'Here's an inconvenient truth: the Islamisation of Europe'

Thursday, 07 May 2009 09:03

There’s a truly awful piece in Telegraph blogs by, no not Damian Thompson, but Ed West (pictured), entitled ‘Here's an inconvenient truth: the Islamisation of Europe’.

West tries to rationalize what is nothing more than a racist diatribe against Muslim immigration and Muslim citizenship in Europe. While he tries to couch his article in language that conveys anxiety over mass immigration and the costs to social cohesion, he betrays his barely concealed Islamophobia by singling out Islam and Muslims as the scourge of Europe.

Reading West, one would think the BNP and associated far right racist parties in Europe were merely filling the void left by mainstream parties unwilling to bring the debate on the effects of Muslim mass immigration to the centre stage. Perhaps because to do so would reveal one’s patent anti Muslim prejudice, Mr West?

Instead, West accuses those that resist the far right’s racist politics and blatant Muslim bashing as forming a ‘liberal conspiracy over an issue that is as important to our society, if not to our planet’.

And his source for this conspiracy that will undo Europe and the world? An article by Bruce Bawer, author of ‘While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within’ and, more recently, 'Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom'. The titles alone should tell you all you need to know about their contents (forget the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’).

West, quoting Bawer, argues that Muslim immigration to Europe has been costly both financially and culturally with European societies struggling to maintain cohesion, welfare provisions and their Enlightenment cultural attributes in the face of the waves of Muslim immigration that have, supposedly, brought the continent to its knees. Hurrah then for the brave, people like Pym Fortuyn and Jorge Haider, who stand up in the name of the downtrodden who suffer quietly as their societies become unrecognizable.

Shame that the percentage figures of Muslims living in Europe do not correspond to the fearmongering rants of the ‘Eurabia thesis’ enthusiasts.

West also mentions David Goodhart’s piece in Prospect magazine, ‘Too Diverse?’, which tries to reframe the immigration debate in respectable terms questioning whether we’re becoming too diverse to manage the reciprocity and sense of community that underpins the welfare state model.

Goodhart wrote:

‘The different appearance of many immigrants is an outward reminder that they are, at least initially, strangers. If welfare states demand that we pay into a common fund on which we can all draw at times of need, it is important that we feel that most people have made the same effort to be self-supporting and will not take advantage. We need to be reassured that strangers, especially those from other countries, have the same idea of reciprocity as we do.’

West, citing Bawer, contends that Muslims are persistent offenders in this regard, preferring to sponge off the state than engage in active employment and contribute to the public purse. Bawer writes,

‘For while some immigrant groups in Europe, such as Hindus and East Asians, enjoy relatively low unemployment rates and healthy incomes, the largest immigrant group, Muslims, has become such a burden that governments have made extensive cutbacks in public services in order to keep up with welfare payments—closing clinics and emergency rooms, reducing staff in hospitals, cutting police and military spending, eliminating course offerings at public universities, and so on. According to a report issued last year by the think tank Contribuables Associés, immigration reduces France’s economic growth by two-thirds. In 2002, economist Lars Jansson estimated that immigration cost Swedish taxpayers about $27 billion annually and that fully 74 percent of immigrant-group members in Sweden lived off the taxpayers. And in 2006, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise warned that Norway’s petroleum fund—which contains the massive profits from North Sea oil that have made the nation rich—could wind up drained to cover outlays to immigrants.’

No mention whatsoever in this woeful piece of the many research reports produced which reveal the dire economic states in which many of Britain and Europe's Muslims live.

West also contends that value differences between Muslims and others has undone the Left’s loyal voter base as voters shift their voting preferences from Left to Right.

He writes:

‘[European Jews] have traditionally voted for Left-wing parties because of the Right's bigotry. Last year the Conservatives won the Jewish vote in the London elections, the first time in history that the capital's Jews had voted for a Right-wing party. ‘

Could it be because the right wing press, particularly the Evening Standard, engaged in a vicious campaign to discredit Ken Livingstone and set its sights firmly on ensuring his electoral defeat given his rejection of its Muslim hatemongering?

West writes:

‘If the Conservative Party fails to take up its position as Fortuyn's heirs, then the vacuum will only get bigger. The space is open for either dissident Conservatives, UKIP or some other non-fascist party to take up that mantle.’

Fortuyn’s heirs? In the vein of Douglas Murray, who in his Pym Fortuyn memorial lecture in 2006 argued that, ‘All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. ...the whole deal under which Muslims live in our societies must change.

Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition.’

Don’t be surprised to find West’s blog cross-posted on the BNP’s website. It would be the best place for it. That and similar xenophobic websites that delight in cross posting anti Muslim harangues and which invite fellow racists to contribute their own spewing in the comments appended below the article.