The European Islamic State of Franjistan 2050

The murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh by a man of Moroccan origin has brought simmering tensions to the surface. Now, more than ever, you can hear about the "threat" of "radical" islam, from politicians and the media, and wonder at why muslims do not "apologise" for it.

Excerpts from a Guardian Report

"In Britain, the Daily Telegraph's Daniel Johnson noted that the Arab-European League had also accused the Dutch immigration minister of giving a "Hitler speech" at a rally in protest at Van Gogh's killing. But Johnson defended the Dutch reaction. "Even the most liberal society is illiberal when it is a question of survival," he said. "The prospect of Islamist imams imposing Sharia law on Dutch cities amounts, they feel, to a new Nazi occupation."

"There is no doubt that Muslim extremism is out to destroy our system of democratic rule of law," agreed the Netherlands' Trouw, "but ... we still have to play by the rules."

What evidence do they have for this? I have yet to hear of any statistics detailing how many "extremist" imams there are in European countries. All one can find is stories of individuals, such as AbdelKader Bouziane, who was expelled from France.

Indeed, whenever an individual muslim commits a crime or says something ridiculous, then you will find it used as a brush to tarnish the rest of us with. People such as Omar Bakri and Hamza Al-Masri are used regularly to whip the entire muslim cimmunity. Muslims are not the borg. There is no central hive mind, and I tire of muslims having to apologise for their very existence. Here is an excerpt from an article by David Aaronovitch:

"Murder maddens and some good people have accordingly gone mad. On one centre-left website, a Dutch writer expressed fury that a TV presenter had argued that the killing meant Dutch society had to do some "soul searching". "Dutch society has (to do) much soul searching?" the writer (taking the handle of "Voltaire") asked angrily, adding: "Theo wasn't killed by Dutch society but by a Muslim. But then Muslims rarely do much soul searching." See that? In a blink of a cursor? See how "a Muslim" so quickly became "Muslims"? There are a billion Muslims with a hundred thousand interpretations of the Koran, but they are all now transformed into the Muslim who killed Van Gogh. "

This does not excuse actions such as the death of Theo Van Gogh, yet I do not see why Muslim organizations are somehow expected to constantly apologise whenever a muslim does something wrong. On the contrary, this perpetuates the notion that there is something wrong with Islam, and that muslims somehow have a different view of basic morality e.g. concerning murder, from everyone else. As for fears of muslims imposing sharia law and undermine democracy within European countries, I'd love to hear explanations by those who are afraid as to how they are to achieve this miracle. If they expect that extremists will try to impose such changes by force, then I am highly sceptical of their chances of success. If there really was a concerted effort by segments of the muslim community to implement such changes, they would have to "infiltrate" European institutions from top to bottom, yet all I hear is whining of how muslims fail to integrate into European society ( As if Europe has nothing to learn from Islamic culture! the sheer arrogance of it, but I guess that's the notion of progress for you).