Question 1

True or False: In Brussels, Belgium, the capital of the European Union and Belgium, the Socialist mayor presides over a caucus that has a majority made up of Muslims.

Question 2 

True or False: In a few years, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rotterdam and many other European cities will reach majority Muslim status.

Question 3

True or False: The Muslim population of the United Kingdom is increasing 10 times faster than the general population.

Question 4

True or False: British banks have abolished piggy banks, as they might offend Muslims and police in Brussels are enjoined from eating doughnuts during Ramadan.

Question 5

True or False: Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, believes it is perfectly acceptable to blow up buses in Tel Aviv, but objects to those blowing up buses in England.

Question 6

True or False: The British lean over backward to grant freedom of speech to Muslim groups, even as they slander returning war heroes; but they also lean over backward to silence any critics of Islam.

If you answered true to all six questions, you’re tuned into what is going on in Europe. All six are true. This quiz is based on an article by Mark Steyn in Commentary Magazine (May 2009) titled “Israel Today, The West Tomorrow: Acquiescence to extremist Islam’s assault on Jewry and Israel will not save the nations of Europe from a Muslim Fate.”

Mr. Steyn’s thesis is that the Muslims may now be targeting Israel, but their basic objective, for the moment, is to take over Europe … and they are well along in that process, as the six-question quiz suggests.

He wrote a classic book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, in which he found that Europe is virtually finished as a Western, Christian continent and will soon be under Muslim control. But here is his bottom line, to make sure resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t viewed as the magic bullet for peace: “In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them [the Europeans]. It may be some consolation to an ever lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.”

Europe thinks when the canary in the mine dies, the miners are safe. In this case, the Europeans are the miners, and if the present trend continues, they will be as dead as the canary in short order.

Mr. Steyn’s book was frightening on two counts. First, it is shocking to understand that Europe is about to become Eurabia, a continent subject to Muslim domination. Second, it is even more shocking that when you study what is going on in Europe, you get the feeling that America is starting down the same path to the destruction of Western civilization. Mr. Steyn’s book came out in 2006, and it painted a grim picture. Now, just three years later, Mr. Steyn’s predictions are proving to be right on target, and the collapse of Europe is continuing at a steady and rapid pace.

Mr. Steyn’s conclusions are backed in another recent article found in Townhall Magazine (May 2009) by Tim Montgomerie titled “Far From United: The United Kingdom’s Government Has Decided To Appease Muslim Extremists and Act Embarrassed About Western Culture. Can Britain Survive?”

The picture he paints is just as grim and bleak as that of Mr. Steyn’s. Just consider his opening salvo. When British troops returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, they were given a homecoming parade by the southern English town of Luton. The people of Luton enthusiastically greeted the soldiers with cheers, smiles and flowers.

But then came what some might be considered to be unexpected if not the incredible:

“But a day of thanksgiving was overshadowed by the loud protests of a group of Islamic extremists. Holding up placards, they accused Britain’s heroic soldiers of being ‘butchers,’ ‘war criminals,’ ‘murderers’ and ‘baby killers.’ By granting the Muslim protestors a right to insult the soldiers, the police were risking a breach of the peace — and a breach of the peace did occur. But Britain’s police service always appears eager to bend over backwards for a militant minority within the Muslim population.”

The British give every consideration and every doubt to the Muslim population, including freedom of speech to insult war heroes. But when it comes to critics of Islam, the British are willing to abolish free speech to silence them, if that’s what it takes to appease the Muslims.

They did that by banning the appearance before Parliament of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. The ban came after Islamic Web sites threatened to mobilize a mob protest if Mr. Wilders was granted a right to deliver his warning that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion.

More recently, after the Townhall article went to the printer, the British government banned talk show host Michael Savage from entry as his views were apparently considered too inflammatory. This all shows how far along the British and the rest of Europe are to surrendering to the oncoming Islamic tide. Mr. Steyn and others who forecast the end of Europe as we know it were right on course.

For other excellent books documenting the same trend, see Melanie Phillips, Londonistan; Bat Ye’Or, Eurabia: The European Arab Axis; and Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept.

Ms. Phillips, who is right on target in her writings, says the British have an unwritten agreement that they would turn a blind eye to Muslim terrorists as long as they did not target Britain. You would think that would have all changed after the London subway bombing of July 7, 2005 killed 50 Londoners. Instead, Britain answered by more appeasement, according to Mr. Montgomerie. This is the kind of hopelessly stupid and irrational reaction that leads people like Mr. Steyn and Ms. Phillips to write the Europeans off as lost to Islam.

You can’t preserve your own culture and values and fight off those who would subjugate you if you don’t believe in yourself. America, England and much of Europe have become self-loathing apologists for their own culture, and can hardly expect it to be preserved against those who believe in their culture and values and who are determined to see it win.

Even in America, we have important centers of America-hating self-loathing in our academic centers, in much of our mainstream media and in the White House. That does not bode well in an ideological war between two cultures and value systems pitting self-loathing apologists of the West against fanatical enthusiast on the other side.

You also can’t preserve your culture and values if you aren’t forming enough families and having enough children to preserve your nation and its power. Europe is ideologically doomed, but it is also demographically doomed. Its population is shrinking slowly, while the Muslim population is exploding. This is classic conquest by demography on the part of the Muslims and death by demography on the part of the Europeans.

You also won’t preserve your culture and values when one of the bastions of our way of life, the churches, are being weakened and are even disappearing in Europe. That continent seems to have surrendered to secularism and religion has gone out of style. In England, for example, the Church of England is in retreat and is in the appeasement mode. The bishop in charge of the Church’s urban ministry opposed the idea of the Church having a duty to convert Muslims to Christianity. The bishops of the Church seem more interested in accommodating Islamic opinion than in bringing their religion to others. The leader of the Anglican Church has spoken with approval of the introduction of aspects of Shariah law (Muslim law) into Britain.

There’s another deadly trend obvious in England but making headway elsewhere in the West — the union of the left and radical Islam in the hate America campaign. The Townhall magazine article explains the seemingly strange but solid alliance between the left (including major segments of the Democratic Party) and radical Islam. To make the point the article quotes Michael Gove, a leading Conservative member of Parliament:

“The Left’s enemies are no longer primarily a system, capitalism and its agents such as big business. Instead the principal enemy is now the oppressive West and, in particular, The Great Satan, America and the Little Satan, Israel. The Crusaders and the Zionists … Antipathy towards America, like opposition to Israel, has become the touchstone of radical Left credibility.”

So America has to face the music and fight, as no matter what happens to Israel and other obstacles in the path to Muslim world domination, the final target has to be America. Like it or not, we are marked for subjugation and/or destruction.

If we are to win that war against radical Islam, we have to recognize we’re in a battle, which will not be won by retreat and appeasement. And we will not win if we do not believe in our own values and culture and if we do not try to end the hate-America, blame-America streak that is becoming all too common in our national life. Again, Mr. Gove struck a cord, also sounded by Mr. Steyn. He was speaking of the challenge facing Britain, but America and the rest of the West face the same challenge:

“Unless we retain the moral clarity to know that Western society, its freedoms and traditions, are worth celebrating, deserve to be emulated, and will benefit others by being adopted, then we will find them increasingly difficult to defend at a time of trial.”

Those in the process of appeasing the Muslim onslaught should heed the wisdom of Mr. Churchill, one of the great statesmen of history who understood the folly of appeasement: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”

And then for those who won’t stand up to a bully, an aggressor, or a homicidal maniac until it’s too late, they should heed the words of the  German theologian, Martin Neimoller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,   and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew,

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Rev. Neimoller almost learned his own lesson too late. He supported the Nazis until he finally realized what they were up to. He was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and was one of the lucky ones to survive and be freed at the end of the war.

Most aren’t that lucky. The sooner you speak up, the more likely you are to escape without catastrophic consequences. Don’t count on being one of the lucky ones.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and  consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him atadvocate@thebulletin.us.