America at a Crossroads –The Missing European Anti-Americans

The “Anti-Americans”, was a one-hour PBS documentary that premiered on Monday night. It explored the often humorous Hate/Love Relationship that SOME Europeans have with America. I say “SOME” Europeans because this particular PBS special featured the conflicting opinions of mostly fair skinned, fair haired, blue-eyed Europeans. You know - the traditional Europeans we Americans tend to think of as French or British or Polish.

I must admit that it was a very entertaining special and I came away with the bemused feeling that preoccupation, imitation, and envy are the sincerest forms of flattery. But, I couldn’t help wondering why the producers of this PBS special (New American Media) left out the new Europeans? You know – the future of Europe?

This special was part of a continuing PBS event.

America at a Crossroads is a major public television event that premiered on PBS in April 2007. This groundbreaking series continues with occasional specials throughout the broadcast schedule.

Explore the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world – including the war on terrorism; the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of American troops serving abroad; the struggle for balance within the Muslim world; and global perspectives on America's role overseas.

The NYT review by John Strausbaugh “Love Us or Hate Us, Ya Can’t Ignore Us” offered a pretty fair rendition of what I observed. But apparently Strausbaugh didn’t notice that new Europeans were missing from the special.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

At a fashionable dinner party in London a proper Englishwoman sniffs with supreme condescension, “Americans are the first nation to come from barbarians, skip the civilized bit and go into decline.”

In a French country kitchen a woman recalls, with horrified outrage, a trip to Chicago, where she encountered “the fattest people I ever saw in my life.” She gasps that she could have ridden on their “big fat behinds.” . . .

In Poland a large crowd in cowboy hats and boots waves American flags and cheers a bluegrass performance. If it weren’t for the accents and the odd spellings like “piknik” and “hod dog,” you might think it’s Branson, Mo.

Perhaps the answer to why the new Europeans are missing from this special can be found in Tuesday’s article by Cal Thomas, “England is Vanishing.” Here’s an excerpt:

“There’ll Always Be an England” — popular World War II song.

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND — Perhaps there will not always be an England. An exodus unprecedented in modern times, coupled with a record influx of foreigners, is threatening to erode the character of the land of William Shakespeare and overpowering monarchs, a land that served as the cradle for much of American thought, law and culture.

The figures, making headlines in London newspapers, tell only part of the story. Between June 2005 and June 2006 nearly 200,000 British citizens chose to leave the country for a new life elsewhere. During the same period, at least 574,000 immigrants came to Britain. This number does not include the people who broke the law to get there, or the thousands unknown to the government. Britain’s Office of National Statistics reports that middle-class Britons are beginning to move out of towns in southern England that have become home to large numbers of immigrants, thereby altering the character of neighborhoods that have remained unchanged for generations. . . .

The problem for Britain and the United States isn’t just the change in demographics. It is the reluctance of both countries to inculcate the beliefs, history and, yes, religious ideals, which made our nations so successful that others wanted to come and be a part of them. The difference between many of the current immigrants and those of the past is that the previous ones wanted to become fully American or fully British. The current ones, in too many cases, would destroy what makes our countries unique. And the “leaders” of Britain and America refuse to stop it.

The greater tragedy is that the people of Britain have little say in any of this, so they are taking the road of last resort. They are leaving.

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Islamification, Christianity and WWIII: Islam’s Subtle Political Maneuvers

If we are to escape further Islamification, we must take back our churches and all of our cultural institutions. Stand up, speak out, and if you must, walk out and withdraw financial support!!!

NEW YORK (BP)--Much of the church is asleep or in “deep, dark denial” about Islam, Anglican Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda said in New York City at the Kairos Journal Award dinner Jan. 26. . . . The inner attack on the church is the shifting of authority away from the Bible toward a “false gospel,” Orombi said. But from without, he said, the church’s most significant threat is Islam. . . . the church is generally ignorant about Islam, its doctrine, its ideology and its expansionist strategy, the Anglican leader said. Most churches have no plan or vision about reaching Muslims and even shy away from evangelism out of fear and the prospect of retaliatory violence. . . . Mark Durie, vicar of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Caulfield, in Melbourne, Australia, echoed that sentiment. Failure to address Islam with the Gospel will result in falling prey to it. At present, he said, the future of the world is less than certain.

What exactly is Islamification?

The simplest definition is can be found at WorldViews in a 2004 review “The Islamification of Europe.” This was a review of a WSJ article by Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami.

Here’s an excerpt: (Bold highlights added by me)

On the op-ed page of the "Wall Street Journal" (subscription required) is a remarkable article by Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami on how radical Islam has been nurtured specifically in Europe, and why the Europeans feel they must be on the Arabs' side, even as they are threatened by an unassimilated and growing population that owes them no loyalty.

Europeans imported huge numbers of Muslim laborers in the 1960's. Their numbers swelled as refugees fled the wars and tyrannies of their own countries. The mideast regimes were so oppressive that the dissidents fled to Europe, where they took advantage of the freedom they could never have at home to develop their radical Islamic ideologies. And, according to Ajami, as the immigrant population booms and the native Europeans have fewer and fewer children, the radicalized Muslims are gaining more and more power in the European democracies. But while they are willing to take advantage of the opportunities afforded in their new homelands, the Muslims are insisting that they owe allegiance to no nationality; only to Islam.

For a good view of Islamification see the video Islamification of Britain.

January 27, 2007: “We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso.”

See “World War III has already begun, says Israeli spy chief”
Former head of Israel's intelligence service tells Portuguese newspaper it would take at least 25 years before battle against fundamentalist terrorism is won; says nuclear strike by Muslim terrorists 'very likely'.

Hat Tip to Mr. Minority

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal.

‘We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso. . .

Halevy, who was raised in war-time London, predicted it would take at least 25 years before the battle against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is won and during this time a nuclear strike by Islamic militants was likely.

Hat Tip to Dhimmi Watch
“How the Pope sees Islam” (2/6/07) Here’s an excerpt. (Bold highlights added by me.)

The Egyptian Jesuit priest Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. here explains the thoughtful, careful, and realistic approach that Pope Benedict XVI has adopted toward the Islamic world. "When Civilizations Meet: How Joseph Ratzinger Sees Islam," from Asia News via Chiesa, with thanks to D.:

Benedict XVI is probably one of the few figures to have profoundly understood the ambiguity in which contemporary Islam is being debated and its struggle to find a place in modern society. At the same time, he is proposing a way for Islam to work toward coexistence globally and with religions, based not on religious dialogue, but on dialogue between cultures and civilizations based on rationality and on a vision of man and human nature which comes before any ideology or religion. This choice to wager on cultural dialogue explains his decision to absorb the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue into the larger Pontifical Council for Culture.

While the pope is asking Islam for dialogue based on culture, human rights, the refusal of violence, he is asking the West, at the same time, to go back to a vision of human nature and rationality in which the religious dimension is not excluded. In this way – and perhaps only in this way – a clash of civilizations can be avoided, transforming it instead into a dialogue between civilizations. . . .

. . .But the key point that he tackles is that of shari’a. He points out that:

“the Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic. Shari’a shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can exploit such freedoms as our constitutions give, but it cannot be its final goal to say: Yes, now we too are a body with rights, now we are present [in society] just like the Catholics and the Protestants. In such a situation, [Islam] would not achieve a status consistent with its inner nature; it would be in alienation from itself”.

This alienation could be resolved only through the total Islamization of society. When for example an Islamic finds himself in a Western society, he can benefit from or exploit certain elements, but he can never identify himself with the non-Muslim citizen, because he does not find himself in a Muslim society. . . .

With regard to the Jesuit’s statement above concernining Sharia: “it can exploit such freedoms as our constitutions give” please take a look at “Our Vulnerable Religious Freedoms”

Our greatest National strengths can also be our biggest points of vulnerability. I have written earlier that our freedom of expression, freedom of equal protection as citizens, and the “wall of separation” between church and state in the United States, as guaranteed by the Constitution and the 1st, 2nd and 14th amendments, is vulnerable to being undermined for one specific reason. Our nation has never attempted to define what constitutes a religion. . .

Hat Tip to BookWorm Room

At FrontPage Magazine, you can read an interview with Bill Warner, the the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. Warner discusses Islam’s dualistic nature, which can hold simultaneously two opposite thoughts (such as the instruction to treat nonbelievers decently and the instruction that they must be destroyed as infidels). Thus, Warner contrasts Islamic beliefs with the Golden Rule, a principle that appears in all of the world’s other than Islam . . .

Here’s a typical response from a moderate Muslim to all this so-called “Islamophobia”. Although I am very glad to hear a “moderate” Muslim’s response against Islamic terrorism, note the dualistic denial. (BOLD highlights added by me).

Britácora Almendrón
Una mirada al mundo artistico, cultural y political

By Zeeshan Hashmion, who served in the British Army between 2000 and 2005. He is now a student at Cambridge (THE TIMES, 06/02/07):

. . .I do feel increasingly impatient when engaged in debates about my faith, its so-called link with extremism and its so-called rejection of democracy. I wish I could shout out loud and say that a majority of Muslims believe in the core message of Islam, which is peace. We are tolerant of others and comfortable coexisting in a multicultural, multi-ethnic environment. Islam does not dictate that one can only be Muslim and not British or Chinese at the same time.

Unfortunately, there are those among us who are ill-educated, misled and are indeed extremists. My message to those who preach extremism and a false concept of jihad is that our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) not only stood up but asked his companions to do the same when the funeral of a Jew was passing near by. One’s responsibility to the Muslim ummah demands logic and reasoning in achieving long-term, peaceful solutions based upon coexistence. Isolation and extremism is not the answer; initiating a dialogue is.

Those in power should be more responsible and sincere when discussing conflict resolution. Stop using the notion of democracy to justify loss of human life; we need to ensure that we create a more stable and less bloody future for coming generations. This is the least we owe to those who have made sacrifices. Political systems and doctrine can not effectively be imported from one region to another facing a different range of problems.
As individuals, we ought to be more open and receptive in our approach towards fellow humans, in peace time or in conflict. “For those who have had to fight for it, Life has truly a flavour the protected shall never know.”


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