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The subject of immigration in Europe and the integration of Muslims in local communities is among the hottest ones in recent years. Polemics develop between two major groups: on one hand, the Europeans who think national borders should be opened for everyone, and on the other – people who are strongly opposing immigrants. Recently, representatives of another group of citizens appeared in the media. Until now, they did not dare to speak up because they had been afraid of accusations of xenophobia and racism. Most of them consider immigrants welcome as long as they adopt European values.

 Today, GRReporter presents to the readers a publication on this subject, originally published on the commentary and analysis website Protagon.gr. It is authored by Thanos Tsimeros, leader of the Recreate Greece party and member of the Regional Council of Attica.

Multiculturalism and Other Tales

“Mommy, why are these people in the park throwing stones?”

“Don’t worry, my boy. They are stoning a woman who left her husband. This is part of their culture, do not misunderstand them.”

This is multiculturalism. This is cohabitation of different types of ‘values’ comprehension in a single residential area, in a single residential building. And everyone does this in parallel with the other. Multiculturalism does not mean to simply have your dinner in a Chinese restaurant and then in a Mexican restaurant. Is there a place on Earth where this does not happen?  NO! Has it ever existed? NO! Multinationality has existed, meaning the cohabitation of people of various ethnic origins who had adopted a SINGLE culture, common fundamental values.   

To be more specific, one of the Western culture values is the equality of men and women. Yes, it was hard to achieve, it waded through blood, and many Hypatias and many ‘magicians’ burnt at the stake. But it was achieved. Period.

Freedom of speech is yet another value. Whether correctly attributed to Voltaire or not, this quote is very popular: ‘I might disagree with your opinion, but I am willing to give my life in defence of your right to express it.’

Shall I name more? Individual rights, freedom of religion, tolerance to the different, economic freedom. And above all: the ability of society to develop and discover its future face.

And in order to silence the idiots who always have their ‘template’ answers, I duly note that we have military dictatorship, censorship, torture, pious fanatics, dictators, holocausts, men who beat their girlfriends and wives, paedophiles, incest, and murderers. But they are all considered perpetrators of our common values and they are punished for their wrongdoings.  And when a holy fanatic preaches racism from the pulpit, he is considered a comic figure and becomes subject of satiric shows and jokes in the social networks.

Which of these Western values are parts of Islam? None. Can it coexist with Western civilization?

Let’s not hurry to answer prior to realizing a fundamental mistake made in comparing Christianity and Islam. This is no mere comparison of two religious doctrines. All religions, no exception, are not limited to managing God’s rules. They did not get limited to philosophical issues of life and the explanations attempted by their founders or apostles. Religions permeated all areas of human behaviour. They imposed rules, even hygienic ones. According to the Old Testament, when menstruating, a woman is considered impure. According to the New Testament, the man is the head of the woman and sex before marriage is prostitution just like unconventional sex within marriage is considered prostitution. (All religions demonize pleasures because they were threatened by the way they make people free). And in order to strengthen their positions, every religion refers to God’s inspiration and encapsulates itself in it.  God’s inspiration is perfection, i.e. it is final and immutable!

But life goes on. The pattern people according to which people lived 2000 years ago in Judea is out-dated today. Just as out-dated, as the 1400-year old pattern of life in the Arabian desert when Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim (Muhammad, to his friends) ‘launched’ Islam.

The Western civilization realised this albeit with some delay… and restricted religion to the churches. Even religion itself realised how antiquated are its dogmas and ‘connived’ against pregnant brides to perform the ceremony of marriage though they had obviously behaved like ‘prostitutes’. The Pope can still condemn contraception, but no one bans condoms from sale. Every religious organisation can print a booklet on ‘the sins of the mouth and eyes’ but not a single one contemplates proposing legislative measures to punish the sinners. No matter how strong the influence of religion over the secular authorities, no matter how many fanatics protest in front of theatres against ‘blasphemous plays’ no one is publicly beheaded, because he is not a believer, no woman is publicly flogged, because she committed adultery, and no child is subjected to female circumcision.

In the West, the centuries-underlying movement of rationalism and doubt over everything (politics, religion, science) that was rooted in the Ancient Greece and Roman spirit heritage finally eroded and tore down the medieval religious barbarism. But Islam could never transcend itself.  It had no cultural identity in the times before Muhammad, no Antigone to openly oppose God’s commandments, and a total exclusion of one of the sexes from any productive activity (except for the reproductive one), it is still anchored in the patterns of 600 B.C. This proved quite convenient, because an authoritarian and intolerant religion is the best match for an equally authoritarian and expansionistic power. Even the enlightened period of the Fatimid could not exist for long – Saladin wiped it out unceremoniously and restored the Sunni power.

Christianity today cannot be compared to Islam, because these are two absolutely different doctrines. Christianity is only a religion to the believers and the substantial or purely formal ways they choose to profess it.  The rest of its doctrines are invalidated. Islam is still a comprehensive way of life and legislation, of course.

Naturally, not all Muslims are the same. There are Muslims in Serbia, in the European part of Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt who are atheists. But they are the minority there. In some countries, they are a tiny and persecuted minority. At the same time, there is a huge number of Muslims around the world who have adopted in their everyday life some of the most repulsive and inhuman customs we can imagine.  We witnessed those with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, in Chechnya, and Yemen and now we see it happening in Syria with the Islamic Caliphate. What is their purpose? They have never tried to hide it. Destroy Western civilization! And if Christianity, with its ‘love thy neighbour’ and after the first and second admonition reject’, organized the Crusades and the mass burnings, what could be expected of Islam whose dogma commands spreading religion by the sword?

Therefore, the answer to the question if the Western world and Islam can coexist depends on which Islam we are talking about. If this is its minority, which, similar to Christianity, limits itself to the salvation of souls and several rituals once a year, the obvious answer is yes, they can.

But if we mean the hordes of beasts that slay innocent people and shoot the ‘ceremony’ with their mobiles, the answer is NEVER and AT NO COST! There is not even the slightest chance for them to change. When you keep half of the population inactive and resisting against technological progress, you have no future. You are sentenced to eternal poverty and backwardness. The abyss between the West and fanatic Islam is getting deeper. And since no fanatic will admit that fanaticism is the cause of his misery, he points a finger at his enemy: the hateful (since the times of the Crusades) Western world.

Do not make haste to say ‘I don’t care’. The twin-tower terrorists lived in Germany and the USA. Jihadists recruit new ‘martyrs of Allah’ in Europe. Official data from France, Belgium and Germany point out the fact that at least 3000 European citizens, Muslims with European passports are in the battle fields of Syria among the fighting Jihadists. 14 volunteers from France have already been killed. Do we know how many departed from Greece?

If and when they return from their ‘training’ in decapitation, torture, mass executions and fidelity to the cause of imposing Islam to its opponents, in your opinion, how easy would it be to reintegrate them into Western values, such as mutual respect and tolerance? Or, probably, they had never sincerely adopted them?

Western values are based on a delusion: the belief that the other will adopt them no matter what. Life has refuted this. Hundreds of thousands of female circumcisions are annually performed in Europe by doctors, either Muslims or regular practising women. Millions of Muslim women suffer physical or psychological abuse but do not complain, because the revenge of the tribe will be merciless.

Would a law be in conflict with human rights if it obligates all girls from Muslim families  to visit a non-Muslim gynaecologist  annually from birth until adolescence and, in the case that circumcision is found, for the parents to be extradited immediately and the child to be given up for adoption?

Would it be too much for the countries of origin of the European Jihadists to deny them re-entry in their ‘motherland’?  

Would declaring the marriage of minors invalid, constitute a llack of tolerance towards other cultures?

And since there is this uneasily numerous group of ‘professionals of unilateral humanitarian sensitivity’ for whom the rights of the Muslims far outweigh the right s of the rest, I am quick to explain again that fanatics piss me off regardless of whether they are Christians, Confucians, or devotees of the flying spaghetti monster. But on the other hand, I will not fight against the extinction of the last minuscule remains of medieval Christianity while you pass the entire ‘Nile’ of medieval Islam through the back door in the name of the ‘different’! We are not going to dedicate pages in the newspapers to fight the bishops of Piraeus and Kalavrita, and not publish a single short note on the mufti who preaches the same or even worse things. We condemn, and rightfully so, the violent European who slaps his wife but we get distracted when girls are beaten to death or executed just because they wanted to go to school.

The Western world and, mostly, the American policy made huge and unforgivable mistakes as regards fanatic Islam. Initially, they armed and trained them to counterbalance the former Soviet influence. So stupid! So short-sighted! Even now they continue to supply them with weapons to seemingly establish democracy in a region of the world where it had never been known and no one knows how to handle it, at a time when Sharia is imposed there and everyone dreams of a theocratic Caliphate!  And finally, they maintain the best of relationships with the hateful bastion of medieval Islam – Saudi Arabia that finances most of the Jihadists.

Furthermore, they did the unthinkable: they were granted a favourable environment in the heart of Europe in order to grow all the flowers of hate that are getting ready to attack the hospitable family.

This voluntary short-sightedness of the West should be stopped as soon as possible! On the battlefields of fanatics good manners are out of place, unlike armies. No matter whose armies these are, whether the UN’s or NATO’s, they should be vanquished and disarmed. If this does not happen now, while things are still under some control, it will happen when the Jihadists are strong enough to impose the conditions of the clash.

And in the heart of Europe, though late, some things should be clearly stated:

You want to live with us? You should not merely respect our values but also adopt them. You should forget about flogging a homosexual just because you are afraid to be caught, but because you agree that everyone decides for himself what to do with his body and no one can interfere. You should realize that we do not limit satire, even when its subject is our God. Therefore, we can do the same unto your God.  You will watch The Life of Brian and picture it in its Muslim version. If you think is great, you can stay.  If you get angry over defamation, sorry, you do not belong to Europe. No, we are in no way obligated to respect your archaic ‘values’. We would have had to do so if we were living in your native country. But it is you who comes here. We are not saying we are better or worse, because there is no estranged observer to decide the matter. But we are different. Here, we live like this regardless of your likes or dislikes. If you do not like it here, there is always the return ticket potion. If you insist on not buying one, there is also extradition. And while on the plane, on your way to the sacred land of Allah, while you read the programme of public events in your favourite country (hanging, beheading, cutting of limbs, flogging…) you will have time enough to consider the multiculturalism on the central Riyadh boulevard: young couples kissing in the mouth, and girls wearing short skirts and tank tops with no bra just like the ones in Paris, Rome, Athens.

You wouldn’t accept that ever, would you? Neither will we accept you.

Тranslation: Anastasia Balezdrova