Posted by
Georgiaboy on Monday, October 23, 2006 11:29:38 AM
This article caught my eye over on Fox news. It is about the continuing violence committed by the peaceful adherents of Islam in France. Go read it real fast. You probably remember the month of car burning riots that these Muslim youth engaged in a while ago. Now, they have taken to ambushing police, firemen, and rescue workers with stones and clubs.
"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."
It is a well known fact that Muslims immigrants to France, and Europe as a whole, are unassimilated. They are alienated, living in poverty-striken ghettos. This is probably due to both the immigrants and Europe. Europe does not have the melting pot tradition like America, and many of the Muslims have no intention of modernizing.
Make no mistake. This is one of Europe's gravest problems. The Muslim birthrate dwarfs that of the declining European population. With a continued influx of poor Muslims, a majority Islamic Europe is a distinct possibility.
Europe has two paths they can take. The first is to immediately end all immigration and deport any Muslims who are causing problems. Liberals will scream bloody murder. But, Europe did not ask for this fight. I think this is probably their best option, although certainly an unsavory one. The immigrants that they have seem to be nothing but trouble. In contrast to the Hispanic immigrants to the US who work hard, mind their own business, and enthusiastically embrace America, Europe's Islamic immigrants burn cars, attack police, and are unemployed drains to the welfare state.
The second option is an aggressive integration scheme. They would force Muslims to integrate into their culture, move out of the ghettoes, outlaw any expression of extreme Islam, crack down hard on gang activity, and once again shut off all immigration. School kids would be required to take extensive assimilation courses, learning about the history and civics of each country and do things like community service to foster a sense of community and belonging. They would also have to reform their welfare state to boost their economy and drag these people out of poverty. This path would be harder and would have no guarantee of success. If it succeeded, however, it would be a kinder way of dealing with the problem. The ironic thing is that by dealing gently with these immigrants, Europe would commit to billions of dollars and years worth of work to fix a problem that was the immigrants' in the first place.
In truth, I don't have the answers. All I know is that Europe's present course in unsustainable. They can either grow a backbone now, or they can get used to living like the Israelis. Islam came within a few battles of conquering Europe in the middle ages; it may just conquer Europe now through the pathetic weakness of the Europeans, their political correctness, moral relativism, and naive goodwill. Wake up, Europe!!!