"We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame"

another great article sent to me by email

Shabbat Shalom

J.

AWAITING THE NEW FALL OF ROME


By Avi Davis




In his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the historian
Edward Gibbon describes how a vacillating Roman Senate, with the army of
the Barbarian Goths at its city gate, debated fretfully about the Roman
Empire's future.
Apparently unknown to them, a civil rebellion, led by slaves and
domestics, had erupted within the city walls, leading to anarchy. Days
after the appearance of the enemy, the gates were opened from within
and the Barbarians poured
in to pillage Rome. Within a week, 1100 years of empire
building had come to a close.



Sixteen hundred years after that epochal event, it should surprise no
one that new barbarians threaten the safety and
security of the continent Rome once controlled When the
body of Ilan Halimi turned up last week on a railway track outside of
Paris the group responsible was identified as the Barbarians. Yet these
were not Goths, Huns or Vandals of ancient times, but Muslim criminals
whose intent was clearly to commit a racial murder. The torture to
which Halimi was subjected and the methods with which he was eventually
dispatched should remind everyone in Europe of the original
provenance of the term "barbarian" - that of men intent
on destruction of centers of Western culture and civilization.



The actions and justifications of the present day Barbarians, are of
course, more than a match for their
ancient predecessors. The brutal slaying of Halimi , a
young French Jew of no particular importance, has opened the eyes of
the European public to the dangers of the Muslim jihadist culture as no
other act of terrorism or criminality has done until now.Tens of
thousands protested the murder - recognized universally as an attack -
not on
just a Jew, but on France itself. Not even the brutal
slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh or the murder of the gay Dutch
politician Pik Fortuyn has quite provided
the same political impact. That is because in the wake
of the recent French riots and the worldwide disturbances caused by
the publication of the Danish cartoons, European politicians now
recognize that radical Islamic sentiment is no longer confined to a few
scattered sects, focused on anti-Semitic provocations, who can be tamed
through dialogue
and discussion. It rather represents an ideological
pandemic spreading voraciously in European cities, which vouchsafes the
notion that the murder of Jews, gays, conservatives, journalists,
editors - and in fact anyone who is perceived as a barrier to Islam's
advance, entitles those with requisite religious belief to issue and
execute death warrants. And further, that flimsy , ignorant responses
and the cognitive dissonance of denial only fans these flames higher.



A word should certainly be offered to those secular humanists who
still believe that amelioration of the economic plight of Islamic urban
centers will substantially change the attitudes of the jihadists in
their midst.
This view not only ignores the historical pattern of the jihadist
culture and motivation; it is a sop to the Islamists - clerics and
leaders - who see such soft-pedaling as a weakness to be exploited. One
must wonder at the blindness of European politicians who still believe
that the fire bombings of synagogues, the murder and harassment of Jews
or the torching of Jewish businesses are merely isolated examples of
urban unrest, economic disenfranchisement or even latewnt
anti-Semitism. They are, in fact blows, aimed against Western
civilization. Imams and Islamic clerics throughout Europe have
prophesied for years about the West's imminent collapse. They do this
while employing the liberal values of tolerance, openness and dialogue
to protect their mosques while propagating hatred, racism and
incitement to murder beneath the shield of freedom of speech.


Most Western countries have not , as yet, recognized the
profundity of the threat. But for some there is a growing
measure of clarity. Last week Peter Costello, the
Australian treasurer, made public his government's opinion that those
who do not subscribe to Australian values or deny the supremacy of
Australian law over Islamic law should be denied both citizenship and
the right to enter Australia.
Costello went further, in an interview on television, in declaring that
even Australian citizens who fail to pass this basic litmus test should
be subject to deportation.
The Australian government, particularly its feisty prime minister John
Howard, have been well ahead of the rest of the world in legislating
firm controls against incitement
and racism emanating from their country's mosques. But
few Western leaders have been as forthright as Costello in recommending
deportation as a measure against a country's citizens for denying the
basic values upon which their own societies are founded.



Meanwhile, time is running short for Europe. Without
recognizing that an unbalanced emphasis on pluralism at the expense of
security, will gradually erode the moral superstructure of liberal
democracy, there will be thousands more Ilan Halimis - Jew and non-Jew
alike - tortured in third floor apartments and dying on the streets of
restive Islamic communities.



For that reason, no one should be deceived. Barbarism has
returned to Europe. But this time the barbarians are not
just outside the city, battering at the walls. They are inside it,
with sufficient political clout and public sympathy to open the gates
from within.



Avi Davis is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.

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The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
– Abraham Lincoln