IS EUROPE AWAKENING TO THE THREAT?

Tony Blankley thinks so.

This Christmastime could be the moment when Western Europe finally joins our war on terrorism. Anti-Islamist fear and anger from the mouths of the European volk is breaking through the surface calm perpetuated by the elite European appeasers. The assassination and mutilation of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic — and the retaliatory firebombings of mosques by ethnic Dutchmen — have forced high European leaders and news outlets to begin to publicly face up to the implications of September 11, 2001 and the migration of Muslims in large and hostile numbers into the heart of Europe.

I've often been critical of the people of Western Europe. It seems to me that they long ago lost their will to defend themselves. I've heard Blankley make some of the same points, so I believe he has also come to that conclusion. But now he believes the tide is changing, and he looks to Germany as much as the Netherlands for evidence of this change.

Heating the German national broth is the re-emergence of a call for German "Leitkultur," the term for the dominant and guiding culture. Der Spiegel quotes Christian Democratic leader Joerg Schoenbohm: "In the Middle Ages, ghettos were founded to marginalize the Jews. Today, some of the foreigners who live with us in Germany have founded their own ghettos because they scorn us Germans. Those who come here have to adopt the German Leitkultur. Our history has developed over a thousand years. We cannot allow that this basis of our commonality be destroyed by foreigners." Edmund Stoibel, the Bavarian Christian Social Union's candidate for chancellor two years ago, said: "We have to defend the Christian tradition of our country." Even the Social Democrat Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, called for banning headscarves for schoolteachers in German public schools.

Read the whole article. Blankley thinks Europe may now finally be aware of the threat posed to them by Islamofascism. I hope he is right.