Below is an extract from an interview in which Argentinian historian Mariano Fazio explains the positive aspects of secularisation, from a Christian viewpoint, and why secularisation rose out of the Christian world. Professor Fazio is the head of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He recently published a book called “A History of Contemporary Ideas: a reading of the process of secularisation”. Extract:

MercatorNet: In your recent book, you distinguish between “strong” secularisation and “weak” secularisation? What do you mean by this?

Mariano Fazio: “Strong” secularisation implies that man has absolute autonomy. That is, it contends that man, and more generally speaking, earthly realities, are self-sufficient. They have no need for transcendence, for God. By “weak” secularisation I mean the growing awareness since the 16th century of the relative autonomy of the secular world. The distinction is between “absolute autonomy”, as represented by Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, and “relative autonomy”, and “relative autonomy”, as understood by the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, especially in the document Gaudium et Spes. The latter means that earthly realities have their own laws, but that at the same time, these laws ultimately have their source in God.

MercatorNet: Is it possible to see a positive side to secularisation?

Mariano Fazio: From a Christian standpoint, the positive aspect of secularisation is “declericalisation”. Let me explain. Clericalism asserts that there is no distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order, between political power and spiritual power. This clericalism was a common feature of the Middle Ages. Modernity as “weak” secularisation implies that we are applying the Gospel injunction to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.

[..]
MercatorNet: It seem curious that secularisation sprang from within Christendom, and not in, say India or Saudi Arabia. How can this be the case?

Mariano Fazio: The doctrine of creation, one of the pillars of Christianity, underlies secularisation correctly understood. The world has been created by God and God himself has given it natural laws. God has given reason to men so that they can discover the structure of reality. It also makes it possible to access the deepest realities of life through faith. Harmony between faith and reason — a key theme of the teaching of Benedict XVI — leads to respect for the relative autonomy of earthly realities.

True, in traditionally Christian societies a radical separation between faith and reason has often appeared. This has led to secularisation in its “strong” sense, ie, to laicism and moral relativism. But such are the risks of freedom.

In other religions this is not even possible. They tend to be sceptical about man’s capacity for reason and man’s role is merely to accept revelation; there is no room for rational inquiry. This is what happens in Islamic fundamentalism (which need not be said of all Islam): citizenship in the political order is equated to citizenship in the heavenly order and political laws are derived directly from religious revelation. In such an environment, the possibility of secularisation is eliminated by a religious totalitarianism which denies the fundamental human rights.

[..]

You can read the whole thing at MercatorNet.

Taqiyya: easy as ABC.

Yvonne Ridley ducks, weaves, splutters, lies, goes berzerk on the ABC’s AM radio program last Saturday:

JANE COWAN: Can you categorically condemn suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: You know, the greatest purveyors of suicide bombing are the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist organization, largely of the Hindu faith; I’m not really quite sure why it is being attached specifically towards Muslims.

JANE COWAN: But if you’ve been reported as saying you support suicide bombing, would you now here condemn it, no matter who perpetrates it?

YVONNE RIDLEY: I condemn shoddy journalism and poor research, and people like you should know better than to try and tackle people like me over things that have allegedly been said or not said.

ANE COWAN: But this is an opportunity for you to clarify your views, and …

YVONNE RIDLEY: I’ve clarified them. What don’t you understand?

Listen, I have told you exactly what I have said, now you tell me why you need me to condemn something that is as plain as, you know, as the language that I’ve just said. What didn’t you understand about what I have just said?

JANE COWAN: My question is, do you or do you not support suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Of course I don’t.

Feel free to read the whole thing, just to make sure she is not being taken out of context and that it still makes no sense what-so-ver. There is not much more to it.

Anyhow, of course she doesn’t support suicide bombing. The term that is. She much prefers the more glorifying description of martyrdom operations:

A: Yvonne Ridley – “Muslims have lost confidence since September 11th. Something as simple as suicide bombers being martyrs is being denied by prominent sheikhs. The dictionary definition of a martyr is a person who gives up their life for a cause – suicide bombers are martyrs.”

Now, about that bit on the Tamil Tigers and why oh why, as Yvonne wonders indignantly above, is suicide bombing associated with Islam.

Suicide bombing: 1980 – 2001

Lets start with the following numbers on Wikipedia and go from there:

“Lebanon saw the first bombing, but it was the LTTE Tamil Tigers who perfected the tactic and inspired its use elsewhere [2]. Their Black Tiger unit has committed between 76 and 168 (estimates vary) suicide bombings since 1987.

That first statement is a strange one to make, considering the Black Tigers carried out their first suicide bombing in 1987, by which time they were already common place in Lebanon, for example the suicide car bombing of the Iraqi embassy by Islamists in 1981, the bombing of the U.S. embassy by Hezbollah in 1983 and the bombing of the American and French barracks, also in 1983 and also by Hezbollah and Iran. In the least the word “bombing” above should be plural. Further, for a decade after 1987, most of the suicide bombings perpetrated by groups other than the Tamil Tigers were carried out by groups originating either in Lebanon or Israel, ie Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Brigades. Did Hamas need inspiration from Sri Lanka, when they already had plenty from next door in Lebanon, where they were also involved in the Lebanese uncivil free-for-all?

A quick look at those numbers on Black Tiger bombings – “between 76 and 168″.

The lower number, 76, is taken from Robert Pape’s book, “Dying to Win”:

Pape says that the group [the Tamil Tigers] accounted for 76 of 315 suicide attacks carried out around the world from 1980 through 2003, compared with 54 for the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and 27 for Islamic Jihad.

The higher number, 168, is taken from this report by Jane’s Intelligence Review (note these numbers stop just before the start of the intifada in Israel in 2000, see more recent figures from that region further down):

NUMBER OF SUICIDE ATTACKS BETWEEN 1980 – 2000

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 168
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52
Hamas in Israel 22
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey 15
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 8
Al Quaida in East Africa 2
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in Croatia 1
The Islamic Group (IG) in Pakistan 1
Barbar Khalsa International (BKI) in India 1
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria 1

What we have above is 10 groups out of which 7 are Islamic, 2 are Marxists-Leninist nationalists (the LTTE and the PKK, although the latter began reclaiming their Islamic identity from the late 1980s on) and one Sikh separatist group, BKI. What we also have, by the way, is numbers pretty damn different to Robert Pape, whom everyone (and especially Islamist apologists) seems to quote, usually out of context, as an expert on suicide bombing.

The list from Jane’s seem far from exhaustive, for example the suicide bombing of the Iraqi embassy in 1981 in Beirut was carried out by the Islamic Dawa Party, which is a militant Shiite party, to which the current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs. Others were also carried out in Lebanon by groups like Amal and even the schitzophrenically fascist Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who are credited with the first suicide bombing by a woman. Overall however, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman calculates that 31 out of the 35 groups that have carried out suicide bombings since 1980 are Islamic (2005 figure).

Suicide bombing since 2001.

Looking at the numbers above, Yvonne would have had a point had she made her statement, often repeated by Islamist apologists, 5 or more years ago. Since then however the picture has changed completely, no matter how you look at it. As the number below will show, 95% – 97% of the suicide attacks in the last 5-6 years have been carried out by Islamists, with a large number against civilian targets.

In 2002 a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka and the suicide bombings ceased, until renewed hostilities in 2004. In the three years since 16 suicide bombings have been carried out by the Tamil Tigers. Taking the 168 from the Jane’s article, and adding the 16 recent one, plus 7 that occured between October 2000 (when the Jane’s article was published) and the ceasefire and we get a total of 191 in 20 years. Note however that most although certainly not all, of these were against military targets.

In the meantime the Second intifada started in Israel in September 2000. In 2002, as a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka, the intifada was at its peak – 42 suicide bombings were carried out by Palestinian Islamists that year, killing 228 people. Dozens more followed since. About 130 suicide bombings have been carried out in Israel in the last 15 years, about 75 of those by Hamas, 22 by Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades and 32 by Islamic Jihad. The number would be much higher had it not been for the excellent work of the Israeli security services and the security wall. And then came Iraq. There were about 30 suicide bombings in Iraq in 2003. Then two to three times that in 2004. In 2005 the numbers went off the chart, as this Washington Post article from July 2005 that I’ve already quoted above documents:

The numbers in Iraq alone are breathtaking: About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In May, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in the war-torn country — nearly as many as the Israeli government has documented in the conflict with Palestinians since 1993.

Hundreds more have followed in Iraq since. A November 2006 estimate by David Cook put the number at 540, with a death toll between 16,000 and 18,000. Stratfor put the number above 500 for 2005 alone (subscription only). Dozens more have followed in other countries. In the 1980x only three countries experienced suicide attacks – Labanon, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. By 2002 this had risen to 15, including countries as far and wide as Croatia and Argentina, Russia (23 suicide attacks since 2000, 6 against civilian targets) and Algeria. The number is now above 30 (hint: the Tamil Tigers have not expanded their area of operation). The Tamil Tigers have long been superseded by the various Islamist groups in terms of number bombings and even more so in number of casualties, especially civilian casualties. Islamist terrorist groups are responsible for the most deadly suicide attacks – at least the top 10, the suicide attacks that killed the most civilians – again easily the top 10, and the attacks that used the most bombers at one time. The genocidal Islamist terrorist organization Lashkar e-Toiba pioneered the use of suicide squads (fedayeen) in their operations. Just in 2005 Islamist groups in Iraq alone carried out more attacks than all non-Islamist groups in the last 30 years combined, the civilian death toll has also been proportionally larger. Islamists have flown planes into building killing thousands of civilians, blown themselves up to kill hundreds on trains, in mosques, and in crowded markets, walked into weddings, cafes, nightclubs and onto buses killing dozens or more. All the while they were screaming “Allahu Akbar!”, fantasizing of virgin flesh and yearning to please Allah. In the background of the carnage Islamic clerics have been issuing fatwas that support these suicide attacks, not only against military targets, but also against civilians. Is it clear yet why the question is being asked specifically in relation to Muslims yet, Yvonne?

Perhaps it isn’t, after all, this is Yvonne Ridley we’re talking about, so lets continue.

So how about your pals, the Taliban then, who claim to have 2000 suicide bombers (and 10,000 fighters) ready for the imminent spring offensive? OK, we all know thats bullshit, but even if we go with the much lesser estimate given by the commander of US forces in Afghanistan Major General David Rodriguez, who says they have more like 500 suicide bombers and 3,000 fighters, thats still a substantial number. Potentially record breaking even. Speaking of breaking records, lets see – Afghanistan had 25 bombings in 2004, 139 in 2005 and about 30 so far this year, targeting not only military targets but also civilian buses and markets, with 84% of the victims of these attacks being civilians (Feb 2007 figure). Add to that their 8 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year so far (ie not even looking at previous years) we get a total of 201, thus making the Taliban greater “purveyors of suicide bombing” than the Tamil Tigers (in 3 years versus 20). And all they are trying to do is catch up with their friends in Iraq.

Speaking of Pakistan, last week the chief cleric of the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid] in Islamabad had this to say:

“Our youth will commit suicide attacks, if the government impedes the enforcement of the Sharia and attacks Lal Masjid and its sister seminaries,” Maulana Abdul Aziz, the in-charge of the mosque said in his Friday sermon. The fresh suicide bombing threat is stated to be the strongest given so far by the hard-line clerics of the Lal Masjid, intensifying fear among Islamabad residents.

How about Morocco, where 4 bombers were killed or killed themselves yesterday and another detonated himself last month, his exposition leading the the uncovering of a plot involving at least 12 bombers? These bombers were working in Casablanca, by the way, where 45 people died in the Islamist suicide bombings in 2003 carried out by 14 bombers from the Al-Qaeda linked group Salafia Jihadia. The list goes on and on – London, Bali, Moscow, Riyadh. Islamists, Islamists, Islamists, Islamists. And the latest news – a twin suicide car bombing in Algeria, that killed 30 people. What kind of group may the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) be? Oh sorry, I see they’ve recently changed their name to the Al-Qa’ida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

The “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”.

No martyrdom-seeking roll call can be complete without the “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”:

In an earlier interview with Parto-Sokhan, Jaafari [commander of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison”] announced that more than 50,000 individuals had been enlisted in the Iranian military garrison opened to recruit and train volunteers for “martyrdom-seeking operations”.

He added that several military divisions of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” had already been established in several of Iran’s provinces and others were presently being formed to “confront threats by America and Israel”.

The leader of the glorious Iranian bullshit-spinning entity praised his death-seeking fanatical compatriots a couple of weeks ago: “Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future”, brimming with pride that Iran is capable of recruiting “hundreds of suicide bombers a day”.

In the name of Islam.

Perhaps its time to hear from a Muslim, here’s Yasmin Al-Mas in “Something has gone wrong” where she looks at challenging the Islamic justification for suicide terror, used by the Salafi-Jihadists, Q-News Magazine, November 2005:

Worldwide, in merely three years after 9/11, the number of suicide bombings in the name of Islam had increased three-fold than it had over two decades whilst the number of people killed had doubled. Suicide bombing in the name of Islam had now occurred in 26 countries: Lebanon [1981], Kuwait [1983], Argentina [1992], Panama, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [1994], Pakistan, Croatia [1995], Saudi Arabia [1996], Tanzania, Kenya [1998], Yemen, Chechnya [2000], USA, Kashmir, Afghanistan [2001], Tunisia, Indonesia, Algeria [2002], Morocco, Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey [2003], Uzbekistan and Spain [2004] and the United Kingdom [2005].

The bigger picture.

Here’s Walid Phares, with some more numbers (Feb 2007):

Asked to estimate the number of jihadist insurgents worldwide, Phares had some unsettling news.

“It depends on what the duty of such people [insurgents] would be,” he told NewsMax. “Suicide bombers would be lower in number than of those who will fight, those who will spy, those who will provide funds. There are about from 5% to 6% to 8% jihadist sympathizers in the Muslim world, which is 1.1 billion, so we are talking about 50 to 60 million who sympathize with these ideas.

“They are all not committed, but out of those you have probably 1% of people who would fight. That’s an army of 1 million. Among those, if you want to go to the most narrow dimension, there are about 100,000 suicide bombers around the world. For example, in Iraq there are probably 5,000, in Iran another 8,000 to 10,000, and within Hezbollah, 2,000.

“There is a pool of 100,000 people who have received this jihadist ideology and could be recruited for suicide bombing. Internationally, from an operational standpoint, there are somewhere around 5,000, and that’s a huge number of suicide bombers. Look at England, for example the operation of [July 7, 2005 -- the subway bombings] involved eight terrorists The next year, in the operation that wanted to bring down the airliners, there were about 50. So it grows geometrically.”

Why you should verify what you read on Wikipedia.

While we’re on the subject of “shoddy” reporting, take a look at this Wikipedia article on the Tamil Tigers:

LTTE had carried out more suicide bombings than any other organization on the face of the earth. According to the experts at Janes securities, between 1980 to 2000, LTTE had carried out a total number of 1,680 suicide attacks on civilians, political, and military targets. The number of suicide attacks easily exceeded the combine total of Hizbullah and Hamas suicide attacks carried out during the same period.[48]

Reference 48 is the Jane’s article which I quoted above. As you can see the original Jane’s article seems to be missing that extra 0.

UPDATE: I compiled the data above into the table below.

Top perpetrators of suicide attacks since 1980.

Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) 500-800
Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan 200+
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 190+
Hamas in Israel 75
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52
Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades 32
Chechen groups in Russia 23
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 22
Al Qaeda outside of Iraq 20+
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey 15

Note: Where I am not quoting other sources, for attacks where multiple attackers were involved I am adding up the number og targets attacked, not the number of attackers. Thus for the Casablanca 2003 bombings, there were 5 targets attacked, with 14 bombers, 12 of which detonated successfully, so I am counting that as 5. I wanted to avoid skewing the numbers by counting it as either 1 or 14.

Regarding the Al Qaeda in Iraq estimate, in 2006 Ayman Al Zawahiri, claimed Al Qaeda carried out 800 suicide bombings in Iraq. Al Zawahiri is of course exaggerating, but the total number of attacks over the last 4 years would be approaching that number. Also according to a report from the Gulf Research Center (see last link), there is four groups other than Al Qaeda that have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq. The same report also states that suicide attacks in Afghanistan increased 750% between 2001 and 2006, jumping from 21 to 180, suggesting a total far higher than what I’ve stated above, so as you can see I am playing it safe with the numbers.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, The Pet Haven, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, , Bumpshack, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

This poster was dropped in mailboxes in the department (which is like an English county) of Seine-Saint-Denis, northeast of Paris, where 1/4 to 1/3 of the population is now Muslim:

The heading reads:

“They Only Stop Troublemakers!”

Under the hat it reads:

“Deliberately led into traps, forced to bow before youths still holding a Molotov cocktail in their hands (knowing that this low life will be set free the next day), forced to watch youths break windows in the name of Allah, and then being accused of ‘brutality’ because of a simple ID verification…”

Followed by:

Support Your National Police

before the inevitable civil war and before… that!

Note what “that” (ca) is at the bottom of the picture.

Via Cassandra in the comments.

I wonder how many “no-go zones” France has now?

A great three part essay on slavery in the Islamic world, entitled “Should The Islamic World Apologize For Slavery?” has been posted at Western Resistance. Extract:

[..] Modern Western nations’ involvement in the black slave trade lasted little more than 350 years, yet Islam has been involved in the black slave trade for more than 14 centuries, from the time of its founder. Mohammed owned black slaves, and in countries like the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the black slave trade continues. According to Murray Gordon, the amount of black slaves taken by Muslims amounted to 11 million, though this figure is probably an underestimate. While white (and Arab) slave merchants bought and sold black people from the west coast of Africa, Muslim slavers in north Africa also engaged in a trade of white Christians, a trade that politically correct history books conveniently ignore. [TOD: some two million European Christians were enslaved by some accounts]

[..]
According to Bernard Lewis, author of Race and Slavery in the Middle East: “Black slaves were brought into the Islamic world by a number of routes – from West Africa across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia, from Chad across the desert to Libya, from East Africa down the Nile to Egypt, and across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Turkish slaves from the steppe-lands were marketed in Samarkand and other Muslim Central Asian cities and from there exported to Iran, the Fertile Crescent, and beyond. Caucasians, of increasing importance in the later centuries, were brought from the land bridge between the Black Sea and the Caspian and were marketed mainly in Aleppo and Mosul.”

Slavery is advocated in the Koran. Though Mohammed states that freeing slaves gains merit, he made no prohibitions against acquiring slaves. Women and girl slaves could be gained as “booty” in raids. Sura 33, verse 50 states: “Prophet, we have made lawful for you…. the slave-girls whom God has given you as booty.” These could be raped at will by Muslims who in no way contradicted the Koran – Suras 23:1 and 70:22 state that it is lawful to have sex with slave girls. The Hadiths are filled with references to slaves owned by Mohammed and his associates. In one Hadith Mohammed intervened to reverse one man’s emancipation of six slaves. By casting lots, Mohammed denied freedom to four of them.

[..] According to Bernard Lewis (page 38) the Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) wrote: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage.”

Such attitudes still exist in Mauritania and also Sudan, where Arab elites enslave black people from the Dinka and the Shilluk tribes who live in southern Sudan. Since 1983 when the northern government of Simon Deng had been a Shilluk child slave, abducted to live in northern Sudan by an Arab. In May 2006 he went on a fact-finding mission to southern Sudan. He said that “villages are still being burnt, women are still being raped, and people are being sold into slavery.” Mr Deng now lives as a US citizen in New York.

Another Sudanese-born black man who is now a US citizen is Francis Bok. He came from a Catholic family in a Dinka village. In 1986, when aged seven, he was abducted by Arabs from the north who decapitated adults at a local market and stole the children. For ten years Mr Bok was a slave in a Muslim household – forced to convert to Islam – until he ran away. Some Dinka slaves who do not convert to Islam have had their Achilles tendons cut.

In 2000, a UNICEF representative estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 children were still slaves in Sudan. The Dinka Committee in 2001 claimed that 14,000 children have been abducted since 1983. In Sudan, as elsewhere, child slaves are subjected to cruel punishments.

[..] In 2003, it was revealed that a Saudi Sheik, Saleh Al-Fawzan, said: “Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.

If you only read one part, read the third, which describes how slavery continues to this day in some Muslim cultures.

“A Mauritanian woman and child stand inside a makeshift shelter in the Keube slum in the capital Nouakchott in this March 13, 2007 file picture. Herding camels or goats out in the sun-blasted dunes of the Sahara, or serving hot mint tea to guests in the richly carpeted villas of Nouakchott, Mauritanian slaves serve their masters and are passed on as family chattels from generation to generation. Reuters correspondent Ed Stoddard reports that U.S. evangelical Christians are united behind a new campaign to end modern slavery around the world. (Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)”

But there is a bit of surprisingly good news coming out of Mauritania – their recent elections have been deemed free and fair by observers, showing promise of a real transition to democracy, following a military coup in 2005. Also the UN Economic Commission for Africa has just released a report ranking Mauritania as the best economically performing country in Africa in 2006.

Find out the real origins of the infidel holiday of April Fools!

Another excellent instalment from Pascal Bruckner in the Multiculturalism debate on signandsight.com (my initial post on the debate here):

[..]

At the heart of the issue is the fact that in certain countries Islam is becoming Europe\’s second religion. As such, its adherents are entitled to freedom of religion, to decent locations and to all of our respect. On the condition, that is, that they themselves respect the rules of our republican, secular culture, and that they do not demand a status of extraterritoriality that is denied other religions, or claim special rights and prerogatives such as unisex swimming pools and separate gym or other classes. A tense international context surrounds this problem. Today a fundamentalist wave is bearing down on Europe, seeking to re-Islamise the Muslim communities accused of tepidness, and ultimately to place our entire continent of infidels under the law of the Prophet. This proselytism is carried out by all kinds of revanchist groups, the Saudi Wahhabists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, all of whom rival each other in zeal. The birth of an enlightened European Islam takes on importance in this context, one which can serve as a model for Muslims all over the world.

I repeat: two directions lie open to us here. The first, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, stresses strict differences, basing itself on the respect for religious adherence. Here multicultural Canada is the key reference. The other, more French in inspiration, is based on an equally strict separation of church and state, and the subordination of beliefs to civil law. Even if both models are currently undergoing a crisis, as Timothy Garton Ash rightly notes, it seems to me that in all respects the principle of secularism remains the best compass.

Modern France was formed in the struggle against the Catholic Church, and remains extremely sensitive to religious fanaticism. And I maintain that Jacques Chirac, supported by the commission headed by Bernhard Stasi, was right to put a law to parliament on the banning of religious symbols in school and public administrations. This initiative passed easily, with few opposing voices. Supporters included a majority of French Muslim women keen to safeguard their emancipation, among them Fadela Amara (news story), founder with Mohammed Abdi of the association \”Ni putes, ni soumises\” in the suburbs (more here).

\”In conflicts between the weak and the strong, liberty helps suppress the weak, while the law protects them\” said Abbé Grégoire at the time of the revolution. It\’s so true that many English, Dutch and German politicians, shocked by the excesses that the wearing of the Islamic veil has given way to, now envisage similar legislation curbing religious symbols in public space. The separation of the spiritual and corporeal domains must be strictly maintained, and belief must confine itself to the private realm.

It\’s not enough to condemn terrorism. The religion that engenders it and on which it is based, right or wrong, must also be reformed. Can one understand the Inquisition, the witches burned at the stake, the Crusades and the condemnation of heretics without referring to the dogmas of Roman Catholicism? The time has come to do for Islam what was done for Christianity as of the 15th century: by bending it to modernity and adapting it to contemporary mentalities. It is too often forgotten that the fight against the Church in Europe was one of outrageous sectarianism, with unheard of violence on both sides. Cathedrals were burned; priests, bishops and nuns were hung or guillotined; the clergy\’s goods were confiscated. But in the end this fight liberated us from the tutelage of the cassock, radically limiting ambitions on the part of Rome and the various Protestantisms to direct the social order and govern not only people\’s consciences, but also their bodies. There is no reason why Islam, as soon as it enters the Occidental democratic sphere, should escape secularism and enjoy a favour that is denied to other confessions.

[..]

Read the whole thing.

I mentioned Bernard Lewis’ (“the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East.”) speech at the AIE dinner recently, you can read the full text here.

Here are some editted extracts the AIE also posted for those lacking the patience to read the whole thing, “Islam and Europe”:

The Muslim attack on Christendom . . . has gone through three phases. The first is from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond. It was then that the Muslims conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa–all at that time part of the Christian world–and went beyond into Europe, conquering a sizable part of southwestern Europe and occupying for a while parts of France.

After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part, but not all, of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land. . . .

That was not the end of the matter. The Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time conducted not by Arabs and Moors, but by Turks and Tatars. They conquered Anatolia and Russia and captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans. Twice they conquered half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna. Barbary corsairs from North Africa–well known to historians of the United States–were raiding Western Europe. They went to Iceland–the uttermost limit.

Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing farther into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers from whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was.
This European counterattack began a new phase which brought the European attack into the very heart of the Middle East. In our own time, we have seen the end of that domination.

***

Osama bin Laden had this to say about the war in Afghanistan, the war which led to the defeat and retreat of the Red Army and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We tend to see that as a Western victory–more specifically an American victory–in the Cold War against the Soviets. For Osama bin Laden, it was nothing of the kind. It was a Muslim victory in a jihad. . . . As bin Laden put it, “We have met, defeated, and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers. Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans will be an easy matter.”

This belief was confirmed in the 1990s when we saw attacks on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind–only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places. This was a sequence leading up to 9/11. It was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp.

The third phase has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms–two in particular–terror and migration.

***

Where do we stand now? The Muslims have certain advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration leading to major population changes which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in some European countries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge to a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement, is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.

Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word “freedom” was not used in a political sense. Freedom was a legal concept, not a political concept as in the West. But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated, and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope–perhaps even our only hope–of surviving this developing struggle.

Further to this post a couple of days ago, here’s a must read article on the spread of the now-inextractable Wahhabi cancer in Bosnia.

Extract from “Emissaries of Militant Islam Make Headway in Bosnia”:

[Ex-Wahhabi] Nermina said the Wahhabi sect had infiltrated schools, universities and the media. They know most of the population dislikes them and have therefore adapted their outward appearance in order to enter public institutions, she claimed.

Nermina also told Balkan Insight she had been trapped in her house for almost three of the five years she wore a hijab. The men and women in the house were separated and all visitors had to comply with the rules.

“I believed that men were preordained to run public life while it was our duty to stay in the house,” she said. “Rare gatherings were our only contact with the outside world. Over the summer, we took trips to special camps near Lake Jablanica where women were also separated from men.

“We had a parallel world that others may not have noticed. We had our own public transport and grocery stores. We migrated inwards into our own closed sphere.”

Polygamy, which is illegal in Bosnia, was encouraged, she went on. “I know women whose husbands have several other wives,” she said. “They told us we would be rewarded in the next world if we put up with this hardship and refrained from being jealous. They keep talking about the next world to scare you, and promise you’ll go to heaven if you obey.”

At the same time, Nermina realised she increasingly disliked Wahhabism. She started getting out of the house and communicating with people. But when wearing the hijab, it was difficult to reach out. “People in Sarajevo are hostile towards Wahhabis and veiled women. It is impossible to get a job or even talk to anybody,” she said.

Eventually, her plight forced her to reconsider her beliefs and whole way of life. “I met a fellow Muslim woman who studied Islamic sciences,” she recalled.

“At first I treated her as an infidel, as she veiled only her hair while leaving her neck and ears exposed, which Wahhabism regards as a deadly sin,” she went on.

“But watching her and learning what a beautiful religion Islam is, I realised that everything I had learnt from the Wahhabi was wrong. My conversations with this woman brought up many crucial questions in my head. One of them was about polygamy, which I believed in wholeheartedly.

“She asked me why men shouldn’t put up with being cheated on to get their reward in the other world if women were being asked to do the same. It was a logical question but one I had never heard before.”

Professor Hafizovic believes the authorities ought to take immediate action. “I keep getting calls from parents whose children have been taken away by the Wahhabi; they are begging me to help them,” he said.

“The Wahhabi train these young people to break their own families into pieces and introduce their propaganda through literature and camps. There is nothing I can do to stop it but I hereby appeal to the authorities in this country to speak out,” Hafizovic told Balkan Insight.

Jasmin Merdan also said immediate steps were needed. “Decisive action needs to be taken, primarily by the Islamic Community and the authorities through cooperation with international institutions,” he said. “But it should rest on the Islamic Community first and foremost because destroying traditional Islam in Bosnia is the basic Wahhabi objective, just as it would be in any other country,” he added.

Read the whole thing.

While I’m at it, some articles on the developing Kosovo situation too:

“Creating a state of denial”

“Europe’s approaching train wreck”

“Report damns West’s revival of Kosovo”

A couple of stories from The Australian:

“Extremist students take over Newcastle mosque”:

Up to 150 university students from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt who follow the fundamentalist Wahabbism ideology were central to the overthrow at the weekend of the executive board of the Newcastle Muslim Association.

Deposed association president Yunus Kara yesterday accused the students of pushing for new leadership of the port city’s mosque in order to advance their own extremist agenda and continue “brainwashing” local Muslims.

“The international students have used their puppets to come forward and dictate,” Mr Kara told The Australian.

“They’re driving them to whatever ideology that (suits them). Their ideology is extremism … but they teach under the banner of Islam.”

“Taxation office to probe Muslim cleric on Saudi cash”:

An ACT Islamic organisation has also accused the Palestinian-born imam Mohammad Swaiti of being “radical”, anti-Western in his religious teachings, and failing to declare payments he received from officiating at wedding ceremonies.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal an Australian Tax Office investigation into Sheik Swaiti over allegations by senior Muslim community leaders that he failed to declare his clerical allowances of up to $US30,000 ($37,700) a year, which were paid to him by the Saudi Government.

The tax office sent Islamic Society of ACT president Sabrija Poskovic a letter in reply to written allegations made by him and his community regarding Sheik Swaiti.

“I refer to your letter relating to the imam of your mosque, Mohammad Swaiti, who also happens to be a tax office employee,” the ATO’s letter to Mr Poskovic says.

[..]

Mr Poskovic accused the Saudi Embassy of bankrolling the annual salaries of up to 20 imams around Australia, including Sheik Swaiti, through its Islamic donations (Daawa) office.

A letter understood to be sent on behalf of Mr Poskovic claims the Saudis pay the imams “mukafa”, which is regarded a “reward compensation payment”. It also alleges that Sheik Swaiti had been on the Saudi payroll for 12 years.

Are parts of Australia heading the way of some cities in Europe, like Antwerp, where the Saudi-sponsored radical Salafists/Wahhabists have taken over all 25 mosques? On a bigger scale, just watch what is happening in Kosovo, where the Wahhabis have sponsored about 200 mosques and religious schools since 1999:

Wahhabis open internet cafes associated with their mosques, “in a bid to attract children to listen to ‘naslihates’ against Skenderbeg and the Albanian national renewal movement, the Western civilization and even Kosovo’s traditional brand of Islam,” the media report.

The newspapers in Priština also say that “Kosovo and international mujahedins may be preparing for a rebellion on the brink of the status solution,”

Or look at the growing influence of the Wahhabis in Bosnia, . Rather predictably, in both places a growing section of the Muslim population is growing increasingly radicalised. Lets not be going in that direction.

Suzanne Fields reports on a lecture recently given by Bernard Lewis at the annual American Enterprise Institute dinner:

[..]

Bernard Lewis, age 90, has studied Islam and the Middle East for more than half a century. The Capital grapevine has it that he strongly influenced President Bush to take the coalition of the willing into Iraq. His books have been important to historians, but he wasn’t known to most of the rest of us until after 9/11, when the West woke up to its ignorance of the Middle East and Islam, beyond the fanciful tales of the caliphs, harems and camel drivers of the Arabian nights.

Crucial reading soon included his book, “What Went Wrong,” in which Mr. Lewis dissects the sociology and psychology of the Muslim world after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, when Muslim humiliation became total. But instead of examining their own responsibilities for their failures, the Middle Eastern governments looked for others to blame for their demoted status. “Who did this to us?” they asked. Blame was variously assigned to the Mongols, the Turks, then the French and the British, and now Israel and America. The Muslims refused to see the source of their weakness, beginning with the brutal mistreatment of women.

“The status of women, though probably the most profound single difference between the two civilizations, attracted far less attention than such matters as guns, factories and parliaments,” says Mr. Lewis. Half of the Muslims are forbidden to contribute their creativity to the Islamic civilization.

[..]

He draws chilling differences between “them” and “us.” The Muslims bring fervor and conviction to the struggle; we don’t. The Muslims are self-assured in the rightness of their cause; we answer with self-denigration and self-debasement. Muslims prize loyalty and discipline; we prize politically correct multiculturalism. Most troublesome of all, he says, demographics favor the Muslims. He worries whether there will be an “Islamicized Europe” or a “Europeanized Islam.” The assets of the West are freedom and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge, and he offers the hope that Muslims will eventually find these things appealing. But he concedes it’s only hope.

[..]

“What is needed [today],” says Bernard Lewis, “is clarity in recognizing issues and alignments, firmness and determination in defining and applying policy.” But is anyone listening?