In case there is still anyone out there under the impression that Hamas is a peaceful organization whose sole interest is the establishment of a Palestinian state living peacefully aside Israel, apparently some of them haven’t forgotten Lepanto either:

A sermon last Friday by a prominent Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament openly declared that “the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital,” would soon be conquered by Islam.

The fiery sermon, delivered by Yunis al-Astal and aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, predicted that Rome would become “an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe.

…

“Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad,” he added.

Full story here.

One does wonder just what people that say things like this are thinking. I mean hey, even if it’s what you think, you don’t blather it out there for everyone to make news stories. The most dangerous person out there isn’t the one with all the guns, it’s the one that doesn’t care for his life or that of anyone else. Particularly when they’ve twisted their theology to a point where they believe they’ll be rewarded in heaven for their insanity. It saddens me to think it might take something of that scale to wake Europe from its collective doldrums.

Jeremy Lott has a very interesting interview with Philip Jenkins over at CWR. The topics range from the Islamicization of Europe to American Exceptionalism and more. Particularly interesting is his take on European demographics, which suggests that things really aren’t quite as bad in terms of an Islamic take-over as some people think they are. Mostly so because, he suggests, Muslims tend to act like most other groups – there are a core group of committed fundamentalists who are small in number but loud in volume and then there are the rest who are interested in integrating as much as possible.

Add to that the overall trend over time that the second and third generations tend to integrate into their host societies more than their predecessors and the picture he paints is not nearly as negative as that we’ve heard otherwise. I’m not saying that he’s right, but rather that he is bringing up a different set of facts. It’s now time for those who are more dour on the prospects to respond, I would think, integrating these facts or providing proof they either don’t apply or are mis-used. To be honest, I’m not a demographics expert so I have no particular leverage either way. As usual, I expect the end result to be somewhere in the middle but I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn out much worse.

H/T to The Roving Medievalist.

There are so many clichés I can throw out here. “Leave it to the French to surrender before the war starts.” “You’re only being paranoid if it isn’t true.” On and on. (And yes, if you take offense to the first one realize just how French the neighborhood I live in is and you’ll understand that it’s purely tongue-in-cheek. C’mon, lighten up.) If it weren’t so comical it would be downright threatening. From CWN:

Paris, Mar. 8, 2007 (CWNews.com) – The Green Party candidate in the French presidential race has declared flatly that religion has no place in public life.

“In today’s France, religious can only exist as a private matter,” Dominique Voynet said an interview with La Croix newspaper. He said that he could see rare exceptions to that rule, such as the inclusion of religious representatives on the National Ethics Committee.

The Green Party candidate opposes public funding for the construction of mosques. Instead he proposes that unused Catholic churches “which are after all the property of the entire nation and must not only serve Catholics” be given to other religious confessions.

No, wait. I’m not laughing either. Tell me how someone who thinks Catholic Churches should not be reserved for Catholic worship (and replace the word “Catholic” with any other denomination or indeed replace “Catholic Church” with “mosque” and invert the sentence) can rightfully be called a serious candidate. It was not long ago someone who publicly said such a thing would be rightfully and clearly identified as a bigot and sent along on his way. Now, instead, the person is a candidate for the presidency of a country who is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

Gerald points us to an interesting article from The Times of London:

Roman Catholicism is set to become the dominant religion in Britain for the first time since the Reformation because of massive migration from Catholic countries across the world. Catholic parishes will swell by hundreds of thousands over the next few years after managing years of decline, according to a new report, as both legal and illegal migrants enter the country.
…
The Catholic Church is the first port of call for thousands when they find themselves in difficulty, with up to 95 per cent from countries such as Poland being practising Catholics. … Most of the migrants settle in London, where some parishes are putting on Sunday Masses from 8am to 8pm to cope, the report, carried out by the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge, found.
…
[T]hey acknowledge that the immigration is changing the face of Catholicism across Britain. From being an Irish-English church in a mindset of managing steady decline, the Church has within the space of 12 months found itself having to countenance an unprecedented expansion and change in its ethnic make-up.

Figures for 2005 show that there are 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, under one fifth the 25 million baptised Anglicans and double the number of Muslims.

This puts a very interesting twist on the idea of Eurabia. Could it be, in fact, that migration of observant (and therein procreating) Catholics from Eastern Europe will form an offset to the migration and reproduction of Muslims from Africa and the Middle East? If you want to make like a weatherman (err, weatherperson) and make a projection from a minute amount of data, this seems like we’re entering a population war, and the only two sides playing along are practicing Catholics and Muslims, and the future and culture of Europe is at stake.

One European imam was quoted as saying that Muslims would conquer Europe “with the wombs of our women”. One does wonder if all those “breeders” the “enlightened” European intelligentsia complain about might not just be the salvation of the cultural patrimony they profess to love. Maybe it’s an overstatement, maybe it’s a foul concept to contemplate; I only ask because it does seem an interesting question – does population decide the Reformation (or Revolution as I’d see it), and does it offer us the start of another clash of civilizations, this time on the European continent, and, perhaps, at Lepanto? Just something to ruminate on…

From Brit Hume’s Grapevine at Fox News:

A partnership of Muslims and Christians is denouncing what it describes as efforts to “de-Christianize British society.” The Christian-Muslim forum says civic officials who remove references to Christianity from Christmas are actually becoming “recruiting agents for the extreme right.” It cites the removal of the word “Christmas” from one town’s winter festival — and the printing of Christmas stamps with no Christian theme.

The group says those things provoke antagonism toward Muslims and others by “foisting on them an anti-Christian agenda they do not hold.” The forum believes Christmas should be celebrated as the birth of Jesus and says the desire to secularize religious festivals is offensive to both the Christian and Muslim communities.

Who’d a thunk it? Maybe if enough groups like this speak up people will start to realize that only the atheists are getting their way with a naked public square and recognize that in fact that is as close to establishment of religion as you can get. As many problems as there are in the Muslim world (and not suggesting, of course, the Christian world does not have its own collection) I think it’s very important to show cases like this where the right thing is being done. Good for them.

Father Jonathan in his latest post included a series of links to articles he found that may be of interest. The one that caught me was a story regarding Europe’s just-beginning realization that their current “ignore the problem and it’s not a problem” stance on Islamic extremism may not cut it any more if they wish to survive. Thinking that it would be a nice way to start the day to know that our elder brothers realize that Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy still is not a way forward I hopped into the story. What caught me, however, was a quote from an entirely different direction:

“We live in Europe, where democracy was based on criticizing religion,” said Philippe Val, editor of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. “If we lose the right to criticize or attack religions in our free countries … we are doomed.”

As Shaggy would say, “zoiks!” I utterly cringe to think that it just may be possible a majority of Europeans consider the criticism of religion to be the basis of democracy. If that is, indeed, a prevailing opinion, even if an subconscious one, it certainly explains the secular humanist onslaught and the emptying of the pews that continent has seen.

Maybe it’s just an American thing, or maybe it’s just the teachers I had growing up, or perhaps even some latent understanding of the necessity of religion for the proper direction and upkeep of man and society but I’ve always felt, going back even so far as my fairly early childhood that the French Revolution and the militant secularization it wrought were a classic case of a small good coming of a great evil. Certainly the continent had need of moving beyond the divine right of kings and the inherent eventuality of corruption. But it always seemed obvious they had thrown the baby out with the bathwater (indeed, they had thrown the bath tub out as well one could say) by so drastically distancing the state from religion. Now, we’ve all heard of the wonders of the separation of Church and State, but the European (and more and more now the American) mode of separating religion in any shape, form or fashion from any act by any member of the state and its apparently intentional disrespect for religious faith and expression as a natural right of humanity would, one should think, be considered a step too far.

I’m all for defending the rights of people to practice the religion of their choice, including those who see fit to deride religion, but one does begin to wonder if saving this militantly secular society from the militantly fanatical members of a religion might come to be a case of a great evil coming of a small good. Perhaps that is worded too harshly. Certainly we cannot allow the Eurabia that many speak of to become a reality, at least not in the dhimmitude sense which normally underlies it. But, to play the ugly American, doesn’t it also seem about time for the Europeans to grow up and realize their experiment with secular humanism and institutionalized agnosticism (or is it, in fact, atheism?) is dangerously close to failure? I shudder to compare which would be worse – a radical Muslim dhimmitude where those who do not follow the rules of Mohamed are punished, or a radical secular humanist dhimmitude where those who do not follow the rules of “if we can we must” and “all truths are equal” are equally punished. I’m sure I’ll have offended many (if there are many who see this, that is) but it is a question which, frankly, I only wish to ask that it might be explored to greater depths, not necessarily an assertion of a strongly held truth.