These are a few of the WikiLeaks revelations that are exciting much comment on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Middle East, and that we find helpful to know:

The release of Magrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, from a Scottish prison, was done for cowardly motives that had nothing to do with justice or compassion, just as we always thought. (See the Telegraph here and here, and the Scotsman here.)

Contrary to Obama’s assumptions, the Arab States are much more interested in stopping Iran developing a nuclear capability than they are in the Israel-Palestinian “peace process”, and they confer directly with Israel about this crisis, having lost patience with Obama. (See the Jerusalem Post here and Front Page here.)

Ireland impeded US arms transfers to Israel. (See the Jerusalem Post here.)

In the vain desire to empty Guantanamo, the US administration used questionable inducements to persuade foreign governments to accept prisoners – with little success. (See PowerLine here.)

The Saudi Arabian rulers – under whose strictly “moral” Wahhabi regime young girls were pushed back into a burning school because they ran out with their faces uncovered – entertain themselves in extravagant orgies, with every kind of sexual indulgence and drugs, with music they forbid their subjects to listen to.  [Note it is their hypocrisy and cruelty we find morally repulsive, not their choices of entertainment,  except when they involve the exploitation and corruption of children – which, to our certain knowledge, they frequently do, especially homosexual exploitation.] (See the Guardian here.)

These revelations underline the message that many others convey, such as those concerning the Obama administration’s mishandling of relations with and between North Korea, Iran and China. (See our posts Thanks to WikiLeaks? December 3, 2010, and More on WikiLeaks December 4, 2010).

If WikiLeaks, which did not steal the documents but published them, is guilty of a crime – what crime we are waiting to be told – then are not the newspapers that publish them, such as the New York Times, equally guilty?

Attorney General Eric Holder, no master of understanding or expression, will name the crime eventually perhaps. So far he has only told us that the WikiLeaks publication of the documents was “not helpful”. To whom? For what? They’re certainly helpful in proving, inter alia, that the State Department is an institution which does not serve the interests of the country. Or, to be a little less delicate, that it’s a malignant tumor on the body politic.

With a little bit of luck, the undemocratic European Union will soon fall apart. One Euro-zone member state after another is collapsing for the simple reason that socialist economics – the sort Obama wants to force on the US – do not work.

Here is Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independent Party (UKIP) which has been doing grand work trying to undo the EU for years, makes a short speech saying bluntly what needs to be said about the whole rotten enterprise of European economic and political unity:

General Petraeus has claimed counterinsurgency success in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. But if this Washington Post report provides a true picture of what success amounts to, it makes failure hard to define.

Helmand is the place with the highest concentration of American troops, and the site of the first major operation under the new military strategy, when U.S. Marines in February retook the Taliban-held town of Marja. Coalition commander Gen. David H. Petraeus now points to parts of Helmand, such as Nawa, as examples of counterinsurgency success.

But the Helmand refugees living in this squalid camp, known as Charahi Qambar, offer a bleaker assessment. They blame insecurity on the presence of U.S. and British troops, and despite official claims of emerging stability, these Afghans believe their villages are still too dangerous to risk returning.

“Where is security? The Americans are just making life worse and worse, and they’re destroying our country,” said Barigul, a 22-year-old opium farmer from the Musa Qala district of Helmand … “If they were building our country, why would I leave my home town and come here?” …

The camp has since grown to more than 1,000 families, making it the largest of some 30 informal settlements around Kabul. …

The residents say they are mostly farmers who brought their bundles by bus and taxi to live in these mud hovels or under scraps of tarp. It is a place of wailing children and dirt-caked faces, where husbands search for menial labor and wives burn heaps of trash to cook their daily gruel. …

Ahunzada, a 35-year-old mullah, gets by on meager donations from other refugees, given to him as payment for teaching Islamic classes and leading the daily prayers in a low-ceilinged makeshift mosque built from mud. Two years ago, he left his opium fields in Sangin, one of the most violent parts of Helmand, which British troops recently handed over to U.S. Marines after taking casualties for four years.

“Every day, fighting is going on there. The more infidels who come to our country, the more Afghans die, and the less safe we become,” he said.

Ahunzada has little affection for the Taliban. His father, Mohammad Gul Agha, and his brother, Abdul Zahir, both died when a fireball engulfed their car on the road to the provincial capital. The insurgents, he said, had planted the bomb to target a passing U.S. military convoy.

“We are not happy from either side, but I believe the British and American troops are more cruel than the Taliban,” he said. “I have seen it happen: The Taliban come on motorbikes, they open fire, then they leave. Then the Americans just come and kill us, they bomb us, they open fire on us, they kill the children and innocent people.” …

He makes this claim although “U.S. commanders say they have made reducing civilian casualties a top priority, and they say their soldiers accept more risk in order to minimize collateral damage” – a deplorable fact we know to be true.

Barigul [the 22-year-old opium farmer mentioned above] and his family left Helmand last month. He said the decision was the culmination of long-running harassment from American troops and their insurgent enemies. He has been detained, he said, accused of planting bombs, searched at checkpoints, and slapped in the face by foreign troops. Outside the Musa Qala district center, where American troops are dominant, the Taliban patrol the villages, block children from attending school and kill Afghans accused of collaborating with foreigners.

“If we grew our beards, the Americans arrested us and put us in jail saying we were Taliban. If we shaved, the Taliban gave us a hard time,” he said. “What are we supposed to do, shave half of our beard?” …

These camp residents – refugees though they are, who have sought protection in the camp from the Taliban – have decided that the Taliban is after all the lesser of two evils. They “clearly want foreign troops to depart”.

They blame the Americans for bombing them out of their homes:

“Who are the Taliban? They are our brothers, our cousins, our relatives. The problem is the Americans,” said Lala Jan, 25, also from Musa Qala. “If somebody attacks from one house, the Americans bomb the whole place. If the Taliban come inside, during the night the Americans come and raid the house. That’s the problem.”

As the number of foreign troops has risen – there are now about 140,000 U.S. and allied NATO soldiers on the ground – the population of those who have been displaced from their homes and have moved elsewhere in Afghanistan has also grown. …

Mohammad, a 36-year-old imam, said that during the Marine operation in Marja, his family hid in a hole, covered by boards, for 12 days as the Taliban fought Americans from house to house. This spring his mother-in-law’s home in Marja was obliterated by an American bomb, he said, killing six of his relatives.

“It was impossible to stay,” he said. “The house had collapsed. “If I go back to Marja, I will have to pick a side,” he said. “If I support the foreign forces, the Taliban will behead me. If I join the Taliban, I will also get killed.” …

For many, the lure to return remains strong. The rain seeps into Ahunzada’s hovel. … He lies on the floor at night and yearns to return to Helmand.

“I keep thinking I should go back to my village, either to cultivate opium or to stand alongside the Taliban. Then at least I will have money. I could send it to my wife and son,” he said. “I think about this every night.”

Yet he is not quite ready.

“When the infidels leave our province, on the next day I will go home.”

Where in this calamitous story does an Afghan army come in, well trained, effective, competently commanded, and seriously willing to take on the Taliban without foreign assistance?  Is it even remotely in prospect?

Without such a thing – and who at this stage can seriously believe in it? – whenever the infidel forces withdraw, whether in 2011 or in 2014 (dates that have been named) or in any unspecified year beyond that,  the Taliban will have won.

The proposition for the debate at Cambridge University was: Israel is a Rogue State.

The mood now in Britain and the British universities – Cambridge no exception – is anti-Israel.

Gabriel Latner, a strong supporter of Israel, was on the side whose remit it was to argue for the proposition.

He did it so convincingly that – the other side won. By a decisive majority.

Here’s part of what he said (but enjoy reading it all):

This is a war of ideals, and the other speakers here tonight are rightfully idealists. I’m not. I’m a realist. I’m here to win. I have a single goal this evening – to have at least a plurality of you walk out of the “Aye” door. I face a singular challenge – most, if not all, of you have already made up your minds.

This issue is too polarizing for the vast majority of you not to already have a set opinion. I’d be willing to bet that half of you strongly support the motion, and half of you strongly oppose it. I want to win, and we’re destined for a tie. I’m tempted to do what my fellow speakers are going to do – simply rehash every bad thing the Israeli government has ever done in an attempt to satisfy those of you who agree with them. And perhaps they’ll even guilt one of you rare undecided into voting for the proposition, or more accurately, against Israel.

It would be so easy to twist the meaning and significance of international “laws” to make Israel look like a criminal state. But that’s been done to death. It would be easier still to play to your sympathy, with personalized stories of Palestinian suffering. And they can give very eloquent speeches on those issues. But the truth is that treating people badly, whether they’re your citizens or an occupied nation, does not make a state “rogue.” If it did, Canada, the US, and Australia would all be rogue states based on how they treat their indigenous populations. Britain’s treatment of the Irish would easily qualify them to wear this sobriquet. These arguments, while emotionally satisfying, lack intellectual rigor.

More importantly, I just don’t think we can win with those arguments. It won’t change the numbers. Half of you will agree with them, half of you won’t. So I’m going to try something different, something a little unorthodox … to try and convince the die-hard Zionists and Israel supporters here tonight to vote for the proposition. …

A rogue state is one that acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner. A state that behaves exactly like Israel. …

The fact that Israel is a Jewish state alone makes it anomalous enough to be dubbed a rogue state: There are 195 countries in the world. Some are Christian, some Muslim, some are secular. Israel is the only country in the world that is Jewish. …

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism – in particular, Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis – for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that – but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened, and is still happening in Darfur, is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt – where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border.

Why would they take the risk? Because in Israel they are treated with compassion – they are treated as the refugees that they are – and perhaps Israel’s cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

But the real point of distinction is this: The IDF sends out soldiers and medics to patrol the Egyptian border. They are sent looking for refugees attempting to cross into Israel. Not to send them back into Egypt, but to save them from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and Egyptian bullets. …  To call that sort of behavior anomalous is an understatement. …

When you compare Israel to its regional neighbors, it becomes clear just how roguish Israel is.

Israel has a better human rights record than any of its neighbors. At no point in history has there ever been a liberal democratic state in the Middle East – except for Israel. …

In Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Syria, homosexual conduct is punishable by flogging, imprisonment, or both. But homosexuals there get off pretty lightly compared to their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, who are put to death. Israeli homosexuals can adopt, openly serve in the army, enter civil unions and are protected by exceptionally strongly worded anti-discrimination legislation. …

Freedom House is an NGO that releases an annual report on democracy and civil liberties in each of the 195 countries in the world. It ranks each country as “free,” “partly free” or “not free.” In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has earned designation as a “free” country. …

Iran is …  given the rating of “not free,” putting it alongside China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Myanmar. … Iran is the world leader in terms of jailed journalists, with 39 reporters (that we know of) in prison as of 2009. They also kicked out almost every Western journalist during the 2009 election. I guess we can’t really expect more from a theocracy.

Which is what most countries in the Middle East are – theocracies and autocracies. But Israel is the sole, the only, the rogue, democracy. Out of all the countries in the Middle East, only in Israel do anti-government protests and reporting go unquashed and uncensored. …

Israel willfully and forcefully disregards international law. In 1981 Israel destroyed Osirak – Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb lab. Every government in the world knew that Hussein was building a bomb. And they did nothing. Except for Israel.

Yes, in doing so they broke international law and custom. But they also saved us all from a nuclear Iraq. That rogue action should earn Israel a place of respect in the eyes of all freedom-loving peoples. But it hasn’t.

Tonight, while you listen to us prattle on, I want you to remember something: While you’re here, Khomeini’s Iran is working towards the Bomb. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know that Israel is the only country that can, and will, do something about it. Israel will, out of necessity, act in a way that is not the norm, and you’d better hope that they do it in a destructive manner. Any sane person would rather a rogue Israel than a nuclear Iran.

Michael Gerson, in an article at Townhall – a conservative website! – objects to Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment preventing the introduction of Islam’s sharia law into the state.

He claims that the measure was introduced to “to taunt a religious minority”, and dubs it “faith-baiting”, warning that other states could follow the example and introduce measures to “bait” Christians, for instance, or Hindus.

He tries to defend sharia:

Anti-Shariah activists argue that Shariah law controls every area of a Muslim’s life … and thus that Islam itself is incompatible with American democracy. Radical Islamists would nod in agreement to each of these claims…

Not surprising really, since the claims are true. But he has a different understanding:

Both are wrong. The proper interpretation of Shariah law is a subject of vigorous debate within Islam. There are some who would freeze societies in the cultural practices of seventh-century Arabia. But there are others who identify a core of Islamic teaching that is separable from the cultural assumptions of the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Predominantly Muslim nations take a variety of approaches to the application of Islamic law, from theocracy to official secularism. …

Wherever did he get this idea of a “vigorous debate within Islam” over sharia or anything else? Where is “Islamic teaching separable from the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad”? What taqqiya (religiously sanctioned lies) has he been swallowing? He gives no sources, no references.

Most if not all states that have a majority Muslim population and a constitution  – and we have found only one exception  – claim that the basis of their  law is sharia. The exception was Turkey, but that is changing. Turkey is now governed by a religious party. The genuinely secular state  that Kemal Ataturk created is being dismantled and the Turks are returning to Islamic darkness.

Does Gerson actually know anything about sharia law? He goes on:

So is Shariah law compatible with democracy? In the totalitarian version of the Taliban, it cannot be reconciled with pluralism. But if Shariah is interpreted as a set of transcendent principles of fairness and justice …

If it is so interpreted? It would be interesting to see how a system of law that has a woman’s testimony valued at half that of a man’s, and prescribes death for apostasy, to take just two examples, can be interpreted as “a set of transcendent principles of fairness and justice”.

He really seems not to know what he’s talking about. It is precisely this sort of deliberate blindness to what Islam is and intends that helps it towards its objective of domination.

He also seems to be unaware that sharia is creeping into Western countries and creating a great deal of justified anger and anxiety by the sort of “justice” the sharia courts are doling out. Muslim women in Britain, for instance, who had hoped for protection from sharia under British law, are now subjected to the “justice and fairness” of one or another of 85 sharia courts, whose rulings are enforced by the British state. They feel bitterly betrayed by the country in which they sought refuge from the subjugation that the law of Islam prescribes for them. (See our post Sharia in Britain, November 5, 2010.)

The state of Oklahoma, in our opinion, is foresightful and wise to bar sharia out. What is deplorable is that it has become necessary to take legislative action against it in the United States of America.

On Remembrance Day in Kensington, London, Muslims burn poppies, the symbols of heroic sacrifice worn by Britons in honor of their fathers and brothers who fell in two world wars.

In Flanders Fields

composed in the trenches by John McCrae, May 1915

***

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

*

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

*

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Rarely in history has any society been as supine as modern Britain in the face of a mortal threat.

So says Leo McKinstry in his column in the Daily Express.

We applaud him. We thought the day would never come when some Briton with a public platform would speak out with this degree of bitter fierceness against the Islamic invaders of his country, and upbraid his own people – those once courageous, hardy, proud, patriotic, powerful islanders – for lying down and whimpering instead of fighting them off.

Here’s more of what McKinstry has to say:

The fabric of our civilisation is now at risk from militant Islam which aims to destroy our way of life. Yet instead of showing resolve in the face of this challenge, the political establishment vacillates between collusion and denial.

His welcome outburst was occasioned by events at a Muslim woman terrorist’s trial. Roshonara Choudhry was convicted of trying to kill a Member of Parliament, Stephen Timms, by stabbing him.

Her deed, which led to a jail sentence of 15 years, was sickening enough. What was just as offensive was the enfeebled police response to the gang of Muslim demonstrators who gathered at the court to cheer Choudhry and denounce the verdict.

“British soldiers must die”, was one their poisonous slogans. “Stephen Timms – go to hell” was another. But the police, standing nearby, took no action … paralysed by fashionable multi-cultural dogma which holds that ethnic minorities always have to be treated as victims. …

Perhaps the most nauseating feature of this Islamic demonstration is the fact that the British taxpayer was forced to subsidise it.

For nearly all the protestors are benefit claimants sponging off the rest of us. They are hypocrites as well as parasites, since they are happy to grab cash from a society they claim to despise. … It is the height of lunacy that we should be compelled, through our taxes, to provide comfortable lifestyles to our sworn enemies.

Effectively we are paying for our own demise. … Tragically, this is the pattern of modern Britain. It has emerged that the state is now paying for more work on the expensive west London home of the notorious Islamist hate preacher Abu Hamza, currently serving seven years in Belmarsh prison for incitement to murder and racial hatred.

Last week, in another example of the establishment’s pusillanimity, a Special Immigration Commission decided that this brute should be allowed to keep his British citizenship. Abu Hamza is already estimated to have cost the taxpayer an incredible £3.5million through welfare payouts, home improvements, prison and legal bills.

Only a sick political system would think it right to lavish millions on the family of a monster whose entire existence is predicated on our obliteration … This is the hallmark of Britain’s relationship with Islam, where fear is dressed up as tolerance. …

We are dealing with a dangerous, aggressive ideology, not some minor fringe problem. “Islam will dominate the world” read one of the placards at last week’s democracy. Unless we wake up, this will become a terrifying reality.

Read it all here.

(This post, like the one immediately below, Europe’s doom, takes up a point made in the comments on the video Getting nowhere. )

Sharia has been accepted in Britain as a parallel legal system. Here is a report from the Times (London) which seems adequately to establish the fact:

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Britain has cruelly betrayed Muslim women and children by allowing sharia rulings to be enforced. Here are extracts from an article by Maryam Namazie in the (left leaning) Guardian, explaining some of the ways women are unjustly treated in sharia courts, and pleading for a single system of secular law.

A report, Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights, reveals the adverse effect of sharia courts on family law. Under sharia’s civil code, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s. A man can divorce his wife by repudiation, whereas a woman must give justifications, some of which are difficult to prove. Child custody reverts to the father at a preset age; women who remarry lose custody of their children even before then; and sons inherit twice the share of daughters.

There has been much controversy about Muslim arbitration tribunals, which have attracted attention because they operate as tribunals under the Arbitration Act, making their rulings binding in UK law. …

An example of the kind of decision that is contrary to UK law and public policy is the custody of children. Under British law, the child’s best interest is the court’s paramount consideration. In a sharia court the custody of children reverts to the father at a preset age regardless of the circumstances. In divorce proceedings, too, civil law takes into account the merits of the case and divides assets based on the needs and intentions of both parties. Under sharia law, only men have the right to unilateral divorce. If a woman manages to obtain a divorce without her husband’s consent, she will lose the sum of money (or dowry) that was agreed to at the time of marriage.

There is an assumption that those who attend sharia courts do so voluntarily and that unfair decisions can be challenged. Since much of sharia law is contrary to British law and public policy, in theory they would be unlikely to be upheld in a British court. In reality, women are often pressured by their families into going to these courts and adhering to unfair decisions and may lack knowledge of their rights under British law. Moreover, refusal to settle a dispute in a sharia court could lead to to threats, intimidation or isolation. …

Rights, justice, inclusion, equality and respect are for people, not for beliefs and parallel legal systems. To safeguard the rights and freedoms of all those living in Britain, there must be one secular law for all and no religious courts.

Read here and here about sharia spreading in Europe , Canada and the United States..

Finally, listen to Pat Condell, eloquent and just, deploring the Archbishop of Canterbury’s pronouncement that the acceptance of sharia is “unavoidable”:

(This post arises out of an interesting and important argument in the comments on the video Getting nowhere, posted below.)

Are there areas in Europe where Muslims have established small “states within a state”? And if so, are they “no-go areas” into which police forces fear to enter and enforce the law of the land?

Daniel Pipes has given much well-informed thought to the subject of Islam in Europe. On the “no-go areas” he wrote in November 2006:

They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are convienently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations.

What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassone to twelve in the heavily Muslim town of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.

In a series of updates he subsequently cited examples of such problematic “no-go areas” in France, Britain, and Germany.

Muslim enclaves exist, and Muslim populations are increasing, and Muslim power is growing in Europe.

So is Europe becoming an Islamic continent? Will the Europeans allow this to happen? If they’d rather not, what will and what can they do to prevent it?

In 2007 Daniel Pipes wrote that Europe faces “stark options” in dealing with the immense problem that the Muslim presence gives rise to.

Europe’s long-term relations with its burgeoning Muslim minority, the continent’s most critical issue, will follow one of three paths: harmonious integration, the expulsion of Muslims, or an Islamic takeover. Which of these scenarios will most likely play out?

He takes his third scenario, “Muslims Rule”,  first, sets out the case that has been made for it, and sums it up in these words:

This first argument holds that Europe will be Islamized, quietly submitting to the dhimmi status or converting to Islam, because the yin of Europe and yang of Muslims fit so well: low and high religiosity, low and high fertility, low and high cultural confidence. Europe is an open door through which Muslims are walking.

His second scenario is “Muslims Rejected” :

This scenario has indigenous Europeans – who do still constitute 95 percent of the continent’s population – waking up one day and asserting themselves. “Basta!” they will say, and reclaim their historic order. …

For years, Muslims have worried about just such incarceration and brutalization, followed by expulsion or even massacres. Already in the late 1980s, the late Kalim Siddiqui, director of London’s Muslim Institute, raised the specter of “Hitler-style gas chambers for Muslims.” Shabbir Akhtar warned in his 1989 book, Be Careful With Muhammad that “the next time there are gas chambers in Europe, there is no doubt concerning who’ll be inside them,” meaning Muslims. A character in Hanif Kureishi’s 1991 novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, prepares the guerilla war that he expects will follow after “the whites finally turned on the blacks and Asians and tried to force us into gas chambers.”

But it is more likely that European efforts at reclamation will be initiated peaceably and legally, with Muslims – in keeping with recent patterns of intimidation and terrorism – being the ones to initiate violence. Multiple polls confirm that about 5 percent of British Muslims endorse the 7/7 bombings, suggesting a general readiness to resort to force.

However it happens, a European reassertion cannot be assumed to take place cooperatively.

Thirdly he considers “Muslims Integrated”:

In the happiest scenario, autochthonous Europeans and Muslim immigrants find a modus vivendi and live together harmoniously. Perhaps the classic statement of this optimistic expectation was a 1991 study, La France, une chance pour l’Islam (“France, an Opportunity for Islam”) by Jeanne-Hélène and Pierre Patrick Kaltenbach. “For the first time in history,” they wrote, “Islam is offered the chance to waken in a democratic, rich, laic, and peaceable country.” That hopefulness lives on. An Economist leader from mid-2006 asserts that “for the moment at least, the prospect of Eurabia looks like scaremongering.” Also at that time, Jocelyne Cesari, associate professor of Islamic studies at the Harvard Divinity School, claimed a balance exists: just as “Islam is changing Europe,” she said, “Europe is changing Islam.” She finds that “Muslims in Europe do not want to change the nature of European states” and expects them to adapt themselves into the European context.

Such optimism, unfortunately, has little foundation. … Those polls of British Muslims for example, find that a majority of them perceive a conflict between their British and Muslim identities and want Islamic law instituted.

The possibility of Muslims accepting the confines of historic Europe and smoothly integrating within it can virtually be dismissed from consideration.

Having dismissed Muslim integration as unlikely, he is left with the alternative of Muslims rejected or ruling. Which it will be, he cannot predict:

As the American columnist Dennis Prager sums them up, “It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for Western Europe than its becoming Islamicized or having a civil war.” Indeed, these two deeply unattractive alternative paths appear to define Europe’s choices, with powerful forces pulling in the contrary directions of Muslims taking over or Muslims rejected, Europe an extension of North Africa or in a state of quasi-civil war.

Which will it be? The decisive events that will resolve this question have yet to take place, so one cannot yet make the call. Decision-time is fast approaching, however. Within the next decade or so, today’s flux will end, the Europe-Islam equation will harden, and the continent’s future course should become apparent.

Correctly anticipating that course is the more difficult for being historically unprecedented. No large territory has ever shifted from one civilization to another by virtue of a collapsed population, faith, and identity [Rome? – JB]; nor has a people risen on so grand a scale to reclaim its patrimony. The novelty and magnitude of Europe’s predicament make it difficult to understand, tempting to overlook, and nearly impossible to predict. Europe marches us all into terra incognita.

In 2009 he considered another possible development:

A reader, Chris Slater of Upper Hutt, New Zealand, writes me to predict a fourth outcome as most likely: “larger existing Muslim areas will re-create themselves into independent national entities” and “by the middle of the twenty-first century nearly all western European countries will be riven by the creation of Islamic city states within their borders. For the sake of brevity they will be referred to as ‘microstates,’ that is, autonomous conurbations defined by the Islamic beliefs of their citizens.”

Slater foresees boundaries being formed “around existing Muslim centres of population, initially in France, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, followed rapidly by Britain, Norway, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. Dates for eastern European states, particularly Orthodox, may be more difficult to predict, although Russia, with 15 percent of its 143 million people professing Islam, may well lead many western European countries in having an independent Islamic state. By the end of this century this process will affect every non-Islamic state throughout the world.”

These microstates will enjoy a “monopoly on legitimate violence,” impose their own autonomous legal order, and form alliances among themselves. They will feature such Shar’i customs as polygyny, no-interest finance, huddud punishments, Islamic ways of dress, family “honor” codes, bans on criticism of Islam, and so on. Arabic and the dominant immigrant vernacular will enjoy more currency than the host country’s language. Street names will be changed, statues removed, churches and synagogues converted to mosques.

Slater sees this outcome this as “the only way to avoid the destruction of both the national cultures and, indeed, European civilization from total domination by the cultures of Muslim immigrants.”

But this scenario Pipes considered to be as unlikely as integration.

We think that Muslim rule is the most likely scenario; and that microstates, forming now as “no-go” areas, will be an intermediate phase on the way to complete Islamic domination.

There are new political parties in Europe which understand, as the old established parties do not, the threat of Islamization. (A new one has just come into existence in Germany, called Die Freiheit.) But what can they do at this late stage? Limit immigration? It’s too late for that to make a significant difference. Expel Muslims? Where to? Many, after all, have been born in Europe, and there are thousands of European converts. Resort to massacre? Most unlikely: the Holocaust, even though it does not inhibit persecution of the Jews or hostility to the State of Israel, does stand as too recent an act of shame to allow Europeans to commit cold-blooded murder on such a scale again in this century.

The low fertility rate of the Europeans cannot be reversed in time to prevent their nations dwindling, while that of the Muslims amongst them means there’ll be a Muslim majority within 50 years, barring some casus fortuitus to prevent it.

There remains the possibility of civil war.