""We should not be arrogant but only helpful. After all, Christianity waged terrible conflicts for a few centuries until the process of Enlightenment took root, and part of Christianity shows signs of falling back in that direction.""

hey cretin bureacrat, nobody helped us for the christian englightment, why we should help the master race?

Posted by: StillFedUp at January 11, 2007 2:04 PM

He has no idea. Nor do the others. How do they propose to change the Qur'an, the immutable Word of God? How do they think the Hadith can be changed, so that the "authentic" Hadith become inauthentic, and vice-versa? What new Bukhari or Muslim, his hour come round at last, will slouch (I always did have trouble with that verb as Yeats uses it -- don't you?)into, not toward Bethlehem, but toward Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, London (take your pick, followers and adorers of Tariq Ramadan) to be born?

And just how are Europeans going to change the LIfe of Muhammad, so that it is full of sweetness and light, and not full of aggression, violence, and endless attacks on innocent non-Muslims, whose only crime was to refuse to become Muslims?

Posted by: Hugh at January 11, 2007 2:11 PM

Schaeuble intoned:
"We should not be arrogant but only helpful. After all, Christianity waged terrible conflicts for a few centuries until the process of Enlightenment took root, and part of Christianity shows signs of falling back in that direction."

Wie bitte?
Was it Christianity or Christendom that waged terrible conflicts?

Posted by: freedomschool at January 11, 2007 2:18 PM

To the German Interior Minister...

You can't force people to see the world differently anymore than you can make someone love you. It doesn't work that way. The only good advice is that which is asked for.

People will seee the good in Enlightenment ideals and the justice of free women themselves. No amount of talking & literature will convince Islamists if they don't reach the conclusions themselves.

People will have to be forced to reconsider on their own. That means they will have to see the pillars of Islam crumble around their feet. They will have to see that Allah can do nothing about it. Then many will reconsider, but some never will.

The pillars must be shaken to the ground.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at January 11, 2007 2:19 PM

I could scream at these people. Why can't they get it into their thick heads that Muslims will never change. Nothing will ever change the Muslim mindset. Islam is on the rise against the West and it will take years and lots of heartache and death before a settlement is reached.

Posted by: Alan(UK) at January 11, 2007 2:20 PM

I was stationed in Germany while in the AF.

I met a memeber of the German parlement. I asked him why the germans followed Hitler so obediently. He told me that many of the Germans are like sheep. They will follow the leader and never ask why.

I saw this in the orderliness of the people.

I would expect that the Germans will be Islamic before the French. The French will back off and let the Islamics have sections of France. The Germans will probably join the Islamic leadership.

Posted by: credit man at January 11, 2007 2:29 PM

"He said Germany and the European Commission would encourage initiatives to train Islamic preachers so they helped integrate Muslims into European society rather than promote separateness."

....Did he ask just what, if anything, is being done to integrate non Muslims into Muslim societies rather that promote ethnic cleansing???.....I thought not.....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at January 11, 2007 3:35 PM

Simplistic though it is, this is good sentiment from the German Interior Minister. Anything that presents without prevarication the need for the Islamic world to wake up to Enlightenment thought is good.

And to Hugh:

Nothing will change the canonical texts of Islam. However a huge part of the Islamic world is itself deluded as to the real nature of Islam, or they are able to deny it to themselves, as well as its consequences to their societies. If Muslims compare, side by side, the values of the Enlightenment to those of Islam, a critical mass of them will choose the Enlightenment. In the west, this portion will be greater than in the Islamic world, at least at first.

The difference between Islam and that of every other religion is that Islam cannot coexist Enlightenment thought. If you want to free people from Islam, there needs to be a road map out. As for it being Europe's responsibility to provide Enlightenment thought to the Muslim communities in their midst, not to mention the Islamic world, I believe it is, not to save Muslims but to save itself. Since the battle is already joined (or should I say rejoined after a ~150 year hiatus) Islam has to be challenged on its weakest turf, and that is the plane of ideas. To fail to take this fight to the enemy is, to paraphrase Talleyrand, not a crime but a mistake.

Posted by: Quijybo at January 11, 2007 3:58 PM

he would use Germany's six-month presidency

That's lucky! Some time ago it was a whole year.

Posted by: Kybeline at January 11, 2007 4:02 PM

"Germany's interior minister said on Thursday that parts of the Islamic world had yet to embrace the values of the Enlightenment"

I guess this is the PC way to say that islam is backward.

Posted by: DrWolffenstein at January 11, 2007 4:12 PM

In this case ignorance is not bliss it is death. See let me educate the German Interior Minister. Muslims believe that Mohammed was the perfect man that his life should be immulated, that the divine teachings of the Koran are perfect for all times. If you believe otherwise you are an apostate, and should be executed. So there is no changing Islam or moderate Muslims there is one Radical Islam for all for all time. You would be better off simply making the faith illegal, burn all copies of the Koran you can find, convert all mosques into something else, then deport any and all caught reading or practicing Islam. No one more detail you can have state literature about Islam, but only describing in reality what a threat it is to western culture and society.

Posted by: ethoman at January 11, 2007 5:06 PM

Quijybo:

I think you have made some very good points.

The German minister in question may have made his utterances in all their apparent naive sincerity. Alternatively, he may have been very aware of how hopeless this approach will have in reaching the desired goals. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is that the question is put, loud and publicly: Why don't Moslems accept the basics of human rights and freedom? All too many in the West still feel that it's only a matter of bringing the light to the poor, benighted Moslem immigrants. So let them try it and see. If it moderates the European Moslems, and then ripples outwards from Europe like a tidal wave of good will and tolerance long overdue, well I think there'll be a lot of surprised people. More likely it won't. The question is then as you point out: what will teh Europeans do?

There's not much time. And what time there is can easily be consumed by pointless feel-good exercises, in which one party deals in good faith and the other lies through their teeth. The python will calmly pay attention to everything one has to say, even as he tightens his coils and prepares to open his jaws. Do the Europeans need to go through this exercise to realize that they're in danger of being swallowed qwhole?

Posted by: Chatillon at January 11, 2007 7:35 PM

Schamme dich, Herr Schaueble. Even before the enlightenment, your country's own Johannes Althusius of Emden worked out a theory of federalism; while Calvinist and Jesuit thinkers all over western Europe were cobbling various versions off the rule of law ideal--and the Calvinists even had a place for the consent of the governed.

As for the enlightenment, prior to their falling out over purely personal matters, Voltaire greatly admired that "enlightened despot", The Great Fritz of Prussia (whom better historians than I credit with the rise of German militarism). Perhaps this is why European chanceries all have a soft spot for the recently hanged Sadam Hussein?

Does the good minister really think that the Ummah will tolerate for a minute someone trying to police its conscience from the outside? Does he honestly believe that the Ummah thinks it has anything to learn from an "enlightened" West that has "enlightened" its own way to cultural suicide?

Indeed, the arrogance and condescension of these Eurocrats are stupefying, overpowering, and awe-inspiring--to say nothing of utterly repellent! And they dare to say that the Bush administration was arrogant!

Posted by: Kepha at January 11, 2007 8:57 PM

A pity americaningermany seemingly is no longer around to comment on this absurdity from a German.

As for myself, I don't see Islam having any possibility of enlightenment, with or without the West's help. If the West "helped" it would be deemed interference by infidels and that would be the end of it. I don't see any Muslims of stature stepping up and leading an enlightenment either-probably because even many such people deep down know that the dark abyss of Islam is beyond any hope of any kind of enlightenment.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at January 11, 2007 11:10 PM

To muslims, the Enlightenment is synonomous with sin and corruption and is certainly unislamic. Allah did not decree the Englightenment and it contradicts muhammad's putative "revelations." Gee, it seems that after thirty years of continuous muslim immigration to Europe, a few of the brilliant, cosmopolitian Eurocrat intellectuals and professional bureaucrats would have taken the time to study the religion that dictates the lives of muslim citizens.

The leaders of the West are hell-bent and determined that they can convince muslims (and non-muslims) that islam is an innocuous, peaceful religion. They want to believe this lie so desperately that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the truth when it's staring them in the face. I wonder how much longer they intend to delude themselves, to live in a precarious state of denial. If nothing else, they could stop additional muslim immigration, yet they don't. The Europeans have no excuse; they have had ample time and experience with muslims and islam to realize that they are incompatible with Western culture.

Perhaps Bat Y'eor is right; they made a pact with the devil and they intend to honor it, anxiously awaiting doomsday when the muslim hordes begin burning the churches, cathedrals, landmarks, museums, theatres, and historical icons. The Enlightenment will become a fond memory after the barbarians seize power and Europe becomes an islamic utopia reminiscent of the Dark Ages. Will the Eurocrats who allowed and encouraged this tragedy hang around when the muslims impose islamic law, or will they seek asylum elsewhere while the masses are slaughtered or forcibly converted? Will the indigenous Europeans fight back or surrender?

Posted by: Susanp at January 12, 2007 12:35 AM

"the European Union should help integrate Muslims by promoting the training of imams."

This condescending attitude toward Third World peoples is straight out of the PC Multiculturalist playbook: Muslims are children, you see, and they need the helping hand of we superior Westerners who, by the way, can never acknowledge our superiority in any intelligent terms. It can't be up to the Muslims to educate themselves, to grow up themselves, to join the 21st century themselves. No, the World's Adults must coddle to their educational deficiencies; Muslims are "Progressively Challenged". And why are Muslims that way, and why can't they help themselves? Could it have something to do with their culture, some bad, inferior features of their culture? Heavens, no: cultures can't be bad or inferior -- particularly not non-Western cultures. It's just their nature, as though they were animals in our perpetual care, which, when they get restive and start devouring the hand that feeds them and eating our young, reflects poorly on us, and only on us, somehow.

Posted by: remote_control at January 12, 2007 1:26 AM

Nothing new from Germany. Few days before Angela Merkel just said that will of majority on Kosovo must be respected. Not a single word or hint how muslims became majority. In time, Germans will learn the lesson with the rest of Europe when they get their Kosovo or Palestine on the. Then, there will be a plenty of time to think about enlightenment.

Posted by: svemirko at January 12, 2007 3:20 AM

How would this be done? How are mere Infidels going to tamper or change the texts of Islam? The only way to help Muslims accept the Enlightenment is by causing some of them to question, and question to the point of abandoning, Islam.

Germany was the country which first recognized, with unseemly haste, somoe of the states that first left Yugoslavia, without any consideration of what this might mean for Muslims and non-Muslims in the Balkans. It was a country whose press took the side of the Muslims against the Serbs, though one might have thought that, given the history of German and Nazi involvement in that area --at Kozara, for example, where Austrian Kurt Waldheim was decorated for his war crimes -- that the Germans would have taken care to find out a bit more about Izetbegovic, and his plans, that so terrified so many intelligent Serbs, and led to their disastrous support for someone like Milosevich. But there was none of that.

Similarly, one would have thought that Angela Merkel would have had the decency to hold her tongue about some idiotic "two-state solution," demonstrating a diffidence about putting pressure on Israel that should be demonstrated, by German governments, not for a decade or two but for all time -- and indeed, it should be one of the central missions of the Germans to work to ensure the permanent security of Israel, and an Israel not further reduced, but at a minimum possessing what is currently controlled by Israel today -- including the Judean heights and the aquifers of the West Bank, and of course control of the invasion route from the East. That is the least that can be done, and that Germany should require of itself.

As for the abandonment of Serbia, by Germany, and the blithe notion that "the majority" should decide when that "majority" is Muslim, and became a majority only by murdering and terrifying the Serbs into leaving -- what nonsense. There is a civilizational war. Serbia is on our side. Muslims are on the other side.

Those Muslims who are not real Muslims, but Muslims-for-identification-purposes Muslims, live happily in Serbia. Where does the director Emir Kusturica live? And why do you think that is?

Posted by: Hugh at January 12, 2007 6:06 AM

Full point Mr. Hugh. And just one more thing about director Emir Kusturica. In 2005 he dump islam and take baptism in Serbian Orthodox Church giving most vivid exemple what realy muslims should do if they wanna to became enlightenmented . He accept new name Nemanja (Nemanya) which btw was the name of the first Serbian ruler responsable for baptism of the Serbs. Even the day he choose and the place gives special more significance. Latter, provoked by some malitious comments he said:"My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were Orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks." The last sentence explains a lot of things

Posted by: svemirko at January 12, 2007 6:35 AM

Can someone let me know the words to sound enlightened about a 54 year old man who got his sexual kicks with a 9 year old girl and whos idea of an afternoon's entertainment was watching hundreds of men and boys beheaded after the siege of Medina.

I'm struggling with "homicidal paedophile" at the moment.

Posted by: Celsius at January 12, 2007 9:03 AM

We need to start seeing female and gay imams. A religion whose founder has encouraged sex with children could surely not have a problem with that?

Posted by: DaveMate at January 12, 2007 12:45 PM

Here in Germany it's just as bad as in Britain.
The Idiot Government passing new 'Anti-Discrimination Laws' to make sure the poeple will be defenseless against Muslim-Immigrants who live on welfare, rape women and stab anyone who dares to look into their eyes.
And then of course, there is the 'Nazi-Mace' which will be slammed down on your head if you try to resist those thugs. Ironicly, the Muslims are much closer to the Nazis than anyone else, a large majority of them being anti-semetic.
Schäuble is an igorant and corrupt idot anyway, and I think he really believes what he says.

Greetings from Germany (or Turkistan?)

Posted by: QRT at January 12, 2007 5:23 PM

"...the European Union should help integrate Muslims by promoting the training of imams."

Do these morons EVER pause to think about what they are going to say before they open their mouths and start speaking?

Posted by: enemyofislam at January 12, 2007 11:27 PM

did nazis embrace the enlightenment

Posted by: god at January 13, 2007 2:40 PM