Islam, Terrorism, Immigration.
Jul 09, 2007
Speech and Q&A by Bat Ye'or:
Q: You talked about multiculturalism in Europe and critics of multiculturalism of being accused of Islamophobia. How do you defend your own views if one was to say that your views are Islamophobic.
A: Well I will say that when I go for instance to India, I enjoy seeing the culture, the Indian culture in India. I think it is very good, very nice, very colorful. And I am very grateful to the Indians or to the Buddhists to have added their own culture to world cultures. In the same way, I am very happy to see European culture. I don’t think that European culture should disappear and I think that when Indians come and ask to live in Europe, they have to be grateful to the state that welcomes them and they have to respect the culture of this country. And I spoke about the Indians, the Indians are doing that without any problems, but the problems come from other populations — mainly Muslim populations but not all, who have in their historical traditions and their religious text also the tradition of fighting Jews and Christians. And also, to refuse to have contacts or to link with Jews and Christians as friends, so there it is a difficulty. This is in Koranic verses so there are two or three Koranic verses that say: don’t become friends to Jews and Christians — make friends with your own (5:56-65).
More:
So we have to know that there are these aspects in the Muslim religious texts which don’t exist in Hindu or Buddhist or other religions. So there is a difficulty there for integration. On the other hand also, we have to know (sorry for being a little long), that Islamic civilization was created by Jihad; that means by the conquest of Christian lands, in Asia it was Buddhist and Hindu lands - but the Christian lands that Muslims took over were from Hungary to Nubia, from Portugal to Iraq. And all over this enormous territory, over three continents, there were Christian populations living there with Jews. So when those lands were conquered by Jihadist armies, the Muslim theologians and jurists established special regulations concerning Jews and Christians. Those regulations were oppressive; they recognized them the right to live as non-Muslims but on the condition that they would be humiliated and totally inferior to Muslims. So there is this tradition in the Islamic history and we have to take this into account and we must, in order to establish friendly relations with Muslims, discuss these problems. It is extremely important otherwise we will not be able to eliminate the problems between us.
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