Islam versus Europe

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik may have failed to ignite a race war with Muslims, but he succeeded in stoking anxieties about the stability of Europe's increasingly diverse societies.

Though his talk of an international underground of killers - latter-day Crusaders he called the Knights Templar - seemed to be mere fantasy, and while his methods place him far beyond the pale of mainstream politics, many of his beliefs are to be found within the fold of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant populists.

"His ideological `manifesto' is a distilled representation of a cultural crisis that pervades the European continent and finds expression in an increasingly xenophobic populism," Kirsten Simonsen, a professor at Denmark's Roskilde University, wrote in "Bloodlands", a 2012 series of essays about Breivik.

Some notions - that Europe and its indigenous cultures are being weakened by immigration and multiculturalism - have been helping reshape the continent's right-wing politics for years.

These beliefs occasionally find an echo on the margins of centre-right parties, among politicians seeking support from communities plagued by rising unemployment.

Human rights groups are increasingly alarmed, not just at the far right, but at what many see as the pandering to its Islamophobic stereotypes by Europe's mainstream parties.

"We need our own 'European Spring' to overcome old and emerging forms of racism and intolerance," Nils Muiznieks, the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, a governmental human rights body, wrote in a July 2012 blog.

Muslims, he said, had become the primary "other" in right-wing populist discourse in Europe, and needed to be accepted as an integral part of society, entitled to equality and dignity.

Political parties in Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland had employed anti-Muslim rhetoric for political gain, he said.

...In June 2012 an Ipsos MORI poll on attitudes to immigration found that in seven out of nine EU member states surveyed the majority regarded immigration as having had a negative impact on their country: Sweden and Poland were the only exceptions.

...Pepe Egger, head of Western European Forecasting for the UK-based Exclusive Analysis research house, says some of Breivik's ideas are held quite widely among European political activists.

"The bizarre thing is that his ideas, as Islamophobic as they are, are almost mainstream in many European countries," he told Reuters. "The perceived need to defend Europe against 'Islamisation' is not that far removed from what you can find in the opinion pieces in large daily newspapers."

Source: Reuters

What bizarre language! It shows the contempt for democracy that lurks at the heart of the Euro-elite, especially the human rights commisars. I'm always amazed at the ability of leftists to see themselves as somehow fighting the system ("The Man") even though it's obvious, to anyone who isn't a '68er, that they ARE the system.