If I had been asked two months ago “Which Western country runs the greatest risk of electing a Muslim-born leader and how soon do you think this is going to happen?” I would have bet on the Netherlands somewhere in the next decade. Today, it looks as if the first Western country with a Muslim-born leader might very well be the United States next year, when President Barack Hussein Obama enters the Oval Office. The Europeans do not mind being surpassed. Obamania has struck Western Europe. Two weeks ago, in an attempt to explain Europe’s enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, the left wing German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the Illinois senator is the most “European” of all the candidates in the U.S. presidential race. “Many in Europe would like nothing more than a ‘European’ America […] Obama personifies Europe’s hopes for a modern America: black, socially minded and gentle,” the German magazine wrote. As if Europe is black, socially minded and gentle…
Last week, Algemeen Dagblad, a newspaper in the Netherlands, asked the 150 members of the Dutch House of Representatives how they would vote in the U.S. elections if they could. Mr. Obama got 58 votes, Mrs. Clinton 40, while a mere 23 Dutch parliamentarians – fewer than those who said they had no opinion – would vote Republican.
There is little doubt that if Europe were to decide the American elections the next POTUS would be Barack Hussein Obama. In November we will know whether letting Americans decide their own future makes any difference. The Europeans hope it does not.
Europe is preparing itself for a Muslim take-over. Last year, an influential French Catholic archbishop told the American Catholic scholar Richard John Neuhaus that in the not-so-distant future Europe will be an Islamic continent. “We are preparing ourselves for soft Islamization,” the French archbishop said. Last week, the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, advocated the adoption of certain aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the British legal system. His remarks caused indignation from people who do not seem to realize that several Sharia courts already sit across England, Scotland and other Western countries.
Perhaps Mr. Obama strikes the Europeans as the “most European candidate” because he was born a Muslim. If America can have a Muslim-born leader, why not Europe, many Europeans will ask. They know that the latter is “unavoidable” (to use the archbishop of Canterbury’s words). In America, Mr. Obama’s Muslim family background (unlike Mr. Romney’s Mormonism) is a non-issue because he attends a Christian church. Nevertheless, being born from a Muslim father, raised by a Muslim stepfather, having been enrolled at school (in Indonesia) as a Muslim and having attended Friday prayers at the local mosque as a young boy, he cannot be seen by Muslims as anything but a Muslim, especially because he has never explicitly rejected the faith of his fathers nor said anything negative about it.
The day Barack Hussein Obama comes to the White House many Muslims, also in Europe, will see it as a vindication of recent announcements by radical Islamists that the green flag of Allah will soon fly over the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Vatican and the other “fortresses of the West.”
Since perception is often more powerful than reality the importance of an Obama presidency cannot be underestimated. The American political establishment, including the Republicans, are very naive about the Islamic threat to Europe. Rather than working against the Islamization of Europe American policies tend to hasten the process. America is an ally of Saudi Arabia – a dictatorship which funds the most extremist Islamic organizations. America pushes for the independence of Kosovo, which will establish an Islamist regime in the heart of Europe. America wants the European Union to accept Turkey as a member state. If Mr. Obama proceeds with these policies (as he is likely to do) and withdraws from Iraq, thereby indicating that America has lost the war, the radical Islamists in Europe will become even more arrogant than they are today.
Obviously, America is not to blame for Europe’s present predicament. The demographic and religious vacuum in Europe, which is being filled by Muslim immigrants and by Islam, is entirely of Europe’s own making. The Europeans – and they alone, not the Americans and not even the Muslims, who were welcomed to Europe – are to blame for the Islamization of the old continent. The irony, however, is that America does not seem to draw lessons from Europe’s predicament.
The specter of Islam is haunting the world. The Europeans, who lack America’s fighting spirit, are trying to appease their enemy and are hoping for “soft Islamization.” America, sadly, does not even seem to have noticed that there is a problem. It called Mr. Romney to account for his Mormonism but has yet to ask Mr. Obama for his views on Islam.