Appeasement takes hold again in Europe

smh.com.au Last September Robert Redeker, a French high-school philosophy teacher and author of several scholarly books, published an opinion piece in Le Figaro entitled "What should the free world do in the face of Islamist intimidation?"

Good question.

His piece concluded that while Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites reject and delegitimise violence, Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.

I wish more would understaand that fact.

The article was posted on the internet, translated into Arabic, and widely distributed. Within a day, it was being condemned on Al-Jazeera TV and the offending issue of Le Figaro was banned in Egypt and Tunisia. Redeker received a large number of threatening emails. He was condemned to death on one Muslim site, which posted his address and a photograph of his home.

Islam. The Religion of Peace. NOT!!!!!

.... "The editorial board of Le Monde, France's newspaper of record, characterised Redeker's piece as excessive, misleading and insulting. It called his remarks about Muhammad a blasphemy. To judge from this response, large sectors of the French intellectual and political establishment have carved out an exception to the hard-won tradition of open discussion: when it comes to Islam, as opposed to Christianity or Judaism, freedom of speech must respect definite limits.

That sounds like the French. IIt is ok for the Secular Progressives to criticize Christianity and Judaism, because Christians and Jews are not likely to cut off their heads, but they must back down on criticism of Islam.

.... The last time France was faced with a large-scale threat from something similar - fascism - it reacted with denial, defeat and accommodation.

And quickly found Hitler walking through Paris.

.... It's a bleak view, but Western Europe's 15 million Muslims today will be 30 million in 10 years. A similar argument is made in another book, Infidel, published last week by a former Dutch member of parliament and former Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is fluent in Arabic and Somali, has lived in Saudi Arabia, and worked for 10 years as a translator with the Muslims of Holland. Since criticising Islam and the oppression of Muslim women, she has been subject to so many threats and murder attempts she now lives in the US. In an interview last week I asked her why there was such censorship, denial and silence from so many European liberals in the face of so many attacks on liberalism.

"There is a combination of imperial guilt, and the civil rights movement," she said. "It created an attitude that all cultures are equal, that Western culture is not superior, that Christianity is not superior.

That is foolish. In Holland, Dutch culture should prevail. In Britain it would be British Culture, and in France it should be French culture (if they have one). Government should not promote Christianity or any other religion, but all religions should be treated equally.

This is especially so in the intellectual elite, the media, the education systems, in politics. But for the intellectual elite this belief is only theoretical. "It is the working-class communities who were the first to experience the realities of immigration and cultural differences. When there were the first protests in these communities about problems with immigration, and about problems with how immigrant women were being treated, the elite immediately turned on them by calling them 'racists'.

Islam is not a race. It is a religion. But it is a religion with political implications, and they are not Western implications.

.... "Holland's multiculturalism has deprived many Muslim women and children of their rights. It is tolerance for the sake of consensus, but the consensus is empty. Many Muslims never learn Dutch and reject Dutch values of tolerance and personal liberty.

Then they should go back to a Muslim country, and not stay in Holland.