Thanks to Rachel Neuwirth for bringing this to our attention

CHOMSKY IDENTIFIES "THE EVIL" THAT HAUNTS THE WORLD
by Amir Taheri
ASHARQ AL-AWSAT
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/3089
April 4, 2004
THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN ASHARQ AL-AWSAT ON MARCH 13, 2004

At the conclusion of his latest book, Noam Chomsky, quotes these lines from Bertrand Russell:

"After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution
progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however,
I believe, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life,
and peace will return."

This is a fitting conclusion for a work that starts with another quotation- this time from the
biologist Ernst Mayr.

Chomsky summarises Mayr's view like this:

"The human form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by selection. The history of life
on Earth refutes the claim that it is better to be smart than stupid, at least judging by biological
success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of
survival."

Russell and Mayr, though trained scientists, belonged to what one might call the "romantic-tragic"
tradition of political thought.

Chomsky, an eminent linguistics professor, belongs to the same tradition.

If his latest book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance", has any message is
this: the United States today is the most concrete example of what humans could achieve in terms of
economic and military power. And, yet, such is the flawed character of mankind, that all that power
is monopolised by a small stratum of society that uses it to impose "total dominance" on the globe.
And American "dominance", for reasons that Chomsky does not explain, threatens the survival of
mankind.

Before we examine Chomsky's thesis, let us briefly analyse the two pillars of his system, i.e. the
citations from Russell and Mayr.

The problem with Russell is twofold.

First, he compares trilobites and butterflies, which are species, with Neros, Genghis Khans and
Hitlers that are individual types within the human species. He might have as well mentioned Homer,
Hafez or Shakespeare, or Buddha, Mansur Hallaj, or Master Eckhardt. Or Marilyn Monroe, for that
matter.

The second problem with Russell's view, and the foundation of his pessimistic vision, is that he
regards peace as a passive state of non- being rather than an active process of becoming. He
dismisses the entire human experience as a "nightmare" that will be over when the earth, unable to
sustain human life, will condemn our species to extinction.

Mayr's vision also suffers from two flaws.

The first is that he believes that smartness, i.e. intelligence, and stupidity are uniform
abstractions common to all species. He does not understand that what is intelligent for beetles, for
example, may not be intelligent for buffalos or humans. The beetles have not survived because they
are stupid in human terms. They have survived because they are intelligent as beetles.

Thus the recipe for human survival is not, as Mayr suggests, to become stupid, so as to win the
favours of selection and ensure survival, but to expand the boundaries of human intelligence.

The approach of both Russell, a self proclaimed atheist, and Mayr is essentially religious, and more
specifically Christian. They both burden the human species with the "original sin" of either cruelty
or intelligence.

After all, Adam, according to the Christian narrative, was expelled from paradise because he and his
wife, Eve, tasted fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Chomsky's method is also religious, more precisely theological, inasmuch as he tries to find a
single all-encompassing cause for all the real or imagined failings of mankind that could one day
lead to the destruction of the human species, indeed of the earth itself. Monism, theory of a single
cause for everything, is the typical resort of religious minds: whatever happens is because God
wanted it.

Chomsky's position as a self-styled Jeremiah is underlined in his book's blurb: "From the world's
foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis (sic) of America's pursuit of total
domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow."

To be sure, Chomsky's monism is not theistic. Nor does he adopt the monisms of Russell and Mayr,
i.e. the wanton cruelty and/or diabolical intelligence of the human species.

Like Russell and Mayr, Chomsky is not concerned with the positive achievements of humanity. His
focus is what he believes to be man's evil deeds. Even then he is not concerned with the broader
sweep of human history but limits himself to the past two centuries, with special emphasis on the
past five or six decades. In that time-span, Chomsky believes that almost all the evil done in the
world, and to humanity, was, directly or indirectly, caused by the United States. Even when others
did evil, in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, or Iraq, to cite a few recent examples, they were "ordered"
or at least aided, by the United States.

The US, he tells us, began its existence by massacring the peaceful natives of North America. George
Washington and other American founding fathers were "terrorists" engaged in acts of genocide against
the Indians. (p.101)

The US then expanded southwards and westwards through a series of aggressions against Mexico, the
Spanish and French Empires in Central America, and Canada. The US then pillaged the New World's
natural resources with no regard for the environment, and thus created a powerful economy. Once that
was achieved, the US started planning global "hegemony", participating in two world wars and
numerous smaller conflicts across the globe.

Chomsky finds American fingerprints everywhere.

Hitler and Mussolini were helped achieve power with American, and in part, British, help. (p.67) And
who helped Stalin beat back the Nazi onslaught and survive? The US, of course! (pp.47 and 147)

The Korean War was caused not because Kim Il-sung tried to conquer the whole of the peninsula but
because the US wanted to impose its "dominance" in the Far East. (p.151)

The US is even blamed for the Algerian war of independence, presumably because France was a full
member of The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at that time.

And why do you think the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979? Chomsky tells us that this was
the result of a plan worked out by President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Bzrezinski who wanted to bleed the Soviets to death. (Pp.110-111)

Contrary to what some Arabs imagine, Israel is a pawn in Washington's hand. Chomsky writes:
"{Israel} has no alternative but serving as a US base in the region and complying with US demands."
(p.158) The Bush administration even dictates Israel's internal economic policies. (p. 180)

Chomsky claims that almost every evil character in the past century or so, anywhere in the world,
was installed in power or supported by the US.

So why did the US wage war against Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists, Slobodan Milosevic,
and most recently, Saddam Hussein?

Chomsky's answer is simple: they all initially worked for the US but had to be crushed when they
tried to act independently. The US wants total obedience: anyone that shows any sign of independence
is cut down.

In Chomsky's Manichaean world anyone who is opposed to the United States is good and anyone who
sympathises with it is evil. That belief leads Chomsky into strange assertions. He asserts that the
resistance movements against the Nazis were terrorists. He writes: "The partisans were directed from
London and did engage in terrorism." (P.189) The Afghan Mujhahedin who fought against Soviet
invaders were "saboteurs and terrorists" as were the Contras in Central America because they fought
anti-American regimes.

Saddam gassed the Kurds in response to "Kurdish terrorism" which, in turn, had been prompted by the
US. However, when the Kurds fight Turkey, an ally of the US, they become freedom fighters struggling
against a terrorist state.

According to Chomsky, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a just punishment for the latter's
ingratitude towards Iraq. Saddam had protected Kuwait against Iranian aggression and was angered by
Kuwaiti moves that were designed to wreck Iraq's oil-based economy. (P.46)

While Chomsky insists that Saddam was no threat to anyone and thus unfairly included in the
so-called "Axis of Evil", he suggests his own alternative "Axis of Evil". This consists of Turkey,
Israel, and Morocco whom Chomsky blames for the worst cases of "state terrorism". (P.198) Those
three countries draw Chomsky's ire because they are allies of the US.

Chomsky portrays the defunct Soviet Union as a victim of American aggression. He tells us that
Communism was "never a military threat" to the United States. (P.66)

He praises Stalin, and even the sinister Lavrenti Beria, subsequently executed for his crimes, as
men of goodwill who proposed schemes that would have ensured peace in Europe. (Pp.223-224).

President Dwight Eisenhower rejected the Soviet peace proposals because that would have meant an end
to American "dominance" in Europe. Washington wanted to draw Moscow into an arms race in order to
destroy the USSR.

Chomsky ignores the fact that it was the USSR that almost always introduced new and deadlier weapons
in Europe, starting with supersonic fighters and ending with the SS-20 missiles. Chomsky also
forgets that what he calls "the arms race in the space" began with the USSR that sent the first
manned mission into the space.

The Taliban, having come into being by "American design", were evil when they were supported by the
US, but became good when they turned against it.

Chomsky opposed the war that toppled the Taliban and claims that the US wanted to invade Afghanistan
not to destroy Al Qaeda but to extend its "dominance" to Central Asia. (P.199) Once the Taliban had
turned against the US, toppling their regime became "a war crime". (P.200) (Chomsky had forecast
that six million Afghans would die as a result of the US intervention. The figure six million, of
course, was chosen to establish a parallel with the figure given for the Jewish victims of the Nazi
Holocaust.)

US help to the Colombian government's programme of eradicating cocaine cultivation is described as
"chemical warfare", because, Chomsky insists, other countries do not have the same right to use
fumigation to eliminate tobacco fields in the US state of North Carolina.

In other words even the drug barons are transformed into choir boys when they are attacked by the
US.

Chomsky tells us that the war in Kosovo was not about Serbs massacring ethnic Albanians but the
other way round. It was the ethnic Albanians, recruited, trained and organised by the CIA, who were
massacring the Serbs in Kosovo.

The US, and NATO, intervened to prevent Slobodan Milosevic from rushing to rescue his fellow Serbs
from massacre by "US-controlled terrorists". On Bosnia, too, Chomsky finds himself on the side of
the ethnic Serbs because the Muslims were supported by the United States and its "terrorist allies".

Faithful to the classical methods of religious propaganda, Chomsky does not allow the slightest
shade of grey in his black-and-white picture of existence.

He goes further than fellow-travellers like Russell who tried to establish a moral equivalence
between the Free World and its enemies, especially the USSR, during the Cold War. (Note that in the
quotation from Russell, cited above, there is no mention of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.) But Chomsky is
not satisfied with moral equivalence. He believes that, in any conflict involving the United States,
it is the American side that is evil.

He claims that the US and all its leaders, starting with Washington, as already noted, were evil
from the very beginning.

President James Monroe was evil because he declared a doctrine designed to prevent the European
colonial powers from returning to Latin America. President Theodore Roosevelt was evil because he
insisted that the US must carry a big stick.

Even the idealistic President Woodrow Wilson does not escape Chomsky's censure. Wilson is portrayed
as an arrogant racist who saw the US as a vanguard for human progress. (P.43)

President John F. Kennedy is presented as almost a lunatic who, through the Cuban missile crisis of
1962, pushed the world towards thermonuclear war. The world was saved by Nikita Khrushchev, the
Soviet leader, who proved to be a statesman. (Pp.74-75) Every US president since Kennedy is also
portrayed as an evil-doer of one kind or another, with Ronald Reagan and George W Bush getting the
sharpest lashes.

Even John Stuart Mill, the leading philosopher of Western liberalism, does not escape Chomsky's ire,
and is presented as a champion of colonialism. (Pp.44-45)

Chomsky makes too many factual errors to be enumerated here. His knowledge of the Middle East and
the Muslim countries is especially patchy, if not downright wrong.

But Chomsky's book, written in haste, suffers from more serious problems.

The first of these is his habit of arranging facts to suit his often contradictory claims.
Discussing many of the major issues of international life in the past century or so, Chomsky relies
on some 30 writers, most of them Americans. More than half of his current affair sources are traced
to just two newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. Few people with opinions at
variance with Chomsky's certainties get a chance. Where he does not find any sources that he can
name, Chomsky uses a device dear to second-rate hacks. He mentions " respected commentators", "
impartial observers", "very well-informed sources", "internal sources"," most experts", and " noted
analysts".

A professional linguist, Chomsky knows how to use words to suit his purpose, whatever it happens to
be. For example, he avoids the term Cold War which would set the context for the US-USSR rivalry.
Nor does he describe the Communist Parties that existed all over the world by their name, preferring
to call them "mass-based parties of the poor".

Whatever the US does, even in self defence, is "crime" or "an act of terrorism". Whatever it foes to
do, is "a patriotic movement" or "popular resistance."

The US committed "a war crime" when it took military action against Canada in 1814. But Chomsky does
not remember that that was in response to the British attack on Washington, the capital of the newly
created United States, during which the White House was burned down.

Chomsky's use of the word "dominance" instead of domination is problematic, especially when he uses
it as a synonym for hegemony. (It is possible that his publishers suggested the word "dominance"
instead of hegemony because the general public might not understand the latter.)

Hegemony or survival does not represent the choice of an alternative. For there can be no hegemony
without survival, although there can be survival without hegemony. The domination of the
international space by one major power- ancient Persia, Rome , Britain , etc- at different times in
history, in no way threatened the survival of mankind.

The second problem is that Chomsky thinks the US has been, and is, able to do whatever it pleases,
ignoring the dialectics of any relationship.

For example he writes: Kennedy decided that Latin American armies be transformed into anti-guerrilla
forces.(P.192) It means that the governments, armies, and peoples of dozens of Latin American states
had no will of their own.

Chomsky is unable to conceive of a situation in which both the US and its adversary of the time
could be wrong. He cannot accept that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein do not become good because they
are attacked by the US.

The third problem is that Chomsky never explains why the US might want to impose its "dominance" or
hegemony, or whatever you like, on the world.

Some causes are hinted at, often like faint echoes of the old Leninist analysis of "Imperialism as
the highest stage of capitalism."

For example, Chomsky claims that the US abolished slavery not because it was an ethical goal, but
because New England capitalists wanted it. The Marshall Plan, which helped war-shattered Western
Europe rebuilt its economy, was designed to facilitate the penetration of US capital into the old
continent.

Chomsky also claims that the US is in search of military bases which, once secured, it will never
abandon. (He forgets that in 1966 the US immediately closed all its French bases when President
Charles De Gaulle demanded it. And in 1969 the US wound up its air base in Libya, without the
slightest hesitation at the behest of the new government in Tripoli.)

Chomsky's claim that the US is a "rogue state" determined to destroy "international law" is too
crude to merit lengthy rebuttal. He forgets that what is known as "international law" is itself an
American creation, along with a few allies such as Great Britain.

The United Nations, and the League of Nations before it, were fruits of American diplomacy. The same
is true of almost all other institutions of the "international system" that Chomsky believes the US
is out to destroy.

He also forgets that almost all of the thousands of international treaties, that impose limitations
to the sovereignty of individual states, came into being either on direct American initiative or
with active US participation.

The average American might be surprised to learn how much of the powers of its government have been
transferred to international authorities in the context of numerous treaties. And that in a global
system in which the most brutal regimes enjoy the same rights and privileges as the most democratic
states.

As expected, Chomsky claims that the US built up its military power not to defend legitimate
interests, indeed its national security, but to dominate the world.

But he forgets that the US has for years been pressing its European allies to increase their defence
expenditure in the context of the famous "burden sharing". As a percentage of GDP, American
expenditure on defence steadily declined between 1990 and 2000. What happened was that the European
allies, and Japan, reduced their defence expenditure at an even faster rate because they knew they
could continue to rely on the American security "umbrella".

Chomsky ends up by shooting himself in the foot.

He shows that the US today enjoys less of an economic "dominance" in the world than it did in 1945.
He also reminds us that even before the Second World War the US had been "by far the largest
economic power anywhere in the world."

In 1945 the US accounted for almost 50 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). By 1975
that share had fallen to 25 per cent. In 2000 it was down to 18 per cent, slightly lower than the
European Union. Even in terms of foreign investment per head of the population the relative share of
the US has declined. That figure for the Dutch is almost twice that of the US while Britain and
Japan, Taiwan and South Koreas are also catching up.

All the new economic powers of the post-war world were helped by the US in the crucial phases of
their economic take-off, and emerged as its trading partners: Western Europe, Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and today China. Even the current "economic miracle" in India is, to some
measure, due to massive investments of American capital and technology.

But the biggest problem with Chomsky's book is that he offers no alternative to "evil" America. He
vaguely speaks of "world public opinion", by which he means the peace-marchers and the Porto Allegre
crowd, as "the second superpower", and says that a majority of mankind believe that US "dominance"
is the main threat to the world. Even if that were the case, we have to note that it is not enough
for something to be believed by large numbers of people, or, indeed by the entire humanity, for it
to be true.

It is Chomsky's final bouquet that is most surprising.

Having vilified George W Bush as the arch-villain of the modern world, Chomsky ends up by adopting
W's analysis almost word by word.

Like W, Chomsky tells us that the status quo, especially in the Middle East, is untenable, and that
the wave of democratisation must spread to the whole world. (P.215) which is precisely what George W
Bush asserts.

Also like Bush, Chomsky tells us that the spread of nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction,
is a threat to mankind and must be stopped. (P.221) The difference is that Bush is trying to do
something about it while Chomsky seems to want those weapons to be denied only to the US and its
allies.

Finally, and perhaps, unwittingly, he echoes President Bush's claim that the US remains part of the
solution, often the main part, to all of the problems that the world faces. The difference is that
Chomsky seems to favour the disappearance of the US, or at least its withdrawal from the
international arena, while Bush proposes an active, some might say aggressive, American foreign
policy in pursuit of such goals as democratisation, trade liberalisation, and the inclusion of
isolated dictatorial states into the global system.

One thing is sure: mankind is not, as Russell and Mayr predicted, to disappear and leave the earth
to beetles and bacteria. Copyright Amir Taheri 2004

* HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL:

America's Quest for Global Dominance

By: Noam Chomsky

278 pages, New York, London 2003

CAIR's Shameful Silence
By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 5, 2004

Witnessing the gruesome attacks on four Americans in Fallujah last week would thoroughly sicken any fellow American—except for one very prominent American-Muslim organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In a statement issued shortly after the gory murders, CAIR said that it “condemned the mutilation of those killed in Iraq on Wednesday.” The slaughter of these men was not “murder,” though, it was merely a “killing.”

Nowhere in the statement, in fact, did CAIR condemn the murder of the four Americans.

Nowhere in the statement did CAIR condemn setting on fire the cars the men were driving.

Nowhere in the statement did CAIR condemn the parading of the charred bodies through the street or the hanging of one of the headless corpses hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River as the locals stoned it.

This is no mere oversight or a simple semantic slip. In the press release’s second paragraph, CAIR explains, “The mutilations violated both Islamic and international norms of conduct during times of war.”

What “war”? The war ended long ago, even long before Saddam’s beard was examined for lice and other living creatures. What has been going on since can only be described as “terrorism,” not “war.”

But CAIR clearly sees this as a “war” between legitimate foes, going so far as to call “on all parties to the conflict to respect the sanctity of the dead and the sensitivities of their families.” The only parties, though, are the American-led coalition forces attempting to build a democracy and the terrorists trying to prevent it.

So why is CAIR calling on “all parties” as if there were a war between two legitimate sides? Probably because CAIR doesn’t view terrorists as terrorists.

In other words, an American Muslim organization has taken the same stance as much-publicized Fallujah cleric Sheikh Khalid Ahmed, who condemned only the mutilations as contrary to Islam—CAIR’s reasoning as well—but not the murders.

And this isn’t the only time CAIR has refused to condemn terrorism.

CAIR’s spokesman was given the opportunity to condemn Hamas and Islamic Jihad by the Washington Post in November 2001. His response was telling: “It’s not our job to go around denouncing.” Asked a similar question about Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called such queries a “game” and explained, “We’re not in the business of condemning.”

But when Israel is to blame, CAIR seems to be very much “in the business of condemning.”

After Israel recently killed the founder of Hamas—a man responsible for the deaths of 52 mostly young Palestinian suicide bombers and 377 mostly civilian Israelis—CAIR saw fit to “condemn” the Jewish state without a moment’s pause. In its press release, CAIR said it “condemned the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian Muslim religious leader, calling it an act of ‘state terrorism.’”

CAIR couldn’t bring itself to call the founder of one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations on earth even a “militant,” let alone a “terrorist.” To them, a man with the blood of over 400 people on his hands was a handicapped “religious leader.” Seems awfully instructive about the kind of Islam they must follow if they label terrorist masterminds “religious leaders.”

All of this could be happily ignored if CAIR was some fringe organization, but it is not. The group represents Muslims in the media and to the government and touts itself in its press releases as “America's largest Islamic civil liberties group” with “25 regional offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada.”

Read a news story on American Muslims or on Islamic terrorism or flip on a cable news channel, and there is CAIR, being held up as the representative of American Muslims.

But what kind of American Muslim would want to be represented by a group that refuses to condemn the brutal murder of four Americans or any number of different terrorist organizations? Let’s hope not many.

Joel Mowbray (mail@joelmowbray.com) is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.

THANKS TO MEMRI http://www.memri.org/

Special Dispatch Series - No. 691
April 6, 2004 No.691

Former Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee Head Sets Out the Jews' 20 Bad Traits As Described in the Qur'an

On March 22, 2004 Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, former head of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee who in the past issued a Fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs,"(1) was asked the following question this week in an online chat room: "What, according to the Qur'an, are the Jews' main characteristics and qualities?" The following is his answer:(2)

The Bad Traits of the Jews Outweigh Their One Good Trait
Sheikh Saqr lists one positive trait of the Jews(3), and then 20 bad traits: fabricating; listening to lies; disputing and quarreling; hiding the truth and supporting deception; rebelling against the Prophets and rejecting their guidance; hypocrisy; wishing evil on people; feeling pain at others' happiness and feeling happiness at others' afflictions; rudeness and vulgarity; murder of innocents; mercilessness and heartlessness; breaking promises; cowardice; and miserliness.

In discussing these bad traits, Sheikh Saqr wrote, "We would like to note that these are but some of the most famous traits of the Jews as described in the Qur'an. They have revolted against the divine ordinances, distorted what has been revealed to them and invented new teachings which, they claimed, were much more better than what has been recorded in the Torah.

"It was [because of] these traits that they were not warmly received in all the countries where they tried to reside. Instead, they were either driven out, or lived in isolation.

"It was the Almighty Allah who placed on them His Wrath and [humiliated] them due to their transgression. Almighty Allah told us that He had sent to them those who would pour upon them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection.

"All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over [the Jews], as soon as Muslims cling to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt modern means of technology."

Explaining the discrepancy between the Jews' bad and good traits, Saqr added: "The Qur'an [devoted] a considerable [number] of its verses to talking about Jews [and] their personal qualities and characteristics. The Qur'anic description of Jews is quite impartial, praising them in some occasions where they deserve praise and condemning them in other occasions where they practice blameworthy acts. Yet the latter occasions outnumbered the former, due to their bad qualities and the heinous acts they committed."

Saqr then lists the following 20 "bad traits" of the Jews, as they appear in the Qur'an:

1. "They used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah. Allah Almighty says: 'That is because they say: We have no duty to the Gentiles. They knowingly speak a lie concerning Allah.' (Al-'Imran: 75) Also: 'The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. [But it is] their hands that are fettered and they are accursed for saying [Allah's hands are fettered]. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will' (Al-Ma'idah: 64) In another verse, Almighty Allah says: 'Verily, Allah heard the words of those who said, (when asked for contributions to the war): 'Allah, forsooth, is poor, and we are rich! We shall record their words with their wrongful slaying of the Prophets and we shall say: Taste ye the punishment of burning!' (Al-'Imran: 181)
2. "They love to listen to lies. Concerning this Allah says: 'And of the Jews: listeners for the sake of falsehood, listeners on behalf of other folk.' (Al-Ma'idah: 41)
3. "Disobeying Almighty Allah and never observing His commands. Allah says: 'And because they broke their covenant, We have cursed them and hardened their hearts.' (Al-Ma'idah: 13)
4. "Disputing and quarreling. This is clear in the verse that reads: 'Their Prophet said unto them: Lo! Allah hath raised up Saul to be a king for you. They said: How can he have kingdom over us when we are more deserving of the kingdom than he is, since he hath not been given wealth enough?' (Al-Baqarah: 247)
5. "Hiding the truth and supporting deception. This can be understood from the verse that reads: '… [They] distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture.' (Al-'Imran: 78)
6. "Rebelling against the Prophets and rejecting their guidance. This is clear in the verse: 'And when ye said: O Moses! We will not believe in thee till we see Allah plainly.' (Al-Baqarah: 55)
7. "Hypocrisy. In a verse, we read: 'And when they fall in with those who believe, they say: We believe; but when they go apart to their devils they declare: Lo! we are with you; verily we did but mock.' (Al-Baqarah: 14) In another verse, we read: 'Enjoin ye righteousness upon mankind while ye yourselves forget (to practice it)? And ye are readers of the Scripture! Have ye then no sense?' (Al-Baqarah: 44)
8. "Giving preference to their own interests over the rulings of religion and the dictates of truth. Allah says [to the Jews]: '… When there cometh unto you a messenger (from Allah) with that which ye yourselves desire not, ye grow arrogant, and some ye disbelieve and some ye slay?' (Al-Baqarah: 87)
9. "Wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them. This is clear in the verse that reads: 'Many of the People of the Book long to make you disbelievers after your belief, through envy on their own account, after the truth hath become manifest unto them.' (Al-Baqarah: 109)
10. "They feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity. This is clear in the verse that reads: 'If a lucky chance befall you, it is evil unto them, and if disaster strike you they rejoice thereat.' (Al-'Imran: 120)
11. "They are known for their arrogance and haughtiness. They claim to be the sons and of Allah and His beloved ones. Allah tells us about this in the verse that reads: 'The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones.' (Al-Ma'idah: 18)
12. "Utilitarianism and opportunism are among their innate traits. This is clear in the verse that reads: 'And of their taking usury when they were forbidden it, and of their devouring people's wealth by false pretences.' (An-Nisa': 161)
13. "Their rudeness and vulgarity is beyond description. Referring to this, the Qur'anic verse reads: 'Some of those who are Jews change words from their context and say: We hear and disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not, and Listen to us!, distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said: We hear and we obey; hear thou, and look at us, it had been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save for a few.' (An-Nisa':46)
14. "It is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents. Nothing in the world is dearer to their hearts than shedding blood and murdering human beings. They never give up this trait even with the Messengers and the Prophets. Allah says: '… And [they] slew the prophets wrongfully.' (Al-Baqarah: 61)
15. "They are merciless and heartless. In this meaning, the Qur'anic verse explains: 'Then, even after that, your hearts were hardened and became as rocks, or worse than rocks, for hardness.' (Al-Baqarah: 74)
16. "They never keep their promises or fulfill their words. Almighty Allah says: Is it ever so that when ye make a covenant, a party of you violates it?' The truth is, most of them believe not.' (Al-Baqarah: 100)
17. "They rush hurriedly to sin and compete in transgression. Allah says: 'They restrained not one another from the wickedness they did. Verily, evil was what they used to do!' (Al-Ma'idah: 79)
18. "Cowardice and love for this worldly life are undisputable traits [of the Jews]. It is to this that the Qur'an refers when saying: 'Ye [Muslims] are more awful as fear in their [the Jews'] bosoms than Allah. That is because they are people who understand not. They will not fight against you in a group save in fortified villages or from behind walls. Their adversity among themselves is very great. Ye think of them as a whole whereas their hearts are diverse.' (Al-Hashr: 13-14) Allah Almighty also says: 'And thou wilt find them greediest of mankind for life and (greedier) than the idolaters.' (Al-Baqarah: 96)
19. "Miserliness runs deep in their hearts. Describing this, the Qur'an states: 'Or have they even a share in the Sovereignty? Then in that case, they would not give mankind even the speck on a date stone.' (An-Nisa': 53)
20. "Distorting Divine Revelation and Allah's Sacred Books. Allah says in this regard: 'Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and say, 'This is from Allah,' that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for what their hands have written, and woe unto them for what they earn thereby.' (Al-Baqara: 79)

Endnotes:
(1) April 15, 2002.
(2) IslamOnline.com, March 22, 2004.
(3) According to Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr: "The Qur'an has specified a considerable deal of its verses to talking about Jews, their personal qualities and characteristics. The Qur'anic description of Jews is quite impartial; praising them in some occasions where they deserve praise and condemning them in other occasions where they practice blameworthy acts. Yet, the latter occasions outnumbered the former, due to their bad qualities and the heinous acts they used to commit. The Qur'an praises them on the verse that reads: 'And verily We gave the Children of Israel the Scripture and the Command and the Prophethood, and provided them with good things and favored them above (all) peoples.' (Al-Jathiyah:16) i.e. the peoples of their time."

Eurabia and Euro-Arab Antisemitism
By Bat Ye’or
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 5, 2004

"The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans," announced a summary released March 31, 2004 to the European Parliament from the report of the European Union's racism and xenophobia monitoring center. This blatant denial of local Islamic extremism and Muslim perpetrators, as the primary source of Antisemitic actions in contemporary Western Europe, was predictable. The overt Antisemitic violence manifest in Europe over the past three years resulted from several decades of inculcation. Public denunciation by Christians and Jews of this poisonous Antisemitism forced reluctant European authorities, notably in France, to acknowledge its existence. Europe, so anxious to preach morality to Israel and the United States, suddenly stood accused of tolerating, even promoting unabashed, violent Antisemitism.

Although the vast majority of Europeans today are not Antisemitic or anti-Israeli, they are immersed in a culture of demonization of Israel, fomented by a European political entity in which nearly everything that is written and said on the Middle East conveys this anti-Israeli mentality. We can recognize in this contemporary phenomenon some aspects of the system of political, cultural, and moral conditioning that led to the Shoah. Reactivated during the past four decades, this Judeophobic conditioning, indirectly, and almost subliminally, is being implemented by the willing heirs of the genocidal fathers. They transmit and spread this Antisemitism in a new political and ideological construction, different from Nazism: the Euro-Arab war for the delegitimization and destruction of Israel.

Herein, I will give a brief outline of the Euro-Arab anti-Israeli policy: 1) the Project, 2) its institutional structure, 3) its modes of operation, and 4) its themes. The new forms of global Judeophobia that grow and develop within this system, also have anti-Christian, anti-European, and anti-Western ramifications.

The Project
The Project is articulated around two entities: European and Arab.

The European policy
The Project is an enlarged vision of the anti-American Gaullist policy dependent upon the formation of a Euro-Arab Mediterranean rim hostile to American influence and penetration. The project facilitated European ambitions to:

[1] play a defining political role in international relations in competition with the United States, and independent of its influence;

[2] maintain important spheres of influence in the former European Arab colonies;

[3] open huge markets for the European Economic Community’s products in the Arab world, especially in oil-producing countries;

[4] secure supplies of petroleum and natural gas to Europe;

[5] make the Mediterranean a Euro-Arab inland sea by encouraging massive Arab immigration into Europe, and favoring Muslim immigrants, mixing Euro-Arab populations by promoting multiculturalism with a strong Islamic presence in Europe;

[6] develop a powerful Islamo-Christian symbiosis against Israel, orienting Europe toward Islam, and liberating Christianity from Judaism, which is viewed by some Antisemitic factions as the embodiment of evil

To achieve these ambitions European countries had to operate as one entity. Therefore, the first step was the construction of a common foreign policy. Each nation would abandon its autonomous foreign policies and forge a joint Euro-Arab policy. France was a driving force in this unification, which had already been envisaged by General de Gaulle’s inner circle and Arab politicians, including the former Mufti of Jerusalem, and Nazi-collaborator, Haj Amin al-Husseini.1

In the 1960s, nostalgic Nazi and fascist Antisemitic groups began strengthening ties with Arab countries engaged in bellicose actions to eliminate Israel. This pan-European and anti-American movement formed the nucleus of a European solidarity with Palestinian Arabs that became more assertive after 1967. It included fascist movements such as Jeune Europe, EuropaFront and Europe Réelle, the National Socialist Movement in England, the C. E. Carlberg Foundation in Stockholm, as well as centers in Malmö, Sweden, and other European cities, such as Strasbourg, Vienna, and Lausanne.

The 1973 oil crisis gave France and Germany a pretext to base the integrated Euro-Arab policy on the danger of an energy shortage, which they used to 1) forge a shared European energy policy on petroleum and 2) cement the European Community’s alliance with the Arab League countries in a common anti-American, anti-Israeli policy. Thus, the French-German duo used the 1973 oil crisis to justify their political reversal. The most tangible and immediate consequence of this alliance between the nine European Community countries and the 22 Arab League countries was the isolation and demonization of Israel.

Arab policy

The Arab States demanded from Europe:

1) alignment with their anti-Israeli policy;

2) modernization of their countries;

3) access to Western science and technology;

4) European political independence from the United States, and separation of the two blocks;

5) measures favorable to Arab immigration and dissemination of Arab and Islamic culture in Europe.

Commitments between the two parties were made with the Déclaration des Neuf sur le Moyen-Orient on 6 November 1973 in Brussels and the Summit of the Arab conference in Algeria for the Arab party on 28 November 1973. For the first time the European Nine adopted the French interpretation of UN Resolution 242 as establishing Israel’s borders on the 1949 armistice line, and including Palestinian rights in all Middle East peace negotiations.
These points were confirmed by the Déclaration des Neuf in London in 1977 and that same year at the UN in New York by the president in exercise of the Council of Europe, Henri Simonet, and again in the Venice Declaration in 1980. Other European Community more severe declarations would follow.

Institutional Structure

Clearly, a project that was so compromising for Europe could not be set forth in written documents and treaties; the Europeans chose the formula of “dialogue.” An institutional structure was devised to study all relevant questions, give directives, and design programs. All meetings, committees, and working groups included representatives from European Community nations and the European Council along with members from Arab countries and the Arab League. Proceedings and decisions took place in closed sessions, with no official minutes. Sessions were jointly directed by two presidents, one European and the other Arab. This complicated structure implemented a policy of Euro-Arab association defined at the highest levels by the European Community and member States, hidden behind the inoffensive name, “Dialogue.”

The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) is a political, economic, and cultural institution designed to ensure perfect cohesion between the two parties. Its structure was set up at Conferences in Copenhagen (15 December 1973), and Paris (31 July 1974). Ongoing operations are handled by various organs that define working themes and impose policy decisions made by the General Commission. The principal agent of this policy is the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, founded in 1974. The Association, which represents several hundred parliamentarians from all European parties, works to promote Arab interests and demands within each European party and Parliament, and in the European Council. The Association pressured European governments to adopt measures of exclusion and economic and academic boycotts of Israel. It is a powerful instrument of Arabic lobbying against Israel. The other principal organs of the Dialogue are the MEDEA Institute, the European Institute of Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation created in 1995 with the backing of the European Commission, and the MEDA program that manages substantial European funds allocated to Arab countries.

Modes of operation

Together these associations, committees and subcommittees ensure perfect coordination between the two parties in the political, economic, and cultural domains. In the political domain, the European Community stands apart from the United States by consistently backing Arab claims, and Palestinian policies, and stubbornly insisting on Arafat as the unique and exclusive representative of the Palestinians. European emissaries of the Dialogue have tried to bring the American government into line with Arab anti-Israeli positions.

The cultural committees formed Euro-Arab associations between universities, students, publishers, media syndicates including the press, television, radio, the arts, cinema, and NGOs. Exchange programs were organized for students and professors. At various symposia – like the Symposium of Venice (1977) or the Hamburg Symposium (1983) – decisions were made to promote the study and dissemination of Islam and the Arab language and civilization in European schools, universities and Euro-Arab cultural centers established throughout Europe. At the opening session in the Venice University’s great audience hall in Cà Dolphin, several personalities gave welcome speeches – including Ambassador Cesare Regard, the Italian representative to the European Group of coordination for the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The participants in this Seminar unanimously forward recommendations for consideration by the governments of the member states of the European Community and the League of Arab States, including:

1. Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread the Arabic language and culture in Europe and to find the appropriate form of cooperation among the Arab institutions that operate in this field.

2. Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals which will undertake the diffusion of the Arabic language and culture.

3. Encouragement of European institutions either at University level or other levels that are concerned with the teaching of the Arabic language and the diffusion of Arabic and Islamic culture.

4. Support of joint projects for cooperation between European and Arab institutions in the field of linguistic research and the teaching of the Arabic language to Europeans.

5. Necessity of supplying European institutions and universities with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans.

6. Necessity, when teaching Arabic, of emphasizing Arab-Islamic culture and contemporary Arab issues.

7. Necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists in order to present an objective picture of Arab-Islamic civilization and contemporary Arab issues to students and to the educated public in Europe which could attract Europeans to Arabic studies.

These decisions were furthered in the Recommendations adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1991. Arab and Islamic anti-Israeli propaganda, barely disguised in academic and cultural packaging, was disseminated by organs of the EAD operating under the highest State authorities and imposed in universities, the press, and cultural centers. Dissidents, whether in religious, political or cultural circles, were marginalized or reduced to silence. These measures accompanied the influx of Arab immigration promoted as privileged and priority source of population growth in Europe.

Within this Europe transformed into a Euro-Arab continent hostile to the United States and Israel, transnational, transcontinental Judeophobia is structured in the fusion of two hatreds – European Antisemitism, and Arab-Muslim Judeophobia. This incendiary mixture formed the two pillars of the Euro-Arab alliance against both Israel and the United States. The dialogue committees condition European mentalities to the new cult of Palestinism. This ideology of hate melds Christian and Islamic Judeophobia, including the principles of replacement theology, expressed as both Christian, and finally Islamic supersessionism against Israel, which is condemned to disappear.

Themes

The themes of hatred that flourish in the fusion of Euro-Arab cultures on both shores of the Mediterranean were probably studied within these EAD committees and disseminated worldwide, since they are founded in Europe as well as the Arab world, and particularly among the Palestinians who cement this Christian-Muslim symbiosis against Israel. They are enunciated in common EAD declarations issued jointly by the European and the Arab parties associated at the highest state level in the EAD. The committees function under the strict authority of European Foreign Affairs ministers and heads of state, and European Council delegates, together with their colleagues on the Arab side.

The political themes include:

1. recognition of the Palestinians as a people; up to 1973 they had been known as Arab refugees;

2. recognition of the PLO and its leader Arafat as unique representative of the Palestinians;

3. obligation for Israel to negotiate exclusively with Arafat;

4. a global and not a separate peace;

5. retreat of Israel to the1949 armistice lines;

6. Arab-Islamic sovereignty in Jerusalem;

7. European pressure on the United States to align with their Arab policy;

8. demonization of Israel, a danger for world peace;

9. moralization of the Palestinian jihad as a just war against the injustice of Israel’s existence;

10. placing the Palestinian problem at the center of international politics.

11. delegitimization of Israel with all the negative characteristics that follow.

All of these themes, none of which are found in the 1967 UN Security Council Resolution Number 242, were developed by the European Community in crescendo from 1973 to 1980. Europe spoke incessantly for the “ legitimate inalienable rights of the Palestinians.” This phrase, borrowed from Arab League declarations, is repeated in every few lines of European statements mimicking their Arab models. We would seek in vain the definition of the rights of Kurds, Berbers, Copts or any other pre-Islamic indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East, including Jews- these peoples are never mentioned. The EAD committees imposed on Europe the cult of Palestinity based on the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, whose usurped history and identity are projected onto the Palestinians. Traditional European Antisemitism and Islamic jihad are fused within the structures and geopolitics of Euro-Arabism; in this process, European anti-Americanism and Judeophobia come together within the Euro-Arab ideology. The Arab genocidal policy, which benefits from European Union support, guidance, and financing, is an international geostrategic force. Today we must abandon the usual framework of traditional Antisemitism and study Judeophobia in this new Euro-Arab context.

On January 31, 2001, with the recrudescence of Palestinian terrorist jihad, European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten declared to the European Parliament that Europe’s foreign policy should give special attention to its southern flank (the Arab countries, in EU jargon), adding that he was delighted by the general agreement to give greater visibility to the Mediterranean Partnership. How should his words be interpreted? Suddenly the diffuse Israelophobia in the media, the universities, and policy declarations reached a paroxysm in harmony with the Arab world. Europe was inflamed with the cult of Palestinity and its frantic hatred of Israel in the press, media, and universities. This Judeophobic prejudice reminiscent of the 1930s, encouraged Palestinian terrorism in Israel and attacks against Jews in Europe, revealing that Antisemitic networks exist which can be activated or repressed by governments. The aim of this paroxysm of Judeophobia was to use terror and intimidation to detach Diaspora Jews from the State of Israel, leaving Israel even more isolated.

The Euro-Arab Dialogue comprises many different aspects and determines complex policies with respect to the United States, Europe, Israel and Arab countries. Europe’s hidden war against Israel is wrapped in the Palestinian flag, and is part of a global movement that is transforming Europe into a new continent of dhimmitude within a worldwide strategy of jihad and da’wa, the latter being the pacific method of Islamization. The implementation program of this policy of dhimmitude for the Euro-Arabian continent is set forth in the Rapport du Comité des Sages submitted to European Commission president Romano Prodi in October 2003. This program, entitled “Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean region” was accepted by the European Union in December 2003. Unfortunately, the policy of “Dialogue” with the Arab League nations, willfully pursued by Europe for the past three decades, has promoted European dhimmitude and rabid Judeophobia.

Notes:

1. Henry Laurent, "Le Mufti et la France de la IVe République", in Revue d’Etudes Palestiniennes, Paris, automn 2001, n° 81:.70-87; Lukacs Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966; Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement, London/Portland, OR, 1993.

Translated from the French by Nidra Poller, and presented, in part, at The World Conference on Global Antisemitism, Montreal, Canada March 15, 2004.

Bat Ye'or (www.dhimmitude.org ) is the author most recently of Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, and the forthcoming Eurabia.

Insight on the News - World
Issue: 4/13/04

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Commentary: A Dearth of Muslim Outrage
By Uwe Siemon-Netto

As the ghastly pictures from Fallujah flashed across the television screen, one of Salman Rushdie's most famous outbursts in recent years came to mind: "Where's the Muslim outrage?"

Here the world saw an ugly crowd beating the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes and then hanging them on a bridge over the Euphrates River. And all the while the mob howled, "We sacrifice our blood and soul for Islam."

One was reminded of Rushdie's words in the New York Times in 2002: "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"

To be fair, there were protests, but they came chiefly from Muslims in the West, where the still-fledgling movement striving for a moderate, democratic Islam is located.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the Fallujah atrocity, which it said "violated both Islamic and international norms." CAIR said a tradition of the Prophet Mohammed "prohibits mutilating bodies (Hadith 654.3)."

"As a Muslim, I wish all Muslims worldwide would condemn what is wrong," CAIR spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed told United Press International on Thursday. But what about the Muslim sages in the Middle East? She added, somewhat meekly, "In the past, many Muslim countries have condemned 9/11, suicide bombings and terrorist activities."

That is true, some did. But there has never been a unison outcry. There have never been high-powered delegations of Muslim notables willing to intercede, for example, when northern Nigerian religious courts sentenced alleged adulteresses to be stoned to death. That task fell to European Union officials and international secular organizations such as Avocats sans Frontières (Lawyers Without Borders).

European Muslim scholars interviewed for this column follow what they term the spinelessness of their Middle Eastern counterparts with growing alarm. They observe that some of their most prominent Christian dialogue partners have become extraordinarily blunt when discussing the carnage authored by Muslim militants.

Take another TV image that shocked the international community -- the picture of a Palestinian boy wearing a bomb strapped around his waist. The Vatican, the former archbishop of Canterbury and the state-related Protestant Church of Germany, all three often critical of Israel, were unanimous in their dismay.

"First women, now children are being used, more and more often, in these suicidal attacks," thundered L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper.

The Evangelical Church in Germany, or EKD, scolded "Palestinian terrorists" for "recruiting children with deceptive promises to commit suicide bombings."

"We appeal to our Muslim fellow citizens and their organizations to speak up, in the name of their Islamic faith, against suicide attacks and deny them their religious legitimization," the EKD's governing council declared.

And George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, one of the biggest players in the international Christian-Muslim dialogue, stunned his Islamic interlocutors with his outburst: "Sadly, apart from a few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn -- clearly and unconditionally -- the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people."

Four prominent moderate U.S. Muslims, who were asked to comment on Fallujah, did not return UPI's call by late Thursday afternoon.

Carey's criticism came at a time when Christian-Muslim relations arrived at a dangerous crossroads. The terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Spain, killing 190 people, and the reason the perpetrators gave in a video -- revenge for the expulsion of Islam from that country centuries ago -- were a wakeup call to Europeans, church leaders included.

Now there are unconfirmed reports from Rome that a terrorist attack on Pope John Paul II may be looming as he presides over Holy Week celebrations in the Vatican.

In this situation, Western Christians wonder: We were near-unanimous in our support for Muslims as they faced bigotry after Sept. 11, 2001; when will we hear comparable expressions of support from Muslim leaders now that we are increasingly under threat from the Islamists?

Madrid, the Palestinian boy and now Fallujah seem to have caused a paradigm shift in Muslim-Christian relations. The days of naïveté on the Christian side evidently are drawing to a close.

As Carey said, Christians share many values with Muslims -- family values, for instance. But, he implied, sympathy must be a two-way street. "The welcome we have given Muslims in the West, with the accompanying freedom to worship ... and build their mosques should be reciprocated in Muslim lands," he declared in a speech at Rome's Gregorian University.

With great sorrow, rather than anger, Carey spoke of the decline of the Islamic culture. "Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as the Dark Ages, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries," he said.

He attacked the "glaring lack of democracy" in Muslim countries. "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes," he complained. Then Carey pleaded with moderate Muslims to resist the usurpation of Islam by radicals and to "express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their coreligionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah."

The Muslim League of Britain condemned Carey's statements, saying, "Mainstream Muslims have consistently condemned terrorist attacks of all kinds."

But this prompted the kind of commentary that often causes despair among Western Christians perfectly willing to coexist amicably with Islam: "Muslims must not denounce other Muslims," militant Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "Cooperation with the authorities against other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy."

Uwe Siemon-Netto is a religious-affairs editor for UPI, a sister news organization of Insight magazine.

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NY Times
Eurabia?
By NIALL FERGUSON
Published: April 4, 2004

In the 52nd chapter of his ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,'' Edward Gibbon posed one of the great counterfactual questions of history. If the French had failed to defeat an invading Muslim army at the Battle of Poitiers in A.D. 732, would all of Western Europe have succumbed to Islam?

''Perhaps,'' speculated Gibbon with his inimitable irony, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.''

When those words were published in 1788, the idea of a Muslim Oxford could scarcely have seemed more fanciful. The last Muslim forces had been driven from Spain in 1492; the Ottoman advance through Eastern Europe had been decisively halted at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

Today, however, the idea seems somewhat less risible. The French historian Alain Besancon is one of a number of European intellectuals who detect a significant threat to the continent's traditional Christian culture. The Egyptian-born writer Bat Yeor has for some years referred to the rise of a new ''Eurabia'' that is hostile in equal measure to the United States and Israel. Two years ago, Pat Buchanan published an apocalyptic book titled ''The Death of the West,'' prophesying that declining European fertility and immigration from Muslim countries could turn ''the cradle of Western civilization'' into ''its grave.''

Such Spenglerian talk has gained credibility since 9/11. The ''3/11'' bombings in Madrid confirm that terrorists sympathetic to Osama bin Laden continue to operate with comparative freedom in European cities. Some American commentators suspect Europeans of wanting to appease radical Islam. Others detect in sporadic manifestations of anti-Semitism a sinister conjunction of old fascism and new fundamentalism.

Most European Muslims are, of course, law-abiding citizens with little sympathy for terrorist attacks on European cities. Moreover, they are drawn from a wide range of countries and of Islamic traditions, few of them close to Arabian Wahhabism. Nevertheless, there is no question that the continent is experiencing fundamental demographic and cultural changes whose long-term consequences no one can foresee.

To begin with, consider the extraordinary prospect of European demographic decline. A hundred years ago -- when Europe's surplus population was still crossing the oceans to populate America and Australasia -- the countries that make up today's European Union accounted for around 14 percent of the world's population. Today that figure is down to around 6 percent, and by 2050, according to a United Nations forecast, it will be just over 4 percent. The decline is absolute as well as relative. Even allowing for immigration, the United Nations projects that the population of the current European Union members will fall by around 7.5million over the next 45 years. There has not been such a sustained reduction in the European population since the Black Death of the 14th century. (By contrast, the United States population is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2000 and 2050.)

With the median age of Greeks, Italians and Spaniards projected to exceed 50 by 2050 -- roughly 1 in 3 people will be 65 or over -- the welfare states created in the wake of World War II plainly require drastic reform. Either today's newborn Europeans will spend their working lives paying 75 percent tax rates or retirement and ''free'' health care will simply have to be abolished. Alternatively (or additionally), Europeans will have to tolerate more legal immigration.

But where will the new immigrants come from? It seems very likely that a high proportion will come from neighboring countries, and Europe's fastest-growing neighbors today are predominantly if not wholly Muslim. A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize -- the term is not too strong -- a senescent Europe.

This prospect is all the more significant when considered alongside the decline of European Christianity. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark today, fewer than 1 in 10 people now attend church once a month or more. Some 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes say that God did not matter to them at all. While the social and sexual freedoms that matter to such societies are antithetical to Muslim fundamentalism, their religious tolerance leaves these societies weak in the face of fanaticism.

What the consequences of these changes will be is very difficult to say. A creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom is one conceivable result: while the old Europeans get even older and their religious faith weaker, the Muslim colonies within their cities get larger and more overt in their religious observance. A backlash against immigration by the economically Neanderthal right is another: aging electorates turn to demagogues who offer sealed borders without explaining who exactly is going to pay for the pensions and health care. Nor can we rule out the possibility of a happy fusion between rapidly secularized second-generation Muslims and their post-Christian neighbors. Indeed, we may conceivably end up with all three: Situation 1 in France, Situation 2 in Austria and Situation 3 in Britain.

Still, it is hard not to be reminded of Gibbon -- especially now that his old university's Center for Islamic Studies has almost completed work on its new premises. In addition to the traditional Oxford quadrangle, the building is expected to feature ''a prayer hall with traditional dome and minaret tower.''

When I first glimpsed a model of that minaret, I confess, the phrase that sprang to mind was indeed ''decline and fall.''

Niall Ferguson is Herzog professor of history at the Stern School of Business, New York University. His book ''Colossus: The Price of America's Empire'' will be published this month by Penguin Press.

Former Terrorist Speaks

By Alyssa A. Lappen and Jerry Gordon
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 2, 2004

On Thursday March 25, former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat mesmerized a Wesleyan University audience. Nearly 200 students, faculty and Connecticut residents cleared ironclad security and packed room 107 in Shanklin Hall: According to Wesleyan Public Security and the Middletown police, an email from the Bank of Bahrain had placed a $10 million price on Shoebat’s head.

The crowd took no comfort from the technical deficiencies of this particular Islamic threat: It arrived unaccompanied by a fatwa (religious ruling)—and unsigned by a Muslim sheikh. Concern for Shoebat’s safety was nevertheless palpable: His rejection of Islam, to which he was born, his avowal of Christian faith and his support for Israel, all make Shoebat a potential target of his own Muslim family and other Islamic radicals. Shoebat’s peril is all the greater for his intimate acquaintance with many PLO terrorists and their operations, in which he once willingly participated.

Turnout at Wesleyan was bolstered by Shoebat’s 30 minute interview that morning on Hartford’s WTIC news talk radio, an Infinity broadcasting affiliate. After Jim Vicevich featured Shoebat on Connecticut Today, WTIC’s switchboard lit up. Eager listeners swamped the station with calls, says producer Mike Constantino, who immediately invited Shoebat to return to the show.

Jerry Gordon conceived of Shoebat’s Wesleyan appearance after the university hosted a radical February 7 “training day,” co-sponsored by Students for a Free Palestine (SFP) and Al Awda. The latter group seeks Israel’s political destruction through a supposed Arab “right of return.” Gordon connected with Shoebat and Irish Jewish publicist Keith Davies through New York playwright Glyn O’Malley, whose one-act drama Paradise concerns Islamic suicide bombing and earlier earned him Muslim ire. After reading of Shoebat, O’Malley contacted and spoke at length with him. He then emailed Gordon, extolling Shoebat’s message. Gordon contacted Davies and obtained a preview DvD.

Gordon had learned of Wesleyan’s plan to host radicals on February 7 in an urgent February 1 email from New York Jewish activist Janet Lehr: over Tu B’shevat weekend—the Jewish Arbor Day—the university would feature an Al Awda “training day” anchored by the group’s anti-Semitic chief, Yale Medical School geneticist Mazin Qumsiyeh. Coincidentally, Shoebat grew up with Qumsiyeh in the village of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem. Their families are well acquainted. Qumsiyeh participated in terrorist activities as a teenager in the 1970’s, according to Shoebat.

More than one third of Wesleyan’s 2,500 students are Jewish. One fifth of its 250 full time faculty are Jewish, as well. By contrast, says junior Todd Stock, only five SFP members are Jewish. Despite vociferous protests from the Jewish community in advance protests of the Al Awda session, Wesleyan held the February 7 event as scheduled.

Matthew Scherzer, assistant head of Connecticut’s American Jewish Committee chapter, immediately exposed the rabid Jew-hatred Al Awda advanced there in the Jewish Ledger. Local AJC and Anti-Defamation League leaders then followed up with Kol Israel students and 10 Jewish Wesleyan faculty members.

Gordon proposed that Shoebat come to Wesleyan to counter Al Awda’s poison. On March 2, he previewed the Shoebat DvD with Kol Israel leaders Stock and freshman Vlad Gutkovich at Bayit House on campus. They invited Shoebat to Middletown on March 25th.

Shoebat’s talk was nuanced and effective.

He described an educational system that inculcates students with Jew hatred through every imaginable medium: Nursery songs paint Jews as dogs and pigs; caricatures and ubiquitous graffiti decorate every wall in Arab villages. Walid attended two elementary grades at an Anglican Lutheran school. Even Christians there perpetuate and legitimize Jew hatred, he said. Their “liberation” and “replacement theology” call for Israel’s destruction. Fatah propaganda incorrectly portrays the Jewish Jesus as a Palestinian revolutionary, he noted. For the crown of thorns, PLO churches substitute barbed wire adjoining refugee camp fences. He said Hanan Ashrawi and George Habash—one a prominent Christian member of Arafat’s PLO, the other a terrorist and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—graduated from schools that foment Islamicized Christian Jew hatred.

The “Palestinian refugee” problem, Shoebat said, results from international hypocrisy. Fifty-six years after the first Arab-Israeli war, Arabs continue to live in deplorable squalor in camps maintained by UNWRA, he said. Past Israeli governments often proposed replacing the camps with apartment buildings, he said. But Palestinian and Arab UN general assembly members vociferously rejected each such plan as "provocative." Meanwhile, Shoebat said, Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim governments expelled more than 900,000 Jews after Israel’s 1948 war of Independence—and confiscated their homes, bank accounts, even their clothing—without recompense. Israel resettled Jewish refugees, he said. They became productive citizens. Arab League member states, by contrast, refused to help their brothers in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Instead they exploited the “refugee” camps as a propaganda tool that even today perpetuates the international jihad with a myth of Arab and Muslim victim hood, he said.

Unlike American teenagers, Shoebat spent his youth stoning Jewish worshipers at the kotel—the western wall—from the Temple mount. He was briefly detained in the Russian compound prison, he said.

After his release, Shoebat worked with Fatah bomb makers in Jerusalem, including a relation of Dalal Al-Mughrabi, who murdered an American, Gail Rubin, and 35 Israelis in a 1978 Jerusalem bus hijacking and open market bombing. Then Shoebat’s turn came. Mahmud Al-Mughrabi gave him a hollowed loaf of Jewish bread packed with explosives. This operator directed Shoebat to destroy the Bethlehem branch of Bank Leumi. He told Shoebat its timer was set to explode late that night; in reality, it was set for—and detonated at—6 p.m. Fortunately, Shoebat arrived at the target early, he said. There, he saw Palestinian children circulating outside. Concerned for their safety, he tossed the bomb onto a nearby roof, where it exploded harmlessly shortly thereafter. Otherwise, Al-Mughrabi’s bread bomb would have rendered Shoebat an involuntary suicide bomber.

Shoebat also described an attempted lynching. He and fellow Beit Sahour rioters attacked an Israeli officer and stripped him of his bullhorn, sidearm, plastic shield and helmet. They clubbed and pounded his head with a nail-studded stick, until the officer became a bloody gore. “Thank God I do not have Jewish blood on my hands,” he said: IDF reinforcements arrived and the officer regained enough strength to rise and jump to safety over a burning wall of tires. Shoebat said he hopes eventually to find him and make personal amends.

Al Awda’s Mazin Qumsiyeh participated in that Beit Sahour incident, Shoebat said privately. The Shoebat family, he noted, had once sold property to the Qumsiyehs. Nearly three years older than he, Mazin “was a product of Arab Christian education, a society that absorbed lethal confusion and hatred from its Islamic surroundings.” Shoebat would like to debate Mazin Qumsiyeh publicly, perhaps at Yale University.

Shoebat came to the US to attend Loop College in Chicago, he said. There, he worked as a PLO student organizer. Of perhaps 100 Palestinians he knew, who enrolled at that time in American colleges, only a handful actually graduated. They were too busy holding rallies and raising funds for their terrorist cause. They collected for battle fatigues, which they sent to PLO forces in Lebanon, for example. To attract participants, they advertised events deceptively, Shoebat said. In Arabic a poster might announce “a fund raiser for the cause.” In English, the same poster would invite students “to a middle east feast with baklava and lamb.”

Shoebat said he fears that Islamist hatred of Jews could lead to another holocaust in the 21st Century. To prevent such an outcome, he said the “terrorism factories” in the disputed territories and throughout the Middle East must be destroyed. Unfortunately the international community fails to even recognize the problem, he added. But even if the United Nations should unexpectedly dismantle the educational systems that mass manufacture hatred, Shoebat said, Jew hatred could not be expunged from Palestinian Authority, Arab or Muslim societies in less than a generation. He lamented the current lack of hope that such a process can ever begin.

During the Wesleyan Q+A, Shoebat was asked how and why he “converted.” He first read the Old Testament, he said, to counter the objections of his nominally Catholic third wife to his demand that she convert to Islam. He also hoped to prove to her the illegitimacy of the Jewish people and their claim to Israel. Much to his surprise, he found that the Tenach radiates with compassion, contrasting sharply with the Koran he had been taught. Thus Shoebat undertook biblical training. He gladly fled hatred of Jews and Israel and converted to Christianity, Zionism and love for Jews. He and his wife now teach this tradition to their children.

Following Shoebat’s Wesleyan talk, 30 students and community members adjourned to a campus lounge for further discussion. He enthralled them.

Central Connecticut State University Professor Jay Bergman, President of the Connecticut Chapter of the National Association of Scholars, found Shoebat’s talk “a revelation, even for someone like myself,…an unequivocal and enthusiastic supporter of Israel and the democratic principles it practices.” That Shoebat had participated in violence gave “his testimony a special credence and credibility that it might otherwise lack. All those on the left and in America and Europe who turn a blind eye to the blatant and vicious anti-Semitism pervasive in the Middle East should be required to attend one of [his] lectures.”

Kol Israel student leader Stock said, "The evening was a success; every one I spoke with was impressed…. [Many] people…left with a new found understanding." For once, he said, the perpetrators of hatred were silenced.

Before Shoebat’s Wesleyan appearance, Hartford JFACT president Marty Shapiro heard Shoebat on WTIC radio. He phoned associate Bob Fishman to ask if Shoebat “was for real.” Assured that he was, Shapiro abandoned plans to watch UConn basketball and brought his wife to hear Shoebat in person. Now, Shapiro intends to invite Shoebat for another Connecticut visit.

A Christian WTIC listener approached a Connecticut organizer following Shoebat’s Middletown talk. “It’s about time such a message was heard,” he beamed. Most Wesleyan and UConn students were equally impressed. They echoed student reactions Shoebat received at many other campuses this spring.

One especially noteworthy response came at Montreal’s Concordia University, where Muslim students, in September 2002, had rioted to prevent former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking. They kicked, punched, spat and threw chairs on Jewish students entering the auditorium. Montreal police quelled the melee only with tear gas. “I was never so scared in my life,” a Jewish student told Lappen last month. Riot instigator Samir Elatrash, ostensibly suspended for three years, still remains enrolled. Muslims continue even now to accost Jewish students on the Concordia campus, the young woman reports. Elatrash has been emboldened by his central role in a National Film Board of Canada documentary on the riot, which he decries for its “bias.” His recent anti-Israel screen for Montreal Muslim News is featured in the news archive of the Islamic Association for Palestine terror group.

To this tense campus, Walid Shoebat arrived on March 10. Elatrash came, once again intent upon shouting down a Zionist speaker. But Elatrash was stunned, according to Shoebat, to encounter in this pro-Israel Palestinian his own cousin. Shoebat easily won student hearts. Elatrash led the Muslim toughs who confidently sought to disrupt his presentation.

Shoebat would have none of it. “This kind of behavior has made the Middle East dysfunctional,” he told them. “In Canada, we do not accept such incivility. Listen to me, and during Questions and Answers, you will each get your own opportunity to speak.” The crowd cheered wildly.

When their turn came, the Muslims lined up at the mic and spoke one by one. The audience booed each one. Shoebat again upended them. Then Elatrash reached the mic and complained of Jewish oppression. “How do you know,” Shoebat asked his cousin. “You never lived there.” Shoebat recalled a shooting committed by Samir’s father. Muslims had blamed on the Jews, he said. Rabbi Tovia Singer broadcast the two-hour program over Israel National Radio in a segment entitled: “Former PLO Terrorist Succeeds where Bibi failed.”

At Wesleyan, Concordia—and many other venues—Shoebat earned well-deserved standing ovations. His truthful message should be replicated on college campuses across North America.