Author: Lorenzo Vidino & Erick
Stakelbeck
Publication: www.nationalreview.com
Date: February 19, 2004
URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino_stakelbeck200402190906.asp
Islam and European secularism clash.
Last month, as Muslims in the small
northern Italian town of Luino prepared to celebrate the annual Islamic
Eid Al-Adha, or "Feast of Sacrifice," they were met by some surprising
opposition. The feast, which requires the slaughter of rams and lambs carried
out according to Islamic tradition - meaning the animal must bleed to death
after its throat is slit - sparked outrage amongst the region's animal-rights
activists. Abandoning the hushed reverence with which Europe's Left usually
regards all things Islamic, a coalition of groups gathered in front of
a Luino slaughterhouse in an effort to prevent trucks loaded with animals
from entering. Soon enough, the protesters - some of whom, ironically,
wore Palestinian keffiyehs - were confronted by a group of angry local
Muslims shouting "Allah u Akhbar!" ("God is Great!"). In the past, such
blatant disregard for Muslim sensitivities would have caused the local
Left to apologize profusely and enroll in cultural sensitivity training,
post haste. But in today's increasingly Islamicized Europe, many on the
Left are slowly realizing that the behavior of large segments of Europe's
Muslim population represents the antithesis of their politically correct
ideals and values. Indeed, only the intervention of local police prevented
physical violence between the protesters in Luino and their Muslim counterparts.
The Luino incident was not an isolated
one. From France's controversial decision to ban the veil in public schools
to news of the barbaric application of Islamic law throughout Europe, Muslim
immigrants are creating a crisis of conscience within the Left. While most
European conservatives have acknowledged the problems created by massive
Muslim immigration, the Left has usually chosen instead to blame Muslims'
assimilation problems on the close-mindedness of native European populations.
But after years of calling conservatives racist for raising these issues,
Leftists have begun to notice that many of the Muslim immigrants arriving
in Europe have little respect for values sacrosanct to the Left, like women's
rights and separation of Church and State.
As a result, the positions of the
late Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, rejected as extreme just a few years
ago by his opponents, are now being quietly reconsidered by many on the
Left. Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2002 by, ironically, an animal-rights
activist, hailed from the Dutch city of Rotterdam, where roughly half the
residents are foreign born and many are Muslim. Fortuyn feared that due
to its unwillingness to assimilate, Holland's growing Muslim population
(which currently comprises almost ten percent of the Dutch population),
would undermine traditional Dutch values. Fortuyn, who was openly gay,
also worried that Islam's aversion to homosexuality would clash with Holland's
liberal attitude toward gays. Whereas Fortuyn was once branded a "fascist"
by the European media, his views are now gaining mainstream acceptance.
For example, supporters of the ban
of the Muslim veil in France and Belgium come from a variety of political
parties, including some in which multiculturalism is normally considered
gospel. A member of the Belgian Socialist party, Anne-Marie Lizin, declared
to the British newspaper the Guardian that, "It's not normal that in certain
parts of Brussels there are more women in veils than in the streets of
Algiers." Until recently, Lizin would have been ostracized for making such
a statement. However, her comments explaining her vote in favor of the
ban went largely unreported in the European press. Interestingly enough,
members of Lizin's Socialist party have previously referred to rival Belgian
party Vlaams Blok - which advocates a moratorium on immigration - as a
fascist organization. But Lizin's comments to the Guardian show that her
view of the veil is firmly in line with that of Vlaams Blok and other European
conservative parties.
The hijab is only one aspect of
women's status in Islam that Left-leaning Europeans find troubling. In
Spain, Muslim imam Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, who wrote a 120-page book, "Women
in Islam," which taught Muslim men the "proper" way to beat their wives,
was sentenced in January to fifteen months in prison for encouraging violence
against women. In the book, Mustafa urged husbands not to hit their wives
on sensitive parts of the body but, rather, "on hands and feet, using a
light rod so that the blows don't leave scars or bruises." In his decision,
Judge Juan Pedro Yllanes said that Mustafa's book was "infused with a tone
of obsolete machismo," and "incompatible with the reigning social mores."
The case against Mustafa was spearheaded by three Spanish feminist groups,
who filed a lawsuit against the book in July 2000. The groups were represented
by renowned feminist lawyer Maria Jose Varela, who said the verdict against
Mustafa was the first in Spain to recognize "incitement to violence on
the basis of gender" as a crime.
Recently, feminist and other Leftist
organizations in Europe have also taken a decisive stand against female
circumcision, a gruesome practice occurring with increased frequency in
the West as its third-world population grows. When a Muslim gynecologist
in Florence proposed "soft" circumcisions for local Muslim women, Florence
city officials - renowned for their left-wing politics and for supporting
the ban of the crucifix in Italian schools - responded with a resounding
"no." One of them, Marzia Monciatti, was quoted as saying that certain
traditions are at such odds with Italian values that accepting them in
any form was impossible.
The European Left's strong support
for Muslim immigrants has traditionally been twofold: first, Muslims are
a religious and ethnic minority in Europe and therefore advance the Left's
multicultural agenda. Secondly, as evidenced by their joint participation
in the antiwar protests of the past two years, Europe's Left shares with
many Muslim immigrants a resentment of the U.S., Israel and capitalism.
But virtually all other aspects of the two groups' belief systems are at
odds: gay rights, women's rights, abortion rights, multiculturalism, separation
of church and state, interfaith dialogue and opposition to the death penalty,
all perennial Leftist causes, are opposed by an overwhelming number of
Europe's Muslim immigrants, sometimes brutally so. As its ever-growing
Muslim population continues to alter the Old Continent's social fabric,
the European Left seems to be coming to the realization that the "enemy
of my enemy is my friend" adage to which it has traditionally ascribed
its support of mass Muslim immigration no longer applies. For many of Europe's
Muslims, the most pressing "enemy" is not the U.S., Israel or capitalism,
but the liberal, secularized way of life practiced by their "infidel" hosts.
- Erick Stakelbeck is head writer
and Lorenzo Vidino is an attorney and terrorism analyst at the Investigative
Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism think tank.
