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News & Comment
Islam is Changing Europe
News
“ISLAM IS CHANGING EUROPE” was the headline of a blog on one of the largest liberal Danish newspapers under the sub-section “cultural battles”. The author commented on the PEW Research Report, stating that the Muslim population in Europe will double before 2050, and concluded that it will “significantly transform” Europe.
Comment
The author, a left leaning Islamophobic liberal whose name is not worth mentioning, is expressing an increasing concern among liberal Europeans. One should think the characteristics: left, liberal and Islamophobic did not go hand in hand, but in Europe they most certainly do. The antipathy towards Islam is shared across political observations, and left is only the means.
Besides mentioning the old tune about high representation of immigrants is crime statistics and how he cannot stand the look of a woman wearing a scarf or a man with beard, he touches upon something relevant.
He describes humans as being soft and fragile and in need of culture and systems to avoid them from destruction. He then goes on to claim that Islam and conflict are intertwined and tries to prove his point by mentioning how the Muslim world is filled with conflicts, even though admitting the West plays a certain role with failed military interventions (the lefties twist, so they seem more nuanced, than the right, when attacking Islam and Muslims).
This is the classical low attempt of smudging the correlation between cause and effect, and thereby blame Islam for all evils on earth. The fact is that instability, corruption and physical conflicts in the Muslim world, is primarily caused by Western intervention and hegemony for decades.
The problems with immigrants in the West do not stem from Islam either, but are on the contrary a result of socio-economic problems combined with western mindsets of material success imprinted in the minds of Muslims.
What they see as a sign of destruction, is indeed a sign of something new and better. If we, as Muslims, start taking our role as ambassadors of Islam seriously. If we start seeing ourselves as having a higher more noble cause than just bread feeding our families and building houses in our homelands, we will be able to change the world.
So yes, Islam is changing Europe and the entire world, but for the better with stability, mercy and justice for all.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Junes Kock