Last time we looked at the cultural shift that comes with brining in un-assimilating Muslim immigrants into a once-Christian based Western society. Europe is fast becoming a mess. Don’t get me wrong. The numbers will tell you that the majority of Europeans still identify as Christians. But that seems about the extent of their commitment to their faith. It is not reflected in church attendance – and it certainly is not reflected in the laws and cultural mores that we are seeing on the continent.
PART VI – THE ASSAULT ON BIBLICAL RELGION
Many biblical scholars point to Daniel Chapter 2, Daniel 7and Revelation 13 and see the Antichrist coming from a revived Roman Empire. On the other hand, as we will see, there is evidence too, that he may arise from the ranks of Islam. Thus there is an inherent challenge to reconcile the notion of the rise of a Revived Roman Empire with the belief that the Antichrist will likely come from Islam. The fact is, I believe both of those interpretations are plausible and reconcilable. [I’m not declaring doctrine here….but just saying both are possible.] The fact is, Europe is changing! Once the cradle of Christian thought, Europe is fast losing that heritage, preparing the way for the revival of a New World Order and the ascendance of the Antichrist.
Europe has abandoned its cultural heritage – and with that, just about all its ties to scripture. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” (2Timothy 4:3-4)
All across Europe, the winds of change are blowing. The Europe that brought us the Renaissance and the Reformation is no more. In a continent where art and architecture and the culture and intellectual life of nations was once centered on God of the Bible, there is no faith. To paraphrase Lincoln: Europe has lost the better angels of its nature. This is manifesting itself in various ways. On the march to irrationality: Europe is leading the way. The Europe that was the cradle of Christianity is no more. Since the end of WWII, its population has shifted increasingly away from the traditional Christian beliefs that had served as the foundation stones of society. A Gallup poll taken for the Millennium revealed that church attendance was down to about 20% in Western Europe, and about 14% in the old Communist Bloc. That compared at that time with about 47% in North America and 82% in West Africa. And anecdotal evidence says it has only gotten worse since then. [For the record, American church attendance has since dropped. It was recorded at 37% in 2013.]
Europe has become what must be called a Post-Christian society. Gone are its traditional historical values that for so long defined its soul. The Continent that saw the triumph of Luther and the Reformation and experienced waves of revival under Wesley, now sees the belated triumph of the godlessness of the French Revolution. Across much of the continent, Churches are empty. Surveys have put regular attendance in the range of 10% to 20% of the overall population on the Continent as a whole,[i] with less than 5% attending services in the U.K. on any given Sunday. But it gets worse. In France only about 17% of the population even express an “interest” in religion. In Britain the figure is 23%, Germany 24% and in staunchly Catholic Italy, only about half of the people believe religion is important. Concrete changes have followed belief. France has forbidden the wearing of religious symbols (including crosses) in schools. Socialist Spain was among the first to legalize same-sex marriage.[ii] In England mosque-goers outnumber those that attend services of the Anglican Church.[iii] In Britain, church attendance has dropped by almost a third just since 1980. This is all resulting in the shuttering and the sale of Christian / Catholic churches all across Europe. The Netherlands, home of Christian heroine Corrie ten Boom is expected to lose 2/3 of its Catholic churches by 2025. A full 42% of the Dutch are unaffiliated with any religion. Elsewhere those numbers are 28% in France, 24.7% in Germany and over 21% in the UK. But it’s not that Europeans are totally without spirituality. Islam, which has grown from about 6% of Europeans in 1990 to about 6% in 2010, is flourishing. In 2010 there were about 44 million Muslims living on the Continent – 19 million of those in the EU.[iv] Chicken or egg? Loss of moral clarity follows depressed church attendance follows loss of moral clarity.
And more Europeans have now bought into the Eastern or New Age view. They see God as just an impersonal life-force rather than the Biblically held view of a personal Creator-God.[v] As church attendance has gone down, belief in the existence of God among youth went up nearly 20% between 1981 and 1999. But they have fashioned a god of their own creation. The influence of Eastern forms of thought is creating a ‘cafeteria Christianity’, where elements of Buddhism and the New Age are combined with traditional Christian beliefs.[vi] Portions of the Anglican Church have cooperated in this unholy synthesis, providing displays featuring, among other things, – Buddhist monks chanting the ‘sacred’ syllable “oooohm”. Ignoring Scripture; gay-friendly and militantly feminist Church’s and services abound. In Denmark, an atheist minister held on to his pulpit in the state-sponsored church. All of this has created a crazy atmosphere where the culture cannot or will not distinguish between right and wrong. So we see the following:
- Abortions For Treatable Birth Defects – In Britain, babies were being destroyed for such minor, treatable defects such as cleft pallets, club feet, web fingers or an extra digit.[vii] Iceland has gone one further. They claim success in eliminating “Down syndrome by aborting virtually 100 percent of fetuses that test positive.”[viii]
- Compulsory Prostitution – German welfare legislation requires unemployed women under 55 to accept work in legalized brothels if offered.[ix]
- Campaign To Legalize Pedophilia – In the Netherlands, pedophiles are organizing their own political party to promote legalized child porn and the doing away with the age of consent.[x]
- Apes Are People Too – Spain’s government once proposed a law that would grant Great Apes like gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans some of the same rights as human beings. The proposed law against illegal imprisonment would of course affect Spanish zoos. [I’m not making this up!][xi]
Western culture, it can be argued is demonstrably failing. Yet the East is offering its solutions; – Not only the New Age and Eastern Religions, – but also Islam.
In a seismic shift, Europe is becoming less European. Served by an anemic birth rate, the indigenous European population is shrinking and being replaced by one that is increasingly Muslim. At the very minimum: Demographers tell us that a society must maintain at least 1.3 births per couple in order for that society to survive. In Greece the number is just below that minimum figure. In Spain the number is 1.1, in Italy it’s 1.2. Mark Steyn points out that “by 2050, 60% of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no uncles.” He says of Europe and the West: “they’re running out of babies.”[xii] In contrast Muslim families in Europe are producing lots of babies. And it’s starting to change the whole demographic of the Continent.
In addition, Old Europe is fast abdicating cultural control through demographic suicide. And as birthrates in most of the continent have plunged to levels incapable of maintaining present population levels, – abortion rates are way up. Europe boasts the highest incidence in the world,[xiii] with Russia leading the way. Health officials there reported that abortions actually outnumbered live births by 1.6 million to 1.5 million in 2007.[xiv] According to UN sponsored studies: “By 2050, the U.N. projects, more than 40% of the people in Italy will be 60 or older. By mid-century, populations in 25 European nations will be lower than they are now; Russia will lose 31 million people, Italy 7.2 million”. The trend continues across the continent.[xv] Without immigration Europe will be without a labor pool.
All of this of course has its inevitable effect. Daniel Pipes points out that the great national cultures of Europe are being replaced by a “transnational Muslim identity.”[xvi] This new culture is buttressed by a robust birth rate, continuing immigration, a strong Islamic subculture and a general sense of European apathy with regard to maintaining ties to its historic past. According to Amir Taheri, should current trends continue, in the not too distant future, a “new and expanded version of the old Roman Empire will have a total population of around 800 million of which some 250 million would be Muslims.”[xvii]
While ethnic Europeans have abdicated their cultural imperative, Islam has been careful to secure their own. The Islamic Council of Europe laid out a strategy for future dominance of the continent way back in 1980.
- Do not integrate with Westerners. Keep the Muslim community together and culturally pure.
- Concentrate in urban areas. Become a local majority. This would multiply power.
- Push for Sharia law. Make it “racist or Islamophobic” to oppose this cultural[xviii]
This strategy seems to have worked very well. Sharia law has exploded on the continent. The Islamic legal code with its origins in the Koran and the fatwa rulings of the Imams, has expanded in Europe, especially with the increasing number of no-go zones that have sprung up. These are areas where even police and government services are hesitant to go. In the UK, Sharia is used for “guidance on family law, finance and business.”[xix] In Germany, “Sharia courts presided by Muslim ‘peace judges’ now dot Germany, where even non-Muslim German judges in German courts cite Sharia law and quote from the Quran to uphold polygamy and husbands’ right to beat wives when judging cases involving Muslims.” In some cases, Austria is even applying Sharia to non-Muslims.[xx]
But the problem is not just in France. In Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague, Muslims hold the majority among youths. In the Swedish city of Malm, police admit that violent gangs of Muslim immigrants control the city.[xxiv] Groups of Arab immigrants engage in rapes and beatings of women dressed in western garb in Marseilles and other French cities.[xxv] In the Netherlands, one Justice Minister envisioned a time when majority rule may allow Sharia Law to govern that nation. (To the countries where it has been practiced, Sharia Law has brought such civilized enhancements as amputations for thievery and the flogging or execution of women for “crimes against chastity.”)[xxvi] All of this came to a head in the 2005 riots of French Muslims in which tens of thousands of vehicles were burned in violence that shook a large portion of urban France.As Islam expands its presence, some of the effects are quite ominous. Many of France’s 600,000 Jews dare not wear their yarmulkes in public for fear of being attacked. Synagogues are being burned and beatings are taking place as police sit on their hands. The atmosphere has become so poisoned that thousands of European Jews have already secured residences in Israel … just in case.[xxi] Gang rape by roving bands of Muslim youths has become common. In 2002, one girl was set on fire.[xxii] Tony Blankley, writing in November of 2005 states; “Muslim parts of Paris, Rotterdam and other European cities are already labeled no-go zones for ethnic Europeans, including armed policemen”.[xxiii] They are living out the 1980 plan of the Islamic Council of Europe.
In Britain, the new order has manifested itself in the form of a large population, living in-country, – that could best be described as active or passive enemies of the state. The London bombings of 2005 and the foiled attempt to blow up a number of planes on the way to the US were symptomatic of the problem there. The United Kingdom is hardly united. With a population approaching 2 million, Muslims account for a significant minority, – and a concentrated minority at that. A radicalized community it is. Even after the London bus bombings 28% of 18 to 24 year old Muslims still believed that suicide attacks could in some cases be justified. Sixteen thousand said that they would be “willing to embrace violence to bring an end to ‘decadent and immoral’ Western society.”[xxvii] In one borough, Oldham, (once served in Parliament by Winston Churchill himself), Pakistanis are “trying to create no-go areas for white people.”[xxviii]
And while traditional European culture is drifting rudderless down a river of apathy, the invading Islamic culture is a robust and dynamic presence. The result is a new political reality. It seems like ancient history now, but the Madrid train bombings of 2004 actually changed the result of the elections in Spain and drove the Spanish from Iraq. France on the one hand has forbidden the burkha and on the other is careful to walk a fine line of support for the Palestinian cause. And a wave of anti-Semitism has taken hold of the continent. In fact the atmosphere vis-à-vis their Jewish population, has been described by many sources as being as bad as it was in the 1930’s, just prior to Hitler’s Holocaust. “Over the course of the past decade France had never had less than 400 anti-Semitic acts a year, including the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the ‘gang of Barbarians’ in 2006 and the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012.”[xxix] Seven Jews were murdered in that incident. The increasing danger explains why some French-Jews are taking flight.
Europe is no longer Christian in outlook. In some ways it is no longer Western. And often it is acting against its own long-term self-interest. According to historian Bat Ye’or, Western Europe is evolving from an independent society to one that in many ways lives in servitude to the Arab/Muslim power. It is becoming something she calls Eurabia.[xxx] How did this happen? It has chosen to do so.
[i] James Gannon, Is God Dead In Europe, USA Today, January 15, 2006
[ii] Angus Reid, Religion on the Way Out in Europe, Global Monitor, November 12, 2006
[iii] In Anglicanism’s home, mosque-goers outnumber Anglican worshippers, World Magazine, January 28, 2004
[iv] Jeff Chu, O Father Where Art Thou, Time Europe, June 16, 2003
[v] Religion in the World at the End of the Millennium, Marita Carballo, Gallup of Argentina
[vi] Jeff Chu, O Father Where Art Thou, Time Europe, June 16, 2003
[vii] Babies aborted for not being perfect, Daily Mail, May 26, 2006
[viii] Why Down syndrome in Iceland has almost disappeared, CBS News, August 14, 2017
[ix] Has Europe Gone Crazy?, AFA Journal, Agape Press, July 31, 2006
[x] Has Europe Gone Crazy?, AFA Journal, Agape Press, July 31, 2006
[xi] Has Europe Gone Crazy?, AFA Journal, Agape Press, July 31, 2006
[xii] Mark Steyn, The World We Know Is Ending, October 24, 2006
[xiii] Henshaw, Singh & Haas, The Incidence of Abortion World Wide, Family Planning Perspectives, January 1999
[xiv] More Abortions Than Births In Russia, MosNews, August 8, 2005
[xv]James Gannon, Is God Dead In Europe, USA Today, January 15, 2006
[xvi] Daniel Pipes, Muslim Europe, New York Sun, May 11, 2004
[xvii] Amir Taheri, The Empire 2003, National Review Online, January 6, 2003
[xviii] Fjordman, Beheading Nations, Brussels Journal, July 13, 2006
[xix] The Muslim Rule Book, The Sun, March 31, 2017
[xx] Sharia Law in Europe, Billion Bibles.org, monitored: December 12, 2017
[xxi] Anti-Semitism rears ugly head in Europe, World Net Daily, January 13, 2003
[xxii] Fjordman, Beheading Nations, Brussels Journal, July 13, 2006
[xxiii] Islamist threat in France, Tony Blankley, Town Hall, November 9, 2005
[xxiv] Muslims rule major Swedish city, Free Republic, September 9, 2004
[xxv] Principal Anti-Semitic Attacks in France Europe 1 January to 12 May 2002, Centre Simon Wiesenthal
[xxvi] The God Vacuum, November 9, 2006
[xxvii] Daniel Pipes, The state of Islam in Britain, Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2006
[xxviii] Fjordman, Beheading Nations, Brussels Journal, July 13, 2006
[xxix] Anti-Semitism in France: Facing Reality, Huffington Post, May 10, 2016
[xxx] Bat Yeor makes that argument in her 2005 book, Eurabia- the Euro-Arab Axis.
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