URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/8812
No, Eurabia does not mean a strong influx of Arab-Muslim immigrants into European countries, though it does include demographic input. Eurabia does not mean the European Union after Turkey has been admitted, though welcoming Turkey with its 80 million Muslim citizens, fruitful and multiplying, is part of the plan for Eurabia. Eurabia is an ambitious project of fusion between the E.U. and the Arab world, beginning with the Mediterranean rim countries, and with no end in sight.
In her recently published “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis,” the Egyptian born historian Bat Ye’or, a pioneer in the study of jihad, dhimmitude, and Eurabia, documents the system of secret conferences, negotiations, agreements, and directives elaborated since the early 1970s, which has resulted in the construction of Eurabia and the forging of a joint foreign policy based on hostility against Israel and hostile competition with America. Ms. Ye’ or will be speaking at various venues on the East and West Coasts in February, including Columbia University on February 8 and Yale University the next day.
Today, the architects of Eurabia have moved from secret diplomacy to unashamed declaration of their ambitions, as exemplified in “Dialogue Between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area,” a curious report drafted by the High-Level Advisory Group named by Romano Prodi, the European Commission President at the time, and published in December 2003.
The cover illustration, a medieval Arab map of an upside-down Europe at the feet of a commanding South, sets the tone. The South-North motif is carried through in the composition of the 12-member Advisory Group, chaired by Assia Alaoui Bensalah and Jean-Daniel (editorial director of the Nouvel Observateur), featuring the famous Umberto Ecco and the infamous Tariq Ramadan in a more or less balanced list: an Aboulmagd for an Eisenstadt, a Susskind-Weinberger for a Matvejevic, and no Jean-Michel, Hans, Mario, or Peter anything. For some unexplained reason the report was published in English and reads as if it were awkwardly translated from French.
Though purportedly involving the entire Mediterranean rim, the dialogue is clearly aimed at the Arab-Muslim states of North Africa. Greece and Europe’s Greek heritage are never mentioned, Judeo-Christian roots are eschewed, Israel is reduced to the guilty party in the Middle East conflict, leaving Europe and the Maghreb free to recombine the two halves of a shared history in a marriage made in secular heaven. In the opening pages, nation states are implicitly abolished -“the Mediterranean is made up of a number of sub-units” -and a new ethnic group is created -“communities of immigrant origin.” As immigrants they have a culture, which gives them a sort of lifetime guarantee to indulgent consideration, because “culture is by nature egalitarian.” Broadly speaking, the dialogue intends to “involve… civil societies in ending the discrimination from which European citizens of immigrant origin still too often suffer and the persistent situation of injustice, violence, and insecurity in the Middle East.”
Making the best of both worlds, Euro-Med dialogue will bring together the vibrant youth of the Mediterranean and a “cynical ageing” Europe rich in capital and employment opportunities. Lest the South look askance at the E.U.’s eastward enlargement, the advisory group casts it in a friendly light. The E.U. is taking steps in the right direction by incorporating countries with Orthodox Christian traditions that “sometimes lead to behavior which is surprisingly similar with that of Islam,” encompassing Bulgaria with its 10% Muslim population, then Bosnia-Herzegovina with its Muslim majority, and Turkey with its “‘historically’ European Islam.” The end result will be a European Islam that will “dispel the image of a rampant Islamisation of Europe.” Did Mr. Ecco really sign this document?
Though all cultures are equal, the report pinpoints two troublemakers. Democracy would flow and flourish in the Mediterranean region if it were not for “The weight of humiliation and the feeling of impotence which, though inherited from the colonial period, are nursed and even sharpened by the vicissitudes of the peace process in the Middle East and by military ventures trumpeted as crusades -for example in Iraq.” By contrast, the interminable 43-page report is a hymn to peace in the European mode, the “peace of the brave,” based on non-judgmental acceptance of the Other, respect for diversity, and tolerance for religious and cultural differences. All the tolerance has to come from the North. The refusal of the Other, his religious edifices, his language, his very existence in the decolonized North African countries, is not really mentioned as such.
In the brave new world of Eurabia a Euro-Mediterranean Parliament with real power will promote democracy throughout the region, based on mutual respect, a shared history, and a shared rewriting of history to correct past errors. School textbooks will be rewritten, teachers will be trained, and the very standards for assessing performance will be revised in the interests of equality, solidarity, and cultural diversity. European pupils will learn Arabic. The press will portray the beauties of the Other culture and convey the message of harmonious fusion. There will be exchanges of students, professors, artists, and writers; and somehow, this is going to be mutual and egalitarian, a rush of students from Algeria to the Sorbonne, a flux of students from Paris to Fes. And all of this will be richly financed by the “ageing cynical North.” Ditto for the institutions, the foundations, the sumptuous headquarters. The Euro-Med dialogue is a costly proposition. No penny-pinching will be tolerated.
Shared institutions modeled on the E.U. will implement the ambitious projects set forth in the report. Beyond these institutional changes, close personal contact will be fostered with the creation of congenial meeting places where North and South can see each other face-to-face, talk, and touch. No mention of the diversity that precludes the slightest hint of physical contact with women in certain cultures, a prohibition that is applied in some quarters of European cities today. In fact, cultural diversity in the dewy eyes of the High Level Advisory Group is all charm and folklore, all Mediterranean and non-European and, since no culture can make any claim to superiority, all to the benefits of the Other whose Otherness is more of an ethnic quality than a relation to a Someone.
What could go wrong? In the North, “populist and xenophobic movements… could make it difficult for all 25 members of the E.U. to embrace the philosophy we are advocating here.” In the South? A vague risk that the “aim of the dialogue will be distorted by some part of the elite or within civil society.”
How will we know if everything is working as planned? A polling mechanism, the “Euro-Mediterranean cultural barometer,” will ask a sample population in a diversity of languages what they think of Each Other. That should do it.
Ms. Poller is a novelist living in Paris and a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East spme.org
