Interestingly, there are efforts in media and the blogosphere (an example here) to portray some debauched, drunken molesters in Cologne, Germany as “Muslims” and represent their behavior as if it’s something condoned in Islam. I believe their behavior was not typical of Islam but typical of the West, or of people desperately trying to “integrate” into its society.

Once again, although I’m not a Muslim, I can see what they must be thinking about these new accusations against their people.

It is obvious that the Cologne attackers were not Muslims, or at least did not consider themselves Muslim. Their behaviour was of (if we accept they were refugees) desperately straining themselves to “integrate” and become “European”. By all accounts, the offenders in question were drunk and were celebrating the Western New Year celebration, which is not even celebrated by Muslims. The Islamic New Year is at a different date than the one on our Western calendars. Islam prohibits intoxication with alcohol, provides moral guidance for people to not do what they did in Cologne. If only those men in Cologne were serious Muslims, they would not have been there in the first place.

Refugees understandably want to behave the way they did in Cologne. And from their perspective, Westerners support their behaviour. Remember, it is the West that constantly and proudly advertises itself to the world as a place of absolute freedom, debauchery and intoxication, and rejects morality and Islam while asking others to “integrate” into its society. The way many outsiders read this, given the differences in their more ordered culture, is that any behavior by them is going to be tolerated. Yet still it is reported that in Cologne, foreigners failed to “integrate” – despite their vast leap of already buying into the West’s renowned mass intoxication and permissiveness.

And remember, Muslims have a reputation not for being intoxicated and looking for debauchery, but the opposite. That is exactly the cause of so many Westerners’ contempt for them, with those Westerners believing the Muslims are a threat to their drinking, drugs, and other vices and affections. It is strange to now see Westerners cry out that Muslims are the immoral ones, and revive the canards about rape by foreign races and “invaders” that were so popular to the Nazis.

Even the racist or neo-Nazi analysis of Cologne can’t be as dumb as the Islamophobic one. Cologne is a stronger case for Islam in Europe than against it. The only reason anyone is arguing that Islam is the problem is just for political gain, and for more suppression of people’s freedom of conscience by the state. Bashing Islam won’t improve the state of morality in Europe. It will only degrade life for many and make it even more unbearable, and events like Cologne will become even more commonplace. The Cologne attackers were not Muslims, they were pure-bred Westerners in their ideology, the kind the West likes to call its own.