In 711 Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. They took Spain by force and remained there until they were thrown out during the reconquista in 1492. Every year, in a tradition that goes back to the 16th century, Spanish villages still celebrate the liberation from the Moors (as the Muslims were locally called) during “Moros y Cristianos” festivals in which effigies of the prophet Muhammad – the so-called “la Mahoma” – are mocked, thrown out of windows, and burned.

Now the Spanish, having witnessed what happened to the Vikings recently, are wondering whether they can still continue their tradition of “offending Muslims.” The village of Bocairent near Valencia decided this year to discontinue the century old tradition of mocking and burning effigies of Muhammad. Bocairent does not want to risk becoming the target of suicide bombers.

Jozias van Aartsen, the leader of the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) which is the coalition partner of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s Christian-Democrat Party (CDA) in the Dutch government, is angry with Javier Solana. Mr van Aartsen demands that the Dutch Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs both reprimand Mr Solana. The latter, a Spanish Socialist who is the EU Foreign Policy Coordinator, recently signed a common statement with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The EU-UN-OIC statement said: “We understand the deep hurt and widespread indignation felt in the Muslim world. The freedom of the press, which entails responsibility and discretion, should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions.”

Last week Chresten Anderson wrote a piece on this website about the tiny island of Åland (actually a group of islands, as one of our readers pointed out) that is rebelling against the European moloch in Brussels. The Daily Telegraph sent its Brussels correspondent David Rennie to Mariehamn, Åland’s capital. He reports about the case in today’s paper. The rest of the European mainstream media have yet to awaken to one of the major news stories of the coming months.

Åland’s 26,000 citizens, who speak Swedish but live on a Baltic archipelago that is a self-governing region of Finland, have the right to veto any international treaty that Helsinki considers entering into. They intend to wreck the European Constitution because the EU wants to prevent them from consuming “snus” (chewing tobacco).

An article by Paul Belien with Filip van Laenen (Oslo)

Last Saturday’s riots in Antwerp, when Moroccan “youths” went on the rampage in Antwerp’s historical center, destroying cars and beating up reporters, has led to frustration among police officers because the authorities prevented them from stopping the violence. Officers complained in today’s papers that they had been given orders to watch passively while young, rowdy Muslims were allowed to take revenge over... drawings published more than four months ago in a Danish newspaper.

An episode from a show based on the “Candid Camera” of the late 50s has survived in my memory. In it a child was confronted with a wired cow that “could talk.” The dialogue involved the bovine revealing that it “wants to become President.” When he heard it, the child kept a straight face and sort of wished the cow success. Subsequently, the host asked the boy what he thought of the unusual cow. His comment “That stupid cow wants to become president!” The reason for remembering is that below the surface something significant is hidden. It struck me that there is a tendency to pretend publicly what seems to be prescribed, while privately the contrary is being articulated.

A review of Decadence – The passing of personal virtue and its replacement by political and psychological slogans.
A collection of essays edited and introduced by Digby Anderson
The Social Affairs Unit, 2005

It is hard to recommend Decadence enough. It stands well in the long tradition of The Social Affairs Unit of offering an alternative view to the received wisdom of the time. Decadence considers themes of universal concern, especially in secularised modern Europe. Virtues are habits or they are not virtues at all. This collection of essays contrasts the “old” virtues (perhaps it would have been better to say, “real” or “traditional”) with the “new” virtues of the modern world.

Multiculturalism is dead. It was always dead, in the sense that an untruth has no life, but the energies of a vigorous fraud are enough to deceive many for much time. The idea that differing value-systems could coexist within a superstructure, itself imposing equality upon them, was a tempting one: it affirmed a reassuring view of humanity, and more important, it relieved a West that did not believe in itself of the burden of self-assertion. Its lie was always obvious to those willing to think critically about it — what if the notionally subsidiary value-system struck against the value-system undergirding the arbitrating superstructure? — but now it is obvious to nearly all who have lived through the last five years of war and massacre, and seen its latest phase ignited by mere cartoons.

Dozens of Danish Muslims are joining the network of moderate Muslims, the Demokratiske Muslimer (Democratic Muslims). About 700 Muslims have already become DM members and 2,500 Danes have expressed their will to support the network. The initiative has caused anger among the Danish imams and their leader, Ahmad Abu Laban, who have referred to the moderates as “rats.” The imams feel that they are beginning to lose their control over part of the Muslim population.

A local newspaper in Jutland (ever heard of Jutland before?), a rural area of Denmark (one of Europe’s smallest nations, with a language spoken by barely 5 million people) published twelve drawings. Some were simple portraits of a man with Arab features, some poked fun at the newspaper itself, and barely a handful were caricatures of Muhammad, the prophet of the Muslims – hardly offensive by Western standards.

We [Americans] care about Europe for the same reason we care for the suicidal: because a chosen fate is not inherently a just one, and we are called to act when an unjust end threatens. We care about Europe because filial piety is still a virtue: we are, in the end, a European nation as surely as our peers in the Anglosphere and much of Latin America, and parts of Africa and south Asia. This is not a racial classification, and it is a testament to the encompassing wisdom of the European heritage that it is not. We care about Europe out of self-interest: it is a culture and a way of life that we are heir to — and when we see its internal flaws lead it inexorably (though not inevitably) to this slow death of self-negation, we ignore its lessons at our peril.