Saturday, December 04, 2004

Sharia in Strasbourg?

The other day, I stated there were four Arab television stations in my Switzerland hotel room. I was wrong. There were six: Al-Jazerra, along with the state networks of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia (not Qatar). By comparison, there were only four English-language stations - three if you ignore the witless MTV Europe.

In Commentary magazine, David Pryce-Jones examines "The Islamization of Europe?":
In the opinion of Bassam Tibi, an academic of Syrian origins who lives in Germany, Europeans are facing a stark alternative: “Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized.” Going still farther, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis has speculated that the clash may well be over by the end of this century, at which time, if present demographic trends continue, Europe itself will be Muslim.
The laissez-faire Europeans may need to take an iron-fist approach to the Islamics who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and stoned to death a Tunisian woman:
Days before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to police.

Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific “lapidation” of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.
The Europeans (or the Americans) cannot ban Islam, but instead could insist on hard-line positions on sharia-inspired crime and fundamental civil rights for women. That might be enough to turn the "Islamization of Europe" into the "Europization of Islam."

4 comments:

nikita demosthenes said...

Sorry to go off-topic - but have you seen this??

2004 Weblog Awards: Liberal Blogs Admit CheatingFrom this LGF post:

Re: Daily Kos and other liberal blogs are now officially CHEATING on the 2004 Wizbang Web Awards:

* * * *

Some comments from Kos Readership :

This poll [2004 Wizbang Web Awards] is so non-scientific it's funny. Not only is it not scientific, it's poorly coded ... as in, worse than Diebold. I've voted a couply thousand times today thanks to a a little PERL script I wrote (posted above). I'll get Atrios and JMM some votes once DailyKos moves into 1st

By the way, that Perl script rocks. I turned it into a 200-vote loop voting once a second. Let's see if they find me out. Heh heh heh.

* * * *
Go see for yourself. The liberal blogs just opened-up big leads in the Wizbang 2004 Web Awards under "Best Overall Blog."

nikita demosthenes said...

Hmmm-

It looks like LGF is fighting fire with fire. Look at the top spot & then refresh the page a few times...

I guess lizards make better techies than lefties-

Anonymous said...

Lapidation - why not stoning?

Eric said...

I'm not sure if Turkey is backsliding or evolving - there is an excellent article on Turkey in this month's Atlantic magazine.

The entry of Turkey into the EU would be very good. Therefore, the French will probably block it.