Eurabian nightmare

By Aussiegirl

If you only read one article on the meaning of the continuing riots and violence in France, read this from the American Thinker today. It's even worse than you thought. Rather than simply being a victim of its own ill-conceived policy of importing cheap labor from Arab countries, France is in a sense reaping the whirlwind that it sowed when it deliberately set out on a policy of creating a Eurabia, a European - Arab alliance which would rival America for world dominance. Instead, having made a pact with the crocodile, France may belatedly be realizing that it may be devoured instead of sharing the meal of American power.

The American Thinker

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.