Europe's Secularism Can't Defeat Islam

Islamic street preacher Farid Benyettou (LA Times)

Preaching jihad on the mean streets of Gay Paree is the fellow above, Farid Benyettou, who according to an LATimes story on the rise of Islamoterrorism Europe, is the suspected leader of a gang of young terrorists.

The story is a very interesting read, focusing on how younger and younger Muslim boys from poor Parisian working class neighborhoods are recruited, indoctinated and sent off to jihad. The big motivator is the war in Iraq ... and the fervency of their young faith. The results are very real:

Unlike five Dutch suspects in the Van Gogh case who allegedly trained at secret Pakistani and Afghan camps, the preparation in Paris was minimal: exercise sessions in the wooded Buttes-Chaumont Park, perfunctory consultation of weapons manuals.

"No training," said a senior French intelligence official, whose agency does not permit him to be quoted by name. "These are guys who go to get themselves blown up. Once they arrive at the destination in Iraq, they are very quickly prepared because the insurgents need fighters."

The network may have been crude, but several recruits attained their goal. One 19-year-old Riquet [a Parisian poor neighborhood] homeboy died in a suicide car bombing in Iraq last summer.

Two others, ages 19 and 24, were killed in combat in the Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad. During the battle to retake Fallouja in November, U.S. troops captured Diakhabi, Salah's longtime neighbor, and a 22-year-old from the neighborhood. Another member of the group is in a Syrian jail.

There is no similar phenomenon in the Muslim communities of America. Why? I think it goes to the nature of the nations: Europe is secular and socialist, America is religious and capitalist.

European attempts at assimilation have been bureacratic, socialistic and secular, because the New Dark Continent knows no other way. In A Swedish Dilemma, Weekly Standard author Christopher Caldwell detailed how Muslim immigrants have washed over that country, defeating its vaunted social welfare state, and creating political and society turmoil. It sums up:

The economic historian Rojas begs to differ. "High levels of taxation require that the people taxed be a community," he says. "And this has for a long time been a tribal society. . . . A good tribe! Very peaceful and nice! But a tribe."

Europe is a band of tribes trying to become a single entity, and just as the ball got rolling, millions of non-Europeans have come, complicating matters. Islam is a powerfully strong faith and it will steamroll over the faithless patsies of the secularized European states. Europe, instead of being elitist and thinking they have everything to teach America and nothing to learn from it, had better start learning, or there will be Benyettous, more jihadists from Europe, and more jihad in Europe.

America hardly has a perfect history in assimilating new population groups, but it has more experience, and more innate ability, to assimilate than does Europe. If Europe were still a Christian continent, it would be better positioned to deal with Islamization. Faith confronting faith would stiffen the spine of Europe, creating a molecular-level resistance to rolling over to Islamification, while Euro-bureaucrats would only pore through their policy papers and implementation manuals, looking for the solution that isn't there.

Faith confronting faith could result in a Northern Ireland or a new crusade, but it is more likely to lead to tough love and a commitment to obedience -- a critical attribute that is lost on many leftists, but is certainly a part of Islam and Christianity. Europe is becoming the mission field of more and more American missionaries. It's a good thing for Europe, but they probably don't think so, and certainly won't see Christian faith as their best answer for Islamification.