Will Europe Survive?

There is good news and bad news concerning Europe. The bad news is, it is in a mess. Having rejected its Christian heritage and embraced secular humanism big time, Europe has been in decline for quite a while now. And into that spiritual and moral vacuum has rushed Islam. Thus Europe is quickly becoming a Muslim continent.

The good news is others can learn from Europe’s mistakes. But it remains to be seen whether the rest of the West will learn from Europe’s errors, or simply follow suit.

Paul Belien, writing in The Brussels Journal, October 25, 2006, is not at all optimistic about the fate of Europe. In his article, “The Rape of Europe,” he begins by quoting a German author who “recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Henryk Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: ‘We are watching the world of yesterday’.”

Says Belien, “Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. ‘I am too old,’ he said. However, he urged young people to get out and ‘move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable’.”

Of course as someone residing in Australia, I am not sure if coming here will solve the problem. Australia is on a slow path of Islamisation as well. Some places, like Lakemba in Sydney, are now Muslim enclaves. But back to Belien.

The numbers alone tell the story of Europe’s Islamisation: “Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder’s advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other major European cities.”

And Europeans have lost heart in resisting this takeover: “Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. ‘The dominant ethos,’ he told De Volkskrant, ‘is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death’.”

He then cites a Dutch humanist and homosexual who says coping with the Islamisation of Europe “is like ‘a process of mourning.’ He is overwhelmed by a ‘feeling of sadness.’ ‘I am not a warrior,’ he says, ‘but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it’.”

A telling comment that. Indeed, Belien further explores this idea of capitulation and surrender. “As Tom Bethell wrote in this month’s American Spectator: ‘Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working.’ But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to ‘enjoy’ freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.”

It takes something more than secular humanism to resist the onslaught of radical Islam. “‘If faith collapses, civilization goes with it,’ says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means ‘submission’ and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.”

Of course related to a passive attitude toward Islam is an antagonistic attitude toward Israel and America. “Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.”

Concludes Belien, “This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European ‘islamophobes’ who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission – just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.”

A sobering warning this. Whether we in Australia will wake up to the challenge facing us remains to be seen. And the challenge is twofold: the increased secularisation of the West, and the vacuum it creates which Islam then exploits.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1609

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