Another startling article from the Islam scholar Bat Ye'or, in which she repeats her claim -- to be expanded in a book to be published in the new year -- of a devastating alliance between Europe and Islam going back several decades, in which Islam sought to colonise Europe which duly rolled over and accommodated itself to Islamist imperialism. She writes:

'For years the European countries have joined the 56 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to promote Palestinianism in the international bodies as a world warfare against Israel waged by its leader Arafat whom they supported. This war was officially stated at the 1980 Fez Islamic Conference and at the Amman Arab Summit, soon after the Venice Declaration. It was re-emphasized at the Mecca-Taif Islamic Summit (January 1981). Those august bodies showered thanks on the Vatican and the World Council of Churches for their invaluable support to Palestinianism. The red-green alliance was then strengthened in the Amman Arab Summit Declaration (November 1980). In this marriage the Muslim trend, confident in its divine mission and fed by unlimited funds, overwhelmed its faithless, leftist European partner. The latter, weakened by Communism’s collapse, is now rejuvenated as the antisemitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American conveyor of Islamization in Europe.'

The result is a Europe which is rapidly turning into a decadent civilisation which poses in turn a mortal threat to America:

'Today it is not uncommon to hear Europeans express their disgust for Europe and their wish to emigrate. Europe, they say, is dead and has no future. They flee this Islamic-Christian dhimmi civilization where the native non-Muslims are deprived of their basic human rights under the yet unofficial shari’a rule that recognizes conditional peaceful co-existence only to dhimmis respectful of Islam. Going Europe’s way means a U.S. compliance to bin Laden and the denial of Islamist global terrorism, whose creator and promoter was Arafat, Europe’s hero and the demonic agent of its downfall'.

The evidence of European decadence, its obsessive prejudice against Israel and its servile attitude to Islamist imperialism, are all plain enough to see. But Bat Ye'or takes this one stage further. She claims that Palestinianism was a European invention:

'Palestinianism as an ideology bringing together Europe and the Arab countries on the ashes of Israel was conceived and planned in Europe with unofficial Gaullist benediction, and Arafat was its embodiment.'

If this claim is true, then the whole history of the Middle East over the past four decades needs to be recast; and Europe stands revealed not as the wholly inadequate defender of western civilisation but instead a principal architect of its destruction.

Posted by melanie at November 16, 2004