Eurabia is a conspiracy theory about the alleged
ArabizationArabization or Arabisation describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...
and
IslamizationIslamization or Islamification has been used to describe the process of a society's conversion to the religion of Islam...
of Europe, and the European leaders' alleged capitulation to
IslamIslam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic influences.
Origin of the term
Eurabia was originally the title of a newsletter published by the Comité européen de coordination des associations d'amitié avec le monde Arabe. According to
Bat Ye'orBat Ye'or is a pseudonym of Gisèle Littman, née Orebi, an Egyptian-born British writer and political commentator who writes about the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East, and in particular the history of Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments.She is the author of eight...
, it was published collaboratively with France-Pays Arabes (journal of the Association de solidarité franco-arabe or ASFA), Middle East International (London), and the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva). During the
1973 oil crisisThe 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
, the
European Economic CommunityThe European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
(predecessor of the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
), had entered into the
Euro-Arab DialogueLaunched in early 1970 and based largely on the Arab policy of France, the idea of a Euro-Arab dialogue took shape in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War and the first oil shock, thanks to French President Georges Pompidou and his Foreign Minister, Michel Jobert. Jobert said that dialogue was based...
(EAD) with the
Arab LeagueThe Arab League , officially called the League of Arab States , is a regional organisation of Arab states in North and Northeast Africa, and Southwest Asia . It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan , Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a...
. Bat Ye'or later used the journal title Eurabia in her books.
In her book
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Bat Ye'or claims that Eurabia is the result of the
French-led European policyLaunched in early 1970 and based largely on the Arab policy of France, the idea of a Euro-Arab dialogue took shape in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War and the first oil shock, thanks to French President Georges Pompidou and his Foreign Minister, Michel Jobert. Jobert said that dialogue was based...
originally intended to increase European power against the United States by aligning its interests with those of the Arab countries. She claims it as a primary cause of European hostility to Israel, referring to joint Euro-Arab foreign policies that she characterizes as anti-American and anti-Zionist. The term is generally used in combination with "
dhimmitudeDhimmitude is a neologism first found in French denoting an attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands. It is derived by adding the productive suffix -tude to the Arabic language adjective dhimmi, which literally means protected and refers to a non-Muslim subject of a...
", a term described as a myth, denoting an alleged attitude of concession, surrender and
appeasementThe term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
towards Islam. Her definition of Eurabia is:
Proponents
The term is often used by writers such as
Oriana FallaciOriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career...
, Robert Spencer,
Daniel PipesDaniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
,
Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Magan Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer, politician who strongly opposes circumcision and female genital cutting. She is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse and is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA...
,
Melanie PhillipsMelanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She began her career on the left of the political spectrum, writing for such publications as The Guardian and New Statesman. In the 1990s she moved to the right, and she now writes for the Daily Mail newspaper, covering political and social...
,
Mark SteynMark Steyn is a Canadian-born writer, conservative-leaning political commentator, and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller...
and several web sites.
In 2006, according to MEMRI, Libyan leader
Muammar GaddafiMuammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
delivered a speech predicting Europe would become a Muslim continent in a "few decades".
Geert WildersGeert Wilders is a Dutch right-wing politician and leader of the Party for Freedom , the third-largest political party in the Netherlands. He is the Parliamentary group leader of his party in the Dutch House of Representatives...
reiterated Gaddafi's prediction that Europe will become Muslim and said "for once in his life, Gaddafi was telling the truth."
Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Magan Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer, politician who strongly opposes circumcision and female genital cutting. She is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse and is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA...
proposes treating radical Islam like
NazismNazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. Domestically, she proposes monitoring the Muslim population, and registering the religious identities of criminals who target women, Jews or homosexuals. She also seeks to ban all Muslim faith schools. She believes all new immigrants should pledge allegiance to the constitution and should be deported immediately if they "break it". Internationally she proposes reduction of the dependance on
oilPetroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
(by way of developing alternate energy).
2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manifesto of
Anders Behring BreivikAnders Behring Breivik is a Norwegian terrorist, paranoid schizophrenic and the confessed perpetrator of the Norway attacks on 22 July 2011: the bombing of government buildings in Oslo that resulted in eight deaths, and the mass shooting at a camp of the Workers' Youth League of the Labour Party...
, the perpetrator of the
2011 Norway attacksThe 2011 Norway attacks were two sequential terrorist attacks against the government, the civilian population and a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011....
, includes a lengthy discussion of and support for the "Eurabia" theory. As a result, the theory received widespread mainstream media attention following the attacks.
Rebuttal and Rejection
In 2009, an anonymously-created video proposing the thesis of Eurabia was uploaded to
YouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, with the title "Muslim Demographics". The video become a YouTube hit with 10 million views. The
BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
debunked the YouTube-video by presenting published population figures and statistics in a video named "Muslim Demographics: The Truth".
The EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, acknowledging that integration of immigrants was a difficult process, nevertheless rejected the concept of Eurabia as "scaremongering".
Simon KuperSimon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective."Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents in 1969, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a lecturer in anthropology at Leiden University. He has also...
in
Financial TimesThe Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
described Ye'or's book as "little-read but influential", and akin to "Protocols of the Elders of Zion in reverse", adding that "though ludicrous, Eurabia became the spiritual mother of a genre", but grants that "mixed with the hysteria are kernels of truth." In another article, Kuper wrote that most academics who have analysed the demographics dismiss the predictions that the EU will have Muslim majorities.
According to Marján and Sapir, the very idea of "Eurabia" is "based on an extremist conspiracy theory, according to which Europe and the Arab states would join forces to make life impossible for
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Islamize the old continent."
Scholar Matt Carr writing in
Race & ClassRace & Class is a peer-reviewed academic journal on contemporary racism and imperialism. It is published quarterly by SAGE Publications on behalf of the Institute of Race Relations.- History :...
expressed his concern that the theory of Eurabia had moved from "an outlandish conspiracy theory" to a more mainstream and "dangerous Islamophobic fantasy". He observes that Ye'or's "book has been well received, not only by established heralds of the Islamic threat, such as Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes and Oriana Fallaci, but by respected historians such as Niall Ferguson and Churchill’s biographer Martin Gilbert, who, whatever their political views, might at least be expected to recognise the absence of historical discipline or methodology when they see it." Carr then seeks to answer "What does the popularity of Eurabia in this circle reveal and what ideological function does it serve?", proposing that "On the one hand, Eurabia is a paranoid fantasy, which recalls the way that ‘international communism’ was perceived during the cold war. But, like the communist threat, it is also a politically convenient fantasy, particularly in the US, where Bat Ye’or’s theses have
been well-received by the advocates of ‘permanent war’ against ‘militant Islam’. [...] At the same
time, the depiction of a corrupt European political class secretly colluding with Islam is a variant on the neocon notion of ‘Old Europe’, whose supposed appeasement of terrorism contrasts with the ‘
moral clarityMoral clarity is a catchphrase associated with American political conservatives. Popularized by William J. Bennett's Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, the phrase was first used in its current context during the 1980s, in reference to the politics of Ronald Reagan.The phrase...
’ emanating from the US. Last but not least, Eurabia also serves to legitimise the broader neocon social and economic agenda, since Europe’s coming demise is partly perceived to be the result of an ageing European
population’s fatal addiction to an ‘unsustainable’ social model based on high pensions, early retirement and social security benefits."
Justin VaisseJustin Vaïsse is a French historian. He specialises in International relations, notably French and US politics and foreign policy; neoconservatism; integration ofIslam in Europe; and transatlantic relations. - Biography :...
, co-author of Integrating Islam Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, seeks to discredit what he calls, "four myths of the alarmist school," using
Muslims in FranceIslam is the second most widely practiced religion in France by number of worshippers, with an estimated total of 5 to 10 percent of the national population.-Statistics:...
as an example. Specifically he wrote that the Muslim population growth rate was lower than that predicted by Eurabia, partly because the fertility rate of immigrants declines with integration. He further points out that Muslims are not a monolithic or cohesive group, and that many Muslims do seek to integrate politically and socially. Finally, he wrote that despite their numbers, Muslims have had little influence on
French foreign policyA charter member of the United Nations, France holds one of the permanent seats in the Security Council and is a member of most of its specialized and related agencies.-Nicolas Sarkozy:...
.
David AaronovitchDavid Aaronovitch is a British author, broadcaster, and journalist. He is a regular columnist for The Times, and author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country and Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History...
writes that the proponents of Eurabia confuse Islamists with mainstream Muslims. He acknowledges that the threat of "jihadist terror" may be real, but that there was no threat of Eurabia. Aaronovitch concludes that those of study conspiracy theories will recognize Eurabia to be a theory that combines the Sad Dupes thesis to the
Enemy WithinA fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
idea.
The Eurabia theory has been compared by British columnist
Johann HariJohann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
to historically antisemitic writing. He calls the two "startlingly similar" and says that "there are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca."
In his book Wars of Blood and Faith, US military analyst
Ralph PetersRalph Peters is a retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel andauthor. As a novelist he has sometimes written under the pen name Owen Parry.-Personal:...
states that far from being about to take over Europe through demographic change, "Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time" and that in the event of a major terrorist attack in Europe, thanks to the "ineradicable viciousness" of Europeans and what he perceives as a historical tendency to over-react to real or perceived threats, European Muslims "will be lucky if they're only deported."
Waleed AlyWaleed Aly is an Australian lawyer, academic and rock musician. He has been a member of the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria and has served as the council's head of public affairs. He is a frequent commentator on Australian Muslim affairs. In 2008 he was selected to...
, in an article published in
The AgeThe Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
(Melbourne), responding to
Raphael IsraeliRaphael Israeli is an Israeli academic, Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the steering committee of the Ariel Center for Policy Research....
's call for controls limiting Muslim immigration to Australia (lest a "critical mass" develop) observed that Raphael Israeli's comments are a cause for concern "because they are not as marginal as they are mad." Aly continues that Israeli's latest book "is an unoriginal appropriation of the 'Eurabia' conspiracy thesis of Jewish writer Bat Ye'or: that Europe is evolving into a post-Judeo-Christian civilisation increasingly subjugated to the jihadi ideology of Muslim migrants" and that the theory has received "enthusiastic support" from intellectuals in Europe and activists in the USA.
See also
- Stop Islamisation of Europe
- Counterjihad
Counterjihad is an Islamophobic, far-right intellectual political current. The roots of the movement goes back to the 1980s, but it did not gain significant momentum until after the September 11 attacks.-Counter-jihad ideology:...
- Finlandization
Finlandization is a term used to describe the influence that one powerful country may have on the policies of a smaller neighboring country.It is generally considered to be pejorative, originating in West German political debate of the late 1960s and 1970s...
Books by Bat Ye'or
- Bat Ye'or, L'antisionisme euro-arabe in Nouveaux visages de l'antisémitisme: haine-passion ou haine historique?, 2001, ISBN 9782913973169
- Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Madison, N.J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8386-4077-X
- Bat Ye'or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide is a book by Bat Ye'or.-QuoteContent :In the book Bat Ye’or chronicles the history of non-Muslims living under the dominion of Islam in the status of dhimmitude using a comprehensive body of primary sources and first hand witness historical records...
, Madison, N.J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8386-3942-9
- Bat Ye'or, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1611474459
External links
Proponents
- Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....
, Eurabia?, The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 2004-04-04
- Bruce Thornton
Bruce S. Thornton is a classicist at California State University, Fresno. He has written for many publications, published several books, and appeared at numerous media venues. He lives in Fresno with his wife and two sons. He is currently a research fellow and W...
, The Civilization of Dhimmitude, 2005-03-26.
- Christopher Caldwell
Christopher Caldwell is an American journalist and senior editor at The Weekly Standard, as well as a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate. His writing also frequently appears in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, where he is a contributing editor to the paper's magazine,...
, Islamic Europe?, The Weekly StandardThe Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
, 2004-10-04
- Adrian Michaels, Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent, telegraph.co.uk, 2009-08-08
Debunkers
- Simon Kuper
Simon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective."Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents in 1969, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a lecturer in anthropology at Leiden University. He has also...
, The Crescent and the Cross, Financial TimesThe Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, 2007-11-10
- Thomas Jones, Short Cuts: How to concoct a conspiracy theory, London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
, July 2005
- John Lichfield, Our Man In Paris: France will never be a Muslim state, The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, 2004-02-03;
- Johann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
, 'America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It' by Mark Steyn, New StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, 2007-03-12;
- Øyvind Strømmen, The Elders of Mecca, 2009-02-22;
- William Underhill, Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong, Newsweek, 2009-07-20;
- Douglas Todd
Douglas George Todd is a Canadian journalist, speaker and author. He is best known as an award-winning writer on spirituality, ethics and diversity with the Vancouver Sun newspaper, in Vancouver, British Columbia.-Biography:...
, Do Muslims seek to dominate the West? And could they do it?, Vancouver Sun, 2009-08-15;
- John Esposito
John Louis Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University...
and Sheila Lalwani, Debunking the myth of a 'Eurabia', San Francisco Chronicle, 2011-02-07;
- Øyvind Strømmen
Øyvind Strømmen is a Norwegian authour and freelance journalist. He is known for his book Eurofascism, and many contributions in Norwegian social- and mainstream media....
, So, what’s the deal with Fjordman?, 2011-08-05;
- Adam Keller
Adam Keller is an Israeli peace activist who was among the founders of Gush Shalom, of which he is a spokesperson.-Political views:...
, Drumont's Jewish disciple, 2008-06-02
- Daniel Luban, The New Anti-Semitism, Tablet Magazine, 2010-08-19
- Matt Carr, Christopher Caldwell dissectedhttp://rac.sagepub.com/content/51/3/81, 2009
- Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan American novelist and essayist.Lalami was born and raised in Rabat, Morocco, where she earned her B.A. in English from Université Mohammed V. In 1991, she received a British Council fellowship to study in England, and she went on to complete a M.A. in Linguistics at...
, The New Inquisition, The Nation, 2009-11-24
- Andrew Moravcsik, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, 2009
- Justin Vaïsse
Justin Vaïsse is a French historian. He specialises in International relations, notably French and US politics and foreign policy; neoconservatism; integration ofIslam in Europe; and transatlantic relations. - Biography :...
, Eurabian Follies, Foreign PolicyForeign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
, 2010-01
- Justin Vaïsse, L'Europe islamisée : réflexions sur un genre littéraire américainhttp://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/0112_europe_islam_vaisse.aspx?p=1, Esprit
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...
, 2010-01