]". . . in our opposition to the worldview of Islam, we confront a civilzation with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and fourteenth-century hordes are pouring into our world." (Sam Harris, The End of Faith).
For anyone out there naive enough to still think that Islam is just a religion like the others and that our western values are not under attack, consider some of the latest developments.
France and Canada are two of the western democracies with rapidly-growing immigrant populations of Muslims.
Regarding France, in a recent article entitled “Laïcité: un héritage en péril” (Secularism: an endangered heritage) (all translations mine) in the Jan-February 2007 issue of Historia Thématique Daniel Lefeuvre, a professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Paris and Michel Renard, co-author of “L’Histoire de l’islam et des musulmans en France” 2006, clearly set out the growing danger of Islam and Muslim hostility to the fundamental values of the western democracies that have received them. And the first value they attack is secularism and the separation of Church and State.
One incident after another is recorded. Gangs of young muslim thugs circulate in French schools “enforcing” Islamic dress codes on young women of Muslim background. This, incidentally was one of the principal reasons France passed a law banning the wearing of ALL religious symbols, (not just the Muslim head-scarf). The law, as draconian as it may seem, is actually a way of protecting female Muslims in France from this kind of bullying.
Or what about cases of Muslim students physically attacked for the “crime” of eating a sandwich during Ramadan?
Or what about French high schools where the cafeteria sells only “halal;” meat? And where any non-Muslim French student who dares to bring in something like a pork sandwich risks physical attack?
Or what about the demands that the circumcised Muslim students cannot change in the same locker room as the “impure” French students?
In the emergency wards and obstetrics wards of French hospitals, male doctors have been assaulted by Muslim husbands for coming to the aid of women, some of whom were in serious need of immediate attention. In one case, the doctor was physically thrown down and told “You are in Muslim territory here!” (The hospital is in France!)
In Canada, we have as many examples. A Muslim trying for his driver’s licence refuses to accept a female employee administering the test because he will not accept a woman in the front seat with him. Can you imagine if someone said they refused to have a black or a Jew or a Catholic in the front seat?
In Toronto, a Mulsim woman art student refuses to draw or paint nudes, although this is a required part of the course. The painting of nudes is an integral part of western art. Do the values and traditions of the culture this woman has voluntarily moved to mean nothing to her?
In History classes, Muslim students refuse to learn about the Holocaust, alleging that it is nothing but an inventiion of the “Zionist lobby”.
In France, Muslim female teachers are regularly told by male students that they should be in the home, and that they have no business talking to males.
In cities like Amsterdam, where gays and lesbians have been generally safe and accepted, there is a growing crescendo of violence and attacks against them by gangs of Muslim immigrant thugs.
As Lefeuvre and Renard conclude in their article, France fought a “thirty years’ war” ending in 1905 to get the Catholic Church to accept separation of Church and State. Modern France (and I would say western democracies in general) now face the choice of defeding this value or abandoning it.
As Elie Barnavi says in “Religions meurtrières” (Murderous Religions, 2006)“We must stand and hold the line at certain basic principles that we will neither debate nor compromise on, and from which we will allow no exceptions: Here, freedom of belief is an individual right, and religion is a matter for the free choice of the individual. . . . . The Republic has been a good girl, but she must now learn to expose her claws. She must not only forbid that her laws be broken, but also that her ethic be embraced.”
IT IS TIME FOR NOT ONLY FRANCE BUT WESTERN DEMOCRACIES TO WAKE UP!