Europe Has Been Targeted by Islamic Jihadists for Many Years

Time is not on Europe's side. Moslems are 26% of Brussels’ population, with an average age of 32, compared to 42 for Belgian Christians, so the cohort under 18 will be majority Moslem in less than ten years. It's difficult to see how Belgian or European democracy can survive. ~~~~~ In the 1960s booming post-World War II economy, Europe began importing millions of guest workers from Turkey and the Maghreb. Governments assumed they'd go home in a few years, so no effort was made to integrate and assimilate them. Simultaneously, greatly enriched by the 1973 oil embargo, Saudi Arabia began a massive $4 billion per year program to export its radical Wahhabi, often called Salafist, version of Islam to the West, working with the Moslem Brotherhood, which is grounded on the teachings of islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb, author of "Milestones" and the 30-volume "In the Shade of the Koran." Qutb transformed radical Islam in the mid-20th century, creating totalitarian political islamism with absolute obedience to sharia, which he saw as the foundation of Islam, declaring Moslem rulers who do not impose sharia apostates to be killed, and elevating Jews and the West to the status of existential threats to Islam. ~~~~~ These three radical theories were key innovations not widely preached by Islam before Qutb. Sharia was not the only law anywhere until the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932. A 2013 Pew Foundation report showed overwhelming public support for sharia as the only law in many Moslem majority countries -- Morocco 83%, Pakistan 84%, Malaysia 86%, Iraq 91% and Afghanistan 99%. Qutb's virulent Jew-hatred doctrine was taken from European anti-Semitism in the 1930s and during World War II, when some Moslems actively supported and fought for Hitler. To allow hundreds of thousands of such economic migrants into Europe was very shortsighted, and the EU now faces the generation that grew up under this islamist doctrine that dominates European Moslem enclaves. It has been taught all over Europe in Moslem schools funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. ~~~~~ The Qatari Emir, long presented as a pro-Western modernizer, in 2012 vowed to "spare no effort" to spread the radical teachings of Wahhabi Islam across "the whole world." Wahhabism opposes Moslem integration in the West and actively encourages jihad against non-Moslems. Its spread further radicalizes Moslem immigrants in France, for example, where Qatar is very active, targeting suburban slums, where more than a million mostly jobless young Moslem immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East are exploited by islamist imams from Qatar, Morocco and Turkey, who use the social marginalization of Moslems in France as the excuse to create "separate islamic societies" under sharia. A recent major study on the rise of Islam in France -- "Banlieue de la République" (Suburbs of the Republic) by influential French think tank L'Institut Montaigne and directed by Gilles Kepel, a well-known Moslem specialist -- describes how France's 7 million Moslem immigrants, the largest Moslem population in the EU, increasingly reject French values and identity with Islam, how sharia is rapidly displacing French civil law in parts of suburban Paris, and how France faces a major social crisis because of the failure/refusal of Moslems to integrate into French society. The study says Moslem religious institutions and practices in mosques, Koranic schools and prayer rooms radicalize undereducated low-income immigrants who depend on financial support from countries like Morocco, Turkey and Qatar. France isn't alone : 60% of Italy's mosques are under the Moslem Brotherhood, funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In Ireland, Qatar gave €800,000 to build a mosque in Cork. Ireland's Moslem population has grown tenfold in 20 years, making Islam the fastest-growing religion. The Irish Times says the Moslem Brotherhood is one of Ireland's strongest Islam influences. ~~~~~ Dear readers, there is little hope that Western society can coexist with an islamism that will not reform itself. What can be done? That's tomorrow's topic.