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"We fear for Norway's future," Rehman and Storhaug wrote. "We fear
distance and antagonism between ethnic groups." In time, they pre–
dicted, "Norway may become a country that lives in segregation, vio–
lence and hate.... So far no political leaders in our country have chosen
to take this seriously."
Rehman and Storhaug concluded their article with the observation
that "a whole generation of minority youth is being betrayed by their
own as well as by well-meaning 'anti-racist' Norwegians." Change the
word "Norwegians" to "Britons"-or, for that matter, "Swedes" or
"Dutchmen" or anyone of a number of other national labels-and the
statement would have remained true. The simple fact is that many West–
ern Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner,
from the politician in parliament to the immigration official at the bor–
der, have long considered it their obligation to turn a blind eye to the
more disturbing aspects of the immigrant Muslim reality-in short, to
tolerate intolerance.
It's hard not to see such hands-off attitudes by Westerners as a prod–
uct of leftist groupthink-of the tendency, that is, to view people as
members of groups rather than as individuals, and consequently to
place the values of the group above the rights of the individual.
If
native
Europeans and fundamentalist Muslims are to coexist in the West, the
Muslims must temper their fundamentalism-period. The alternative is
for Europeans to sacrifice the freedom, tolerance, and respect for indi–
vidual mind and conscience on which Western civilization is founded.
That cannot be allowed to happen-not just for Europe's sake, but for
America's as well.
Situations vary, of course, from one Western European country to
another. In Spain, according to a December 4 article in the
New York
Times,
the "Islamic population has exploded" during the last ten years,
during which the Muslim community of
500,000
"has become a busy
logistical rear guard, apparently humming with Islamic terrorists."
In France, which has the West's largest Muslim population (five mil–
lion), there is a man named Soheib Bencheikh who serves as the grand
mufti of Marseille and whom the
International Herald Tribune
calls "the
clean-shaven face of progressive Islam in Europe." In a November
30
profile in that newspaper, speaking with an unequivocal clarity that one
might wish more Muslim leaders in the West had exhibited after Sep–
tember
I I,
Bencheikh assailed the rigidity and backwardness of Islamic
fundamentalism and insisted on the vital importance of reforming
Islam-a project that, he said, would involve "a desacralization of the
whole of Islam's texts, commentaries, and the theological work around
