Tous les arts ont produit des merveilles: l’art de gouverner n’a produit que des monstres.
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
One type of misinformation that should be watched vigilantly is the way Islam is endlessly singled out as a violent religion. This is done by selective coverage of events and constant emphasis on any connection to Islam when talking about violence.
The Daily Mail Online headline of the recent so-called “Muslim girl-gang” attack in France
As I have written before, it takes a very selective memory of history and even recent events to see Islam as a violent religion. Not only is Christianity’s own history marred by the Crusades and the Inquisition, both of which were carried out in Christ’s name, but there are warlords alive today who committed unspeakable atrocities in the name of Christ and even Gautama Buddha.
We are told stories such as the recent one in France, where a girl in a bikini was assaulted by apparent Muslim women attackers offended by her choice of dress. However, we are not told of the comparable stories of the Muslim women threatened and attacked by racists in France or Britain even though we know such attacks are equally real.
Defenders of Muslims are often accused of being Muslims themselves or even extremists, just as anyone who stood up in defense of Jews in Germany in the 1920s or 30s was labelled a Jew and a communist. Just pointing out the facts is enough to offend some people, who believe their racist hostility towards a group of humanity is justified on the grounds that “Islam is not a race”. The people who make this foolish statement clearly know nothing about either anti-discrimination laws, or the history of tolerance and social theories behind those laws. They know nothing about why racism is wrong in the first place and are likely to justify segregation or even killing for the same reasons applied by racists in the Twentieth Century.
It takes little intelligence to realize that Jews are also not a race and nor are homosexuals, yet both groups are protected by anti-discrimination laws and activism and are often championed as the groups supposedly at risk from less tolerant Muslim migrants.
Have we made it acceptable that a whole social group can be opposed and stripped of rights on the grounds that it is not a race? Such a characterization would no less than justify the Nazi holocaust, which was done not in the name of destroying a race but purifying one (the Nazis at no point recognized Jews or their other victims as races and described only themselves as a race and a nation). If we were to try to purify Europe of Muslims and Islamic culture, we will have committed the holocaust yet again.
Islam is now an integral part of Europe, along with the Jewish people. One can either accept this and accept Muslims along with their sensibilities (including how they prefer women to dress and their sense of offense at the way many women dress) or one can leave Europe. They may be replaced by someone who came here with a more open heart and open mind, whatever their race or faith might be.
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