A poll published last week (Feb. 19) in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, reveals that four out of every ten British Muslims want Sharia law introduced in areas of the country which are pre-dominantly Muslim, while 41 percent oppose it.

Sharia law is used in large parts of the Middle East, most notably in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. The law is enforced by a religious police. Special courts can hand out harsh punishments; for sexual offences punishments include stoning, for theft amputation, and for apostasy death. The law also contains detailed rules for practically every aspect of life and is made up of elements from the Koran and the Hadith besides rulings by Muslim judges from the first centuries of Islam.

Yesterday evening (and late into the night) freedom loving Europeans gathered in Brussels for the annual “Capitalist Ball” of the Centre for the New Europe (CNE). I founded CNE in 1993. The name was an idea of my wife’s. Lord Harris, who was helpful in finding sponsors, suggested Centre of the New Europe, which could be abbreviated to CoNE, a concept which he liked because it referred to seed. Hence it was slightly reminiscent of the name of the Flemish conservative magazine Nucleus (also suggested by my wife), which I founded in 1990. However, we did not want it to be the Centre of, but the Centre for the New Europe.

The American journalist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) once said: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” So, here we are, defending Ken Livingstone, the extreme-left London Mayor.

Here is a fascinating insight into the workings and the growth of the Corpus Juris. It appears that the European Parliament is working furiously to justify a decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – which permits the EU to define crimes and set penalties – and to approve the construction of an EU judiciary and police, for enforcing them.

According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet the Turkish government has not demanded an apology from the Danish government for the twelve Muhammad drawings which were published in a Danish paper last September.

One wonders whether the Turks still want to become EU members. Ankara is demanding an official apology from Copenhagen for the twelve Muhammad drawings published last September in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Unless the Danish government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distances itself from the cartoons (see them here, halfway down the page) and apologizes to Muslims worldwide, no bridge-building with the Islamic world is possible, said Namik Tan, the official spokesman of the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

This was Mr. Tan’s response to the European Unions’ request for Turkey to mediate in the cartoon crisis. He stressed that he regards the drawings to be as repulsive as “if these cartoons had had an anti-semitic content. If Denmark persists in insisting that this is about freedom of speech, it will be very difficult to proceed.”

We have created a folkway according to which whoever manages to shout first that he feels offended has won half the points in the game. Being able to prove anything by the criteria of reasonable men is only good for a fraction of the total score.

As I am an avid reader of my newspapers’ “letters to the editor” I notice that the response to the cartoon controversy here in Europe is changing. Initially, when there was more “puff” than “fire” from the “dragon,” the letters and the editorials asserted “We are all Danes now.” Then the protests turned violent. With that the pitch changed. The original “courage of citizenship” took on a new color, as befits a good chameleon. There is now less to be heard about the freedom of the press than about good taste. Under pressure the view of the rubbery-backbone crowd changed.

The Italian judiciary is investigating whether Roberto Calderoli, who resigned from his post as government minister last week, is guilty of “contempt of religion.” Mr Calderoli wore a T-shirt with a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. If he is found guilty the former minister can be fined a penalty of €1,000 to €5,000.

Europe’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture – a process that started with the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not anti-religious) – a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle.

Last Saturday Tim Blair wrote that so far thirteen papers have been closed down after they published the Danish cartoons. At least twelve journalists face charges and seven are in prison. “Most media organisations have taken a stand by boldly running away,” says Blair. “Journalists can spend entire careers mouthing off about their commitment to free speech without ever having the chance to properly demonstrate it. I once had a theory that the lack of repression in modern democracies drove journalists to invent McCarthyesque threats, so much did they crave an opportunity to stare down those who would silence them. Their ideal imagined foes (I’m guessing): brutish religious fundamentalists opposed to progressive notions on women’s rights, homosexuality, art, and education. Problem is, those imagined foes were always named Falwell or Robertson or Nile (or John Paul II). Faced with fundamentalist religious demands from people bearing less familiar titles, however, the media froze. Missed your chance, journalists!”