Confronted by the outspoken aspirations of Islam to expand dynamically, people such as Ashton and those that appointed her show the same deluded blindness they showed three decades ago when confronted with the repressive nature of Communism.
While Ashton blamed Israel, Tariq Ramadan, professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, the so-called voice of moderate European Islam, blamed France. Ramadan wrote on his website that Merah had turned into a terrorist “after having been a citizen deprived of true dignity.” Islam had nothing to do with it, Ramadan claims. France is to blame because “a substantial number of French citizens [of Islamic origin] are treated as second-class citizens.”
Ramadan’s article is another attempt to blame victims for the criminal activity perpetrated against them, this time in their capacity as French citizens rather than as Jews. An Oxford professor writing such an article is an embarrassment and an insult to all members of the Oxford University community. It is, however, as before, unlikely that anyone at Oxford will complain about it.
Europe is in a state of denial about the transformative nature of its enemies. By refusing to recognize mental illness in its varied forms — whether attempts to ward off depression by means of aggression; paranoia, either innate or induced, or the excitement in physically harming oneself or others that is known as sado-masochism — for what it is, Europe remains unable to protect its citizens.
Eighty years ago, the Europeans went through the same process. As Mark Twain said, “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” Once again — just as they did during the Inquisition and the Third Reich — the Europeans are failing, either from ignorance or the wish not-to-know, to confront the subject of emotional disorder, inflamed daily not only by ideological teachings that conspicuously seek to whip up hate, but also with the complicity of a European press increasingly reminiscent of Der Stürmer. Once again, the Europeans, for their own failure, are trying to make the Jews pay the price.
Originally published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org