EUROISLAM: A Threat ?

EUROISLAM

A Threat ?

The heated discussion in relation to an Islamization of Europe is contaminated, toxic and rests on poor or deliberately manipulated facts. The question, as I see it, should be: Is Islam a threat to Europe? What´s the difference? It is important to find out what matters in this context and what can be ignored.

The massive influx of Muslim refugees into Europe due to the unrest in the Middle East is having an extensive impact on the European socio political order and legislative bodies. The normative traditions and the conceptions of what is tolerable or not, especially when the European Convention Article 9 – Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is taken into account, are very explicit and distinct if you read it carefully.

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, and to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This instantly leaves a minefield of subjective interpretation and Justice is not blind but written by those who dominate.

In Europe the prevailing religions are a patchwork of different Christian churches or other non-Muslim religions, in addition to atheism, humanism or other ideologies focusing on existential and ethical issues. The idea that Europe, which is rapidly growing secular with Consumism, has seen the Church seperated from the State (Sweden, inter alia) and religious laws superceeded by Civil Law since the times of Enlightenment for several centuries. Remnents of moral codes and ethics with roots in the Old and the New Testament, however, are evident even if most people have no idea of this influential heritage or even deny it.

The idea that Europeans would collectively convert into Islam is absurd even if the demographic proportions between Muslims and non-Muslims have changed considerably since the seventies and onwards. We are not facing a threath of Ottoman military forces attacking the City Entrance of Vienna and with a succession of formerly Catholic or Orthodox Balcan countries converting in order to adapt to pragmatical necessities for making a decent living or make a career within the administration, The influence of the Sharía, however insignificant from a Civil Law legal point of view, has, however triggered off a legislative confusion of how to deal with normative behaviour contrary to the European normative set up with regards to what can be tolerated and what is regarded as offensive or criminal. 

The honor related violence and the mutilation of the female genitalia have been in focus because the European civil laws are colliding with the  Sharía praxis, which, to a Muslim believer is of a Divine order and supreme to secular law. However, with reference to the second paragraph of the above mentioned convention, the provisions limit religious expressions and traditions if they are a menace to public order and the prevailing judiciary.

Lutheranism and capitalism went hand in hand. Industrialism would most possibly had been delayed or slowed down considerably if Catholocism and Orthodoxism had governed solely in Europe. Gradually because of the growing economic liberalism and the market economy leading to Consumism an increasing secularization saw the light of day and resulted/results in a small interest in organized and institutionalized religious life. We find extensive socio economical evidence that children growing up in strict religious conditions are prone to defect as soon as they are going through higher education and ending up with a good job, a fair income and a totally different social pattern of behaviour than their parents. A second or a third generation of originally Muslim refugee immigrants, will, in the a benevolent financial scenario, most probably be as secularized as other younger generations. 

But, much to our worry and dismay, we cannot expect an ideal future economic scenario. The polarization of ethnic differences resting on competition over jobs and other means of production and reproduction, is the real threat !! The demographical order of ethnicity and age has shifted dramatically during the last three decades.

The grotesque Jihads (originally ”Holy Mission” and not necessarily a ”Holy War”) and terror in the name of Allah, planned in the Middle East, Africa, Sout East Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan with cells and links on every continent with the intention to create confusion and fright in Europe will not convert Europeans, as was the case during the Ottoman Empire, especially on the Balkan.

The imminent danger is rather a rapid growth of European facist counter political movements, ultranationalistic and blinded by xenophobia. 

It would, as we all know, not be for the first time in European history. If the Muslims, who are encouraged by the Q´oran to convert every living being to become a good Muslim, succeed to create social unrest and a fragmentation of current national sociopolitical unities, there is a risk for a feudalistic like regression, as many times before when faced with overwhelming political dangers och epidemical disasters into a Europe divided by smaller political autonomous provinces , increased chauvinism, ethnocentrism and fierce parochialism. Be it as it may. A Muslim take over is not likely to happen. 

When regression sets in people in general become more orthodox and fundamentalist and we may even experience a revival of Christendom and fervent religiosity. In dire circumstances man looks for scapegoats and the Muslim of a moderate Euroislam may easily become a target for progroms such as other religious, ethnical and political groups repeatedly have been exposed to for a millenium or longer in Europe.

The disgustingly vicious terror strategy of Muslim fanatics may cause considerable damage in Europe and elsewhere but the havoc will serve them nothing. With an impoversihed and socially unruly and chaotic Europe, the struggle will return to where it came from and become intensified within the Muslim regions, a situation which already has been going on, to and fro, since the murder of the Prophet´s grandchild Huseyn ibn Ali ibn Abu Talib in 680 AC which led to the discrepancy regarding the question of the heridatory legal descent of the Prophet in a Sunni and a Shia tradition, known to be each other´s worst enemies.

If a dramatic decline in European economies continues, Europe will no longer be a Muslim refugee´s first choice and I believe, on good grounds, that they will look to the east or the African continent. The ”Islamization” of Europe will cease because it will no longer be fit for a decent survival and the terror the reversed of the contemporary. Migrations almost always is looking for territory where the grass is greener. That´s how Europe once was populated by Caucasians, later divided into Aryans with subethnical tribes such as, for instance, the Kurds, the Germanic, and the Latin tribes, the latter migrating from the Black Sea.

Just a thought

Douglas Modig