Fjordman: Reparations From Muslims?

Fjordman’s latest essay is posted at Atlas Shrugs. Below are some excerpts:

In early September 2008, demands were made that France must make reparations for its colonial past in Algeria. The calls followed the signing between Italy and Libya of a 5 billion dollar investment agreement to resolve colonial-era disputes. The 25-year deal includes the construction of a highway running between Egypt and Tunisia and the return to Libya of a prized ancient marble statue taken to Rome in colonial times. The settlement was a “complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial period,” said Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. “Italy committed historic errors in Libya, and the Italian government’s move to apologise is positive,” secretary of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) party, Al-Said Abu Haja, told Algerian daily El-Khabar. The FLN led the war of independence from France between 1954 and 1962. “We hope that the European Union will be able to put pressure on other former colonial powers such as France and get it to make amends for what it did in Algeria,” Haja added. “Algeria asked for France to apologise long before Libya [asked Italy]. The French occupied us for 130 years.”

I’m not an expert on French colonial history, but if I recall correctly, the French were at least partly motivated for establishing themselves in Algeria due to the Barbary pirates, who continued their evil activities well into the nineteenth century. The period of French colonial rule is the only period of civilization Algeria has experienced since the Romans. Muslims have been raiding Europe, especially the southern regions but sometimes even north of the Alps, continuously since the seventh century. In fact, the only period during more than 1300 years they haven’t done this was during the time of European colonialism. That’s what they are whining about now. This is compensation for lost jizya. Moreover, there are now more North Africans in France than there ever were Frenchmen in North Africa. If non-Europeans can resist colonization and expel intruders, why can’t Europeans do the same thing?

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I’m not even going to mention the Spanish and the Portuguese, who were under colonial rule much longer than were the Algerians. As Ibn Warraq says in his book Defending the West:

“Where the French presence lasted fewer than four years before they were ignominiously expelled by the British and Turks, the Ottomans had been the masters of Egypt since 1517, a total of 280 years. Even if we count the later British and French protectorates, Egypt was under Western control for sixty-seven years, Syria for twenty-one years, and Iraq for only fifteen — and, of course, Saudi Arabia was never under Western control. Contrast this with southern Spain, which was under the Muslim yoke for 781 years, Greece for 381 years, and the splendid new Christian capital that eclipsed Rome — Byzantium — which is still in Muslim hands. But no Spanish or Greek politics of victimhood apparently exist.”

Read the rest at Pamela’s place.