I read Robert Spencer's two weblogs (Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch) on a daily basis, so I was pleasently surprised (and a bit flattered) when a few days ago he dropped a comment over here at the Jawa. An essay of his appears in today's Front Page Mag:

The problem, in short, is not the race, but the ideology of Muslim immigrants. For over thirty years, besotted EU officials have concluded pact after pact with the Arab League that made for massive Muslim immigration into Europe without assimilation. Would the new European Muslims accept European pluralism? That was assumed — betraying a shocking naivete and ignorance of what Islam has historically taught about the nature of society and the proper relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The problem is not racism, but precisely a clash of civilizations, or a clash between two radically opposing views of how society should be ordered. Another news item from Holland last week vividly illustrated that fact: when Dutch artist Chris Ripke commemorated van Gogh by painting a mural featuring the words “Thou shalt not kill,” a local mosque leader complained to police. The mural, you see, was “racist.” The police obediently sandblasted away the offensive message.

Patel insists that Hizb is no threat to the west, but part of it. But he adds that the west "needs to understand what is really an inevitable matter, and that is that Islam is coming back, the Islamic caliphate is going to be implemented in the world very soon ... The Muslim people need to realise that the way in which they will restore a form of dignity and bring civilisation back to the Islamic world is to establish a modern caliphate."

The call to re-establish the caliphate, the single Islamic state that existed for a millennium and a half, until the end of the Ottoman empire in 1924, forms the thrust of the group's message. But its call for Muslims to be strong is not just political; it is also religious: "Secularism has failed the world" declares a Hizb poster.

Bringing the caliphate back will not be easy: at one debate on the future of Iraq, held just off Brick Lane, an American journalist warned the audience that America, China and India would never tolerate an Islamic state "strung like a belt across the world. There would have to be a response."

Posted by: Rusty at 02:22 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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