http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21650
Fantasies About Jihad
By
Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 15, 2006
I recently spoke at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague, which
focused on Europe's growing immigration crisis and imminent Islamization;
Bat
Ye'or, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Douglas Murray and others were also
featured speakers. The first night we were in The Hague there was a
reception for
us at the American Embassy. The new Ambassador, Roland E. Arnall, hadn't
arrived yet, but I had a pleasant conversation with our host, Deputy Chief
of
Mission Chat Blakeman.
Blakeman introduced me to an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration,
who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders.
We
began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the
proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim
leaders
she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept
the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch
pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not
superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only
very few,
but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our
faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I
asked
her if she had read the Qur'an. She told me no, she hadn't, and wouldn't,
because she didn't want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it,
she
still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter
what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their
loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to
ask
them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at
any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any
way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would
be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch
pluralistic
society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic
supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn't ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would
immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when
cooperation
was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you're not
getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is
to be
gained by pretending that it isn't happening?
....