"We Have Awoken a Sleeping Wussy"

And that wussy's name is Europe, which seems to finally be twigging on to the fact that yes, they hate us for our freedoms:

Islamic fundamentalism is causing a 'clash of civilisations' between liberal democracies and Muslims DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to police.

Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific “lapidation� of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.

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From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside their doctrines of diversity and insisting that “Islamism�, as the French call the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is incompatible with Europe’s liberal values.

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“The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart,� said Angela Merkel, leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat opposition. “Anyone coming here must respect our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots.� Italy’s traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of Islamism. An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians believed that a “clash of civilisations� between Islam and the West was under way and that Islam was “a religion more fanatical than any other�.

Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia — and no longer just from the populist rightwing party’s such as Pia Kjaersgaard’s People’s Party in Denmark. The centre-right Government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has equipped Denmark with Europe’s toughest curbs on immigration, largely aimed at people from Muslim countries. In Sweden, where anti-Muslim feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the measure comes nowhere near France’s new ban on the hijab in all state schools.
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M Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that France’s rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques. “Whether I like it or not, Islam is the second biggest religion in France. So you have to integrate it by making it more French,� he said. To general dismay, however, the national council is coming increasingly under the effective control of radicals.

Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for Europe should be the US. On Tuesday a writer for Libération, the French left-wing daily, noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves into “the American dream� and prospered. “There is no French, Dutch or other European dream,� she noted. “You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing more."

I'm happy Europe is finally engaging the problem, but I fear they're going about it the wrong way.

Despite my fear of radical Islamism, I also get a very queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I hear talk about "muscular efforts at integration." That sounds an awful lot like compelling people to give up their religion and their culture in order to better serve the State-- and that sounds, to me, an awful lot like fascism.

There are two different responses to gun violence. One: Allow people to have guns but lock them up forever, and perhaps execute them, should they murder someone. Two: Attempt to avoid response number one entirely by just outlawing guns.

Similarly, there are two responses to racism. One: Allow people to believe what they will, but should they engage in a criminal act, lock them up. Two: Attempt to avoid response number one entirely by enacting a regime of near-forcible PC brainwashing that almost (but not quite) criminalizes bad thoughts.

It seems that Europe -- liberal, Communist-sympathisizing Europe -- is enamored with the second sort of response. Rather than simply criminalizing bad acts and severely punishing those who engage in violence or incitement, they seem to want to avoid that sort of punishment entirely, and instead get to the "root causes" of the problem... by taking away the culture and religion of Muslims.

I think Muslims should make much more of an effort to obey local laws. The fact that a neighborhood is predominantly Muslim does not, in fact, mean that Shari'a law has been enacted into operation. But I'm worried about this talk of forcibly homogenizing populations so that no one disagrees, as everyone is expected to think as the State permits.

To be honest, when I first heard the French were outlawing the habib in schools, my reaction was vindictive: "Good. Show them who's boss." But that's actually a dangerous reaction. I understand the issue is complicated by the possibility of coercion -- i.e., how do we know Muslim schoolgirls want to wear the habib? Maybe they're just doing so to avoid being beaten by their parents or, worse yet, raped by monsters who think they're not Islamic enough to have the right to be free of sexual violation.

But there's something inherently creepy about state action intended not to encourage tolerance, not to criminalize violent or grossly anti-social acts of intolerance, but to create a simulated "tolerance" simply by forcibly draining away all the pecularities of individual choice.

Frankly, there's some of this sort of talk in America, too. Secularists and leftists openly wonder how they can get religious Americans to give up their troublesome and regressive beliefs, and are always looking for new ways to use our institutions to compel just that.

Let people believe and worship as they will-- but hold them strictly to account as regards criminal acts, including the crime of incitement.

The law against incitement got a bad name in the 20's and 50's. We were always told that the communists and anarchists agitating for blowing up railroad lines and factories where just speaking metaphorically, or purely rhetorically, or what have you. Only a "clear and present danger" of actual criminal behavior could sustain an incitement charge.

That may be a good and just rule. But it's about time to recognize that in the current climate, there is indeed a lot more of such clear and present danger related to incitement to violence. This sort of racist, violence-exalting hateporn is not just being gobbled up by pencil-necked editors at The Nation. There are angry young men hearing the new hateporn, believing it, and wanting desperately to act on it.

H/t: Alarming News, who needs your vote in the 100-250 category of Wizbang's Best Blogs balloting.

Stop All Muslim Immigration?: A commenter suggests that this is perhaps the only way to make it clear to radical and violent Islamofascists that we are indeed serious about respecting local law.

Indeed, there may be a time -- and I hope it doesn't come -- that there may be a need for a full-out quarantining of the Muslim world, if the forces of moderation and decency are not able to tame their savage kin.

Europe thinks it needs Muslim immigration to keep its welfare state alive. Actually, there are millions of desperately-poor people in Asia and Latin America who would jump at the chance to work in Europe as guest-workers.

I hope it doesn't come to that. But the Islamofascist movement may provoke such a thing. The religious imperative to conquer, and subjugate, and create new sovereign colonies in other countries has to be de-emphasized.

Try reading it metaphorically, guys. Because, honestly, in the end you will not be permitted the conquest you crave. If even Europe is now hip to your agenda, the high-water mark for unending tolerance for violence and hatred is now past.

posted by Ace at 04:57 PM

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