The conference of the Suspects

The “Usual Suspects” is VFR’s term for people who with passionate urgency and a deep sense of mission warn that Islam is a mortal threat to Western civilization, but who never once mention the main factor that has allowed the Islamization of the West to occur, namely the mass immigration of Muslims into the West, and who never once mention the only way to stop the Islamization of the West, namely, to stop (and, at least to some extent, reverse) Muslim immigration. VFR has discussed various writers and intellectuals who deserve the “Suspects” designation, most recently Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam.

But now the Suspects phenomenon is ascending to a new level. Now it is not just a matter of individual writers, but of an entire organization, called “Stop the Islamification of Europe,” which has formed for “the single aim of preventing Islam from becoming a dominant political force in Europe,” and which seeks to “combat legally the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe.” SIOE calls on the governments of Europe to stop favoring Islam over the native cultures and legal systems of Europe, it cries “NO SHARIA HERE,” and it is planning a big anti-Islamization demonstration to take place outside the European Parliament building on September 11, 2007. Such activism of course is desperately needed—that at least some Europeans are starting to see the threat of Islam and are organizing against it is great. At the same time, in the course of a 1,600 word press release from the group’s founder, Anders Gravers, at the Gates of Vienna website, the words “immigration” and “immigrant” do not appear even once. This ignoring of immigration dashes any thought that Stop the Islamification of Europe is a truly serious group. If SIOE does not recognize that the “overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe” has been made possible solely by Muslim immigration, if it does not see that the growth of Islam as a political force in Europe is the natural and inevitable result of the physical presence in Europe of millions of Muslims, what hope is there that the group can help stop that expansion and reverse that growth?

For SIOE, it is as though the presence of millions of Muslims in Europe were (to paraphrase my 1990 booklet The Path to National Suicide)

a vast natural phenomenon, as far outside human control as continental drift. There seems to be almost no awareness of the fact that this profound alteration of European society is the result, not of an act of God, but of an act of the European governments.

True, SIOE blames the European governments for giving special privileges and power to Muslims and demands that they stop; but it doesn’t demand that the European governments stop allowing more Muslim immigrants into Europe, let alone that they deport Muslims who support terrorism and jihad, of whom, according to opinion polls, there are millions.

To use a further analogy, it is as though Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had formed an “Organization against Alcoholism,” while refusing to say anything about or against the drinking of alcohol.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 10, 2007 06:27 PM | Send