In recent years, an increasingly influential intellectual consensus on both sides of the Atlantic has presented Europe as a doomed and decadent continent that is being transformed into an Islamic colony called ‘Eurabia’. The term was originally coined by the British-Swiss historian Bat Ye’or to describe what she identified as a secret project between European politicians and the Arab world for the ‘Islamicisation’ of Europe. What began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy that has moved ever closer towards mainstream respectability, as conservative historians and newspaper columnists, right-wing Zionists and European neofascists find common cause in the threat to ‘Judeo-Christian’ civilisation from Muslim immigrants with supposedly incompatible cultural values.
Tunku Varadarajan , ‘Prophet of decline: an interview with Oriana Fallaci’ , Wall Street Journal (23 June 2005).
2.
Mark Steyn , ‘European population will be ”40 percent Muslim”’ by 2025’ , Wall Street Journal (4 January 2006).
3.
George Weigel , ‘Is Europe dying? Notes on a crisis of civilizational morale’ , European Outlook (March–April 2005).
4.
Tony Blankley , ‘An Islamist threat like the Nazis’ , Washington Times (12 September 2005).
5.
‘Eurabia: the nightmare has begun’ (10 October 2004), <http://uk.altermedia.info/general/eurabia-the-nightmare-has-begun_17.html>.
6.
‘The second fall of Rome’ (21 November 2005), <http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/11/second-fall-of-rome.html>.
7.
Mark Steyn , ‘Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war’, Daily Telegraph (8 November 2005), <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/08/do0802.xml>.
8.
Melanie Phillips , ‘Eurabia on the rampage’ (4 November 2005), <http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001474.html>.
9.
Interview with Pascal Mailhos in Le Monde (25 November 2005).
10.
See Dror Mishani and Aurélia Samothraiz , ‘What sort of Frenchman are they?’ , Haaretz (18 November 2005).
11.
Christopher Caldwell , ‘Islamic Europe’ , Weekly Standard (Vol. 10, no. 4, 4 October 2004).
12.
Niall Ferguson , ‘Eurabia?’, New York Times (4 April 2004).
13.
Niall Ferguson , ‘The end of Europe?’, American Enterprise Institute Bradley Lecture (1 March 2004).
14.
Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: the Euro-Arab axis ( Fairleigh, Dickinson University Press , 2005), p. 36-36.
15.
Ibid., p.138.
16.
See Paul Giniewski , ‘The return of Islam to Europe’ , Midstream (Vol. 40, no. 2, February/March 1994).
17.
Robert Spencer , ‘Spain capitulates to Eurabia’ , WorldNetDaily (17 March 2004).
18.
Cited in Robert Spencer , ‘Fallaci: warrior in the cause of human freedom’ , Front-page (30 November 2005).
19.
Abdal Hakim Murad , ‘Tradition or extradition? The threat to Muslim Americans’ in Aftab Ahmad Malik (ed.), The Empire and the Crescent: global implications for a new American century ( Bristol, Amal Press , 2003), p. 143-143.
20.
Anthony Browne , ‘The triumph of the East’ , Spectator (25 July 2004).
21.
Melanie Phillips , ‘How the West was lost’ , Spectator (11 May 2002).
22.
See Mayanthi Fernando , ‘The republic's “second religion”: recognizing Islam in France’ , Middle East Report (Vol. 35, no. 235, Summer 2005).
23.
See René Vautravers, ‘Muslims in the Netherlands: majority favours separation of religion’, Neue Zurcher Zeitung (27 July 2004). For a detailed and non-Eurabian analysis of Dutch-Muslim relations, see Deborah Scroggins, ‘The Dutch-Muslim culture war’, The Nation (27 June 2005).
24.
See John Upton , ‘In the streets of Londonistan’ , London Review of Books (Vol. 26, no. 2, 22 January 2004).
25.
Mailhos, op. cit.
26.
Tariq Ramadan , To Be A European Muslim ( Leicester, Islamic Foundation , 1999), p. 243-243.
27.
Cited in John Vinocur , ‘A progressive Muslim struggles to be heard’ , International Herald Tribune (30 November 2001).
28.
Cited in Hisham Aidi, ‘Let us be Moors: race and “connected histories” ’, Middle East Report (No. 229, Winter 2003). Aidi's article is a fascinating overview of the two-way cultural interactions that have taken place between Muslim and non-Muslims in Europe and the US since September 11, interactions that are either ignored or denied in the Eurabian presentation of cultural ‘pollution’.
29.
Bruce Bawer , ‘Tolerating intolerance: the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism in Western Europe’ , Partisan Review (Vol. 69, no. 3, Autumn 2002).
30.
See Craig Smith , ‘Europe's Jews seek solace on the Right’ , New York Times (20 February 2005).
31.
Cited in Adi Schwartz , ‘Between Haider and a hard place’ , Haaretz (28 August 2005).
32.
Niall Ferguson , ‘The origins of the Great War of 2007 – and how it could have been prevented’ , Daily Telegraph (15 January 2006).
33.
For a detailed examination of population statistics in the Middle East and the Maghreb, see Youssef Courbage, New Demographic Scenarios in the Mediterranean Region ( Paris, National Institute of Demographic Studies , 1999).
34.
Cited in John Trumpbour , ‘The Clash of Civilizations: Samuel P. Huntington, Bernard Lewis and the remaking of post-Cold War world order’ in Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells (eds), The New Crusades: constructing the Muslim enemy ( New York, Columbia University Press , 2003), p. 109-109.
35.
ibid., p. 110.
36.
Cited in Spencer , ‘Fallaci: warrior in the cause of human freedom’, op. cit.
37.
Oriana Fallaci , The Rage and the Pride ( New York, Rizzoli International Publications , 2003), pp. 131–132.
38.
ibid., p. 142.
39.
Tony Corn , ‘World War IV as fourth generation warfare’ , Hoover Institution Policy Review (January 2006).
40.
Daniel Pipes , ‘Europe under siege’ , New York Sun (18 October 2005).
41.
Michael P. Germano , ‘Islamic Europe? The rise of Eurabia’ , Perspectives (Vol. 6, no. 3, July–September 2003).
42.
Cited in ‘The New Crusade: fighting for God in a secular Europe’, Newsweek (1 November 2004).
43.
Melanie Phillips , ‘Why France is burning’ , Daily Mail (7 November 2005).
44.
Bawer , op. cit. Article 51 allows churches an ‘open, transparent and regular dialogue’ with the European Union.
45.
For an analysis of the impact of post-September 11 ‘national security’ measures on European Muslims, see Liz Fekete, ‘Anti-Muslim racism and the European security state’, Race & Class (Vol. 46, no. 1, 2004).
46.
Hugh Fitzgerald , ‘Why we need reconciliation with France’ (29 August 2005), <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/007893.php>.
