London's new mayor may serve as a voice of reason
While Donald Trump and his court were further trying to explain how they would keep every Muslim away from American borders, an important event occurred across the waters that may change everything.
The good people of London in olde England, which is arguably the Western country that has had the most sobering problems with its Muslim population, has thrown care to the winds and elected Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital city!
The handsome new mayor of the city where he was born and raised is a Labour politician and self-proclaimed feminist who supports gay marriage. Of great comfort to many English is that his website is devoted to combating radicalization and extremism in England and “empowering mainstream Muslims.”
Is it possible that we are beginning to see the end of the first phase of the confrontation between East and West that has been raging for the past quarter century, but especially in the last two years as desperate Muslim refugees have swarmed over Europe?
Is it possible that the “moderate Muslims” who have been so difficult to find — and whose voices regarding the horrors of ISIS, al-Qaida and all the other terrorists have been so silent — might now be heard?
The “discussion” over Islam in Europe and the United States — the Western, non-Muslim world — has until now been so extreme at both ends that it is no wonder Europeans, Americans and other critics could hardly understand it.
It has coalesced into two alternatives that both happen to be baldly untrue. One: President Obama's “Islam is a religion of peace.” And its critics: “We are at war with Islam, a religion of warfare.”
If one reads even a few pages of Middle Eastern history, one has to see that Islam is both. Its history reels between great aggressions — in its first 600 years, Islam expanded across all of North Africa — and some magnificent accomplishments. It ruled Spain in one of the greatest periods in human history, and its universities in Baghdad and Cairo preserved Greek manuscripts when others would destroy them.
Today, large factions of Muslims, ISIS and all the others, are in major conflict mode, but certainly not for the first time. The majority of Muslims may not support these killers, but neither do they lend their voices nor their loyalties to the West.
Here is where immigration comes in. In London, with its 8.2 million people, one in eight is Muslim and many were born in another country. The fear of immigrants, and not only in England, is the “loss of civilization.” And this fear is not without basis.
Islam, for whatever its good factors, holds that church and state are one. In almost all Muslim countries, there are no Christian churches and little respect for them. Therefore, out of respect for their own values and virtues, it is simply rational that non-Muslim countries should resist bringing in numbers of people from Muslim cultures who would overrun their own culture.
If Sadiq Khan can bring the voice of Islamic moderation to England — where, in the north, Pakistani men prostituted 1,400 British girls, and others have attempted to Islamize the schools — what a joy that will be.
A West with a small and appropriate number of Muslims, probably about 5 percent of the total population, could assimilate them and enjoy their differences without fear. A wise man at the top could accomplish this.
Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.
© 2016, Universal