth rate than the US (2.07 children/woman). I think we are overexaggerating a bit.

Source: CIA Factbook

They'll eventually learn of the problem they have the hard way. The French always learn the hard way.

It's the "enemy within" stupid. Great campaign slogan!

If you think that an entire group of people called Muslims - which only major thing they share is their faith (or heritage) - is an "enemy within" ... I don't know whom I'm should be scared of more: those few fundamental Muslims or you.

 

Me too.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Stop the Islamization of Europe

o-b-s
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Stop the Islamization of Europe
Why don't you do something about it instead of posting on a messagboard then, go on go and burn down your nearest mosque if you feel sorry strongly  

 

o-b-s
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Stop the Islamization of Europe
Why don't you do something about it instead of posting on a messagboard then, go on go and burn down your nearest mosque if you feel sorry strongly  

 

Kanadees
Member


Joined: Wed Jan 5th, 2005
Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada
Posts: 25
Status:  Offline
There goes the neighbourhood!

LuLu8769
Member
 

Joined: Sat Oct 23rd, 2004
Location: Puerto Rico USA
Posts: 6881
Status:  Offline
NiteHawk wrote: Someone once said something like "As you sow, so shall ye reap". They're getting exactly what they deserve.

On the brighter side, when France is finally overtaken and controlled by the Muslims, at least they'll cease to be the surrender monkeys that they have always been. Muslims have alot more in the "ballbag" category than any Frenchman has ever even thought of having.
look at it this way, eventually they will be needing the United States to get them out of the pickle they are working themselves in and as usual, the US will step in and save their sorry butts again.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
LuLu8769 wrote: NiteHawk wrote: Someone once said something like "As you sow, so shall ye reap". They're getting exactly what they deserve.

On the brighter side, when France is finally overtaken and controlled by the Muslims, at least they'll cease to be the surrender monkeys that they have always been. Muslims have alot more in the "ballbag" category than any Frenchman has ever even thought of having.
look at it this way, eventually they will be needing the United States to get them out of the pickle they are working themselves in and as usual, the US will step in and save their sorry butts again.

Do you think that will really be the case, or is this - with all respect - an attempt to gave yourself an ego-boost for being a citizen of the United States?

ANI
Member


Joined: Mon Jul 26th, 2004
Location: Just Right Of You., California USA
Posts: 27173
Status:  Offline
I've seen several pieces refering to this subject, some even indicating that the primary population growth in some European countries today comes from immigration and much from muslim countries...I've seen several things which discussed the huge muslim popluation and adjusting culture in France, but not much about the other European nations..I'd be interested in more first hand information from our European members.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline

Where Have All the Children Gone?

By Pavel Kohout
 Published 
 01/27/2005

In the third century AD there was a prophet called Mani. He preached a doctrine of conflict between Good and Evil. He saw the material world as the devil's creation. Marriage and motherhood was a grave sin in his view, since by bearing children people multiply the works of Satan. The Manichean ideal was to move mankind to a superterrestrial realm of Good by way of gradual extinction.




In the course of history, Manichaeism was ruthlessly eradicated as an heretical, ungodly doctrine. When looking at demographic statistics, however, one might think that the populations in developed countries have converted en masse to Manichaeism and decided to become extinct. The birth rate in most western countries has fallen bellow replacement level.

 

In the so-called "New Europe", the situation is even gloomier. According to UN projections, Latvia will lose 44 percent of its population by 2050 as a result of demographic trends. In Estonia, the population is expected to shrink by 52 percent, in Bulgaria 36 percent, in Ukraine 35 percent, and in Russia 30 percent. In comparison with these figures, the projected population decline in Italy (22 percent), the Czech Republic (17 percent), Poland (15 percent) or Slovakia (8 percent) looks like a small decrease. France and Germany will lose relatively little population, and the population of the United Kingdom will even see a slight growth -- thanks to immigrants.

 

Why is the birth rate falling?

 

The question of why fertility has been falling so dramatically in continental Europe has been food for thought for both demographers and economists. The answer must be looked for in several important factors, which, to further complicate matters, do not simply add up in their impact. Nevertheless, it can be said with a fair amount of certainty that the existence of pay-as-you-go pension systems has had a very negative impact on birth rate. The National Report on Family published by the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in August 2004 says:

 

"In terms of intergenerational solidarity, the importance of the child as an investment for material support in old age has been limited by the social security and pension insurance system, which has eliminated people's immediate dependence on children. The importance of the child's role in relation to its parents has transferred to the emotional sphere, which reduced the direct material indispensability of children in a family, while also allowing for them being replaced with certain substitutes bringing emotional satisfaction."

 

To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age. In Czech the word "vejminek" (a place in a farmhouse reserved for the farmer's old parents) is actually derived from a verb meaning "to stipulate": in the deed of transfer, the old farmer stipulated the conditions on which the farm was to be transferred to his son. Instead of an "intergenerational" policy, there used to be direct dependence of parents on their children. This meant that people had immediate economic motivation to have a sufficiently numerous and well-bred offspring - whereas today's anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions of all retirees in an utterly depersonalized manner.

 

This system enables huge numbers of "free riders" to receive more than what would correspond to their overall contribution in their productive life. Those with incomes way above the average, on the contrary, are penalized, as the system gives them less money than they contributed to it. This is referred to as the "solidarity principle". In terms of birth rate, this arrangement is discouraging for both the low-income group and the high-income one. The latter feel that they are not going to need children in the old age, while the former believe that they can't afford to have them.

 

Today, children no longer represent investments; instead, they have become pets - objects of luxury consumption. However, the pet market segment is very competitive. It is characteristic that the birth rate decline in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, was accompanied by soaring numbers of dog-owners in cities. While in the past dog-owners were predominantly retirees, today there are many young couples that have consciously decided to have a dog instead of a baby. These are mainly young professionals who have come to a conclusion (whether right or wrong) that they lack either time or money to have a child. Thus, they invest their emotional surpluses into animals.

 

Taxes are pivotal

 

State pensions systems eliminated the natural economic incentive to have children. At the same time, the welfare state is an enormously costly luxury that has to be financed from taxes. High payroll-tax and social security contributions reduce the earning capacity of people in fertile age. Thus, they push down birth rates as well.

 

A reader of the Wall Street Journal wrote in a letter on the issue:

 

"I am the son of a Pittsburgh steelworks worker. I was born at the end of the Second World War. I have three sisters. Our mother never went to work. After the experience of the Great Depression, our parents were reluctant to borrow; yet they could afford to own a house, and our father used to buy a new car once every three or four years. My parents paid for my university education and bought me my first car when I was twenty. We were by all standards part of the middle class, and I was proud of my parents' achievement. (…) Today both my parents have to go to work in order to maintain a middle-class living standard, due to the increase in taxation that has occurred in the past half-century. (…) This has produced a generation of children carrying a key around their necks, city gangs, and aggressive brats brought up by after-school child-care centers."

 

The tax burden in the United Stated has indeed grown significantly over the past 50 years. The birth rate has been falling proportionately, although not to the critical level that is now current in Europe. The birth rate in the US is nearing the replacement level -- about two children per woman. Even so, comparing to Europe, the United States still appears to be a confirmed and stable superpower.

 

"Even if we include immigration, the population of the original EU-12 will fall by 7.5 million over the next 45 years, according to the UN calculations. Since the times of the 'Black Death' epidemic in the fourteenth century, Europe has never seen such an extensive population decline," writes Niall Ferguson, a British historian. He also predicts that in 2000-2050, the US population will grow by 44 percent. It seems that the European Union will have to forget for good about its ambitious dreams of becoming a "counterbalance" to America.

 

The demographic trends in Europe are indeed worrying. In Italy, for instance, the birth rate has fallen to an average level of 1.2 children per woman. Why? A journalist from the Daily Telegraph describes the life of young Italians in the following terms:

 

"It is virtually impossible to make a living. Just take Rome. Life with a minimum of human dignity (a small rented apartment, occasional dinner in a restaurant) requires a monthly pay of 3,000 euros before taxation, which accounts for some 1,800 euros after tax. If in the Anglo-Saxon world a majority of adults is expected to live an independent life on their own salaries, in Italy this is often not the case. An incredible 70 percent of unmarried Italians aged between 25 and 29 live with their parents, where they benefit from subsidized housing and where their poor incomes amount to a handsome pocket money."

 

When a modern young European has to choose between setting up a family of his own and a comfortable life without children, he is very likely to pick the latter option -- unless he belongs to a social class which regards children chiefly as a source of social benefits. A high amount of taxation combined with ill-functioning labor and housing markets is a truly genocidal mix. That is the case of Italy, but also Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Its impact cannot be corrected by all sorts of government subsidies paid out to young families. On the contrary, under certain circumstances the benefits for families may even lead to a drop in birth rate.

 

The traditional model, which exists especially in Spain and Italy, but to a large extent also in East and Central Europe, emphasizes the successive steps in setting up a family. First, a young man graduates from a college or vocational school; then he secures his living, which is followed by marriage; and only then children are born. This succession not only conforms to social conventions but is also based on a profound economic logic: it is simply foolish to start having children before getting a living. The taboo of sex in Western cultures has profound economic reasons.

 

The troubles start when one link of this chain breaks. In contemporary Europe, the main problem lies in the second link: making a living. Unemployment among young graduates tends to be much higher than the average of the working-age population as a whole. In countries such as France, Spain, Finland, Greece or Italy, 20 to 30 percent of young people are unemployed. What birth rate can we expect, if a fifth or even a third of young population is unable to make a living due to a distorted labor market?

 

But there is another problem. The payroll-tax and social security contributions are up, while investments in capital equipment are made tax-advantageous. The government support of the existing families comes at the cost of heavier tax burden for young people who have not yet founded a family. The so-called "support for families" thus hinders the creation of new families, and effectively reduces birth rate. If a young unmarried person is left with mere pocket money after his salary has been taxed, he will hardly be able to make sufficient savings to set up a family. The politicians of most European countries are living in a reality gap if they cannot see this trivial economic connection.

 

The pay-as-you-go system and its inevitable collapse

 

Some people believe that there is nothing wrong with a low birth rate, as the planet is at any rate overpopulated. Yes, one cannot set the "right" amount of population for a country or a continent by "scientific" means. What we can determine, however, is which age structure of population is favorable, and which is disastrous. In a few decades, a large part of Europe will be dominated by a very unfavorable age structure, typical with an enormous increase in the number of retirement-aged people.

 

To be accurate, it is not yet clear at what age today's young people and children will retire -- if they retire at all. The pay-as-you-go pension systems will inevitably undergo a long and severe crisis, the result of which can, to a certain extent, be reckoned today. There are several scenarios, the most likely of which suggests that retirement age will gradually have to be raised. The most recent Insurance-Mathematic Report on Social Insurance produced by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in 2004 suggests that "the gradual raising of the age limit for the eligibility for old-age pension could substantially eliminate the impact of the expected ageing of the Czech population. It is also clear that a freezing of this age limit would lead to a sharp growth in the level of elderly dependency."

 

Translated into a simple and straightforward language, this means that retirement age will have to be constantly raised: at first to 65 years, then (sometime in the early 2030s) to 67, and so on. To stop this growth would drag the system relatively quickly into a crisis. In other words: a pay-as-you-go system may work for another few decades, before being gradually marginalized by the rise in retirement age. The pay-as-you-go system was a huge political and economic experiment; and the generation of today's children will witness its failure.

 

But perhaps people will just return to the 1880s, when in Bismarck's Germany the retirement age was 70 years -- with an average life expectancy of less than 50 years. If in 2050, for instance, the official retirement age becomes 90, with an average life expectancy around 80, then the pay-as-you-go system can be sustainable in the long term. But a good social security at an age of around 60 will be completely out of the question for those who are now children.

 

On the other hand, if the retirement age remains unchanged, the tax burden could eventually rise up to 70-75 percent of gross wages. In such a case, however, the younger and more educated portion of working-age population would undoubtedly migrate to countries with lower taxes: particularly to Britain, Ireland, or the United States. These countries also have much less trouble with their demographic structure. Over the next 50 years, the United States may hugely benefit from accepting a wave of emigrants who will have been chased out of Europe by high taxes -- and maybe not only high taxes.

 

The end of democracy in Europe?

 

The prophet Mani is dead. But another prophet's teaching is still very much alive. In 2002 the most common first name given to newborn babies was Mohamed. The name Osama finished at a handsome 12th position.

 

In the 1960s there were only about 350,000 North-African Muslims living in France, with some 1.25 million French living in North Africa. Since then, the notion of "colonialism" has completely reversed. There are almost no French living in North Africa, but the number of Muslims of African or Middle-Eastern origin in France is estimated at 4 to 10 million. The exact number of legal and illegal immigrants is unknown, for the sole reason that French statisticians are not allowed to collect information on ethnic and religious patterns of population.

 

Nevertheless, some estimates suggest that one in three births in France occurs in a Muslim family. That would explain, among other things, why France has a much higher birth rate (about 1.7 children per woman) than Spain or Italy. Stripped of this influence, the French birth rate would be around 1.2 children per woman, which is a figure similar to those in the countries of South and East Europe.

 

A Russian-Israeli journalist Shlomo Groman writes:

 

"Go to any child-care store in Vienna. Its clients will be predominantly Arabic, Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Black African. Viennese women never bear children -- they cherish their figures and careers instead. The Western-European pension systems made the bringing up of children less advantageous than social climbing and maximization of income."

 

Culture seems to play an even more crucial role than taxes or pension systems. The countries of the former Soviet Union are an interesting "demographic laboratory" in this respect. We have already mentioned Ukraine, Baltic States, and Russia. The situation in the Muslim republics -- Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan -- is completely different: almost all of them are living a population explosion. The living standard in these countries is close to that of Georgia or Armenia, i.e. poor. But Georgia and Armenia suffer from the same demographic shock as, for instance, the Baltic States. The difference lies in the traditionally Christian character of the latter countries. The position of women in society is perhaps a little different from that of the rich European countries, but comparing to Muslim countries these differences do not count much. In terms of birth rate, they are almost negligible. Armenia will lose a quarter of its population by 2050, while the population of the neighboring Azerbaijan will surge by a third.

 

The international demographic context will see huge changes: in 2050, Yemen will have more population than, for example, Germany. These people will quite understandably long for the standard of living that currently prevails in Europe. The immigration pressure on Europe will be immense. Given the European liberal laws on family reunification, the exodus from Middle East and North Africa will have enormous dimensions.

 

Instead of integration of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa into a majority European society, the opposite will occur: the immigrants will integrate the existing European culture into their own civilization. After some time, it will be their civilization that will become dominant. One does not have to be a supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen to feel a little anxious about that. It is not a problem of ethnics and their mingling. It is a matter of society, its values, and democracy as such. European tolerance competes with Islam, which is not always a religion of peace, as many Europeans would like to believe. Radical Islamic preachers openly condemn democracy. They interpret it not as a social system but as a pagan cult, which prefers the voices of people to the voice of God. This and other theories of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his conservative fellow-believers are proclaimed in many mosques throughout Europe.

 

If as a result of demographic trends a large part of future Europeans will have dark skin and go to mosque, why not? But if they become a threat to the European tradition of democracy and tolerance, it will be a tragedy.

 

The author is an associate of the Center for Economics and Politics (CEP), Prague.

Source http://techcentralstation.com/012705D.html 

 

ANI
Member


Joined: Mon Jul 26th, 2004
Location: Just Right Of You., California USA
Posts: 27173
Status:  Offline
Euro, thank you for your response...WOW...those are some pretty staggering numbers...although perhaps not on the same scale,  the U.S. has a similar situation, specifically with Hispanic immigration and the high birth rate among that group vs. the low birth rate for anglo Americans...since the late 1960's and early 70's. Some of this I would attribute to the "me" generation and the demise of the traditional family and family values...(gee sounds like I'm putting some of this on the backs of the Liberal movement, although that was not my intent...)

Has there been a social acknowledgment of the situation in Europe?, specifically are there movements to control the influx of immigrants or any such thing? 

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Instead of integration of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa into a majority European society, the opposite will occur: the immigrants will integrate the existing European culture into their own civilization.
Now this is what most European politicians, social scientists and antropologists are having dissenting views about. Some point at the fact that a part of the Muslim youth in Europe is getting more and more radical, and see that as proof for the statement above. Others say that although a part of the Muslim youth is radicalizing, an even larger part is secularizing in a high rate - pointing at less and less female Muslims wearing hijabs, less mosque visiting, a growing number of Muslims entering the middle class (and even upper class) and a growing Muslim intelligentsia. So while some claim European Muslims are rejecting European values, others say they are embracing it. From my own experience with Muslims, I tend to believe the second statement. 

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
*Double post*

Last edited on Tue Feb 1st, 2005 09:32 pm by Dutch

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
So much poor christians living hardly in africa,why those eu don't let them migrate if they lack of labour?Oh,I see,those eu are racist,and in their eye,the WHITE muslim is better than BLACK Christian <- this kind of phucko,church should ban them off mess for ever,don't forget Jesus Christ our Great Savor is BLACK HAIR with DARK eye too.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
@ANI there are no movements to stop their influence.

Militant Muslims Act to Suppress Dutch Film and Art Show
By MARLISE SIMONS

class=publishDatePublished: January 31, 2005



ARIS, Jan. 30 - Can angry young Muslims dictate what is and is not acceptable in the traditionally open-minded world of Dutch arts? In the last few weeks, it appears, the answer has been yes.

The Netherlands' main film festival, now going on in Rotterdam, canceled a showing of a short documentary denouncing violence against Muslim women that was made by Theo van Gogh, who was killed 10 weeks ago. An Islamic militant is accused of the crime.


The film's producer said he had pulled the film on the advice of the police after receiving threats.

At about the same time, a Moroccan-Dutch painter went into hiding after a show of his work opened on Jan. 15 at a modern art museum in Amsterdam. The museum director said the painter, Rachid Ben Ali, had received death threats linked to his satirical work critical of violence by Islamic militants.

The two incidents have reinforced fears among many Dutch that fast-growing non-Western immigration is having a negative impact on social attitudes in the Netherlands. Newspaper columnists and members of Parliament have warned in recent days that if people capitulated to intimidation, they would only encourage Islamic militants.

Some have pointed to the recent events as signs that militants are trying to impose their agenda and are undermining the constitutional right to free speech in the Netherlands. A few people have quietly asked if self-censorship might be acceptable to keep the social peace.

"It would be very regrettable if we had to start accepting self-censorship, if we could not show this kind of protest art," said John Frieze, the curator of Mr. Ben Ali's show at the Cobra Museum. "We've been pleased with the show, not only because the work is good, but also because it generated much debate with young Muslims attacking and defending it."

The exhibition, part of a series of cultural events called Morocco-Netherlands 2005, was opened by a prominent Moroccan-born politician in Amsterdam, Alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb, who delivered a strong plea for freedom of expression. But in a sign of the times, he was accompanied by bodyguards, and he has had police protection since he received death threats from Islamic militants.

In Amsterdam, a city known for its ebullient cultural life, local people say threats to painters have not been heard since the occupation by the Nazis during World War II.

The Cobra Museum said it had no intention of removing any of Mr. Ben Ali's work, about 40 recent paintings and drawings. The artist, who had been criticized earlier by some Dutch-Moroccans for homosexual themes in his work, has now apparently infuriated his critics with angry sketches that include suicide bombers and "hate imams," evil-looking preachers, vomiting excrement or spitting bombs.

Since the opening of the show, the artist has stayed away from his home and his workshop. "He has been very overwhelmed by the threats and the controversy," said Mr. Frieze, the museum curator. "His work is very topical and controversial, but that is part of the nature of modern art, and we mustn't shy away from it."

In Rotterdam, where the annual film festival devoted mainly to young, independent filmmakers opened last week, the anger over the withdrawal of the van Gogh film continued. The short film, titled "Submission," used words of the Koran written on the back, stomach and legs of partly dressed women to denounce oppression of women in the name of the Koran. It provoked widespread Muslim anger when it was televised last fall.

The writer of the documentary, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of Parliament who was already under police protection, was sped out of the country on government orders. But Mr. van Gogh, who directed it, declined protection and ignored threats against him. He was killed on an Amsterdam street by a man who shot him and then slit his throat.

Mohammed Bouyeri has been charged with murder in the killing, and the police say he left a letter on his victim, listing others who would be future targets.

The Rotterdam film festival intended to show "Submission" as part of a panel on Sunday called "Filmmaking in an Age of Turbulence." The panel included filmmakers who had suffered censorship in Russia, Indonesia and Serbia.

But the producer, Gijs van de Westelaken of Column Films, said in a telephone interview that he had withdrawn the film because he did not want "to take the slightest risk for anyone of our team."

"Does this mean I'm yielding to terror?" he asked. "Yes. But I'm not a politician or an antiterrorist police officer; I'm a film producer." Those behind Mr. van Gogh's killing, he said, had already achieved what they wanted, "to frighten the country."

The withdrawal of the film has set off many reactions, among them a letter from several members of Parliament to the mayor of Rotterdam asking him to intervene. The producer said that the mayor had indeed called him, but that he was sticking by his decision.

"This is not a freedom of speech issue," he said. "The film has been shown on television, fragments have been replayed, and the text has been published. It's just the wrong moment right now."

Ms. Hirsi Ali, who spent three months in the United States and is now back in Parliament, has announced that she will not give up her criticism of the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. She said she was writing a new film, "Submission Part II, and perhaps even three and four."

Pressed by her party, the conservative People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, to tone down her work, she said she would not attack Islam as a religion. But Ms. Hirsi Ali, an immigrant born in Somalia who said she had abandoned her Muslim faith, announced that she would continue to "fight against the excesses of Islam."

Source http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/31/international/europe/31netherlands.html?ex=1107838800&en=e271e6a7dff210ca&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERNEWS

 

 

 

happyin04
Member
 

Joined: Thu Nov 4th, 2004
Location: Islam Is Going Down!
Posts: 6658
Status:  Offline
Freedom isn't free.

Europe needs to protect their own interests and respond or it will be too late.

 

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
betchamad wrote: So much poor christians living hardly in africa,why those eu don't let them migrate if they lack of labour?Oh,I see,those eu are racist,and in their eye,the WHITE muslim is better than BLACK Christian <- this kind of phucko,church should ban them off mess for ever,don't forget Jesus Christ our Great Savor is BLACK HAIR with DARK eye too.
You really have no idea what you are talking about do you? ;)

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
happyin04 wrote: Freedom isn't free.

Europe needs to protect their own interests and respond or it will be too late.

 

What are you implying here?

ANI
Member


Joined: Mon Jul 26th, 2004
Location: Just Right Of You., California USA
Posts: 27173
Status:  Offline
From what has been posted here, this really looks like a sizable problem brewing for Europeans...unfortunately, it is in part the price of liberalism and what historically happens is that at some point where one group or the other feels threatened and there is a an unpleasant backlash. Rarely do such situations resolve themselves...I hope that I'm wrong.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
ANI wrote: From what has been posted here, this really looks like a sizable problem brewing for Europeans...unfortunately, it is in part the price of liberalism and what historically happens is that at some point where one group or the other feels threatened and there is a an unpleasant backlash. Rarely do such situations resolve themselves...I hope that I'm wrong.
ANI, do realize that Euro is not giving the entire picture here. Bad news scores it seems, and therefore, reading the articles, there is the suggestion that Europe has enormous problems. Good news doesn't appear that often in the news. Now, I live in a city where some 8% of the population is Muslim, and where the total foreign population (including people from other EU countries) is 40%. That doesn't mean that I feel less Dutch. That doesn't mean that I feel in some sort of way threatened. It is true that emigrants flock together when they arrive in a new country. Public opinion has decided that we as Dutchmen have been too flexible in our immigration policies. I think that is a rather quick decision. The new (Muslim) emigrant population is not older than 30-40 years. I personally believe we are still in a transition phase, whereas a large part of the foreign population was born in a foreign country (to prevent confusion: also second and even third generation emigrants who have been born here are considered, well, emigrants - and foreign) and still shares the ideologies they took with them from their homecountry. I do not see how much that differs from emigrants coming to the United States and the first generation clinging to their homecountry (not all of course, but that also applies to a part of the foreing population here; a friend of mine is Turkish, he was born in Turkey and left the country for the Netherlands when he was 7, and now, he is married to a Dutch woman, has two children with Dutch names by the way, finished highschool and college and speaks perfectly Dutch). Many social scientists believe that the second and third generations are adapping to Dutch culture rapidly. Not so long ago I saw a documentary about a couple of Moroccon-Dutch girls who were born and raised in the Netherlands and were for a large part secularized, meaning: Western clothing, no hijab and (but not in all cases) more Western stances on concepts like love and marriage. They said that they were considered strangers in Morocco. That when they visited their family there, they were seen as far too Westernised. In the Netherlands, however, they are still seen as Moroccon girls, and put on the same pile as a person like Mohammed Bouyeri.

I do not want to say that everything is OK. Else we wouldn't be faced with the problems we have know. But I do think this discussion should be put in a little more perspective. And what I fear, is what I've seen after the murder on Van Gogh: the burning down of both mosques as churches, the harassing of Muslims on the streets, and a majority of the Dutch who would not feel sorry if Muslims would leave the country. Racist ideas going loose, from both sides.

Anyway, I can go on about this for hours (I have been discussing this subject for hours too ;)), but I'll stop here and present you an article from The New Yorker about Islam in the Netherlands. I found it a good read.  

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050103fa_fact1

Broom Hillary
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 2nd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 256
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote:
"Do we want the River of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?" France's prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said in September, alluding to the prospect of Turkey joining the European Union. Raffarin's question is a little late. ...

I don't think you wrote this Euro. When posting someone else's work you should name the source (and preferrably provide a link).

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Muslims staking out their place in Europe
BY EVAN OSNOS

Chicago Tribune


ST.-DENIS, France - (KRT) - Butchered piglets hang in tidy rows at the open-air market, and shoppers haggle over cheese and oysters in a scene hardly altered since the last Bourbon king was buried at the Gothic church on the corner.

But slip out of the market on a Friday, and a quarter-mile up the road you will find a very different France: Hundreds of Muslims squeezed hip to hip into an unheated canvas tent, bowing in sacred silence toward Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, which few of them have ever seen.

The worshipers at this makeshift mosque on the edge of Paris are men and women, dressed in the latest fashions and traditional robes, Arab, European and African. They are moderate, conservative and fundamentalist. They are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants. They are content and they are enraged. They are the future that Europe is straining to handle.

What is happening in Europe may provide a partial preview of what lies ahead for the United States and its fast-growing Muslim population.

For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world - nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle - with words, votes and sometimes violence - to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

"The French are scared," said Tair Abdelkader, 38, a regular at the tented mosque whose light blue eyes and ebony beard are the legacy of a French mother and Algerian father. "In 10 years, the Muslim community will be stronger and stronger, and French political culture must accept that."

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism. In some cases, conservative Muslims have refused to visit co-ed swimming pools, study Darwinism or allow women to be examined by male doctors.

One young St.-Denis fundamentalist recently set off for Iraq and was captured fighting American troops in Fallujah. Stunned by stories like that, France is hoping to use the legal system to influence the direction of Islam within its borders.

The government has deported 84 people in the past six months on suspicion of advocating violence and drawn wide attention for banning head scarves and other religious symbols in public school. But even supporters of that tough approach concede that the measures can do little more than patch the widening cracks in Europe's image of itself.

"I'm not sure we'll go much further than gaining a few months or years" in the effort to limit Islam's imprint on France, said Herve Mariton, a member of the French Parliament who lobbied for the head scarf law. "That may be useful. But there is no way this is the ultimate answer to the challenge."

---

St.-Denis' narrow streets sweep outward from a soaring 12th century basilica that is the final resting place for generations of French monarchs. But today their snowy stone statues stare down onto a city and nation in transformation.

The Muslim migration to Europe began in earnest after World War II, when North African workers arrived by the thousands to help rebuild the continent. A half-century later, no fewer than a third of St.-Denis' 90,000 residents are of Arab origin.

Arabic script on butcher shops and storefronts touts halal meat, handled to Islamic standards. Couscous restaurants are as plentiful as brasseries. Muslim settlement houses usher in new immigrants, and Muslim funeral homes bid farewell to old ones.

Across the country, French Muslims still live more or less where the first arrivals settled a half-century ago, in suburban apartment blocks erected in the 1950s for foreign workers. These suburbs, the banlieues, have become the byword for France's virtually segregated Muslim communities.

The complexes used to be integrated, with Polish, Italian and French workers living among North African arrivals, but over time the Europeans moved on - and the Arabs did not. It is a scene repeated across the suburbs of Paris.

"Gradually the French people left or died, and they were replaced by more people from North Africa," said Brigitte Fouvez, 55, deputy mayor in the neighboring town of Bondy. "The French people who stayed would say, `You can smell the cooking in the hallways,' and eventually they left too."

Like other ethnic Europeans, Fouvez and her husband moved from Paris in 1978 in search of more room for their two children. She watched Bondy evolve.

"Before, we had a charcuterie and a butcher," she said. "Now there are just three halal butchers, no fish shop anymore, no traditional French stores."

But those changes weren't nearly as startling as the sight of conservative Muslim women draped head to toe in dark chador robes - to Fouvez's eyes, "as black as crows."

---

Thirteen hundred years after the Frankish King Charles Martel repelled Muslim armies from the central city of Tours, Islam is now the second religion of France; there are about 10 times as many Muslims as Jews.

From the Paris suburbs 25 years ago, Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini planned a revolution that ultimately overthrew the Shah of Iran and, in turn, helped inspire a global Islamic revival. The fallout is easily visible today as the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants in Europe increasingly embrace religion. In France and England, polls show greater commitment to daily prayers, mosque attendance and fasting during Ramadan than there was a decade ago.

Only one in five Muslims in France say they actively practice the faith, but many who once defined themselves in terms of Tunisian, Iraqi or Turkish descent now consider their primary identity to be Muslim.

"Nobody was talking about Muslims in France at the end of the 1990s. People were talking about Arabs or beurs," said French political scientist Justin Vaisse, using the term applied to French of North African immigrant descent.

Young French Muslims gravitate toward charismatic spokesmen of a new European Islam, such as controversial Swiss-born philosopher Tariq Ramadan, whose French headquarters here in St.-Denis urges a "silent revolution." In his writings, he advocates using the political process, instead of violence, to win Muslim rights and recognition across Europe.

Ramadan's supporters call him a major voice of moderate Islam, but some critics say he is tied to extremists, a charge he denies. He was scheduled to begin teaching this year at the University of Notre Dame until U.S. immigration authorities rescinded his work visa, citing unspecified national security concerns.

Unlike earlier immigrants, who were bent on returning home flush with cash, more-recent arrivals have been deterred by the turmoil in their homelands and stayed, building families that are larger than those of their graying ethnic European neighbors. The effect is amplified by the decline of European Christianity. The number of people who call themselves Catholic, the continent's largest denomination, has declined by more than a third in the past 25 years.

The results are stark. Within six years, for instance, the three largest cities in the Netherlands will be majority Muslim. One-third of all German Muslims are younger than 18, nearly twice the proportion of the general population.

With that growth, and the deepening strains between the U.S. and the Islamic world, radical Muslim clerics have found no shortage of adherents. A 2002 poll of British Muslims found that 44 percent believe attacks by al-Qaida are justified as long as "Muslims are being killed by America and its allies using American weapons." Germany estimates that there are 31,000 Islamists in the country, based on membership lists of conservative federations.

Year by year, European Islam pulls further away from the cultural traditions of Morocco or Algeria, refashioned all the while by the pressures of life in Europe. For some, the solution is a more liberalized Islam that incorporates Western concepts of individual rights and tolerance. But for others, the answer lies in a stricter interpretation of the core elements of the faith.

"It is more fundamentalist in its essence because what you subsist on is personal practice_reading of the Koran, Shariah," Vaisse said. "It can take very humanist forms, but in some cases, it can also lead to political radicalization and terrorism."

The potentially serious effects of that radicalization became clear on March 11, when coordinated bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800. Moroccan and Tunisian suspects later killed themselves in a standoff with police.

More recently, the Netherlands is in turmoil after the brutal killing of Theo van Gogh, who made a controversial film about violence against women in Islamic societies. Police arrested a 26-year-old man with Dutch-Moroccan citizenship and charged him with stabbing and shooting van Gogh. The suspect allegedly pinned a note to the body with a knife.

Within days, an Islamic school was set ablaze, and retribution followed. Right-wing politicians in Belgium and Germany demanded new curbs on immigration. In time, however, a more ominous fact emerged from the case: It was not the work of newly arrived immigrants with extremist views, but the product of homegrown radicalism. Police say suspect Mohammed Bouyeri wrote the death note in Dutch, not Arabic.

"This (cultural) schizophrenia is the most dangerous thing we face in Europe today," said Gilles Kepel, head of Middle East studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and author of several books on Islam in Europe. "It means Madrid. It means Mohamed Atta," he said, referring to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived for some time in Germany.

---

Where moderate Muslims ultimately place their loyalty may be the defining - and unpredictable - ingredient in the struggle to fashion an Islam of the West. To understand the choices, visit the men who represent the two competing visions of Islam in France.

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris in the heart of the city, is a long-standing voice of moderate Islam in France. On the other side is Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, the increasingly powerful Islamist federation.

Trained as a dentist, Boubakeur, 64, runs the 1920s-era mosque in the heart Paris. He is prone to quoting Immanuel Kant and is a favorite of French officials and foreign ambassadors. He wears a red rosebud on his lapel signifying membership in the Legion of Honor. And he knows he is losing ground.

"Since Sept. 11, the world of Islam is changing faster in the West than other places in the world," he said at his antiques-lined office, his V-neck sweater, rimless glasses and wispy gray hair giving him the air of an English schoolmaster. "Western countries had had a gentleman's agreement with fundamentalists: You can stay here as long as you keep quiet. But the gentlemen are not being as quiet as they used to be."

There is no question that Boubakeur's influence is weakening. Last year he was handpicked to be president of the official French Council of the Muslim Faith, a new body established by the government in 2003 to give Muslims a formal voice in dealings with the state. Just as other bodies represent Catholics and Jews, the council speaks for Muslims on issues such as the construction of mosques and the training of clerics.

But things didn't go as planned. In the first election, his moderate camp was trounced by conservative candidates who won 70 percent of the 41 seats. The next vote is scheduled for April, and moderates are expected to lose even more to the men he believes are "radicalizing Islam" in France.

"The facts are there: Religions that close in on themselves become sects, and that is what is happening to Islam here," Boubakeur said. "And I am very sorry about that."

Across town, beside the highway in the tough Paris suburb of La Courneuve, Boubakeur's opponents are confident. Breze greets visitors at his glass-and-steel headquarters with a glossy package of materials and a calm message of "coordination, not confrontation."

"We are not extremists," he says, sipping espresso at a conference table. "We practice our beliefs and have respect for the state. We want one thing from Europe and France: that they are faithful to their values."

Indeed, Breze and the union have thrived under Western democracy. Just two decades after its creation, by two foreign students, the union dominates French Islam.

In the last elections for the Council of the Muslim Faith, Breze won control of a crucial post representing central France.

Breze's federation draws 30,000 people to its annual conference, and the crowd is increasingly vocal in challenging the political powers that be. At last year's convention, the interior minister was booed in the middle of his speech when he suggested that women must remove their head scarves for ID photos.

So what does Breze really want for Muslims in France? He and his group carefully calibrate their demands. They demonstrate against the ban on head scarves, for instance, but urge young women to respect the law as long as it is in effect. His federation is part of a broader umbrella group for all of Europe that is known for issuing decisions that help conservative Muslims function in a modern Western society by permitting, for instance, interest-bearing loans that would otherwise be banned under Islam and allowing the consumption of pork-based gelatin.

Push Breze on the most sensitive issues - does he seek an Islamic state in France, or the application of strict Islamic law and punishment - and he says no: "Perhaps they are valid in Saudi Arabia or Palestine, but they are not valid here."

To some critics, Breze is a "double talker" who says one thing in French and another in Arabic. To others, he is simply a shrewd strategist who understands the coming power of the fast-growing Muslim communities here.

For his part, Breze says his mission is to convey a simple message: "France must respect this population."

---

By all appearances, she is as French as they come. A law student at the Sorbonne, she has dark brown hair that falls in stylish curls to her shoulders. Dining with friends in downtown Paris, 23-year-old Faten Mansour wears Diesel-brand jeans and red stiletto heels. But she will be the first to point out that she is not just French.

"I am a woman, I am an Arab and I come from the suburbs. I have three handicaps," she says. "France is not racist, but it is xenophobic. I can study the law all night, but I don't know if I will find a job - not because I'm not competent, but because I'm an Arab."

That feeling of exclusion has emerged as the central issue in the struggle to integrate Islam in Europe. Whether it is Turks in Germany, Indonesians in the Netherlands or Pakistanis in Britain, polls show Muslims feel they live in a parallel world within Europe.

There are no Muslims in the French Parliament, no Muslim CEOs of top French companies, and the national news media is overwhelmingly white. Midlevel Muslim politicians routinely recite instances of their careers being diverted by higher-ups.

In an unusually blunt official assessment, the French government's auditing agency in a report released Nov. 23 faulted the republic for failing to combat segregation in housing, workplaces and schools. The same week, France's largest insurer, AXA, presented a report concluding that young immigrants in France experience a rate of unemployment that is 2 to 5 times as high as that of young people who are ethnic European.

Moreover, that frustration is getting worse over time. "The first generation came to Europe to work, the second generation was caught in between two cultures. But the third generation is completely French, and they want all the rights of citizenship," said Khalid Bouchama, the St.-Denis representative for Breze's group.

For ethnic Europeans, the Muslim migration amounts to a world upended: The continent that for centuries exported its people, culture and religion to the Third World is now being shaped by its former colonies. But for the French establishment, the challenge is to bring Muslims into European society without changing the foundations of secular democracy.

No decision has sparked more controversy than the French government's move to ban conspicuous religious symbols from public schools, including Muslim head scarves, Jewish yarmulkes and large crosses. To its opponents, the law was a blunt refusal to accept Muslim immigration. But to its supporters, it was a decisive move to lower the barriers building between France's young people.

"It showed you can only go so far, you can't go any further," said Blandine Kriegel, an adviser to President Jacques Chirac on integration issues. "The issue touched a raw nerve. It is a nerve that is at the very heart of our way of life."

Kepel, the professor, served on the commission that recommended the law. He originally opposed the idea, he says, until he heard testimony from teachers and young women who described how young fundamentalists used girls' decisions to wear a veil as leverage to pressure them into adopting a more religious lifestyle.

"If we were accused of being Islamaphobes, let's take it and not give a damn. It was a time to give those kids the opportunities to interact in the best possible way and not jeopardize their futures in French society," Kepel said.

French Muslims responded with mass protests. Terrorists in Iraq abducted two French journalists and demanded that the law be repealed or the captives would be killed. The move backfired - French Muslims roundly denounced the threat. The journalists were returned this week.

Four months into the first school year under the law, 45 girls across France remain out of school or in mediation over their refusal to remove their scarves. Considering that 2,000 girls were believed to be wearing the veil last year, French officials have been pleased with the outcome.

Other than the veil law, Kriegel said, the government is trying to reduce segregation of Muslim immigrants by expanding access to French language instruction and combating workplace discrimination. The government, she believes, is on the right track.

"There are no fires in the banlieues," she said. "There are no riots as there were in the black ghettos in the United States in the 1960s. Why don't we have that? Because we've been rolling up our sleeves and doing something. ... We have turned the corner."

But in St.-Denis and other suburbs, the verdict is less clear. The huddles of young men stand like emblems of 17 percent unemployment, well above the national average. Classrooms and public housing are overcrowded with fast-growing immigrant families.

The mosques are busier than ever: the storefront Tawhid Center for young followers of Tariq Ramadan; the Tabligh mosque for the reclusive adherents of Saudi-style conservative Islam; the many basement prayer rooms for whoever stops by.

A French intelligence official who monitors fundamentalist groups said he believes the veil controversy and efforts to train imams have pushed French Muslims to an awkward reckoning point: They must decide whether to integrate with Europe or fight back in earnest against official efforts to shape their community.

"They are at a crossroads," he said. "They can either go left or right."

---

© 2004, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Stop the Islamization of Europe

Anglo
Member


Joined: Mon Sep 20th, 2004
Location: Strawberry Fields Forever
Posts: 2555
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Stop the Islamization of EuropeNice big letters - that should solve the problem

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
That willn't solve the problem,only after Church rebuild her inquisitor court system,the europe can revive on the pagan BBQ smokes..

TravelGal
Member


Joined: Thu Aug 26th, 2004
Location: Laughing @ Lunacy, No Matter How Cute...
Posts: 10172
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Stop the Islamization of EuropeAre you going to help?

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
Why christians haven't our own al-qaidas? <- No suggest anything,but just wonder why.I mean boom up few mosque is much better than yawling hatre on the street or interenet.

Anglo
Member


Joined: Mon Sep 20th, 2004
Location: Strawberry Fields Forever
Posts: 2555
Status:  Offline
betchamad wrote: Why christians haven't our own al-qaidas? <- No suggest anything,but just wonder why.I mean boom up few mosque is much better than yawling hatre on the street or interenet.
Maybe it's because real Christians (have you every met any) don't believe in blowing people up, irrespective of their religion. I am not a Christian but I thought the philosophy was about tolerance, understanding and "love thine enemy". Also what about "Vengeance is mine - I will repay" It's in the bible somewhere.

Best thing you can do is go to Kabul or somewhere and start the fight yourself.

Billy the Kid
Member


Joined: Wed Jul 28th, 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 1403
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Muslims staking out their place in Europe
BY EVAN OSNOS

Chicago Tribune


ST.-DENIS, France - (KRT) - Butchered piglets hang in tidy rows at the open-air market, and shoppers haggle over cheese and oysters in a scene hardly altered since the last Bourbon king was buried at the Gothic church on the corner.

But slip out of the market on a Friday, and a quarter-mile up the road you will find a very different France: Hundreds of Muslims squeezed hip to hip into an unheated canvas tent, bowing in sacred silence toward Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, which few of them have ever seen.

The worshipers at this makeshift mosque on the edge of Paris are men and women, dressed in the latest fashions and traditional robes, Arab, European and African. They are moderate, conservative and fundamentalist. They are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants. They are content and they are enraged. They are the future that Europe is straining to handle.

What is happening in Europe may provide a partial preview of what lies ahead for the United States and its fast-growing Muslim population.

For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world - nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle - with words, votes and sometimes violence - to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

"The French are scared," said Tair Abdelkader, 38, a regular at the tented mosque whose light blue eyes and ebony beard are the legacy of a French mother and Algerian father. "In 10 years, the Muslim community will be stronger and stronger, and French political culture must accept that."

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism. In some cases, conservative Muslims have refused to visit co-ed swimming pools, study Darwinism or allow women to be examined by male doctors.

One young St.-Denis fundamentalist recently set off for Iraq and was captured fighting American troops in Fallujah. Stunned by stories like that, France is hoping to use the legal system to influence the direction of Islam within its borders.

The government has deported 84 people in the past six months on suspicion of advocating violence and drawn wide attention for banning head scarves and other religious symbols in public school. But even supporters of that tough approach concede that the measures can do little more than patch the widening cracks in Europe's image of itself.

"I'm not sure we'll go much further than gaining a few months or years" in the effort to limit Islam's imprint on France, said Herve Mariton, a member of the French Parliament who lobbied for the head scarf law. "That may be useful. But there is no way this is the ultimate answer to the challenge."

---

St.-Denis' narrow streets sweep outward from a soaring 12th century basilica that is the final resting place for generations of French monarchs. But today their snowy stone statues stare down onto a city and nation in transformation.

The Muslim migration to Europe began in earnest after World War II, when North African workers arrived by the thousands to help rebuild the continent. A half-century later, no fewer than a third of St.-Denis' 90,000 residents are of Arab origin.

Arabic script on butcher shops and storefronts touts halal meat, handled to Islamic standards. Couscous restaurants are as plentiful as brasseries. Muslim settlement houses usher in new immigrants, and Muslim funeral homes bid farewell to old ones.

Across the country, French Muslims still live more or less where the first arrivals settled a half-century ago, in suburban apartment blocks erected in the 1950s for foreign workers. These suburbs, the banlieues, have become the byword for France's virtually segregated Muslim communities.

The complexes used to be integrated, with Polish, Italian and French workers living among North African arrivals, but over time the Europeans moved on - and the Arabs did not. It is a scene repeated across the suburbs of Paris.

"Gradually the French people left or died, and they were replaced by more people from North Africa," said Brigitte Fouvez, 55, deputy mayor in the neighboring town of Bondy. "The French people who stayed would say, `You can smell the cooking in the hallways,' and eventually they left too."

Like other ethnic Europeans, Fouvez and her husband moved from Paris in 1978 in search of more room for their two children. She watched Bondy evolve.

"Before, we had a charcuterie and a butcher," she said. "Now there are just three halal butchers, no fish shop anymore, no traditional French stores."

But those changes weren't nearly as startling as the sight of conservative Muslim women draped head to toe in dark chador robes - to Fouvez's eyes, "as black as crows."

---

Thirteen hundred years after the Frankish King Charles Martel repelled Muslim armies from the central city of Tours, Islam is now the second religion of France; there are about 10 times as many Muslims as Jews.

From the Paris suburbs 25 years ago, Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini planned a revolution that ultimately overthrew the Shah of Iran and, in turn, helped inspire a global Islamic revival. The fallout is easily visible today as the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants in Europe increasingly embrace religion. In France and England, polls show greater commitment to daily prayers, mosque attendance and fasting during Ramadan than there was a decade ago.

Only one in five Muslims in France say they actively practice the faith, but many who once defined themselves in terms of Tunisian, Iraqi or Turkish descent now consider their primary identity to be Muslim.

"Nobody was talking about Muslims in France at the end of the 1990s. People were talking about Arabs or beurs," said French political scientist Justin Vaisse, using the term applied to French of North African immigrant descent.

Young French Muslims gravitate toward charismatic spokesmen of a new European Islam, such as controversial Swiss-born philosopher Tariq Ramadan, whose French headquarters here in St.-Denis urges a "silent revolution." In his writings, he advocates using the political process, instead of violence, to win Muslim rights and recognition across Europe.

Ramadan's supporters call him a major voice of moderate Islam, but some critics say he is tied to extremists, a charge he denies. He was scheduled to begin teaching this year at the University of Notre Dame until U.S. immigration authorities rescinded his work visa, citing unspecified national security concerns.

Unlike earlier immigrants, who were bent on returning home flush with cash, more-recent arrivals have been deterred by the turmoil in their homelands and stayed, building families that are larger than those of their graying ethnic European neighbors. The effect is amplified by the decline of European Christianity. The number of people who call themselves Catholic, the continent's largest denomination, has declined by more than a third in the past 25 years.

The results are stark. Within six years, for instance, the three largest cities in the Netherlands will be majority Muslim. One-third of all German Muslims are younger than 18, nearly twice the proportion of the general population.

With that growth, and the deepening strains between the U.S. and the Islamic world, radical Muslim clerics have found no shortage of adherents. A 2002 poll of British Muslims found that 44 percent believe attacks by al-Qaida are justified as long as "Muslims are being killed by America and its allies using American weapons." Germany estimates that there are 31,000 Islamists in the country, based on membership lists of conservative federations.

Year by year, European Islam pulls further away from the cultural traditions of Morocco or Algeria, refashioned all the while by the pressures of life in Europe. For some, the solution is a more liberalized Islam that incorporates Western concepts of individual rights and tolerance. But for others, the answer lies in a stricter interpretation of the core elements of the faith.

"It is more fundamentalist in its essence because what you subsist on is personal practice_reading of the Koran, Shariah," Vaisse said. "It can take very humanist forms, but in some cases, it can also lead to political radicalization and terrorism."

The potentially serious effects of that radicalization became clear on March 11, when coordinated bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800. Moroccan and Tunisian suspects later killed themselves in a standoff with police.

More recently, the Netherlands is in turmoil after the brutal killing of Theo van Gogh, who made a controversial film about violence against women in Islamic societies. Police arrested a 26-year-old man with Dutch-Moroccan citizenship and charged him with stabbing and shooting van Gogh. The suspect allegedly pinned a note to the body with a knife.

Within days, an Islamic school was set ablaze, and retribution followed. Right-wing politicians in Belgium and Germany demanded new curbs on immigration. In time, however, a more ominous fact emerged from the case: It was not the work of newly arrived immigrants with extremist views, but the product of homegrown radicalism. Police say suspect Mohammed Bouyeri wrote the death note in Dutch, not Arabic.

"This (cultural) schizophrenia is the most dangerous thing we face in Europe today," said Gilles Kepel, head of Middle East studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and author of several books on Islam in Europe. "It means Madrid. It means Mohamed Atta," he said, referring to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived for some time in Germany.

---

Where moderate Muslims ultimately place their loyalty may be the defining - and unpredictable - ingredient in the struggle to fashion an Islam of the West. To understand the choices, visit the men who represent the two competing visions of Islam in France.

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris in the heart of the city, is a long-standing voice of moderate Islam in France. On the other side is Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, the increasingly powerful Islamist federation.

Trained as a dentist, Boubakeur, 64, runs the 1920s-era mosque in the heart Paris. He is prone to quoting Immanuel Kant and is a favorite of French officials and foreign ambassadors. He wears a red rosebud on his lapel signifying membership in the Legion of Honor. And he knows he is losing ground.

"Since Sept. 11, the world of Islam is changing faster in the West than other places in the world," he said at his antiques-lined office, his V-neck sweater, rimless glasses and wispy gray hair giving him the air of an English schoolmaster. "Western countries had had a gentleman's agreement with fundamentalists: You can stay here as long as you keep quiet. But the gentlemen are not being as quiet as they used to be."

There is no question that Boubakeur's influence is weakening. Last year he was handpicked to be president of the official French Council of the Muslim Faith, a new body established by the government in 2003 to give Muslims a formal voice in dealings with the state. Just as other bodies represent Catholics and Jews, the council speaks for Muslims on issues such as the construction of mosques and the training of clerics.

But things didn't go as planned. In the first election, his moderate camp was trounced by conservative candidates who won 70 percent of the 41 seats. The next vote is scheduled for April, and moderates are expected to lose even more to the men he believes are "radicalizing Islam" in France.

"The facts are there: Religions that close in on themselves become sects, and that is what is happening to Islam here," Boubakeur said. "And I am very sorry about that."

Across town, beside the highway in the tough Paris suburb of La Courneuve, Boubakeur's opponents are confident. Breze greets visitors at his glass-and-steel headquarters with a glossy package of materials and a calm message of "coordination, not confrontation."

"We are not extremists," he says, sipping espresso at a conference table. "We practice our beliefs and have respect for the state. We want one thing from Europe and France: that they are faithful to their values."

Indeed, Breze and the union have thrived under Western democracy. Just two decades after its creation, by two foreign students, the union dominates French Islam.

In the last elections for the Council of the Muslim Faith, Breze won control of a crucial post representing central France.

Breze's federation draws 30,000 people to its annual conference, and the crowd is increasingly vocal in challenging the political powers that be. At last year's convention, the interior minister was booed in the middle of his speech when he suggested that women must remove their head scarves for ID photos.

So what does Breze really want for Muslims in France? He and his group carefully calibrate their demands. They demonstrate against the ban on head scarves, for instance, but urge young women to respect the law as long as it is in effect. His federation is part of a broader umbrella group for all of Europe that is known for issuing decisions that help conservative Muslims function in a modern Western society by permitting, for instance, interest-bearing loans that would otherwise be banned under Islam and allowing the consumption of pork-based gelatin.

Push Breze on the most sensitive issues - does he seek an Islamic state in France, or the application of strict Islamic law and punishment - and he says no: "Perhaps they are valid in Saudi Arabia or Palestine, but they are not valid here."

To some critics, Breze is a "double talker" who says one thing in French and another in Arabic. To others, he is simply a shrewd strategist who understands the coming power of the fast-growing Muslim communities here.

For his part, Breze says his mission is to convey a simple message: "France must respect this population."

---

By all appearances, she is as French as they come. A law student at the Sorbonne, she has dark brown hair that falls in stylish curls to her shoulders. Dining with friends in downtown Paris, 23-year-old Faten Mansour wears Diesel-brand jeans and red stiletto heels. But she will be the first to point out that she is not just French.

"I am a woman, I am an Arab and I come from the suburbs. I have three handicaps," she says. "France is not racist, but it is xenophobic. I can study the law all night, but I don't know if I will find a job - not because I'm not competent, but because I'm an Arab."

That feeling of exclusion has emerged as the central issue in the struggle to integrate Islam in Europe. Whether it is Turks in Germany, Indonesians in the Netherlands or Pakistanis in Britain, polls show Muslims feel they live in a parallel world within Europe.

There are no Muslims in the French Parliament, no Muslim CEOs of top French companies, and the national news media is overwhelmingly white. Midlevel Muslim politicians routinely recite instances of their careers being diverted by higher-ups.

In an unusually blunt official assessment, the French government's auditing agency in a report released Nov. 23 faulted the republic for failing to combat segregation in housing, workplaces and schools. The same week, France's largest insurer, AXA, presented a report concluding that young immigrants in France experience a rate of unemployment that is 2 to 5 times as high as that of young people who are ethnic European.

Moreover, that frustration is getting worse over time. "The first generation came to Europe to work, the second generation was caught in between two cultures. But the third generation is completely French, and they want all the rights of citizenship," said Khalid Bouchama, the St.-Denis representative for Breze's group.

For ethnic Europeans, the Muslim migration amounts to a world upended: The continent that for centuries exported its people, culture and religion to the Third World is now being shaped by its former colonies. But for the French establishment, the challenge is to bring Muslims into European society without changing the foundations of secular democracy.

No decision has sparked more controversy than the French government's move to ban conspicuous religious symbols from public schools, including Muslim head scarves, Jewish yarmulkes and large crosses. To its opponents, the law was a blunt refusal to accept Muslim immigration. But to its supporters, it was a decisive move to lower the barriers building between France's young people.

"It showed you can only go so far, you can't go any further," said Blandine Kriegel, an adviser to President Jacques Chirac on integration issues. "The issue touched a raw nerve. It is a nerve that is at the very heart of our way of life."

Kepel, the professor, served on the commission that recommended the law. He originally opposed the idea, he says, until he heard testimony from teachers and young women who described how young fundamentalists used girls' decisions to wear a veil as leverage to pressure them into adopting a more religious lifestyle.

"If we were accused of being Islamaphobes, let's take it and not give a damn. It was a time to give those kids the opportunities to interact in the best possible way and not jeopardize their futures in French society," Kepel said.

French Muslims responded with mass protests. Terrorists in Iraq abducted two French journalists and demanded that the law be repealed or the captives would be killed. The move backfired - French Muslims roundly denounced the threat. The journalists were returned this week.

Four months into the first school year under the law, 45 girls across France remain out of school or in mediation over their refusal to remove their scarves. Considering that 2,000 girls were believed to be wearing the veil last year, French officials have been pleased with the outcome.

Other than the veil law, Kriegel said, the government is trying to reduce segregation of Muslim immigrants by expanding access to French language instruction and combating workplace discrimination. The government, she believes, is on the right track.

"There are no fires in the banlieues," she said. "There are no riots as there were in the black ghettos in the United States in the 1960s. Why don't we have that? Because we've been rolling up our sleeves and doing something. ... We have turned the corner."

But in St.-Denis and other suburbs, the verdict is less clear. The huddles of young men stand like emblems of 17 percent unemployment, well above the national average. Classrooms and public housing are overcrowded with fast-growing immigrant families.

The mosques are busier than ever: the storefront Tawhid Center for young followers of Tariq Ramadan; the Tabligh mosque for the reclusive adherents of Saudi-style conservative Islam; the many basement prayer rooms for whoever stops by.

A French intelligence official who monitors fundamentalist groups said he believes the veil controversy and efforts to train imams have pushed French Muslims to an awkward reckoning point: They must decide whether to integrate with Europe or fight back in earnest against official efforts to shape their community.

"They are at a crossroads," he said. "They can either go left or right."

---

© 2004, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Amazing.  Calm before the storm?

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
Anglo wrote: betchamad wrote: Why christians haven't our own al-qaidas? <- No suggest anything,but just wonder why.I mean boom up few mosque is much better than yawling hatre on the street or interenet.
Maybe it's because real Christians (have you every met any) don't believe in blowing people up, irrespective of their religion. I am not a Christian but I thought the philosophy was about tolerance, understanding and "love thine enemy". Also what about "Vengeance is mine - I will repay" It's in the bible somewhere.

Best thing you can do is go to Kabul or somewhere and start the fight yourself.
So,you like to watching those mosque more and more appearing on christian's land?Maybe u living in londonstan do you?And "love own enemy" is NOT = "love God's enemy Satan"!

Last edited on Fri Feb 4th, 2005 01:00 pm by betchamad

Anglo
Member


Joined: Mon Sep 20th, 2004
Location: Strawberry Fields Forever
Posts: 2555
Status:  Offline
betchamad wrote: Anglo wrote: betchamad wrote: Why christians haven't our own al-qaidas? <- No suggest anything,but just wonder why.I mean boom up few mosque is much better than yawling hatre on the street or interenet.
Maybe it's because real Christians (have you every met any) don't believe in blowing people up, irrespective of their religion. I am not a Christian but I thought the philosophy was about tolerance, understanding and "love thine enemy". Also what about "Vengeance is mine - I will repay" It's in the bible somewhere.

Best thing you can do is go to Kabul or somewhere and start the fight yourself.
So,you like to watching those mosque more and more appearing on christian's land?Maybe u living in londonstan do you?And "love own enemy" is NOT = "love God's enemy Satan"!
As I already said. I am not a Christian so whether the buildings are churches, mosques, buddhist or sikh temples means nothing to me. How have you come to the conclusion that Muslims = Gods enemy, Satan?

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
How can we stop the islamization of Europe?

Esau hated Jacob
Member


Joined: Tue Jul 27th, 2004
Location: The Yankees Won The Division
Posts: 7691
Status:  Offline
The audacity of the " new immigrants" is ridiculous. Mexicans, for example, expect Amercians to speak spanish not they other way around. Billions is spent on translating documents for people that REFUSE to adapt to their new situations. They enter ILLEGALLY and expectt to drive, work, receive ALL the same benefits as American citizens while contributing NOTHING in return except enormous education and health care bills that Americans should pay with their tax dollars.

Islamics are no different in Europe. They expect an Islamic state to be created to satisfy their own religious beliefs while not taking into account the thousands of years of the countries culture and traditions.

Hey, if you don't like the country that you just entered illegally......go home.[usa]

 

Last edited on Fri Feb 4th, 2005 05:00 pm by Esau hated Jacob

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Esau hated Jacob wrote: The audacity of the " new immigrants" is ridiculous. Mexicans, for example, expect Amercians to speak spanish not they other way around. Billions is spent on translating documents for people that REFUSE to adapt to their new situations. They enter ILLEGALLY and expectt to drive, work, receive ALL the same benefits as American citizens while contributing NOTHING in return except enormous education and health care bills that Americans should pay with their tax dollars.

Islamics are no different in Europe. They expect an Islamic state to be created to satisfy their own religious beliefs while not taking into account the thousands of years of the countries culture and traditions. So you know being from the other side of the Big Pond that ALL Muslims in Europe want to create an Islamic state without taking in account the rich heritage of Europe? Wow you must know more than 99,99% of the Europeans back here ;)

Hey, if you don't like the country that you just entered illegally......go home.[usa] For what I know, most Muslims in Europe have entered the continent legally, but I have the feeling you switched to talking about Mexicans here, not?

 

Esau hated Jacob
Member


Joined: Tue Jul 27th, 2004
Location: The Yankees Won The Division
Posts: 7691
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: Esau hated Jacob wrote: The audacity of the " new immigrants" is ridiculous. Mexicans, for example, expect Amercians to speak spanish not they other way around. Billions is spent on translating documents for people that REFUSE to adapt to their new situations. They enter ILLEGALLY and expectt to drive, work, receive ALL the same benefits as American citizens while contributing NOTHING in return except enormous education and health care bills that Americans should pay with their tax dollars.

Islamics are no different in Europe. They expect an Islamic state to be created to satisfy their own religious beliefs while not taking into account the thousands of years of the countries culture and traditions. So you know being from the other side of the Big Pond that ALL Muslims in Europe want to create an Islamic state without taking in account the rich heritage of Europe? Wow you must know more than 99,99% of the Europeans back here ;)

Hey, if you don't like the country that you just entered illegally......go home.[usa] For what I know, most Muslims in Europe have entered the continent legally, but I have the feeling you switched to talking about Mexicans here, not?

 

 

I am sure your wife will look very beautiful in her Burka.

 

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Esau hated Jacob wrote: Dutch wrote: Esau hated Jacob wrote: The audacity of the " new immigrants" is ridiculous. Mexicans, for example, expect Amercians to speak spanish not they other way around. Billions is spent on translating documents for people that REFUSE to adapt to their new situations. They enter ILLEGALLY and expectt to drive, work, receive ALL the same benefits as American citizens while contributing NOTHING in return except enormous education and health care bills that Americans should pay with their tax dollars.

Islamics are no different in Europe. They expect an Islamic state to be created to satisfy their own religious beliefs while not taking into account the thousands of years of the countries culture and traditions. So you know being from the other side of the Big Pond that ALL Muslims in Europe want to create an Islamic state without taking in account the rich heritage of Europe? Wow you must know more than 99,99% of the Europeans back here ;)

Hey, if you don't like the country that you just entered illegally......go home.[usa] For what I know, most Muslims in Europe have entered the continent legally, but I have the feeling you switched to talking about Mexicans here, not?

 

 

I am sure your wife will look very beautiful in her Burka. 

 
Is this your way of handling the discussion?

ANI
Member


Joined: Mon Jul 26th, 2004
Location: Just Right Of You., California USA
Posts: 27173
Status:  Offline
I don't want to start an argument, but, honestly I think that the Liberal movement which has made it so that immigrants did not have to assimilate into the existing society is creating the real problem.  This from an immigrant , if I had not had to learn English and the cultural habits around me ...I'm sure that I would not feel as much a part of this community and this culture and would probably feel somewhat suppressed.

Great White
Member


Joined: Mon Sep 20th, 2004
Location: The Great White North, Ontario Canada
Posts: 9685
Status:  Offline
ANI wrote: I don't want to start an argument, but, honestly I think that the Liberal movement which has made it so that immigrants did not have to assimilate into the existing society is creating the real problem.  This from an immigrant , if I had not had to learn English and the cultural habits around me ...I'm sure that I would not feel as much a part of this community and this culture and would probably feel somewhat suppressed.
 

I'll tell you this. Multi-culturalism instead of assimilation is screwing up my country, and I'm fighting tooth and nail to stop it

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Dutch flag "insulting to Muslim immigrants", banned from Dutch schools
The Dutch have banned their flag, but I'm sure they'll be quite happy to wear the zunnar. (The zunnar, folks, was a cloth belt worn by dhimmis, to signify their inferior status.) From Rayra at LGF comes this:
In the Netherlands the national flag is now banned on most schools. If a student wears the national flag of his own country he will be suspended or expelled from school. The reason for this is that this provokes the immigrants (the muslims) and therefore it is considered discrimination if you wear your country's flag in your own country. Even people who have an bumpersticker whit the flag on their car are harassed and called a facist by the Muslims. Most schools also ban certain clothing like the Lonsdale brand and combat boots with white or red laces. This is also concidered a sign of racism. There are of course no restrictions for the immigrants on clothing.
Dutch article here.

Billy the Kid
Member


Joined: Wed Jul 28th, 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 1403
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Dutch flag "insulting to Muslim immigrants", banned from Dutch schools
The Dutch have banned their flag, but I'm sure they'll be quite happy to wear the zunnar. (The zunnar, folks, was a cloth belt worn by dhimmis, to signify their inferior status.) From Rayra at LGF comes this:
In the Netherlands the national flag is now banned on most schools. If a student wears the national flag of his own country he will be suspended or expelled from school. The reason for this is that this provokes the immigrants (the muslims) and therefore it is considered discrimination if you wear your country's flag in your own country. Even people who have an bumpersticker whit the flag on their car are harassed and called a facist by the Muslims. Most schools also ban certain clothing like the Lonsdale brand and combat boots with white or red laces. This is also concidered a sign of racism. There are of course no restrictions for the immigrants on clothing.
Dutch article here.

 

Wow!  That's absolutely stupid, IMO. 

It's easier now, for me, to see how europe got into the mess with Hitler.  They rolled over and rolled over, until he had them by the nads.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
ANI wrote: I don't want to start an argument, but, honestly I think that the Liberal movement which has made it so that immigrants did not have to assimilate into the existing society is creating the real problem.  This from an immigrant , if I had not had to learn English and the cultural habits around me ...I'm sure that I would not feel as much a part of this community and this culture and would probably feel somewhat suppressed.
Actually, you do have a point here. After the murder on Van Gogh there has been a huge debate about whether our multicultural society has failed in its existence. Personally I wouldn't want to put it in such harsh words, but there are things which have gone wrong. It is false by the way to assume that immigrants don't have to learn the language. It is true that this happened in the 60s, 70s (maybe even up to the 80s and the 90s?) but anno 2005, all immigrants have to follow a so-called "inburgeringscursus" (naturalisationcourse) to learn the language and cultural habits and customs. The "dumb" thing is though that for a time (I don't know whether it is still the case), newly arrived immigrants, including refugees, had to pay hundreds of euros to follow the course. Not a real stimulus to take the course. I think the larger problem lies within where the new immigrants settle though. Most of them cluster in the big cities and form isolated communities, where mastering the Dutch language is not a priority among other things. It's funny actually that just yesterday a Moroccon delegation which visited the Netherlands said that many (older) immigrants were still living in the Morocco of the 50s and 60s, while Morocco has changed as well. I don't think though that applies for the second and third generation. For what I've seen, heard and experienced, many of these second and third generation are struggling with their identity: they are not 100% Moroccon (or Turkish, or Iraqi etc.) but neither are they 100% Dutch, which is blamed both on the Dutch society as well as the own ethnic communities.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Dutch flag "insulting to Muslim immigrants", banned from Dutch schools
The Dutch have banned their flag, but I'm sure they'll be quite happy to wear the zunnar. (The zunnar, folks, was a cloth belt worn by dhimmis, to signify their inferior status.) From Rayra at LGF comes this:
In the Netherlands the national flag is now banned on most schools. If a student wears the national flag of his own country he will be suspended or expelled from school. The reason for this is that this provokes the immigrants (the muslims) and therefore it is considered discrimination if you wear your country's flag in your own country. Even people who have an bumpersticker whit the flag on their car are harassed and called a facist by the Muslims. Most schools also ban certain clothing like the Lonsdale brand and combat boots with white or red laces. This is also concidered a sign of racism. There are of course no restrictions for the immigrants on clothing.
Dutch article here.

In fact, the Dutch flag is not banned from "most schools". The article does not state that. It does state that "more schools seem to have banned the Dutch flag". The article does not give a number. This is the first time I hear about this by the way, this story didn't make national headlines so I can't give a prediction as well.

I will translate the article:

"More schools seem to have banned the Dutch flag.

At the Green Heart Lyceum in Alphen aan de Rijn [Dutch city] the Dutch tri-color has already been absolutely forbidden for over a year now. All group-identified marks are not accepted anymore and students face suspension when they do dare to wear clothes or bags with flags on it. Readers reacted furiously earlier this week when they heard about the flagban at a school in IJsselstein [Dutch city], because the flags could provoke foreign co-students.

Execrated

An angry man reported yesterday he is regularly execrated by 'foreigners and leftish intellectuels' because he drives around in a dark blue ex-Defence car with a red-white-blue [colors of the Dutch flag] sticker on the back. "They tell me I'm a nationalist and a fascist. Maybe they can make a list on what Dutchmen can and cannot say and do" he says with a sarcastic undertone.

The Green Heart Lyceum says they are forced to take these measures because of the hardened climate at the school. Not only flags, but also clothes of the Lonsdale brand, combat boots with white or red laces and bomberjacks can have discrimination or ragging behavior as a consequence according to the school board. A spokesman of the school explains: "Sometimes the fat is in the fire and then we are forced to react. At those times we ban the object which caused the problem for a while". According to the school the students don't mind, but it are the parents who believe that their children are deprived of their own identity. "Everything happens here by mutual agreement, a ban is a big word". The National Racediscrimination Bureau does understand the schools, but believe it is of little use to ban preventively."

Source: de Telegraaf (the Telegraph)

The Libertarian
Member


Joined: Fri Oct 8th, 2004
Location: God Gave Rock And Roll To You, USA
Posts: 18415
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: In fact, the Dutch flag is not banned from "most schools".
It shouldn't be banned in any of your schools. If this story is true then you guys need help. Banning your own country's flag in your own schools? That's just rediculous. Don't try defending the fact that "most" schools have not. Just one doing it should be reason enough for you to be p*ssed. Why are you defending it by saying "most" don't? Get mad at your own country for a change and it's policies.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
The Libertarian wrote: Dutch wrote: In fact, the Dutch flag is not banned from "most schools".
It shouldn't be banned in any of your schools. If this story is true then you guys need help. Banning your own country's flag in your own schools? That's just rediculous. Don't try defending the fact that "most" schools have not. Just one doing it should be reason enough for you to be p*ssed. Why are you defending it by saying "most" don't? Get mad at your own country for a change and it's policies.

I'm not saying I'm defending anything, I'm correcting Euro. I share the criticism of the National Racediscrimination Bureau that this is not a solution. A solution to what, you might ask? Look: in the Netherlands, few students wear Dutch flags on their coats, bags, whatever. It's not that we aren't proud of our country, it's just so; the majority of the schools also do not have a flag in front or on top of their building, like in the US. Many (of course not all) of the students who DO wear flags on their clothes or bags are nationalistic students, rightish students who in my opinion abuse our tri-color by linking it a bit to "one nation, one flag". For what I know and reading the article, the banning of the Dutch flags is also directed towards these students. To put it a bit in perspective. But as I said before, I don't think this is a solution, also because there might also be students who do not want to make a racist statement or whatever with it.

Nelliebly
Member


Joined: Wed Sep 15th, 2004
Location: Texas USA
Posts: 2729
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: The Libertarian wrote: Dutch wrote: In fact, the Dutch flag is not banned from "most schools".
It shouldn't be banned in any of your schools. If this story is true then you guys need help. Banning your own country's flag in your own schools? That's just rediculous. Don't try defending the fact that "most" schools have not. Just one doing it should be reason enough for you to be p*ssed. Why are you defending it by saying "most" don't? Get mad at your own country for a change and it's policies.

I'm not saying I'm defending anything, I'm correcting Euro. I share the criticism of the National Racediscrimination Bureau that this is not a solution. A solution to what, you might ask? Look: in the Netherlands, few students wear Dutch flags on their coats, bags, whatever. It's not that we aren't proud of our country, it's just so; the majority of the schools also do not have a flag in front or on top of their building, like in the US. Many (of course not all) of the students who DO wear flags on their clothes or bags are nationalistic students, rightish students who in my opinion abuse our tri-color by linking it a bit to "one nation, one flag". For what I know and reading the article, the banning of the Dutch flags is also directed towards these students. To put it a bit in perspective. But as I said before, I don't think this is a solution, also because there might also be students who do not want to make a racist statement or whatever with it.

I agree with you here Dutch. In my school-going days in the Netherlands, I never saw a Dutch flag at or near the schools. There wasn't even a Dutch flag outside city hall. Nobody had the flag on their bags or clothing. The only times the Dutch flag was very visible was on a national holiday: the Queen's Birthday, and of course worldchampionship soccer games ;). Other than that, most of us (in my younger days) would have reacted like "Why should I carry the flag? I know what it looks like. I know I'm Dutch." Rarely did you see an emblem of the Dutch flag on cars. In fact when you did see one, it was on the car of a tourist. I had emblems on my car from every country I had been to...but not the Dutch one (after all, my license plate 'showed' I was Dutch). That - in short - the attitude of most.

9/11 caused many Americans, including myself, to display the U.S. flag whenever and wherever they could. We all had our own reasons: solidarity, support, and yes - national pride. I'm sure that the peoples of most other nations would do the same if something similar were to happen there.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
UK:The rise of the Muslim Boys
By David Cohen, Evening Standard
3 February 2005
Winston emerges menacingly from the kitchen, a meat cleaver in one hand and a kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade in the other. "I love knives," he says, his eyes gleaming as he begins to slash the air inches from my face.
"Guns make a f***ing noise, but knives go in," he pauses, " silentlike, easy." He begins stabbing the wall and hacking the plaster, and then, just as suddenly, stops, seemingly sated, like an addict who has had his fix.
He holds up his blades to inspect them. "F***ing quality," he says, and deposits them unceremoniously his trousers. Winston, 21, black and from south London, licks his
teeth as he paces around the stripped-bare flat on a Peckham estate that serves as one of his gang's many secret hideouts. He speaks in his gang's uniquely coded lingo.
"Knives is f***-all. Later, my bruvs will be back from their robberies with our skengelengs [guns] and cream [money]. Later there be MACinside-10s [sub-machine guns] all over the floor, laid wall to wall. And moolah! We count it - 10 grand, 20 grand. Then, after midnight," he adds, matter-of-factly, "me and my bruvs go to mosque to pray."
Winston's casual depiction of a lifestyle of crime tightly bound up with religious observance would normally be regarded as paradoxical, but in his case it is what defines him. For Winston is a member of the Muslim Boys, a gang, the black community says, unlike any that has operated before in south London.
Until now, the Muslim Boys have never allowed any members to be interviewed. Ex-convicts and youth workers who know some of them personally warned us: "It's too dangerous. They'll shoot you on the spot."
But an Evening Standard investigation - involving dozens of interviews and finding go-betweens with underworld connections who would agree to take us into one of the many dens of the Muslim Boys - has for the first time thrown light on this street phenomenon.
They number in their hundreds, according to some estimates, with ages ranging from 15 to 30, and their hallmark is extreme violence, with automatic and semi-automatic machine guns their weapons of choice. But what makes them unique is that they are socalled "converts", whose perverted interpretation of Islam is central to their identity as killers and criminals. Their stamping grounds are the estates of south London, where they hole-up in safe houses, living ascetic lives in stark contrast to the " blingbling" lifestyle of other gangs.
D e t e c t i v e Chief Superintendent John Coles, in charge of the Met's Operation Trident team, which investigates black-onblack shootings, confirmed that " the Muslim Boys are responsible for at least two executionstyle murders in the past eight months", as well as scores of robberies and attempted murders. "We have taken out most of the hardcore," he says. "We arrested 20 of them. The majority were sentenced for crimes ranging from murder to shootings to possession of firearms and drugs."
The shooting of PC Liam Morrow, shot in the legs in Bromley in December, has also been linked to the gang. A 19-yearold youth has been charged with attempted murder.
Coles believes, nevertheless, that the Muslim Boys have been "over-hyped", that there are "less than a hundred", and that they are nothing more than "nasty, ordinary south London criminals who have adopted the Muslim Boys name to make them sound bigger and more fearsome than they really are".
But Lee Jasper, the Mayor of London's senior advisor on policing, vehemently disagrees. He says: "The Muslim Boys pose one of the most serious criminal threats the black community has ever faced. The police tell me they have never seen anything like this gang before. They speak in an almost impenetrable code, they use heavy firepower, are forensically aware, unbelievably violent and extraordinarily disciplined. They're as tough to crack as the IRA."
Our investigation reveals that Jasper's concerns are shared by many - including youth workers dealing with vulnerable teenagers in south London.
The Muslim Boys, they say, are notorious for intimidating imams into opening their mosques in the early hours of the morning so that they can pray, often right after committing crimes, and for their "forced conversions", carried out at gunpoint, of black youths to Islam. At least one local young man, Adrian Marriott, thought to have resisted such a conversion, is believed to have been murdered "as an example to others".
At greatest risk of being forcibly recruited are "feral kids", the kind identified by outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens as being left to fend for themselves without adult supervision, and who already operate on the fringes of criminality.
This is how gang member Winston describes "conversion". "You got to be Muslim to be in our group," he tells me. "If you not down [cool] with Muslim, we visit your home, maybe strip you naked in front of your f***ing mother, we put a gun in your mouth. We give you three days [to change your mind], then, if you not down with it, we f* * * ing blow
The existence of the gang is a cause of profound concern within the Muslim community. The precedent set by Richard Reid - the infamous " shoebomber" who prayed at Brixton mosque, and who was both a black convert and a criminal who became a terrorist - is one they don't want repeated.
Last month, the Brixton and Stockwell mosques moved to publicly distance themselves from the gang, saying - without actually naming the Muslim Boys - that there are "criminals masquerading as Muslims" who threaten the good name of their religion.
Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque, said: "What we are seeing is a new phenomenon that I have not seen in my 15 years as a Muslim." He added that TV scenes of militant uprisings in the Middle East are presenting a distorted view of Islam that appeals to criminals. "Keep away from our mosques," he pleaded.
Lee Jasper, speaking in his capacity as chair of the Lambeth police consultative group, says that "the story is potentially explosive", but that he is speaking out because he has become "increasingly frustrated" at the "lack of adequate police action".
"So far," he says tersely, meeting me face-to-face in central London, "police arrests have not made a dent in this lot. There is barely a major estate in Lambeth or Southwark - and increasingly in Lewisham - not dominated by the Muslim Boys. The problem is that the police treat them like an ordinary criminal gang, which they are not. I've asked them to increase their level of policing to a level appropriate for serious organised crime. But the Met has refused to raise its game."
Jasper's deepest worry - that "the leaders of the Muslim Boys could be a criminalised front for terrorist extremists" - is voiced by many with links to the south London underworld.
Trident's John Coles acknowledges these concerns, but says, "we have found no evidence whatsoever of a link to terrorism". Nevertheless, questions remain: if their crime spree is not funding a lavish lifestyle, what are the Muslim Boys doing with their illgotten gains?
The story of the rise of the Muslim Boys started 15 months ago, when a hardcore of Afro-Caribbean "Muslim converts" began violently "taxing" the south London criminal community. Dressed in long, flowing black leather coats, as in the film The Matrix, and initially dubbed "the Taliban Terrorists", these were exconvicts who had been turned on to Islam in prison, and who began to use the austere discipline of Islam to fashion a criminal network with a "higher" purpose.
Their first targets were other criminals - especially local drug dealers and pimps - who were ordered to pay "protection money". If the dealers refused, they were held at gunpoint, often facing the muzzle of a MAC-10.
In the early days, there were about 25 hardcore members, plus 40 " footsoldiers". They had come out of a gang called the SMS, the South Man Syndicate, and now began to rope in other crews, such as The Brotherhood and the Stockwell Crew, evolving into an umbrella crew called the PDC, Poverty Driven Children. To this day, gang members refer to themselves as PDC, regarding the Muslim Boys as a term used by outsiders.
By January 2004, the gang had managed the unique feat of uniting the bitterly divided south-east black criminal-fraternity against them. City officials became aware of a war brewing, says Jasper. "The police were warned: either you take them out, or we do. If you don't move on these guys, all hell will break loose."
Police arrests, it is claimed, have failed to break the gang. Instead, the Muslim Boys are believed to have prospered, recruiting inside Feltham, Brixton and Wandsworth prisons, as well as on the outside, and their numbers have leapfrogged from dozens to hundreds. It has helped that the Yardies, once the most feared gangsters in London, have become marginalised, and the Muslim Boys are said to have stepped into the breach.
Wayne Rowe, 39, an ex-prisoner working as a Brixton community liaison officer, explains their appeal. "For many poverty-stricken kids growing up alienated on estates, often without fathers, the Muslim Boys have become a seductive, alternative family."
One who was nearly seduced was Michael, 31, a youth worker for a south London charity, who thought of joining the gang after growing up alongside many of their older brothers. He says they have jumped on the al Qaeda bandwagon. "Since 9/11, Muslims have become demonised as the number one enemy and alienated black kids feel a kinship with this. The war in Iraq has taught them that those with the biggest guns rule, and so they have the biggest guns."
The trend of black youths converting to Islam has gathered pace in the past three years. Omar Urquhart, 34, imam of the Brixton mosque and himself a black convert to Islam, says: "Sixty per cent of their 500-strong community are black converts."
Unlike religions that have lengthy, formal conversions, the process in Islam can be instant. You neither have to convert in a mosque, nor in front of an imam, says the Muslim Council of Britain. All that is needed is that, in the presence of two other Muslims, you voluntarily make a declaration of faith "that none is worthy of worship except Allah" and that "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah".
But the conversions administered forcibly by the Muslim Boys are, says Imam Omar, totally anti-Islamic, as is their violent, criminal lifestyle.
Last June, the imam had to step in personally after Adrian Marriott - having been hounded by the gang to convert with bullying visits to his home - was found shot several times in the head, in parkland off Barrington Road, Brixton.
"I had to approach the family of the murdered boy and assure them that these criminals have nothing to do with real Islam, or with our mosque," he says. Three men in their early twenties have been charged with Adrian Marriott's murder.
The Standard's attempts to reach a member of the Muslim Boys initially came to nothing, with warnings that contact was "not possible". But suddenly, one afternoon, I am told: "A middle-ranking member will see you." I am driven down the Old Kent Road to a poverty-stricken estate - whose name I am obliged to keep secret - and led upstairs to a dingy-looking flat.
There, lithe and athletic, and fiddling incessantly with his knives, Winston speaks to me, often lapsing into his strange "lingwo", as he calls it, for over an hour. When the time feels right, I ask him about Adrian Marriott. "Yeah, I went to school with him, grew up with him." he says, spitting out each word with venom.
Why was he shot? I ask. "His name came up, innit. He was involved in this Muslim Boys t'ing. He did something that doubled back on his people. So they killed him. Shot in his mouth and his throat."
HAVE you killed anyone? I press him. "I've stabbed people," he says. "Everyone I know has." Ever shot anyone? "Not at close range. My other bruvs have, obviously. But I ain ' t, " he half- smiles, " 'cos I got a little bit of heart. I don't mind f***ing someone up, but I won't blow them in the mouth. I turn my head when I see them things happen, bruv. It happens."
Winston, who has done time in Feltham and Bullingdon prisons for burglary, armed robbery, GBH and affray, says his life of crime started when he left home and school at 14.
"My father, f*** him, he was a low-life drug addict. He held up banks and went to prison when I was 12. I never knew the lovely life - you know, nine-to-five, kids, settle down. My life is the grime. Look at this s***-hole. I'm on the run. This year I've lived in 15 places just like this."
Winston invites me to look around the flat, which he calls "the slumberdrop" and resembles a bolt-hole in a war zone. In the bedroom, there is a bed with a cardboard box stuffed full of clothes; the second bedroom, piled top to bottom with rubbish, cannot even be entered; and the living room has no carpet, just a foam-rubber sofa without upholstery and a small television.
"This is where we do everything - count the money, sell the drugs, hide our guns," he boasts. The picture Winston paints is of an affiliation of gangs - all "converted Muslims" - holding up banks and post offices, trading guns and "taxing" drug dealers, then returning days later to share the booty with affiliates. According to Winston, gang members fan out beyond London to towns such as Reading and Bristol.
If this is true, then Winston and his fellow Muslim Boys are responsible for a national crime wave whose significance extends way beyond south London.
Aren't you worried about the police catching up with you? "The police are f***-all - they don't bother me," he shoots back. "The people I worry about is the gangs. This t'ing of being a Muslim is a new t'ing. It used to be that being in a gang was an individual t'ing. You could come in and leave the next day. But this Muslim t'ing is for life. The only way I can get out of this is if I done a certain amount of murders, then I can get out at the last one."
When I ask Winston whether he believes in Islam, he prevaricates. "Sort of," he says. "I converted when I was in prison. I found it relaxing, we got better food. Now we all go to mosque together. If I refuse, they blow [shoot] me, innit. I pray twice a day: before I do crime, and after. I ask Allah for a blessing when I'm out on the street. Afterwards, I apologise to Allah for what I done."
Winston becomes angry when I show him the Brixton mosque's denunciation of his crew as "bogus Muslims", crushing their statement in his fist. "F***ing cheek!" he says. "Mocking us. There be retribution for this!"
Winston is now agitated again and he begins playing with his knives, laying them in patterns at his feet. "You lucky the other bruvs not here yet," he says. "They pick you up and throw you straight off the f***ing balcony."
One final question, I say. Where does your money go? "To the f***ing laundry, innit," he says, licking his teeth. Is there any connection between your gang and al Qaeda? He glares at me. "That's a deep piece of info. I support Bin Laden. I wouldn't ask that question, bruv - it's rude, it's dangerous, it's ..."
Time to leave. There are moments when words do not come easily to Winston, when he prefers to let his hands do the talking, and right now, they are being frighteningly expressive.
Look at http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/16372042?source=Evening%20Standard 

LuLu8769
Member
 

Joined: Sat Oct 23rd, 2004
Location: Puerto Rico USA
Posts: 6881
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: NiteHawk wrote: Dutch wrote: Actually, French research has shown that while some French Muslims are accepting radical Islam as their way of life, a much larger part of the young Muslim population throughout Europe is accepting secular lifestyles rapidly. Mosque-attendance is dropping, birth rates are dropping, mixed marriages are increasing. The birth rate in Turkey (1.98 children/woman) is not much different compared to other European countries like Iceland (1.93 children/woman) or Ireland (1.87 children/woman). In fact, Turkey has a lower birth rate than the US (2.07 children/woman). I think we are overexaggerating a bit.

Source: CIA Factbook

They'll eventually learn of the problem they have the hard way. The French always learn the hard way.

It's the "enemy within" stupid. Great campaign slogan!

If you think that an entire group of people called Muslims - which only major thing they share is their faith (or heritage) - is an "enemy within" ... I don't know whom I'm should be scared of more: those few fundamental Muslims or you.

I have to agree with you on that one about not all muslims being bad people. I have many muslim friends (most in egypt) loving good people, not radical. They do not look at the radical muslims/terrorists as muslim. They accuse them of misinterpreting the Q'ran and abusing its meaning and state quote a friend here "These people are not true muslim" Muslims are a peaceful people and should be allowed their religion, its the radicals that abuse it and misinterpret the Q'ran." 

Sure, they slaughter a cow in the street (many people cringe) but do people also realize that that meat is donated to the poor on a holiday as arms for the poor and the slaughter is not only an offering but a kindness gesture for their neighbors. We dont have to believe in their Q'ran but giving the true muslims, good honest peace loving hard working people the respect they deserve as we expect from them when it comes to our Bible is something to think about.  

LuLu8769
Member
 

Joined: Sat Oct 23rd, 2004
Location: Puerto Rico USA
Posts: 6881
Status:  Offline
ANI wrote: I don't want to start an argument, but, honestly I think that the Liberal movement which has made it so that immigrants did not have to assimilate into the existing society is creating the real problem.  This from an immigrant , if I had not had to learn English and the cultural habits around me ...I'm sure that I would not feel as much a part of this community and this culture and would probably feel somewhat suppressed. Really pisses me off when certain parts of california (some towns) 75 % of them dont speak any english or just dont care. Friend of mine moved out there and shes mexican. when she came here she couldnt speak english but she worked every day and learned rather fast, got a job and worked hard. when she moved to this place in cal, she said that now she understands why alot of people are so mad about the illegals, look down on mexicans and the souls who are a drain on the economy. she moved back here after 1 year. She couldnt even carry a conversation on with those people and said they looked down on her because she spoke english well, her children were clean (they got hand foot and mouth disease outside their place) she stated they went to the bathroom outside their homes (the men) and the sand was tainted with bacteria.

LuLu8769
Member
 

Joined: Sat Oct 23rd, 2004
Location: Puerto Rico USA
Posts: 6881
Status:  Offline
On that note, My only hang up with Bush is the border thing. Something needs to be done or this country is going to go to shi*.

lasion2
Member
 

Joined: Tue Feb 1st, 2005
Location:  
Posts: 92
Status:  Offline
see I don't understand that.  Why can't Latinos, or anyone for that matter, immigrate here legally, set up shop, get their kids educated and improve their lot.  You xenophobes miss the whole point.  The Irish immigrated here and a lot of people thought it was going to put the country in the crapper...they were discriminated against, took crap jobs, worked their butts off and slowly climbed the ladder.  Germans, Italians, Russians, Slavs, Asians all did the same thing.  My ancestors did it.  My guess is yours did too.  Why not Latinos?  Why do you think the fruits and opportunities of this country should only be available to rich, white, northern europeans?

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
How can we stop the islamization of Europe?

herminator
Member
 

Joined: Thu Oct 7th, 2004
Location: Prague, EU, Czech Republic
Posts: 20
Status:  Offline
Easy!!! No more eguges to Europe!!!![europe]

Holocaust_2000+
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Islam is nothing short of a cancer of the earth.  It's infecting europe to a point where the only escape or sactuary from it is the west.  While Canada is a safe haven for muslims, Bush's policies make for a tough fight to conquer all ofthe west.  Islamic extremists have indeed punctured ever corner of the earth, and spead their fanaticle beliefs.

I support BUSH'S ever expanding police states, and if he is indeed creating a new holocaust its primary victims will not be americans or canadians or any other "ians"  for that matter.  The next holocaust victims will be muslims and the followers of islam. If this scenario occurs world war three will focus on the extermination of Islam.

Watch your own streets for mosques and "terrorist" banners supporting Islam. They are appearing everywhere, support your government and its new anti-Islam stance.

If Bush is truely practicing Hitlers idealism than these moments we share together could be the happiest greatest moments of our lifetime.... and we don't even know it.

herminator
Member
 

Joined: Thu Oct 7th, 2004
Location: Prague, EU, Czech Republic
Posts: 20
Status:  Offline
It depends on country-for example we in Czech republic dont have problems with muslims-we have a law about public referendum- so people living in any city can ban any muuslims activities(marches, clubs, buildings, etc.)- some people call it racism- but since this law we dont have troubles with muslims. Most of them moved to Germany or France. Now we have around 10,000 muslims.[europe]

lasion2
Member
 

Joined: Tue Feb 1st, 2005
Location:  
Posts: 92
Status:  Offline
Holocaust_2000+ wrote: Islam is nothing short of a cancer of the earth.  It's infecting europe to a point where the only escape or sactuary from it is the west.  While Canada is a safe haven for muslims, Bush's policies make for a tough fight to conquer all ofthe west.  Islamic extremists have indeed punctured ever corner of the earth, and spead their fanaticle beliefs.

I support BUSH'S ever expanding police states, and if he is indeed creating a new holocaust its primary victims will not be americans or canadians or any other "ians"  for that matter.  The next holocaust victims will be muslims and the followers of islam. If this scenario occurs world war three will focus on the extermination of Islam.

Watch your own streets for mosques and "terrorist" banners supporting Islam. They are appearing everywhere, support your government and its new anti-Islam stance.

If Bush is truely practicing Hitlers idealism than these moments we share together could be the happiest greatest moments of our lifetime.... and we don't even know it.

 

you and proudnfree should get together...kill everyone in sight.  You guys would have a blast....I mean, anyone who isn't a white christian american is barely worth the bullet, right?

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
herminator wrote: It depends on country-for example we in Czech republic dont have problems with muslims-we have a law about public referendum- so people living in any city can ban any muuslims activities(marches, clubs, buildings, etc.)- some people call it racism- but since this law we dont have troubles with muslims. Most of them moved to Germany or France. Now we have around 10,000 muslims.[europe]
How can you ban Muslim activities; doesn't the Czech Republic has freedom of religion? 

Starts In Europe
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Islam has been taking over Europe for some time now!

Wake up world it has been only 40 some years since the last world war, wars have been fought and won since then but the threat of Islamic tyranny has never been greater.  Islam is a new enemy and is a new axis of evil that has covertly taken over Europe.  Our final vet's are dying and the country has already began to forget.  Iraq is a war, and simple minded people see it that broadly.

Bush has declared war on "terrorism" a war that can't be won using convential weapons of war. Politics will be the first crushing blow to Islam, they are already poor, un eduacted, and fanaticle. But collectively they greatly outnumber the major civilized populus of the world. WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE LEADERS, militant Islam has no face when it does we blow it up. WE should consider ourselves lucky that we can put a face beside our flag.

It would be a worst case scenario for Islamic culture to unify under one man and a flag. When this day occurs Europe will have already been lost and the west will have a REAL threat to the homeland. Don't be foolish Islam knows it must target Europe befor it can bring down Western supper powers.

This may surprise some Americans but I am Canadian, and i recognize my country's flaws, I support my country, but If an Islamic war broke out my country would be a weak link in Northern American Armor. The East is pivital to world politics, it has always been that way.

Worry not the end is not quite at hand!

Our governments have collectively created a secret vendetta, to push islam back to the "Holly Land", seperate groups to create pro-western secs, and we are bombing them now and when i wake up next day we will still be bombing their asses. We have altered the Quran creating non militaint islamic faiths, we have all the power, money, and itellegence to manipulate Islam into our own mold, a passive mold. Islam can't win this war. People like me and maybe people like you will never let a thing like that happen. 

 

herminator
Member
 

Joined: Thu Oct 7th, 2004
Location: Prague, EU, Czech Republic
Posts: 20
Status:  Offline
Starts In Europe wrote:
Islam has been taking over Europe for some time now!

Wake up world it has been only 40 some years since the last world war, wars have been fought and won since then but the threat of Islamic tyranny has never been greater. Islam is a new enemy and is a new axis of evil that has covertly taken over Europe. Our final vet's are dying and the country has already began to forget. Iraq is a war, and simple minded people see it that broadly.

Bush has declared war on "terrorism" a war that can't be won using convential weapons of war. Politics will be the first crushing blow to Islam, they are already poor, un eduacted, and fanaticle. But collectively they greatly outnumber the major civilized populus of the world. WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE LEADERS, militant Islam has no face when it does we blow it up. WE should consider ourselves lucky that we can put a face beside our flag.

It would be a worst case scenario for Islamic culture to unify under one man and a flag. When this day occurs Europe will have already been lost and the west will have a REAL threat to the homeland. Don't be foolish Islam knows it must target Europe befor it can bring down Western supper powers.

This may surprise some Americans but I am Canadian, and i recognize my country's flaws, I support my country, but If an Islamic war broke out my country would be a weak link in Northern American Armor. The East is pivital to world politics, it has always been that way.

Worry not the end is not quite at hand!

Our governments have collectively created a secret vendetta, to push islam back to the "Holly Land", seperate groups to create pro-western secs, and we are bombing them now and when i wake up next day we will still be bombing their asses. We have altered the Quran creating non militaint islamic faiths, we have all the power, money, and itellegence to manipulate Islam into our own mold, a passive mold. Islam can't win this war. People like me and maybe people like you will never let a thing like that happen.

Yes we do, but you most muslims clerks are breaking our laws-1)NAZI propaganda 2)huge antisemitism 3)and some anti jewish attacks---- so this is enough for ban many action

L.C.
Member


Joined: Fri Nov 5th, 2004
Location: Washington USA
Posts: 365
Status:  Offline
Islam is a plague that Europe and the whole world has been trying to defeat for over 1400 years. It is the only religion that demands people to convert or die!


"The Koran is a blueprint for the extermination of the Judeo-Christian world. As Allah said, "It’s all in my book". Islam is not a religion. It is an infestation, a colony of rabid termites, exploding throughout the world gnawing away at the baseboards of Civilization."

"Unlike the Bubonic Plague, the Islamic Plague is in Europe by invitation. It is too late to save Europe from this spiteful, vicious, unwashed substrata of humanity. 50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims. That country is now more bilge than Belge. Russian children massacred by Chechen troglodytes left Vladimir Putin without even a feeling of déjà vu. Only the Dutch sensed it is time for a politically incorrect mass deportation of Moslems, the malignant slag oozing into their corner of Europe."
http://www.etherzone.com/2004/lieb112304.shtml

herminator
Member
 

Joined: Thu Oct 7th, 2004
Location: Prague, EU, Czech Republic
Posts: 20
Status:  Offline
[europe]
I think that best solution will stop all immigration.
Mass deportation????
[confused]
Remember nazis and communists-no more mass deportations or murders!!!! Never more!!!!!

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
L.C. wrote:  50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims.
LC ... Please. Do check the sources.

Holocaust_2000+/Starts In Europe
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
I have said some questionable statements today that are no doubt un-ethical and hatefully generated.

I AM AN ANTI SEMIT,  I hate jews unless their comedians or performers.

I believe in a GOD, yet i wish to declare war against religion.

I am at war with my self, and i do not believe in a HELL

With all this hate spilling out of my fingers it is hard to focus, to many to attack!

I HOPE TO GOD I AM WRONG, I HOPE I AM IGNORANT

Because if what i said is true, if im right, the implications would be great.  As mush as i hate things that do not make sense such as ""religion" , if these Islamits destroy Isreal an claim it for their own. The response could be cataclismic.>>big word

If A Bomb is dropped onto Israel the apocolypse would be fufilled and we could experience the end of the world as we know it.

Am I a christian?

MY GOD DOES NOT JUDGE 

herminator
Member
 

Joined: Thu Oct 7th, 2004
Location: Prague, EU, Czech Republic
Posts: 20
Status:  Offline
hahahahahahhaha
50% of muslims????????? and the rest?????--
15% of mexicans
25% are japanese
5% Valones
5% Vlames
hahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahaha
you need more geography sudies!!!!!!!!!

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline

 
Source http://hq.protestwarrior.com/?page=/featured/International/Dutch/dutchpw.php

L.C.
Member


Joined: Fri Nov 5th, 2004
Location: Washington USA
Posts: 365
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: 50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims.
LC ... Please. Do check the sources.


I have no way of knowing if the statement is true or not since I have not been to Belgium. It was a direct quote from from http://www.etherzone.com/2004/lieb112304.shtml so if you dispute the fact then take it up with the author. Keep in mind that it is not a race, but a religious philosophy so even Belgiums themselves may not recognize the face of Islam.

stick
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Im a capitalist 

[gun]

I'll kill you for a dollar!

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
L.C. wrote: Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: 50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims.
LC ... Please. Do check the sources.


I have no way of knowing if the statement is true or not since I have not been to Belgium. It was a direct quote from from http://www.etherzone.com/2004/lieb112304.shtml so if you dispute the fact then take it up with the author. Keep in mind that it is not a race, but a religious philosophy so even Belgiums themselves may not recognize the face of Islam.

When you post a link and information from within the link, you do acknowledge what is said, not? That's why I said "check the sources". From my own personal experience Belgium is surely NOT 50% Muslim .... maybe 5%, or 4% ... I live only some miles from the Belgian border; I hope that is enough for you.

L.C.
Member


Joined: Fri Nov 5th, 2004
Location: Washington USA
Posts: 365
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: 50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims.
LC ... Please. Do check the sources.


I have no way of knowing if the statement is true or not since I have not been to Belgium. It was a direct quote from from http://www.etherzone.com/2004/lieb112304.shtml so if you dispute the fact then take it up with the author. Keep in mind that it is not a race, but a religious philosophy so even Belgiums themselves may not recognize the face of Islam.

When you post a link and information from within the link, you do acknowledge what is said, not? That's why I said "check the sources". From my own personal experience Belgium is surely NOT 50% Muslim .... maybe 5%, or 4% ... I live only some miles from the Belgian border; I hope that is enough for you.


Ok I will take your word on that one fact because I don't know otherwise and it could even be a typo, but it still does not mean the whole article is off base. From what I am hearing from other Europeans is that the general trend is still a serious problem. Of course since you seem pretty far on the left I expect you to deny it because your scared of your own politically correct liberal shadow. The last thing a Liberal would do is pick up a gun and do something about it so I guess all you can do is complain when it is your head on the Islamic chopping block.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
Where Have All the Children Gone?

By Pavel Kohout
 Published 
 01/27/2005

In the third century AD there was a prophet called Mani. He preached a doctrine of conflict between Good and Evil. He saw the material world as the devil's creation. Marriage and motherhood was a grave sin in his view, since by bearing children people multiply the works of Satan. The Manichean ideal was to move mankind to a superterrestrial realm of Good by way of gradual extinction.




In the course of history, Manichaeism was ruthlessly eradicated as an heretical, ungodly doctrine. When looking at demographic statistics, however, one might think that the populations in developed countries have converted en masse to Manichaeism and decided to become extinct. The birth rate in most western countries has fallen bellow replacement level.

 

In the so-called "New Europe", the situation is even gloomier. According to UN projections, Latvia will lose 44 percent of its population by 2050 as a result of demographic trends. In Estonia, the population is expected to shrink by 52 percent, in Bulgaria 36 percent, in Ukraine 35 percent, and in Russia 30 percent. In comparison with these figures, the projected population decline in Italy (22 percent), the Czech Republic (17 percent), Poland (15 percent) or Slovakia (8 percent) looks like a small decrease. France and Germany will lose relatively little population, and the population of the United Kingdom will even see a slight growth -- thanks to immigrants.

 

Why is the birth rate falling?

 

The question of why fertility has been falling so dramatically in continental Europe has been food for thought for both demographers and economists. The answer must be looked for in several important factors, which, to further complicate matters, do not simply add up in their impact. Nevertheless, it can be said with a fair amount of certainty that the existence of pay-as-you-go pension systems has had a very negative impact on birth rate. The National Report on Family published by the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in August 2004 says:

 

"In terms of intergenerational solidarity, the importance of the child as an investment for material support in old age has been limited by the social security and pension insurance system, which has eliminated people's immediate dependence on children. The importance of the child's role in relation to its parents has transferred to the emotional sphere, which reduced the direct material indispensability of children in a family, while also allowing for them being replaced with certain substitutes bringing emotional satisfaction."

 

To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age. In Czech the word "vejminek" (a place in a farmhouse reserved for the farmer's old parents) is actually derived from a verb meaning "to stipulate": in the deed of transfer, the old farmer stipulated the conditions on which the farm was to be transferred to his son. Instead of an "intergenerational" policy, there used to be direct dependence of parents on their children. This meant that people had immediate economic motivation to have a sufficiently numerous and well-bred offspring - whereas today's anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions of all retirees in an utterly depersonalized manner.

 

This system enables huge numbers of "free riders" to receive more than what would correspond to their overall contribution in their productive life. Those with incomes way above the average, on the contrary, are penalized, as the system gives them less money than they contributed to it. This is referred to as the "solidarity principle". In terms of birth rate, this arrangement is discouraging for both the low-income group and the high-income one. The latter feel that they are not going to need children in the old age, while the former believe that they can't afford to have them.

 

Today, children no longer represent investments; instead, they have become pets - objects of luxury consumption. However, the pet market segment is very competitive. It is characteristic that the birth rate decline in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, was accompanied by soaring numbers of dog-owners in cities. While in the past dog-owners were predominantly retirees, today there are many young couples that have consciously decided to have a dog instead of a baby. These are mainly young professionals who have come to a conclusion (whether right or wrong) that they lack either time or money to have a child. Thus, they invest their emotional surpluses into animals.

 

Taxes are pivotal

 

State pensions systems eliminated the natural economic incentive to have children. At the same time, the welfare state is an enormously costly luxury that has to be financed from taxes. High payroll-tax and social security contributions reduce the earning capacity of people in fertile age. Thus, they push down birth rates as well.

 

A reader of the Wall Street Journal wrote in a letter on the issue:

 

"I am the son of a Pittsburgh steelworks worker. I was born at the end of the Second World War. I have three sisters. Our mother never went to work. After the experience of the Great Depression, our parents were reluctant to borrow; yet they could afford to own a house, and our father used to buy a new car once every three or four years. My parents paid for my university education and bought me my first car when I was twenty. We were by all standards part of the middle class, and I was proud of my parents' achievement. (…) Today both my parents have to go to work in order to maintain a middle-class living standard, due to the increase in taxation that has occurred in the past half-century. (…) This has produced a generation of children carrying a key around their necks, city gangs, and aggressive brats brought up by after-school child-care centers."

 

The tax burden in the United Stated has indeed grown significantly over the past 50 years. The birth rate has been falling proportionately, although not to the critical level that is now current in Europe. The birth rate in the US is nearing the replacement level -- about two children per woman. Even so, comparing to Europe, the United States still appears to be a confirmed and stable superpower.

 

"Even if we include immigration, the population of the original EU-12 will fall by 7.5 million over the next 45 years, according to the UN calculations. Since the times of the 'Black Death' epidemic in the fourteenth century, Europe has never seen such an extensive population decline," writes Niall Ferguson, a British historian. He also predicts that in 2000-2050, the US population will grow by 44 percent. It seems that the European Union will have to forget for good about its ambitious dreams of becoming a "counterbalance" to America.

 

The demographic trends in Europe are indeed worrying. In Italy, for instance, the birth rate has fallen to an average level of 1.2 children per woman. Why? A journalist from the Daily Telegraph describes the life of young Italians in the following terms:

 

"It is virtually impossible to make a living. Just take Rome. Life with a minimum of human dignity (a small rented apartment, occasional dinner in a restaurant) requires a monthly pay of 3,000 euros before taxation, which accounts for some 1,800 euros after tax. If in the Anglo-Saxon world a majority of adults is expected to live an independent life on their own salaries, in Italy this is often not the case. An incredible 70 percent of unmarried Italians aged between 25 and 29 live with their parents, where they benefit from subsidized housing and where their poor incomes amount to a handsome pocket money."

 

When a modern young European has to choose between setting up a family of his own and a comfortable life without children, he is very likely to pick the latter option -- unless he belongs to a social class which regards children chiefly as a source of social benefits. A high amount of taxation combined with ill-functioning labor and housing markets is a truly genocidal mix. That is the case of Italy, but also Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Its impact cannot be corrected by all sorts of government subsidies paid out to young families. On the contrary, under certain circumstances the benefits for families may even lead to a drop in birth rate.

 

The traditional model, which exists especially in Spain and Italy, but to a large extent also in East and Central Europe, emphasizes the successive steps in setting up a family. First, a young man graduates from a college or vocational school; then he secures his living, which is followed by marriage; and only then children are born. This succession not only conforms to social conventions but is also based on a profound economic logic: it is simply foolish to start having children before getting a living. The taboo of sex in Western cultures has profound economic reasons.

 

The troubles start when one link of this chain breaks. In contemporary Europe, the main problem lies in the second link: making a living. Unemployment among young graduates tends to be much higher than the average of the working-age population as a whole. In countries such as France, Spain, Finland, Greece or Italy, 20 to 30 percent of young people are unemployed. What birth rate can we expect, if a fifth or even a third of young population is unable to make a living due to a distorted labor market?

 

But there is another problem. The payroll-tax and social security contributions are up, while investments in capital equipment are made tax-advantageous. The government support of the existing families comes at the cost of heavier tax burden for young people who have not yet founded a family. The so-called "support for families" thus hinders the creation of new families, and effectively reduces birth rate. If a young unmarried person is left with mere pocket money after his salary has been taxed, he will hardly be able to make sufficient savings to set up a family. The politicians of most European countries are living in a reality gap if they cannot see this trivial economic connection.

 

The pay-as-you-go system and its inevitable collapse

 

Some people believe that there is nothing wrong with a low birth rate, as the planet is at any rate overpopulated. Yes, one cannot set the "right" amount of population for a country or a continent by "scientific" means. What we can determine, however, is which age structure of population is favorable, and which is disastrous. In a few decades, a large part of Europe will be dominated by a very unfavorable age structure, typical with an enormous increase in the number of retirement-aged people.

 

To be accurate, it is not yet clear at what age today's young people and children will retire -- if they retire at all. The pay-as-you-go pension systems will inevitably undergo a long and severe crisis, the result of which can, to a certain extent, be reckoned today. There are several scenarios, the most likely of which suggests that retirement age will gradually have to be raised. The most recent Insurance-Mathematic Report on Social Insurance produced by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in 2004 suggests that "the gradual raising of the age limit for the eligibility for old-age pension could substantially eliminate the impact of the expected ageing of the Czech population. It is also clear that a freezing of this age limit would lead to a sharp growth in the level of elderly dependency."

 

Translated into a simple and straightforward language, this means that retirement age will have to be constantly raised: at first to 65 years, then (sometime in the early 2030s) to 67, and so on. To stop this growth would drag the system relatively quickly into a crisis. In other words: a pay-as-you-go system may work for another few decades, before being gradually marginalized by the rise in retirement age. The pay-as-you-go system was a huge political and economic experiment; and the generation of today's children will witness its failure.

 

But perhaps people will just return to the 1880s, when in Bismarck's Germany the retirement age was 70 years -- with an average life expectancy of less than 50 years. If in 2050, for instance, the official retirement age becomes 90, with an average life expectancy around 80, then the pay-as-you-go system can be sustainable in the long term. But a good social security at an age of around 60 will be completely out of the question for those who are now children.

 

On the other hand, if the retirement age remains unchanged, the tax burden could eventually rise up to 70-75 percent of gross wages. In such a case, however, the younger and more educated portion of working-age population would undoubtedly migrate to countries with lower taxes: particularly to Britain, Ireland, or the United States. These countries also have much less trouble with their demographic structure. Over the next 50 years, the United States may hugely benefit from accepting a wave of emigrants who will have been chased out of Europe by high taxes -- and maybe not only high taxes.

 

The end of democracy in Europe?

 

The prophet Mani is dead. But another prophet's teaching is still very much alive. In 2002 the most common first name given to newborn babies was Mohamed. The name Osama finished at a handsome 12th position.

 

In the 1960s there were only about 350,000 North-African Muslims living in France, with some 1.25 million French living in North Africa. Since then, the notion of "colonialism" has completely reversed. There are almost no French living in North Africa, but the number of Muslims of African or Middle-Eastern origin in France is estimated at 4 to 10 million. The exact number of legal and illegal immigrants is unknown, for the sole reason that French statisticians are not allowed to collect information on ethnic and religious patterns of population.

 

Nevertheless, some estimates suggest that one in three births in France occurs in a Muslim family. That would explain, among other things, why France has a much higher birth rate (about 1.7 children per woman) than Spain or Italy. Stripped of this influence, the French birth rate would be around 1.2 children per woman, which is a figure similar to those in the countries of South and East Europe.

 

A Russian-Israeli journalist Shlomo Groman writes:

 

"Go to any child-care store in Vienna. Its clients will be predominantly Arabic, Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Black African. Viennese women never bear children -- they cherish their figures and careers instead. The Western-European pension systems made the bringing up of children less advantageous than social climbing and maximization of income."

 

Culture seems to play an even more crucial role than taxes or pension systems. The countries of the former Soviet Union are an interesting "demographic laboratory" in this respect. We have already mentioned Ukraine, Baltic States, and Russia. The situation in the Muslim republics -- Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan -- is completely different: almost all of them are living a population explosion. The living standard in these countries is close to that of Georgia or Armenia, i.e. poor. But Georgia and Armenia suffer from the same demographic shock as, for instance, the Baltic States. The difference lies in the traditionally Christian character of the latter countries. The position of women in society is perhaps a little different from that of the rich European countries, but comparing to Muslim countries these differences do not count much. In terms of birth rate, they are almost negligible. Armenia will lose a quarter of its population by 2050, while the population of the neighboring Azerbaijan will surge by a third.

 

The international demographic context will see huge changes: in 2050, Yemen will have more population than, for example, Germany. These people will quite understandably long for the standard of living that currently prevails in Europe. The immigration pressure on Europe will be immense. Given the European liberal laws on family reunification, the exodus from Middle East and North Africa will have enormous dimensions.

 

Instead of integration of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa into a majority European society, the opposite will occur: the immigrants will integrate the existing European culture into their own civilization. After some time, it will be their civilization that will become dominant. One does not have to be a supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen to feel a little anxious about that. It is not a problem of ethnics and their mingling. It is a matter of society, its values, and democracy as such. European tolerance competes with Islam, which is not always a religion of peace, as many Europeans would like to believe. Radical Islamic preachers openly condemn democracy. They interpret it not as a social system but as a pagan cult, which prefers the voices of people to the voice of God. This and other theories of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his conservative fellow-believers are proclaimed in many mosques throughout Europe.

 

If as a result of demographic trends a large part of future Europeans will have dark skin and go to mosque, why not? But if they become a threat to the European tradition of democracy and tolerance, it will be a tragedy.

 

The author is an associate of the Center for Economics and Politics (CEP), Prague.

Source http://techcentralstation.com/012705D.html 

the-darkside
Member


Joined: Thu Jan 6th, 2005
Location: Austria
Posts: 871
Status:  Offline

Instead of integration of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa into a majority European society, the opposite will occur: the immigrants will integrate the existing European culture into their own civilization. After some time, it will be their civilization that will become dominant. One does not have to be a supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen to feel a little anxious about that. It is not a problem of ethnics and their mingling. It is a matter of society, its values, and democracy as such. European tolerance competes with Islam, which is not always a religion of peace, as many Europeans would like to believe. Radical Islamic preachers openly condemn democracy. They interpret it not as a social system but as a pagan cult, which prefers the voices of people to the voice of God. This and other theories of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his conservative fellow-believers are proclaimed in many mosques throughout Europe.

 

If as a result of demographic trends a large part of future Europeans will have dark skin and go to mosque, why not? But if they become a threat to the European tradition of democracy and tolerance, it will be a tragedy

 

---------------------------------------------------------

don´t paint it so black.

for me i cannot see that in the future we will all have dark skin and go to mosque.

for example this is a little statistic taken from CIA report of my country:








Nationality:



noun: Austrian(s)
adjective: Austrian


Ethnic groups:



German 88.5%, indigenous minorities 1.5% (includes Croatians, Slovenes, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Roma), recent immigrant groups 10% (includes Turks, Bosnians, Serbians, Croatians) (2001)


Religions:



Roman Catholic 73.6%, Protestant 4.7%, Muslim 4.2%, other 0.1%, none 17.4%


Languages:



German (official nationwide), Slovene (official in Carinthia), Croatian (official in Burgenland), Hungarian (official in Burgenland)

so as you can see there is no need to panik.

statistic taken from

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/au.html

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
L.C. wrote: Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: Dutch wrote:
L.C. wrote: 50% of the population of Belgium is Muslims.
LC ... Please. Do check the sources.


I have no way of knowing if the statement is true or not since I have not been to Belgium. It was a direct quote from from http://www.etherzone.com/2004/lieb112304.shtml so if you dispute the fact then take it up with the author. Keep in mind that it is not a race, but a religious philosophy so even Belgiums themselves may not recognize the face of Islam.

When you post a link and information from within the link, you do acknowledge what is said, not? That's why I said "check the sources". From my own personal experience Belgium is surely NOT 50% Muslim .... maybe 5%, or 4% ... I live only some miles from the Belgian border; I hope that is enough for you.


Ok I will take your word on that one fact because I don't know otherwise and it could even be a typo, but it still does not mean the whole article is off base. From what I am hearing from other Europeans is that the general trend is still a serious problem. Of course since you seem pretty far on the left I expect you to deny it because your scared of your own politically correct liberal shadow. The last thing a Liberal would do is pick up a gun and do something about it so I guess all you can do is complain when it is your head on the Islamic chopping block.

Read my posts first before you start to make statements about me L.C. I do not see the use of "picking up a gun"; nor do I see it happening that my head is on "the Islamic chopping block".

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
Anglo wrote: betchamad wrote: Anglo wrote: betchamad wrote: Why christians haven't our own al-qaidas? <- No suggest anything,but just wonder why.I mean boom up few mosque is much better than yawling hatre on the street or interenet.
Maybe it's because real Christians (have you every met any) don't believe in blowing people up, irrespective of their religion. I am not a Christian but I thought the philosophy was about tolerance, understanding and "love thine enemy". Also what about "Vengeance is mine - I will repay" It's in the bible somewhere.

Best thing you can do is go to Kabul or somewhere and start the fight yourself.
So,you like to watching those mosque more and more appearing on christian's land?Maybe u living in londonstan do you?And "love own enemy" is NOT = "love God's enemy Satan"!
As I already said. I am not a Christian so whether the buildings are churches, mosques, buddhist or sikh temples means nothing to me. How have you come to the conclusion that Muslims = Gods enemy, Satan?
They,deny Jesus Christ is God,and insult Him just another prophrey,that = against God,= satan flower,we have responsibo to make them give up the sin,or,gone with their sin.End of the conversation.

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline


We need to use our sword and blood to defend every inchs land in Church,those islamic barbarious pagan can't take our land by fire and sword during the whole medieval,they can't take our land by migrate and influerence for ever future either.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
betchamad wrote:

We need to use our sword and blood to defend every inchs land in Church,those islamic barbarious pagan can't take our land by fire and sword during the whole medieval,they can't take our land by migrate and influerence for ever future either.

How many times a day are you called a "racist" or a "religious fanatic", betchamad? Just wondering.

betchamad
Member
 

Joined: Thu Dec 23rd, 2004
Location:  
Posts: 1353
Status:  Offline
Europa only should allow Christian migrate,no matter about their skin or education level or rich/poor,but must be christian first.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline

lasion2
Member
 

Joined: Tue Feb 1st, 2005
Location:  
Posts: 92
Status:  Offline
Dutch wrote: .

How many times a day are you called a "racist" or a "religious fanatic", betchamad? Just wondering.

 

certainly wouldn't be called a good writer.  Someone who can't take the time to formulate a coherent thought and create a followable sentence shouldn't be listened to anyway.

Republican 14
Member


Joined: Fri Jul 30th, 2004
Location: The Constitution Party Of, California USA
Posts: 2623
Status:  Offline
Euro wrote: Scary because it's true.

Euro
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline

kernal_panic
Guest
 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status:  Offline
LuLu8769 wrote: NiteHawk wrote: Someone once said something like "As you sow, so shall ye reap". They're getting exactly what they deserve.

On the brighter side, when France is finally overtaken and controlled by the Muslims, at least they'll cease to be the surrender monkeys that they have always been. Muslims have alot more in the "ballbag" category than any Frenchman has ever even thought of having.
look at it this way, eventually they will be needing the United States to get them out of the pickle they are working themselves in and as usual, the US will step in and save their sorry butts again.

 

um not. i'm not shedding my blood for them. we've done it twice and all we got for it was a golden shower.

Dutch
Member
 

Joined: Mon Jan 24th, 2005
Location: The Deep South, Netherlands
Posts: 4188
Status:  Offline
Republican 14 wrote: Euro wrote: Scary because it's true.
Just wondering: why do you think that?

lasion2
Member
 

Joined: Tue Feb 1st, 2005
Location:  
Posts: 92
Status:  Offline
kernal_panic wrote:
 

um not. i'm not shedding my blood for them. we've done it twice and all we got for it was a golden shower.

 

despite the fact they shed blood for us and our independence?

Free speech & free membership. Profanity prohibited.
Spammers beware: ads cost US 5000 per post or PM plus our legal fees to collect it.

Dedicated volunteer moderators make this site possible! They're not representatives of this company (except admin).
Account disabled? If you break site rules we may ban you. Email mods if in error. For legal email click terms.

Meet @OurPlace.com - LLC about us/*site use terms - Please link your site to ours! We're a big board.


Powered by WowBB 1.7 - Copyright © 2003-2006 Aycan Gulez