In recent news feeds I’ve been focusing on stories that relate to the Mediterranean Union: the ever-closer immigration, business, scientific, and military ties between the EU and North Africa (and the Middle East). The recent report about Morocco moving into “fast track” status for EU membership was an important EuroMed story.The article below, concerning Libyan investment in a major Italian bank, is also significant EuroMed news.
If events continue on their present course, Europe will become majority Muslim in the next half-century. The question that has always perplexed me concerns the mechanism for the transfer of power. How will the Ummah eventually take control in Europe? When and how will power be handed over from the existing ruling class to the continent’s new Muslim rulers from North Africa and the Middle East?
The current conflict isn’t a military one, so there will be no dramatic battlefield surrender. No mayor will kneel before the Sultan and hand over the keys to his city. Yet somehow political control will be transferred to the continent’s new rulers.
This article suggests a possible answer: a stealthy purchase of shares in large financial institutions by Muslim commercial firms. The process will gradually shift voting power to the new Islamic investors, and it could occur very quietly, as business at the banks goes on as usual.
Then, when the Muslim investors have a controlling interest in an institution, things will start to change. Assuming they are actual practicing Muslims, “sharia finance” will absorb a much larger share of the financial instruments issued by the bank, and become dominant. There will be more investment in Muslim “community projects”, bankrolling of mosques and educational institutions, etc. It will all be legal, above-board, part of normal business, and all non-Muslim business will gradually get pushed into the background.
I realize that this is not going to happen right away, but I think it is coming.
And now the article from ANSAmed:
Banks: Unicredit, Libyans Up to 4.23% in Friendly Move- - - - - - - - -
(ANSAmed) — MILAN, OCTOBER 17 — Libya’s institutional investors increased their quota in Unicredit to 4.23% of the Italian bank’s share capital, up from the previous 0.87%. It was a friendly and coordinated move of about one billion euro. They are now the second largest shareholder in Unicredit, behind Fondazione Cariverona which holds 5%. They purchased the share in the open market last night after a strongly negative day for the Milan bank, down 13%, as well as for the stock exchanges worldwide. Tripoli’s three investors — the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Foreign Bank — had reached an agreement to take part in the sudden 6.6-billion-euro share capital expansion which Unicredit announced a few days ago by underwriting convertible bonds for the amount of 500 million euro. The Libyans therefore are included, along with the Foundations, institutional investors and Mediobanca, in the core group of stockholders who worked jointly to tackle the bank’s troubles in the wake of the global market crisis. The Libyans, who were partners in the privatization of Banca di Roma in 1997 and moved on to Capitalia and later, following a merger, to Unicredit with a 0.87% quota, are therefore long-time shareholders with a long-term interest. Shortly after the announcement, Unicredit expressed “satisfaction” for the ‘meaningful investment witness to confidence in the long-term profitability of Unicredit and in the strategies of the group and its management’’. An early positive reaction, even if a limited one, came from the market with the Unicredit stocks gaining ground in night trading.
Hat tip: Insubria.
15 comments:
Jihad has a financial and economic component, an educational, propaganda and media component, a diplomatic and legal component, a demographic component and a terrorist component. Muslims are making rapid progress on all of these fronts. The only part of Jihad Western governments are even trying to fight is the terrorist components. They are at best indifferent regarding all the other elements of Jihad or actively aid them. I suspect Muslims think they are so successful at infiltrating and overpowering our societies more or less peacefully that some of them will want to wait with more terrorist attacks because they fear it could trigger resistance.
Muslims have been quite successful at intimidating and/or buying Western officials. It is difficult to assess how the escalating economic crisis will affect this. It could potentially make matters worse and put even more of our economy up for grabs. Or it could finally trigger real resentment among Westerners, an anger which has so far been held down because the economy had been fairly good.
Ordinary citizens don't want to make waves. They just want to live in peace. They will only wake up when the heads are rolling on a daily base or maybe not even then. They will keep on voting for their own demise. It's bollocks that it will take 50 years. Euraboa will be a reality within the next decade.
This theory of Bodissey's has two important flaws:
1) By focusing on the apparently non-violent stealth jihad of the present and foreseeable future, the theory seems to neglect that crucial moment of conquest where physical violence will be necessary. Indeed, the more successful that stealth jihad becomes over the following years or decades in infiltrating and insinuating Islam into the sociopolitico-economic fabric of the West, the more will Muslims be increasing the pressure on the West that will inevitably explode in actual military and para-military conflict. The reason for this is simple and perennial: There is an inseperable nexus between a society's economic and political institutions to its laws, and from there an inseperable nexus between laws and physical force. A stealthy invader who is trying to conquer a society by eventually supplanting that society's sociopolitical paradigm with an alient paradigm inimical to that society's sociopolitical paradigm can only forestall the inexorable military & para-military clash only so long. Conquest -- particularly the type of conquest Islam mandates and has tried to realize (often successfully) throughout its historical career -- cannot be finalized without physical conflicts. And Muslims will never be happy with a conquest that does not have "closure". The more sophisticated the society is that is being targeted for eventual conquest, the more this is true. Europe is vastly more sophisticated, obviously, than the Muslim invaders.
2) More glaringly, Bodissey's analysis seems to fail to notice that in fact terror attacks have had a perversely paradoxical effect on the West: the more we get attacked, the more we scramble around to appease the Muslims. The more we get attacked, the more we open our societies to Muslims. Since 911, and with each subsequent attack (including plots that have been stopped often by sheer luck), and with the escalating bellicosity of Muslim behavior and language around the world, the West has reinforced its politically correct multi-culturalist paradigm by which:
1) Islam is forever off-limits to condemnation and connection to terrorism,
2) the vast majority of Muslims are axiomatically presumed to be harmless and good people,
and
3) any substantive criticism of the assumptions of #1 and #2 are vilified as "bigoted" and "Islamophobic", if not also "racist" and "fascist".
Thus, far from being a separate strategy disconnected from terrorism, stealth jihad in fact seems to have been working hand in glove with terrorism (which itself is the precursor -- necessary in a situation of relative military weakness to mount actual major assaults -- to traditional Qital (killing through combat) which has been throughout the historical career of Islam the major expression of Jihad as Muslims have sought over the centuries to realize their supremacist expansionism begun by Mohammed.
In fact, Stealth Jihad is the "Good Cop", while Terror Jihad is the "Bad Cop". Both "cops" work together for their common goal, but their collusion depends to a great extent on the ignorance of the suspect they are intimidating -- and I have noticed time and time again anti-Islam analysts actually reinforcing that ignorance of the intrinsic concrete connection between Stealth Jihad and Terror.
Of course, the biggest aid to this collusion between the two "cops" has been our own Western stupidity of politically correct multi-culturalism -- which, unfortunately, is dominant and mainstream throughout the West. Let's not do them a favor of reinforcing their stupidity.
For further analysis:
"Stealth Jihad" and Violent Jihad
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/06/stealth-jihad-and-violent-jihad.html
The Problem of "Stealth Jihad" in a Nutshell
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/06/problem-of-stealth-jihad-in-nutshell.html
Fjordman: It is difficult to assess how the escalating economic crisis will affect this. It could potentially make matters worse and put even more of our economy up for grabs.
If, in fact, Wall Street's Den of Thieves have succeeded in rendering America vulnerable to Muslim financial invasion, there are few punishments inappropriate for betrayal on so large a scale.
Erich: stealth jihad in fact seems to have been working hand in glove with terrorism
Without wishing to detract from your well-written article, WELL DUH!
There is absolutely NO difference between slow jihad and fast jihad or stealth jihad and violent jihad, they are all just different spots on the same cat.
That said, I suspect that the Baron might have a few words to do with your own accusations.
Zenster --
What do you expect me to say? That Erich is entitled to his opinion, and that this is the forum in which to air it?
Did you ever read Ulysses (the Joyce version, that is)?
I'm operating from memory here, mind you, but as I recall it, in the book there was a whorehouse chandelier whose prismatic facets reflected everything in the entire universe.
That's what Erich wants every essay of mine to be. He wants me to cram all truth about Islam and jihad into every single post. If I don't insert everything that Erich knows to be true into each article, then somehow he thinks that means that I am denying the truth of it.
Go figure.
He can be his own whorehouse chandelier. It's not my job.
The heck with that.
Hey!
I had a good laugh over this exchange involving Erich, Zenster, and Bodissey. Especially over the Baron's comment.
But on the more serious side this relates to my current series at my blog (yes yes, I hope to write the 2nd part today). About the social aspects and social glue of the anti-Jihad movement.
Erich's approach is almost strictly "earlier Wittgenstein". That is, he assess the writings of someone else only by its propositional material. And then he has a writing style which I would call "intellectually confrontational". By doing so he misses (or ignores) the non-descriptive aspects of other people's writings -- such as here the very explicit linguistic markers of humility and uncertainty by the Baron.
This makes him somewhat socially blind, but even so he's part of this social network, and interact with its participants honestly and non-hostilely. A important fact which some anti-Jihadists fail to see.
While I do not think Erich's communication style is effective, it has to be seen for what it is. And he's intentions are all honest, constructive and genuine. I made the mistake myself of lumping him together with Lawrence Auster at an early stage. But there's a whole world between the two of them. E.g. vis-a-vis Robert Spencer, while Auster is hostile, Erich is "intellectually confrontational" (which unfortunately is bound to be interpreted as hostility in some cases).
I think Erich is an acquired taste, but I have learned to appreciate him. He's got his heart in the right place, and generally very sound opinions. He's clearly too much "early Wittgenstein" in his approach, but as with all people we have to take the good with the bad.
Oil is the weapon Muslim countries hold at the throat of Europe. Europe needs to ask, or demand, that the US produce more oil so Europe can break free of the Islamic tide threatening to extinguish it.
Fiction novelists who have written about a world with a subjugated West ruled by Muslims usually mention wholesale conversion by Western elites, especially entertainment elites to Islam, with their fans following in droves.
I think the best fantasy authors are on to something there. This answers the question on another thread about how Western elites think to maintain their status while selling their countries out to Muslims.
We are seeing a prototype for this lemming type behavior in the emotional following that Obama has induced and the wholesale desertion of even putative conservatives for this obvious marxist who may or may not be a Muslim technically but who definitely is sympathetic to what he considers a "beautiful" religion.
If Princess Di had recovered from her injuries and gone on to convert to Islam and marry one of the many Muslim men she chased latterly, does anyone doubt that droves of her acolytes would have followed her?
I believe it's called mass hysteria. There is no other possible explanation for the large scale delusion that Obama is the savior of the United States instead of its nemesis.
America's enemies are all pulling for him. Draw the correct conclusion from that.
zenster,
"There is absolutely NO difference between slow jihad and fast jihad or stealth jihad and violent jihad, they are all just different spots on the same cat."
There is no difference in motivational impetus, and in ultimate goal, but there are lots of differences in tactics. They are not interchangeable, such that Muslims could just suspend violent jihad indefinitely and be able to conquer the West without ever actually, at some point, engaging us in military & para-military war. And secondly, their different styles are working currently in a paradoxical symbiosis that is counter-intuitive (which is why many analysts think the two must be at cross-purposes, rather than dovetailed).
CS,
"[Erich] assess[es] the writings of someone else only by its propositional material. And then he has a writing style which I would call "intellectually confrontational". By doing so he misses (or ignores) the non-descriptive aspects of other people's writings..."
Have anything specific in mind that Bodissey wrote that contradicts any specific points of my analysis?
" -- such as here the very explicit linguistic markers of humility and uncertainty by the Baron."
Humility and uncertainty about what? Anything pertinent to my critique, or just a general, warm and fuzzy feeling?
Erich,
You understand the scientific process. So if I say that your answer here provide me with solid empirical evidence of my characterization of your person, you understand what I mean.
[Yes I made the person the topic here. Because of that a mechanical switch will go off in Henrik's head, starting a small clockwork which will make his jaws move mechanically (as if they were alive) uttering the words "ad hominem".]
OK, back to the fluffy stuff.
Erich. By simply replacing your first sentence "This theory of Bodissey's has two important flaws" with e.g. "In addition to the description of Bodissey I would like to add the following observations", you would have communicated your message much more successfully.
Humility and uncertainty about what? Anything pertinent to my critique, or just a general, warm and fuzzy feeling?
About the proposistional material, what else?
The major point here is the the Baron never presented any theory. This is what the linguistic markers tell us. There are only a collection of perspectives and observations. So you are factually wrong when you claim there is a theory.
When you write "this theory of Bodissey's" I honestly do not know what you are referring to, most probably because there is no such entity (I cannot find it when I'm reading his text). So your pointer here becomes a dangling reference. Your comments would be more successful if they didn't stumble and fall on the first sentence.
If you intend to make the contrary claim, then you should be able to summarize what is Bodissey's theory, as well as anchoring your summary in his actual writings.
I don't expect a lot of music-icons will convert, unless their as Cat Stevens also are willing to give up their former careers, as most of you already knows, music is haram, especially western style music. I could very well picture someone like Madonna (who thereafter should be referred to as Mad Donna), through her shallow interest in cabala a few years ago.
CS,
"You understand the scientific process. So if I say that your answer here provide me with solid empirical evidence of my characterization of your person, you understand what I mean."
No, not really. To be scientific, you'd have to point out specifically what I wrote that leads you to your conclusion, and then present an argument substantiating that conclusion, before I can even know what you're talking about, let alone possibly agree with you.
"By simply replacing your first sentence "This theory of Bodissey's has two important flaws" with e.g. "In addition to the description of Bodissey I would like to add the following observations", you would have communicated your message much more successfully."
I suppose the passive-aggressive approach has its advantages. But I feel strongly that this notion of "Stealth Jihad" (which has become a theory) as a threat independent of violent jihad is actually counter-productive. Of course, it is minimally productive when we are dealing with idiots who don't see any danger in Islam at all, but in the long run, it is only forestalling -- and at times even obfuscating -- the inevitable connection between all things Muslims do and violent jihad.
I wrote: "Humility and uncertainty about what? Anything pertinent to my critique, or just a general, warm and fuzzy feeling?"
You answered: "About the proposistional material, what else?"
You have to be more specific than that. Which specific propositions, and why?
"The major point here is the the Baron never presented any theory. This is what the linguistic markers tell us. There are only a collection of perspectives and observations. So you are factually wrong when you claim there is a theory."
"If you intend to make the contrary claim, then you should be able to summarize what is Bodissey's theory, as well as anchoring your summary in his actual writings."
To quote from Bodissey's essay:
"If events continue on their present course, Europe will become majority Muslim in the next half-century. The question that has always perplexed me concerns the mechanism for the transfer of power. How will the Ummah eventually take control in Europe?"
There's the question.
He proceeds to lay down an axiom that serves to typify the keystone of the theory that was the main subject of my comment:
"The current conflict isn’t a military one, so there will be no dramatic battlefield surrender. No mayor will kneel before the Sultan and hand over the keys to his city. Yet somehow political control will be transferred to the continent’s new rulers."
The theory of Stealth Jihad as I have seen it rather sloppily articulated (a theory doesn't have to be well-formulated to be a theory -- it can be sloppy) is based upon the above axiom: that, looking at the way things are going ("Eurabia" etc.), Islamic conquest of Europe (or maybe the whole West) will be non-military.
When he then writes --
"This article suggests a possible answer: ... " (then he goes on with various mechanisms, most economic, by which various Muslim interests could sink deeper into the West's institutions and social fabric)
-- this is not the nodus where Bodissey's "humility" and "uncertainty" are pertinent, since the paragraph quoted before bore the certitude of granite. This "possible" just begins the exploration of ways in which his theory might play out. But any signs that the theory itself is in question don't seem evident. The "humility" and "uncertainty", thus, are rather peripheral to the point I was addressing.
I grant that Bodissey was not presenting the theory in question frontally or fully; but the part I quoted --
"The current conflict isn’t a military one, so there will be no dramatic battlefield surrender. No mayor will kneel before the Sultan and hand over the keys to his city. Yet somehow political control will be transferred to the continent’s new rulers."
-- seems to depend upon that theory.
(His gruff and bluff reply to me above is curious: my objection is not that his essay was incomplete; it was that certain statements in it contradict the more productive analysis which I then proposed and articulated. He can disagree with me that the analysis I proposed is better; or he can even disagree that it does not essentially contradict his -- but to do so would require at least a minimal justification; if it is to be taken seriously, that is.)
Erich --
I was preparing for my business trip when I replied before, and then for four days I was absent, so that I haven't had time to respond properly.
As CS noted, your style is quite confrontational -- as if the only way to get your point across were to tell your interlocutor that he is wrong, that his analysis is flawed, and that yours is in fact correct. This is an approach guaranteed to get most people's back up.
My tendency is to say to myself, "I don't have time for this; I have too much else to do," and then move on to something else. However, I'll give you a brief account of my meta-opinions.
Most of what I write here -- especially when it projects into the future -- is quite speculative. I don't know what's going to happen; no one does. That's why I hedge my assertions by larding them with so many conditional and subjunctive tags.
Please note the conditional clause here: "If events continue on their present course..."
That's a big "if", because common sense and simple social dynamics would indicate that things are not going to continue on their present course for much longer. Events will take a new tack, possibly a catastrophic one, and all the things you wrote about may take place.
So I don't disagree with what you wrote. However, what you said simply doesn't lie within my "if" clause. Hence my impatient response.
Your ideas are also speculative, and use a different set of premises than my post did. In another post I may well use your premises, follow a different "if..." track, and come to conclusions similar to yours.
But you are evidently impatient, and want me to conclude the things that you do, but after using a different set of premises.
If I'd used a different set of premises and followed a different speculative line, it would have become a different essay, one that you would (presumably) have liked better.
And that's fine. That's the way it should be. That's why God gave you your own blog, where you can make sure you get it right.
"Whorehouse chandelier", that's a keeper, Baron.
Erich: They are not interchangeable, such that Muslims could just suspend violent jihad indefinitely and be able to conquer the West without ever actually, at some point, engaging us in military & para-military war.
Is a cat's tail interchangeable with its foreleg? The various forms of jihad, be they fast, slow, stealth or violent are all spots on the same Islamic cat. Nowhere did I say they were interchangeable, that is a premise which you have independently introduced. Argue and find fault however much you like but, please, do it in front of a mirror.
While I have a reputation for going on at length, I do my damnedest to incorporate a high proportion of factual information and extrapolations based strictly upon the presented points. In this thread alone, you have posted some 1,500 words, a lot of them devoted to stylistic and forensic quibbling that do little to advance the cause of this forum or further inform its readers.
I suggest that you carefully review Con Swede's exceptionally thoughtful analysis of your style. The information that you have to share could be communicated in a far less adversarial way that would better serve your own aims and reputation.
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