“This month’s riots in the immigrant ghettos outside Paris are only the latest manifestation of a continent in decline. Expressly, Europe has abandoned its culture. Thus, it has lost the means by which to assimilate Muslims who have shown no inclination to emulate those who seek American citizenship and accept the pluralistic values our country represents…. A proper analysis of Great Britain’s attempts at integration of Muslims is far too great a task for a newspaper column, but the behavior of the mayor of that country’s capitol city is cause for distress.
“On first glance, London’s gay community could have no better friend than Ken Livingstone. A legendary member of the far-left wing of the Labour Party, the mayor has been an outspoken advocate for gay rights. He started the first Partnership Register in the United Kingdom. He regularly attends the London Gay Pride Parade. He has worked with his city’s police force to crack down on homophobic crime. In spite of this flawless record on gay rights, Livingstone has repeatedly expressed support for radical Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based imam whom the mayor hosted at City Hall last year….
“Livingstone holds the value of ‘multiculturalism’ as the highest of all, even if that means respecting cultures that seek to destroy ours. The risk of offending a single Muslim is too onerous for Livingstone to condemn those who glorify terror. During the Cold War, the term ‘useful idiot’ (ironically coined by Lenin) was applied to those in the West who excused away or completely ignored the atrocities of Communism. ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone, as he is affectionately known, was a useful idiot then and is no less a useful idiot of the Islamofascists now.”
The usual right-wing American rubbish, assisted by quotes from Peter Tatchell and Brett Lock of Outrage.
Yale Daily News, 1 December 2005
Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer draws the appropriate conclusions: “This article shows why it is so important for Westerners to drop the outmoded language of Left and Right, as I have argued many times: there are those who are interested in defending Western civilization against the jihad, and those who aren’t. Ken Livingstone isn’t.” Spencer spells out his own tactical recommendation: “Opponents and proponents of gay marriage … need to unite now and defend against a common enemy who would render all such controversies moot.”
Rather redundant advice, I would have thought. Tatchell, Lock and their friends long ago adopted the position that, in order to pursue their vendetta against Islam in general and Dr al-Qaradawi in particular, they are more than ready to form a bloc with the anti-Muslim Right.
“France is proudly mono-cultural, insisting that its residents shed all their identities and ‘be French’…. Yet, when facing social problems, the French attribute them to their pluralism. To a lesser degree, Germany and others do the same. ‘Multiculturalism has failed, big time’, said Angela Merkel, on her way to becoming chancellor. But Germany never had a policy of recognizing all cultures. What it has is an immigrant population that long ago ceased to be only white and Christian. That’s what she was complaining about. So was former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, 85, saying of the 2.6 million Turkish Germans, that it had been a big mistake to have let them in.
“… there have been whole legions of pundits wheeled out to offer an explanation. It’s deprivation, a lack of integration, poverty, unemployment, incipient French racism and so on. But the dreaded ‘M’ word has scarcely been mentioned at all; these were ‘young’ rioters or sometimes ‘immigrant’ rioters – they were never Muslim rioters. Islam was almost never mentioned … the suspicion persists that it is the North Africans who do not wish for integration – much as they might whine about a lack of employment opportunities – even more than the indigenous French…. It may well be that the motive for the rioting was nothing more than an inchoate grievance allied to youthful exuberance and a penchant for bad behaviour, but it was Islam which gave it an identity and also its retrospective raison d’être.”
“Lax immigration policies, prostration to the god of multiculturalism, and the refusal to fight fire with fire are three reasons why Muslim ‘youths’ in Paris are rioting in the streets. As I see it, the religion of Islam is inherently incompatible with the concept of individual liberty, a crucial component of western countries. It’s no accident that a culture like the West and a nation like the United States were envisioned and created by people who were either Christians and/or biblically literate and/or respected the Christian tradition. In countries under Islamic law, there’s no such idea as ‘individual liberty’. You’re either a Muslim or in danger of having your throat sliced open.”