Those who make a business of projecting trends often neglect the acceleration factor.
The march of history may be effectively
described as “slowly” followed by “suddenly.”
Yet we are rarely prepared for those times when history seems to “speed up,” and decades of change are compressed into years or even months.
We assume that current trends will continue, and we are surprised when they do not.
This from frontpagemag.com.
An excellent book on the subject is Tony Blankley’s The West’s Last Chance.
Blankley, a nationally syndicated columnist who served President Reagan as a speechwriter and senior policy adviser, began the book with an overview of sudden changes in the course of history: The conquests of Alexander the Great, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Nazi’s rapid takeover of much of Europe.
He then made the case that we are on the brink of another historical reversal of massive proportions—namely:
[T]he takeover of Europe by Islam.
He suggested that the takeover would be accomplished through demographic changes rather than war and he further suggested that Europeans would mount little resistance to it.
According to Blankley:
The lack of resistance would have its source in the fact that demographic changes move slowly and are thus less noticeable.
One can see that an attacking army ought to be resisted, but the threat of rising birth rates seems a much less urgent matter.
As for Europe’s current “Muslim migrant problem,” the multiculturalists too long, in error, assumed it would soon vanish. They wrongfully convinced themselves that once Muslims realized how warm and welcoming Europeans are, they would gladly assimilate to the host culture. But as Blankley realized in 2005 (the date of the book’s publication) things were not going as expected.
Muslims were not assimilating, they were creating “no-go zones.”
They were not adopting the liberal ways of the French and the Dutch, rather, they were importing the repressive customs of Morocco, Somalia, and Iran.
What was the problem? In answer, Blankley quoted Abraham Lincoln’s observation that:
[T]he dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present…As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.
But Europeans (and Americans) did not think anew or act anew.
Faced with the entirely new situation created by the worldwide resurgence of Islam, they fell back on the inadequate dogmas of the quiet past. They fell back, in short, on political correctness and multiculturalism.
The chattering classes in Western societies insisted that what we needed was more understanding, more immigration, more welcoming, and more criticism of our own culture and heritage—and more censorship and suppression, as well.
Blankley was painfully correct when he openly feared the west would not be able to mount a sufficient resistance to Islamization. And he was right.
But Europe’s political, academic, and media elites did mount a powerful resistance against anyone who, like Blankley, dared to bring up the subject of Islamization.
Indeed, concepts such as “Eurabia,” “Islamization,” and the “Great Replacement” were dismissed as anti-Muslim right-wing conspiracy theories.
Moreover, prominent counter jihadists such as Italian author Oriani Fallaci, Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders, and Austrian citizen Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff were put on trial for their views. Fallaci was charged with the made-up crime of ‘defaming a religion.’
Further, the threat of Muslim violence during this time was very real—not a mere theory—and the authorities knew it. Numerous death threats had been made against Wilders, his colleague, ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others.
So, if the “Islamization of Europe” was nothing but a wild theory with no basis in fact, why were the elites so anxious to suppress the free speech rights of Wilders and the others?
And why was Wilder’s trial held in an underground bunker at Shipol Airport? Why was he surrounded day and night by a security detail? And why was he moved on an almost weekly basis from one safe house to another?
NOTE: Tracking all the death threats and assassination attempts directed at those who criticized Islam throughout the last thirty-plus years has been difficult. But the following are several:
In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death fatwah against Salman Rushdie, the author of the Satanic Verses. As a result of the fatwa, assassination attempts (one of them successful) were made against three people connected with the book’s publication. In addition, a hotel-full of people was set on fire in Turkey. Thirty years after the fatwa, a would-be assassin stabbed Rushdie 13 times while he was giving a talk in Chautauqua, New York.
In 2006, worldwide protests over cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper led to over 200 deaths. When Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, reprinted the cartoons in 2015, its office was attacked by two gunmen who killed twelve.
A month later, an assassination attempt was made on Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who drew uncomplimentary pictures of Muhammad. In the years following the exhibit of the drawings, Vilks was the target of two failed assassination plots and two violent attacks. In February, 2015 an assassination attempt on Vilks in Copenhagen left two dead and three wounded.
Three months later in Garland, Texas, two Muslim terrorists with automatic weapons attacked an art exhibit which featured images of Muhammad. The gunmen fired dozens of rounds at police outside the event, but were killed before they could get inside. Among their intended targets were Geert Wilders and prominent American Islam critics, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.
There have been several other assassination threats revolving around images of Muhammad, but you get the picture. European authorities get the picture too, but they won’t admit it. That might be provocative.
The refusal of Europe to acknowledge what has been happening to them is, perhaps, best illustrated by a case in point from England.
English police and other authorities in Rotherham, England, knew about the rape and prostitution of 1400 teenage girls by Muslim “grooming” gangs over a decade-long period, but they didn’t do anything about it for fear of being thought “Islamophobic.”
The politically correct notion that one should only say nice things about people of other religions and ethnicities, had a paralyzing effect on European authorities. The desire to be non-offensive often prevented them from putting a stop to criminal and terrorist activities when they were still able to. Instead of acting, the authorities often looked the other way.
The kind of resistance that Blankley and others called for—namely, government resistance—was in short supply
“Which raises the question: Is it too late now?”
Tony Blankley’s The West’s Last Chance was written nearly twenty years ago. Has Western Europe already had its last chance?
The years 2005-2007 saw the publication of a number of important books on the Islamization of Europe: Blankley’s book, Bat Yeor’s Eurabia, Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan, Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, Mark Steyn’s America Alone, and several others.
All of these books warned that Wester Europe was approaching a demographic tipping point after which the eventual dominance of Islam would be guaranteed. The warning, it seems, was largely ignored.
Contrary to arguments and rationalizations put forth by white Christian Europe and America about multicultural melting pots and the wonders of diversity, the following are facts to consider:
Despite falling birth rates, Muslims are out breeding native populations.
In recent years a massive number of Muslim migrants have entered Europe—mostly from Northern Africa, but also from the Middle East and Turkey.
Another factor to consider is the one initially mentioned—acceleration. As they begin to seem inevitable, demographic changes often go into a phase of acceleration.
Many older Americans are familiar with the phenomenon of ‘white flight’— the migration of white people from racially mixed urban areas to racially homogenous suburban areas. Anticipate something similar to this to occur again—in Europe and in America. And once the ratio of new residents to original residents reaches a certain tipping point, the flight will escalate. This will result in large areas of land off limits to non-Muslims.
The subtitle of The West’s Last Chance is
“Will we win the clash of civilizations?”
That still is an open question for America. But in Europe it’s a different story.
Islam has a solid foothold in Western Europe.
And the demographic changes are all in Islam’s favor.
Any acceleration in these trends will be difficult to resist.
Final thought: Take heed, America. Stand up to Islamization or learn to survive under Sharia law.
