| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Bat Ye'or on Europe and multiculturalism |
| 2006-11-07 |
| Discours prononcé par Bat Ye’or lors de la rencontre annuelle (2-4.11.2006) de Christian Solidarity International (CSI) à l’Église Paul Gerhardt de Munich, en Allemagne: Speech by Bat Ye'or at the annual meeting (2006/11/01-04) of Christian Solidarity International (CSI)in the Paul Gerhardt church, Munich, Germany : Ladies and Gentlemen It is for me a great honour to be invited by CSI, an organization that has been so active on so many humanitarian fronts in order to denounce slavery, war crimes and genocide, and to alleviate human suffering. And I am thinking particularly of its struggle on behalf of human rights and dignity in Sudan since 1992, and CSI’s freeing over 80.000 Christian and other Sudanese slaves under the leadership of John Eibner and Gunnar Wielback. The globalization of our world and the policies that have led to large-scale Muslim immigration, adopted by the European Community from 1973, has introduced into Europe conflictual situations and prejudices common in the Muslim world against non-Muslims that have been documented by Orientalists familiar with Islamic theology, law and history. But the politization of history initiated by Edward Said has obfuscated the root causes of Islam’s traditional hostility toward Jews and Christians from the seven century onward. Edward Said was a Christian raised in Egypt and educated in America; he taught English literature at Columbia University. A great admirer of Arafat and a member of the PLO’s top Committee, he endeavored to destroy the whole scientific accumulation of Orientalist knowledge of Islam and replace it with a culture of Western guilt and inferiority toward Muslims victims. The obliteration of the historical truth that he constantly pursued from 1978 – starting with his book Orientalism – as well as his hostility to Israel, has prevented an understanding and the resolution of problems that today assail Europe and challenge its own survival. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #6 Thanks, NS and TW. I love the Internet and have bought a couple things off there, but generally I am wary of purchasing off the Internet using credit. I am going to try the library request route. I expect to see pinched faces and pursed lips. :) |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-11-07 10:23 |
| #5 Oh dear, Jules. I was not expecting that! About your question, though: Bat Yeor is far out of the mainstream of interests that public libraries and local bookstores cater to. Have you looked into the card catalogs at your local university library? Or put in a request for an order? My local library branch has purchased the most extraordinary things for me when I put in an order for something not stocked even at the main branch downtown. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-11-07 10:00 |
| #4 One snarky little postnote: In America and Europe, we have different ways of punctuating numbers. "80.000" to Europeans is "80,000" to us. Their use of a decimal to separate hundreds from thousands has always been an irritant to me, but perhaps our European friends have it right to this extent: given the propensity of Janjaweed in Sudan for lopping off body parts, thus leaving less than whole humans to count, using the decimal may well give a more accurate picture of the Sudanese left behind. |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-11-07 09:12 |
| #3 What the internet does best. Steyn is having the same problem with Canadian bookstores and has solved it the same way, clicks, not bricks. It is astounding how book sellers and librarians have cut off their noseds to psite their faces in support of their disproven ideologies. I used to vote for every library tax increase. But now I just wonder why I should vote for a tax subsidized Blockbuster that pushes videos from PBS but won't buy books I want to read. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-11-07 09:10 |
| #2 I have not been able to find any books by Bat Ye’or either in my regional library or in the town bookstores. Is Ye’or difficult to find because works aren’t translated into English or because libraries and bookstores don’t like Ye’or’s politics? In any case, I enjoy reading Ye’or. Gawd, I love it when PC fairy tales about tolerant and just Islam get crushed underfoot: “According to Islamic law, dhimmis cannot criticise the Prophet or say that Islamic law has a defect without risking death. Hence, the Islamic blasphemy laws – even at the United Nations – have been imposed on us, and particularly on the Western media.” I think the following sums up the battle, but the use of the cure word “rehabilitation” sounds, to English ears, almost worse than the disease: “If we want peace to prevail, the Muslim world must abandon the jihadist ideology, it must recognise Jews and Christians as different and not see them as apostate Muslims. And this must start with Muslim recognition of the legitimacy of Israel, because jihad started against the Jews and it can only end with the rehabilitation of the Jews and Israel, which will bring the rehabilitation of all non-Muslims.” |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-11-07 09:03 |
| #1 These hadiths, often quoted in sermons, speak of him killing the pig, breaking the cross – which means destroying Christianity – and the hadiths continue: he will suppress the jizya or poll-tax and the booty will be boundless. The Religion of Pirates. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2006-11-07 07:55 |