The Nation takes stock. Good. If left and right can unite against the external threat, we will have all the time we want to discuss amongst ourselves tax rates, spending, and the scope of government regulation.
“This is the beginning of the war!” a French Muslim boy called out in the middle of the recent riots in Le Blanc Mesnil, just north of Paris.
But is it? Or was the war really going on already?
Few Americans have heard of him, but in Europe, more and more are becoming familiar with the name–and the ideas–of Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder of the now-international Arab European League (AEL) and the Muslim Democratic Party. Handsome, charismatic, well-educated and multilingual, he has the perfect makings of a political leader, or perhaps better said, a man poised to lead a revolution. And he knows it.
More to the point: As the fury of Muslim youth explodes across the landscape of Western Europe, it’s time that others know it, too.
The AEL, founded in Belgium in 2000–in other words, before September 2001–now has branches in the Netherlands and France, and intends to spread across the EU, with plans to participate in future European Parliamentary elections as the Muslim Democratic Party. With battle cries like “Whatever Means Necessary” and frequent condemnations of America, Jahjah–who called the 9/11 attacks “sweet revenge”– recruits Muslim youth to spread his ideology, a vague series of ideas that occasionally appear moderate but, when added together, call for violent resistance, the destruction of Israel and the introduction of Sharia (Islamic) law in Europe.
Most recently, Jahjah issued a public statement supporting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. “The foundation of Najad’s reasoning is intellectually defendable,” he writes in English (the statement in its entirety can be found here), “and despite the fact that his regime is no perfect example of political morality, I argue that his position on this matter is the only possible moral one.” (Ironically, the man slain filmmaker Theo van Gogh once called “a pimp for Allah” continues his rant with mention of a “mythical racial-religious holy promise by some god in some religious book”–by which, of course, he means the Old Testament. Despite such statements, Jahjah repeatedly insists he has “nothing against the Jews.”)
I’ve thought a lot about Jahjah in the past few days: Jahjah who never condemned the killing of van Gogh by a Dutch Muslim fundamentalist; Jahjah who finds the destruction of Israel “the only possible moral” option; Jahjah who has on several occasions incited riots on the streets of Antwerp and now defends the ongoing rioting of Muslim youth outside of Paris. I’ve thought of Jahjah as Muslim youths riot, too, in Arhus, Denmark, presumably in protest against the publication in a national newspaper of a cartoon drawing of Mohammed.
As they say, read it all.
Update: The link above disappeared. I have updated it.