Nothing Unusual
The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) has an article today discussing the European Muslim community, focusing mainly around the famous slums outside of Paris and the worldview therein. The key graf:.
A turning point was 1989. The Berlin Wall fell, ending the Cold War -- an event that many Muslims saw as due in part to the actions of Islamic holy warriors, the mujahedeen, who through the 1980s had fought the Soviet Union to a standstill in Afghanistan. That was also the year Iran's paramount leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious opinion, or fatwa, calling for the death of the British writer Salman Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" in part criticized and satirized Islam. Fatwas are traditionally only valid in the Islamic world, so Khomeini's fatwa implied something profound: Europe was part of the Islamic world. It was a revolutionary change that now is accepted by many Islamic theologians and thinkers.
Which has led to the head of the largest Muslim organization in France preaching the following:
After telling about how he was saved, he moved on to a broader point: the need to enforce orthodox Islam on all French citizens of the Muslim faith. After half an hour, he took a few questions and then mingled with the crowd. Over tea and sweets, Mr. Amriou did some damage control for the UOIF. A UOIF preacher had been publicly accused of anti-Semitism and some of the members were worried and wondered what to think. "He said nothing unusual," Mr. Amriou said with a shrug. He clicked on his cellphone, bringing up a picture of a Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli troops. He showed it to the men and they nodded in agreement, anger crossing their faces. The preacher's questionable remarks were forgotten.
