General Sir David Richards, Chief of the British Armed Forces, commander of  NATO forces in Afghanistan since 2006, “subscribes to the notion that such an ideologically-driven adversary [as al-Qaeda] cannot be defeated in the traditional sense, and to attempt to do so could be a mistake”, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Sir David says “War” is the correct term for describing the conflict between the West and al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups.

It might not be the stereotypical view of war, he insists, in the sense of massed armies attempting to outmanoeuvre their opponents but it needs to be viewed in the same way. But this war – unlike those of the past – could last up to 30 years.

Why 30? We are not told. The war he describes has no conceivable end:

We are engaged in a global struggle against a pernicious form of ideologically distorted form of Islamic fundamentalism. …

A war against an ideology, he accepts, has to be fought differently from a war against an enemy nation; and whereas “in conventional war, defeat and victory is very clear cut and is symbolised by troops marching into another nation’s capital” , there can be no such moment of clear victory in this “global struggle” against a “form of Islamic fundamentalism”.

The general is all for fighting such a war, even though there can there never be  a “clear cut victory”.

What is more, he thinks no such victory is “necessary”.

You have to ask: “do we need to defeat it (Islamist militancy)?”  in the sense of a clear cut victory, and I would argue that it is unnecessary and would never be achieved.

It is true that the West is engaged in a war with Islam, which makes war because it is ideologically committed to making war, and the general almost says as much. Perhaps he hopes to be understood to mean as much. But he doesn’t exactly say so. He doesn’t say that what we are up against is Islam, or the ideology of Islam. He removes accusation as far from Islam as he can. We are, he says, under attack by  “a pernicious form“, [an] “ideologically distorted form“,  of “Islamic fundamentalism”. Not even Islamic fundamentalism itself, but a pernicious, distorted form of it.

Seen in those terms, the enemy can only be a bunch of deluded fanatics. In the general’s view there will always be such aberrant types who stupidly misunderstand the teaching of their own religion, and of course we must do what we can to protect ourselves from them. “The national security of the UK and our allies is, in my judgement, at stake,” he says.

And he hastens to add that, despite the indefeatable nature of the enemy, the war in Afghanistan is not futile. The deluded fanatics must be fought in any and every state where they establish themselves.

“Make no mistake,”  he states with added emphasis, “the global threat from al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates is an enduring one and one which, if we let it, will rear its head in states particularly those that are unstable. …

“Our men and women in Afghanistan are fighting to prevent this [pernicious, ideologically distorted form of Islamic fundamentalism] from spreading.”

But in the long run, what will best overcome it, even if never permanently and decisively, is something other than the weapons of war:

Education, prosperity, understanding and democracy, he argues passionately, are the weapons that would ultimately turn people away from terrorism.

Has he not been informed that most of the Islamic terrorists who have murdered thousands in the West are educated and prosperous, and grew up in the democracies they attacked? What is it that they failed to understand which could make all the difference?

The general is right that the enemies are Muslim, use terrorism, are ideologically driven, and are not defeatable by conventional warfare. He is wrong that they are an ignorant, impoverished, desperate, deluded atypical minority who have misunderstood the teaching of Islam.

The truth is that Islam commands jihad. Jihad is continual war against non-Muslims until Islam rules the whole world. The Taliban, the Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, the mass murderers of 9/11, all those who have carried out the 16,384 (tally to this date) violent attacks in the name of Islam, understand perfectly what Muhammad taught and are obedient to the ideology of their faith.

Islam needs to be countered by persistent criticism and argument of all sorts, including derision. That is what Islam fears most – argument against it, critical examination, debunking – which is why the Islamic states are trying to make it illegal to say anything against Islam, hoping to achieve protection from reason by means of a United Nations resolution.

If by “education” General Sir David Richards meant continual teaching against Islam, he’d be right.

After the Second World War, the Germans were made to undergo a process of “denazification”. It was a program of education for all Germans to rid them of belief in the ideology of Nazism. Whether it actually cleaned out the minds of true believers or not, it did make it hard for anyone to speak publicly in defense of what the Nazis and the Third Reich had stood for, by making it shameful to do so. (The defeat itself more than anything else convinced Germany that the Nazis had been wrong.)

Ideally, the same should be done with Islam: a de-Islamization program wherever it could be put into effect.

Of course that will not happen. The West upholds freedom of religion, Islam calls itself a religion, so Islam will be left free to spread its malevolent practices: women mutilated, assaulted, enslaved; non-Muslims killed if they will not submit; legal execution carried out by stoning, burning, crucifixion, punishment by the amputation of hands and feet; and the world at large subjected to perpetual warfare until it accepts unquestioningly forever the law and morals of a cruel illiterate bandit of the Dark Ages.

At least we can and must argue against Islam. Learn about it, spread the truth about it, expose it, denounce it. Resist its advance in every way. No footbaths. No same-sex swimming sessions in public pools. No removal of pigs or their effigies from public places. No taxi drivers exempted from carrying dogs and alcohol. No time off work for prayer. No mosque at Ground Zero. No sharia-compliant financial deals. No legitimized sharia courts, enforcement of their rulings, or deference by judges to Muslim custom.

The West has the intellectual resources to defeat Islam. What it lacks is the will.

During his  grand progress through East Asia, Obama made a speech in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, praising that Muslim country – in which he had spent some years of his childhood – for its “toleration”.

When it comes to religious freedom, Indonesia – he would have it known – is the equal of the United States.

Did he speak the truth?

The people of East Timor, most of them Catholics, would not say that he did. In August 1999 they voted in a referendum for independence from Indonesia. No sooner was the result in, than Muslim militias, aided and abetted by the Indonesian authorities, attacked the civilian population, killing well over a thousand and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee into West Timor. The Muslims proceeded to execute a scorched-earth campaign, razing buildings and destroying infrastructure. (East Timor finally achieved independence in 2002.)

Go here to find lists of atrocities, with pictures, inflicted on the Christians of East Timor in 1999 by Muslim militias and Indonesian troops.

The Christians of West Java would also not agree with Obama that Indonesia is remarkable for its toleration.

From the Gates of Vienna:

The sharia authorities in West Java have developed a two-prong strategy to discourage the practice of Christianity. First they knock down a church, which drives the Christian congregation into open-air worship. Then they harass them for praying in the open, because public worship by non-Muslims is against the law. …

Last Monday, police raided a house used for worship by Narogong Pentecostal Church in the village of Limusnunggal, Cileungsi sub-district. … The building was eventually torn down and ten people arrested.

The police “were not neutral in the dispute”, though their presence could have a calming effect.

A group of 500 Islamic extremists blocked Christians from the Huria Protestant Church in a field where the Sunday service was taking place. The incident occurred last July 18 in the city of Pondok Timur in Mustika Jaya subdistrict, district of Bekasi (West Java).

Muslims blocked all routes to prevent Christians leaving the field and began to insult them, terrorizing them. The group of Protestant believers pray outdoors because their hall for religious functions was closed on the grounds that it was illegal.

The situation improved when a representative of the Bekasi Office for Religious Affairs, along with 200 policemen … [The pastor] asked the representative to help [his] congregation to leave the site without harm. …

For years the Christians of Bekasi have been targeted by Islamic fundamentalists. Early in 2010, radical groups blocked religious services, prevented Christians from access to existing churches and stopped the construction of new churches. Since 2009, more than 17 churches have been affected by Islamic extremists. …

The religious authorities have recently intensified their enforcement of strict sharia practices.

And what might the Christians of Sulawesi province say?

There, in October 2005, three Christian girls were walking to school when Muslims seized them and hacked off their heads.

BBC News reported:

Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia.

They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked. …

Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.

Typically stuck on stupid when it comes to reporting  Muslim violence, the BBC commented:

It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive. …

Sure it might have. Especially considering that –

This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians. …

Between them? Not violent attacks by Muslims on Christians who defended themselves? How eager are Christians to initiate violent clashes with Muslims in Indonesia?

But  the BBC doesn’t care to find fault with Muslims any more than Obama does.

More than 1,000 people were killed before a government-brokered truce.

Although the violence has been subdued, it has never gone away completely.

A bomb in May in the nearby town of Tentena, which is predominantly Christian, killed 22 people and injured over 30.

That naughty violence with a will of its own!

And what might the opinion be of Christians in Sukohajo and Klaten?

This report and commentary comes from NewAmerican:

Astoundingly, Obama compared Indonesia (a nation that has only recently begun to emerge from being an unabashed dictatorship) to the United States, declaring that the two nations share a spirit of toleration. …

“We are two nations which have traveled different paths. Yet our nations show that hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag,” Obama said.

For those Christians whose experience of Indonesian “toleration” is not limited to childhood memories, Obama’s words are likely to elicit sorrow and pain. According to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum (FKKJ), religious violence has been on the increase since Indonesian independence [from the Dutch, in 1945], and Christians have been the target of much of that violence. …

The latest violent incident occurred in Sukoharjo, Central Java, on Oct. 13 [2010], when 12 people on motorcycles set fire to a Protestant church …  A day before, an attempt to set fire to St. Joseph Catholic church in Klaten, Central Java, was foiled … On Oct. 17, radical Muslims threatened to attack a Catholic church in Karanganyar, Central Java. …

After the start of the reform era in 1998, the number of cases [of attacks on churches] skyrocketed …

Contrary to Obama’s “spin,” the history of the two nations regarding the relationship between Christians and Muslims and the experience of “religious tolerance” is vastly different.

So we ask: What, in addition to his obvious penchant for flattering Muslim potentates, moved Obama to make an assertion, in a speech that will endure in the records of his presidency, so far from the truth?

An intention to deceive? Pig ignorance? Wishful thinking? Dumb acceptance of misinformation? Mental derangement?

Note: In the same speech, delivered in an Islamic country, Obama chose to castigate Israel for building in its own capital city because Palestinians don’t like it. It’s worth noting that the “tolerant” Indonesians do not allow Israelis to set foot in their country.

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.

Facebook is alleged to have helped the Palestinian Authority track down a free-thinking blogger living in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.

If this is true, Facebook has committed an indefensible and despicable betrayal of trust.

Walid Husayin is a 26-year old barber. Knowing the intolerance of Islam, he kept up the appearance of a conforming Muslim, and posted his real views anonymously on the Internet, thinking himself safe from detection.

AP reports the story, which is a good thing, but does so unsympathetically, calling his blogs “anti-religious rants”.

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is … illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence. …

Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was … secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

He faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

“He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a “primitive Bedouin.” He called Islam a “blind faith that grows and takes over people’s minds where there is irrationality and ignorance.”

If that wasn’t enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

Then comes a very interesting piece of information:

At its peak, Husayin’s Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

Wow! We wish we could find so many like-minded readers in the free West. But what a revelation – that there are some 70,000 Arabs who appreciate atheism and anti-Islam satire. A thirst for reason in the heart and home of Islam!

But hold on – not all his visitors liked what he said. Some hundreds among them objected – ranted, one might say.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called “Fight the blasphemer who said ‘I am God.'”

The outburst of anger reflects the feeling in the Muslim world that their faith is under mounting attack by the West.

Come, come AP – hundreds among 70,000 reflect “a feeling in the Muslim world”? Oh, we know that feeling exists, but there are larger manifestations of it than that. These figures suggest something quite different: that there is an undercurrent of rebellion against Islamic dogmatism. A tide that could become a flood? We wish.

AP does its best to defend the Palestinian Authoritarians:

Husayin is the first to be arrested in the West Bank for his religious views …

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region. It is dominated by secular elites and has frequently cracked down on hardline Muslims and activists connected to its conservative [read fundamentalist – JB] Islamic rival, Hamas.

Husayin’s high public profile and prickly style, however, left authorities no choice but to take action.

No choice, AP?

Husayin used a fake name on his English and Arabic-language blogs and Facebook pages. After his mother discovered articles on atheism on his computer, she canceled his Internet connection in hopes that he would change his mind.

But he persisted intrepidly:

Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe — a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner …  said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a cafe worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.

He has his brave defenders:

A small minority has questioned whether the government went too far.

Zainab Rashid, a liberal [female] Palestinian commentator, wrote in an online opinion piece that Husayin has made an important point: “that criticizing religious texts for their (intellectual) weakness can only be combatted by … oppression, prison and execution.”

Is Facebook unable to resist being misused by despots?

Such “stalking” on Facebook and other social media sites has become increasingly common in the Arab world. In Lebanon, four people were arrested over the summer and accused of slandering President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. …

In neighboring Syria, Facebook is blocked altogether. And in Egypt, a blogger was charged with atheism in 2007 after intelligence officials monitored his posts.

The effect over time of the products of freedom on the closed world of Islam must be for the good. Meanwhile, those – such as Facebook – who provide the means for the free dissemination of ideas, must resist all attempts to interfere with their purpose. If they collaborate with the forces of oppression they don’t merely tarnish their own reputation but subvert the invaluable service they exist to provide.

Foreseeing the possibility that the cruel law of Islam, the system of oppression called sharia, might creep into Oklahoma, the state passed a state constitutional amendment to prevent it. It was supported by 70% of voters.

Up pops the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – whose aim is to spread sharia over the whole of the United States and ultimately to have it supplant US federal and state law and obliterate the Constitution – with a suit against Oklahoma.

The activist, “progressive”, Clinton-appointed federal judge, Vicki Miles-LeGrange, ruled in CAIR’s favor, granting a temporary restraining order.

Investor’s Business Daily points out that, by bringing the suit, CAIR is bringing sharia – and the Muslim plan to impose it on the whole country – into the bright light of Supreme Court judgment, and so before the bar of public opinion: an exposure that could, and should, put an end to it in America.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations may wish it never sued to overturn an Oklahoma ban on Shariah law. Now the entire nation will get to see it and other Islamists’ true anti-American colors. …

CAIR has ignited a legal firestorm that will likely rage all the way to the Supreme Court. Thanks to CAIR’s latest bit of lawfare, Americans will get to hear a long overdue debate not just about the constitutionality of such bans on Shariah law but about the constitutionality of Shariah law itself.

This is not a debate CAIR wants to have, since it ultimately will have to defend the indefensible. …

It’s a medieval legal code that administers cruel and unusual punishments such as stonings, amputations and honor killings. …

Shariah can be seen in action this week with Pakistan’s death sentence on a Christian woman for blasphemy. …

Read a report on this case at Creeping Sharia. The woman, Asia Bibi, has been convicted on a trumped-up charge. Her conviction is a lurid illustration of the viciousness of sharia.

CAIR, which thinks free speech is a one-way street, is working with the Organization of the Islamic Conference on an international blasphemy law that would criminalize “Islamophobia” …

CAIR says it’s just a “civil rights advocacy group.” But the Justice Department says it’s a front group for Hamas and its parent, the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that has a secret plan to impose Shariah law on the U.S. …

U.S. prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal scheme led by the Holy Land Foundation to funnel millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.

Federal courts found “ample evidence” linking CAIR to the conspiracy and are expected to unseal the dossier in coming weeks.

Finally to indict the nefarious organization? We hope so.

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.

Christians burnt alive by Sunni Muslims in Nigeria

Note: Some commenters in October 2011 tell us that these burnt bodies were victims of a truck accident in the Congo. Whatever the provenance of the picture, it was posted in good faith, and Christians were burnt to death in 2010 by Muslims in Nigeria. See the reports here and here and 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.

The US is now fighting al-Qaeda in Gaza.

Yesterday an al-Qaeda leader, Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, was killed in Gaza City by a missile fired from a US ship on the Mediterranean.

How did the US know where Namnam was at that moment?

He was driving or being driven in one of a consignment of new cars just allowed into the strip from Israel – and of course the Israelis, knowing that the chiefs of armed organizations, such as Namnam, would commandeer the new cars for themselves, had put tracking devices in them.

The targeted assassination was not carried out in order to help Israel defend itself against a terrorist operation, but because US forces were under threat.

Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda’s Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP – to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after last week’s air package bomb plot. …

The Palestinian cell members were planning to infiltrate northern Sinai from the Gaza strip over the coming weekend and strike American personnel serving with the Multinational Force and Observers Organization – MFO – which is under American command and is stationed at North Camp, El Gorah, 37 kilometers southeast of El-Arish.

In a coordinated operation, Al Qaeda fighters hiding up in the mountains of central Sinai were to have attacked US Marines and Air Force troops stationed at the South Camp in Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh.

The twin attacks were scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 7, or the following day. …

You can read more here.