November 15, 2005
"Eurabia" Defined
By Andrew
G. Bostom
The flames consuming thousands of automobiles, and the occasional
bus, nursery, warehouse, and school across France are the result
of tragic - in the original sense of the word - set of decisions
made by the leaders of Europe, motivated by greed, jealousy, and
hubris. The dream of a Europe restored to preeminence, isolating
and vanquishing the upstart Americans, via a rock-solid alliance
with the Arab world, has become a nightmare. The French cannot
acknowledge their problem precisely because they cannot admit
the folly of the policies pursued for the last three decades as
the bedrock of their highest diplomatic, political, and economic
ambitions.
The intifada raging in France for almost three weeks, has been
characterized by overwhelmingly Muslim rioters engaged in acts
of wanton destruction, punctuated by claims of "territorial control"
over sections of various French cities. In the context of this
ongoing havoc, one sees repeated references to the term "Eurabia"
by journalists and other media and academic elites, who, almost
without exception, have no idea about the concrete origins, or
significance of this term.
The use of the term "Eurabia", as noted by the scholar Bat Ye'or
(in her seminal analysis,
Eurabia-The Euro-Arab Axis, released earlier this year)
was first introduced, triumphally, in the mid-1970s, as the title
of a journal edited by the President of the Association for Franco-Arab
Solidarity, Lucien Bitterlein, and published collaboratively by
the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva), France-Pays
Arabes (Paris), and the Middle East International (London).
The articles and editorials in this publication called for common
Euro-Arab positions, at every level - social, economic, and commercial
- and were contingent upon the fundamental political condition
of European support for the Arab (and non-Arab) Muslim umma's
jihad against Israel. These concrete proposals were not the musings
of isolated theorists - they in fact represented policy decisions
conceived in conjunction with, and actualized by, European state
leaders, their ministers of foreign affairs, and European Parliamentarians.
Eurabia, as Bat Ye'or has demonstrated, now represents a geo-political
reality, envisioned in 1973 through a system of informal alliances
between the countries of the Arab League and the nine countries
of the European Community (EC), which became the European Union
(EU) in 1992. Various alliances and agreements were elaborated
at the top political level of each European Community country
with the representative of the European Commission, and their
Arab counterparts within the Arab League. This system was synchronized
under the rubric of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue
(EAD), created in July, 1974 in Paris. A working body composed
of committees always presided over jointly by a European and an
Arab delegate, planned the agendas, and organized and monitored
the application of decisions.
The comprehensive Euro-Arab collaboration included both domestic
and foreign policy issues, ranging from economic matters to immigration.
The joint Euro-Arab foreign policy, advanced at international
forums and NGO meetings was characterized by anti-Americanism
and anti-Zionism, along with simultaneous efforts towards delegitimation
of Israel, and promotion of Arafat's PLO. The EAD also established
close cooperation domestically between the Arab and the European
print, television, and radio media, publishing houses, academic
and cultural centers, student and youth associations, and the
tourism industry. Church interfaith "dialogues" were a major influence
on the development of this policy. Eurabia thus represents a strong
Euro-Arab network of symbiotic associations which cooperate on
political, economic, and cultural issues.
Eurabia involves not only an intricate web of agreements covering
a remarkably broad range; it is essentially a political project
for the total demographic and cultural symbiosis between Europe
and the Arab Muslim world. Israel will eventually dissolve, according
to the design of this project. America would be isolated and challenged
by an emerging Euro-Arab continent, linked to the entire Muslim
world, and invested with tremendous political and economic power
in international affairs. The policies of "multilateralism" and
of "soft diplomacy" express this deepening symbiosis. The Euro-Arab
agreements are merely the tools for the creation of a new extended
Mediterranean "continent." Eurabia is also based on a vision of
Christian-Muslim reconciliation, built on anti-Zionism, strongly
advocated by major Christian religious bodies, and often espousing
a new hybrid Islamo-Christian replacement theology.
Respective European and Arab goals for the Eurabian project, are
summarized by Bat Ye'or. First, the European ambitions: to play
a defining political role in international relations in competition
with the United States, and independent of its influence; maintain
important spheres of influence in the former European Arab colonies;
open huge markets for the European Economic Community's products
in the Arab world, especially in oil-producing countries; secure
supplies of petroleum and natural gas to Europe; make the Mediterranean
a Euro-Arab inland sea by encouraging massive Arab immigration
into Europe, and favoring Muslim immigrants; create Euro-Arab
populations by promoting multiculturalism with a strong Islamic
presence in Europe; develop a powerful Islamo-Christian symbiosis
against Israel, orienting Europe toward Islam, and liberating
Christianity from Judaism, which is viewed by some anti-Semitic
factions as the embodiment of evil. The Arab partners, in turn,
demanded from Europe: alignment with their anti-Israeli policy;
modernization of their countries; access to Western science and
technology; European political independence from the United States,
and separation of the trans-Atlantic allies; measures favorable
to Arab immigration and dissemination of Arab and Islamic culture
in Europe.
Bat Ye'or traces the development, evolution, and major characteristics
of these policies and practices over the past thirty years, while
examining their consequences for the European continent, and Europe's
relationships to America and Israel.
During a November 27, 1967 press conference, Charles de Gaulle
stated openly that French cooperation with the Arab world had
become, "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy". By January
1969, the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab
Peoples, held in Cairo, in its resolution 15, decided "…to form
special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to
use the parliamentary platform support of the Arab people and
the Palestinian resistance."
Five years later in Paris, July 1974, the Parliamentary
Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation was created, under the
Euro-Arab Dialogue rubric. [At present it has burgeoned to over
six hundred members-from all major European political parties
-each active in their own national parliaments, as well as in
the European parliament.] The Parliamentary Association's explicit
policies mimicked the 23 resolutions of the 1969 aforementioned
Cairo Conference. This has become a permanent feature of how the
Parliamentary Association operates- adopting identical positions,
even verbatim language, derived from prior joint Arab League-Western
European policy meetings, or even exclusive international Arab
and non-Arab Muslim conferences.
These associations, through their committees and subcommittees,
maintain complete coordination between the Western European and
Arab parties in the political, economic, and cultural realms.
As a result, the European Community stands apart from the United
States by consistently backing Arab claims, and Palestinian policies,
and stubbornly insisted (right up until his recent death) on Arafat
as the unique and exclusive representative of the Palestinians.
European emissaries of the Dialogue also work incessantly attempting
to bring the American government into line with Arab anti-Israeli
positions. Bat Ye'or has highlighted this shared Euro-Arab political
agenda:
o recognition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; up to
1973 they had been known as Arab refugees;
o recognition of the PLO and its leader Arafat as unique representative
of the Palestinians;
o obligation for Israel to negotiate exclusively with Arafat;
o a global and not a separate peace;
o retreat of Israel to the1949 armistice lines;
o Arab-Islamic sovereignty in Jerusalem;
o European pressure on the United States to align with their Arab
policy;
o demonization of Israel, as a threat to world peace;
o moralization of the Palestinian jihad as a just war against
the injustice of Israel's existence;
o placing the Palestinian problem at the epicenter of international
politics.
o delegitimization of Israel with all the attendant negative consequences
that follow.
Parroting Arab League declarations, the phrase "legitimate inalienable
rights of the Palestinian people" is repeated mantra-like in European
political pronouncements, but as Bat Ye'or notes,
"We would seek in vain the definition of the rights of Kurds,
Berbers, Copts or any other pre-Islamic indigenous inhabitants
of the Middle East, including Jews-these peoples are never mentioned."
This political agenda has been reinforced by (and now mirrors)
the deliberate cultural transformation of Europe. Euro-Arab Dialogue
Symposia conducted 20 to 25 years ago, i.e., in Venice (1977)
and Hamburg (1983), included recommendations, below, that have
been successfully implemented, accompanied by a deliberate, privileged
influx of Arab and other Muslim immigrants, in enormous numbers:
o Coordination of the efforts made by the Arab countries to spread
the Arabic language and culture in Europe and to find the appropriate
form of cooperation among the Arab institutions that operate in
this field.
o Creation of joint Euro-Arab Cultural Centers in European capitals
which will undertake the diffusion of the Arabic language and
culture.
o Encouragement of European institutions either at University
level or other levels that are concerned with the teaching of
the Arabic language and the diffusion of Arabic and Islamic culture.
o Support of joint projects for cooperation between European and
Arab institutions in the field of linguistic research and the
teaching of the Arabic language to Europeans.
o Necessity of supplying European institutions and universities
with Arab teachers specialized in teaching Arabic to Europeans.
o Necessity, when teaching Arabic, of emphasizing Arab-Islamic
culture and contemporary Arab issues.
o Necessity of cooperation between European and Arab specialists
in order to present an objective picture of Arab-Islamic civilization
and contemporary Arab issues to students and to the educated public
in Europe which could attract Europeans to Arabic studies.
Eighteen months ago, Bat Ye'or summarized
the bitter harvest Western Europe was reaping from the sociopolitical
and cultural changes it had sown:
"Arab and Islamic anti-Israeli propaganda, barely disguised
in academic and cultural packaging…disseminated by organs of the
Euro-Arab Dialogue operating under the highest state authorities
and imposed in universities, the press, and cultural centers.
Dissidents, whether in religious, political, or cultural circles…marginalized
or reduced to silence…Within this Europe transformed into a Euro-Arab
continent hostile to the United States and Israel, transnational,
transcontinental Judeophobia is structured in the fusion of two
hatreds-European Antisemitism, and Arab-Muslim Judeophobia. This
incendiary mixture formed the pillars of the Euro-Arab alliance
against both Israel and the United States. The dialogue committees
condition European mentalities to the new cult of Palestinianism.
This ideology of hate melds Christian and Islamic Judeophobia,
including the principles of replacement theology, expressed as
both Christian, and finally Islamic supersessionism against Israel,
which is condemned to disappear…Israel['s] usurped history and
identity are projected onto the Palestinians. Traditional European
Antisemitism and Islamic jihad are fused within the structures
and geopolitics of Euro-Arabism; in this process, European anti-Americanism
and Judeophobia come together within the Euro-Arab ideology.
"Europe's hidden war against Israel is wrapped in the Palestinian
flag, and is part of a global movement that is transforming Europe
into a new continent of dhimmitude within a worldwide strategy
of jihad and da'wa, the latter being the pacific method of Islamization…this
policy of dhimmitude for the Euro-Arabian continent…entitled "Dialogue
between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Region"
(Note the orientation of the map on the cover
page, which, "corresponds to the world view of the Arab cartographers
of the Middle Ages", and no doubt their contemporary descendants,
i.e., the Southern Mediterranean littoral on top of the Northern!)
was accepted by the European Union in December 2003. Unfortunately,
the policy of "Dialogue" with the Arab League nations, willfully
pursued by Europe for the past three decades, has promoted European
dhimmitude and rabid Judeophobia."
In the wake of the continuing French intifada, Bat Ye'or's analyses
have profound implications for Western Europe - which may be incapable
of altering its Eurabian trajectory; her research
may be even more important for the United States if it wishes
to avoid Europe's fate:
"Th[e] Eurabian ethos operates at all levels of European
society. Its countless functionaries, like the Christian [devshirme]-janissary
slave soldiers of past Islamic regimes, advance a jihadist world
strategy. Eurabia cannot change direction; it can only use deception
to mask its emergence, its bias and its inevitable trajectory.
Eurabia's destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become
a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and
Israel. Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia,
and its profound implications for the United States, particularly
in terms of its resultant foreign policy realities. Americans
should consider the despair and confusion of many Europeans, prisoners
of a Eurabian totalitarianism that foments a culture of deadly
lies about Western civilization. Americans should know that this
self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the
result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly
responsible people. Finally, Americans should understand that
Eurabia's contemporary anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are the
spiritual heirs of 1930s Nazism and anti-Semitism, triumphally
resurgent."
Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine, and author
of the recently released, The
Legacy of Jihad, on Prometheus Books.
