Deconstructing Eurabia

Like all socialist dhimmis who catch a whiff of something unorthodox, last week's issue of The Economist launched a five-page spread to discredit an idea they do not grasp. The cover story, "Eurabia: The Myth and Reality of Islam in Europe," is discussed in three separate articles: one snotty editorial, one incoherent "investigative report," and a set of book reviews.

The most striking aspect of these articles is that the scholar who coined the term "Eurabia," Bat Ye'or, and the book she published last year, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, are mentioned nowhere. The Economist must be unaware of her as well as the book, because none of their disdainful counterpoints remotely address, let alone refute, Ye'or's research.

It must be stressed that the book is not an opinion piece, but a meticulous work of historical scholarship that relies entirely on primary source documents from official EU archives. They're not secret -- most are available on the web -- they're just written in impenetrable diplomatese.

They reveal that the EU's unelected power brokers have been auctioning off Europe to the Islamic world -- as well as selling Israel down the river -- for three decades. In exchange, Europe gets oil security and cheap imported labor to keep its crumbling welfare systems afloat. Reasonable people may reach different conclusions about what this means for Europe's future, but the fact of these back-room deals is indisputable. And The Economist makes no reference to them.

Furthermore, The Economist dismisses "the Eurabian myth" as an American invention, mentioning George W. Bush three times in the first paragraph. But to plumb the origins of the term "Eurabia," Bat Ye'or is the definitive source. She did write the book -- and she's European: an Egyptian exiled to the UK, and now a Swiss citizen. She's not even Anglo: Eurabia is her first book written in English, rather than French. But no, The Economist blames the Great Unwashed on the other side of the pond.

For another thing, the term "Eurabia" originated with European and Arab diplomats themselves. They see Euro-Arab cooperation as a good thing: harmonization, integration, mutual assistance, technology transfers, multiculturalism, etc. Ye'or merely pointed out that, 30 years on, it's not all fluffy bunnies and rainbows. The idea of Eurabia is catching on in the U.S., but it is largely thanks to Ye'or's book -- and the daily news out of Europe that reinforces her concerns.

I won't quibble here with the rest of The Economist's off-target pablum. A thorough fisking would take hours, and in any case, you can't win an argument with an ignorant man. Suffice it to say that these chumps are setting themselves up for a huge surprise.

Oh yes, did I mention? Bat Ye'or is Jewish, and writes under a pseudonym so as to avoid being killed. I'm sure that has nothing to do with why her groundbreaking book was ignored.