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| Jumping Jack |
Any comments on this?
Europe's Native-Born Enemy
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 15, 2005; Page A23
Last Nov. 2 Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker and descendant of the painter, was cycling through Amsterdam. He was accosted by Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot him six times as van Gogh pleaded, "We can still talk about it! Don't do it!" Bouyeri then cut his throat with a kitchen knife, practically severing his head. Bouyeri was not done. He then took a five-page Islamist manifesto and with his knife impaled it on van Gogh's chest.
On trial now in the Netherlands, Bouyeri is unrepentant. In court he turned to van Gogh's grieving mother and with infinite cruelty said to her, "I do not feel your pain."
He feels instead glory. Van Gogh had made a short film about the oppression of Muslim women. Bouyeri was acting "purely in the name of my religion," championing his faith by butchering a filmmaker critical of it.
Bouyeri is no newly arrived immigrant. Nor is he, like the Sept. 11 hijackers, a cosmopolitan terrorist sent abroad to kill. He was born and bred in Holland. Likewise, three of the four London bombers were second-generation Pakistani Brits.
The most remarkable discovery is that Europe's second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants are more radicalized than the first. One reasonably non-political and non-radical Muslim activist, raised in the suburbs of Paris, explained himself (to the Wall Street Journal) as having "immigrated to France at the local maternity ward."
The fact that native-born Muslim Europeans are committing terrorist acts in their own countries shows that this Islamist malignancy long predates Iraq, long predates Afghanistan and long predates Sept. 11, 2001. What Europe had incubated is an enemy within, a threat that for decades Europe simply refused to face.
Early news reports of the London bombings mentioned that police found no suspects among known Islamist cells in Britain. Come again? Why in God's name is a country letting known Islamist cells thrive, instead of just rolling them up?
British Islamists had spoken of a "covenant of security" under which Britain would be spared Islamic terrorism so long as it allowed radical clerics free rein. Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, for example, a Syrian-born, exiled Saudi cleric granted asylum 19 years ago, openly preaches jihad against Britain. He is sought by the press for comment all the time. And, a lovely touch, he actually lives on the British dole -- even though he rejects the idea of British citizenship, saying, "I don't want to become a citizen of Hell."
One of the reasons Westerners were so unprepared for this wave of Islamist terrorism, not just militarily but psychologically, is sheer disbelief. It shockingly contradicts Western notions of progress. The savagery of Bouyeri's act, mirroring the ritual human slaughter by Abu Musab Zarqawi or Daniel Pearl's beheaders, is a return to a primitiveness that we in the West had assumed a progressive history had left behind.
Our first response was, therefore, to simply sweep this contradiction under the rug. Put the first World Trade Center bombers on trial and think it will solve the problem. Even today there are many Americans and even more Europeans who believe that after Sept. 11 the United States should just have done Afghanistan -- depose the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda's sanctuary -- and gone no further, thinking that would solve the problem.
But the problem is far deeper. It is essentially a civil war within a rival civilization in which the most primitive elements are seeking to gain the upper hand. Sept. 11 forced us to intervene massively in this civil war, which is why we are in Iraq. There, as in Afghanistan, we have enlisted millions of Muslims on the anti-Islamist side.
But what about the vast majority of European Muslims, the 99 percent who are peace-loving and not engaged in terror? They must also join the fight. They must actively denounce not just -- what is obvious -- the terrorist attacks, but their source: Islamist ideology and its practitioners.
Where are the fatwas issued against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders. They must also dismantle and destroy all "known" Islamist cells before trains and buses are blown up.
A modest beginning might be removing the likes of Sheik Omar -- and Bouyeri -- from the teat of the infidel taxpayer: "He [Bouyeri] had the time to plan this," van Gogh's mother told the court, "because for three years he was on unemployment benefits." Decadence is defined not by a civilization's art or music but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.
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| Gazza |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Any comments on this?
yeah - why are you asking us to 'comment'?
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| Jumping Jack |
It is a current topic like the "Can Bush Save Us From China", the Live 8 discussions, and others. I think this is a well written article and assessment. There are many europeans on this board and I am interested in their/your opinion and if you agree with the assessment?
I have no business contact with Europeans and only have access to highly biased crap from the BBC and other euro media. Boards like this help me better understand other individual's points of view not filtered though the media, whether I agree with them or not. |
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| Zeeta |
Fuck man we need a tour......
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| glencar |
America can expect the same in 20 years or so. |
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| HellsRollingThunder |
I absolutely agree with Jumpin Jack's article it head the thing right
on the head! There is much more to that but it is concise and in
a expertly worded and true nutshell so to speak. We ALL need to
be aware where ever we reside that any one of these terrorists
can strike anywhere. Cannot take any security we have in place
for granted at any time. These people are trying to destroy free
society and they must be stopped before they continue on an
uncontrolled worse than now rampage throughout.
I can remember when the Cold War was going on and the threat of
a nuclear attack by the USSR lead some people to say "Better Red
Than Dead" well NOT ME! Excuse me for being on my soapbox
here but "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" if worse should ever
come to worse.
They are worth the Powder to Blow them to Hell With!!
[Edited by HellsRollingThunder] |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
It is a current topic like the "Can Bush Save Us From China", the Live 8 discussions, and others. I think this is a well written article and assessment. There are many europeans on this board and I am interested in their/your opinion and if you agree with the assessment?
I have no business contact with Europeans and only have access to highly biased crap from the BBC and other euro media. Boards like this help me better understand other individual's points of view not filtered though the media, whether I agree with them or not.
great, I just happen to feel theres more than enough political topics on this board already - whether its new threads or music-related threads hijacked (excuse pun) into one.
No offence, but personally speaking I find almost all political threads tedious and they usually end up the same way - a slanging match which I wish people would take elsewhere. Its obvious by now that many people cant have an intelligent discussion on anything political.
For what its worth, I'm not so sure we were all so culturally 'unprepared' for terrorism within our respective countries, as many European countries have had to deal with it on various levels from within for many years, pre-dating this particular problem. More a case of wishful thinking on our respective governments' behalf, though. It certainly didnt surprise me, to be honest.
[Edited by Gazza] |
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| jb |
I think the British showed us yankees a thing or 2 about how to conduct an investigation....we are truly incompetent... |
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| glencar |
Wha-wha-what??? Our FBI does a great job of tracking these people after they've acted! |
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| souldoggie |
Just my two cents...I thought the initial press conference by British security was rather telling.
One of the first things said, after the four bombs went off, was how "...there had been no prior warning." The IRA would alert people a half hour or so before a bomb attack. But these "people" didn't even give us a warning. Not quite cricket, I suppose.
The jihadists are truly a whole new breed of dangerous animal. All free societies, certainly the USA included, have their work cut out for them. I often wonder how free societies and the United Nations would react if for 30+ years, you had right-wing Christian fundalmentalists blowing up trains and buses and buildings in Muslim countries. You know, strapping dynamite to their bodies and to their children, in order to massacre Muslims and Jews...so that they could go to heaven and bang virgins for all eternity.
My hunch is that their would be zero tolerence. As it should be, of course. My guess is that Christians around the world would unite and march to denounce those who would slaughter innocent civilians in the name of religion. I often wonder why their is not more outrage from Muslims throughout the world. |
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| glencar |
When some errant Christians attacked Bosnian Muslims, the USA stepped in to stop it. |
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