From: tsanasta@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Anastassiades)
Subject: Re: Conflict could lay foundations for Islamic state in Europe.
Organization: Advanced Rotorcraft Technology 
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 21:11:23 EDT

In article <1992Aug17.214053.14717@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>
>Milan, I asked about fundamentalists, not Muslims. B-H may become
>an Islamic state in Europe, so what? We have 40+ Christian states,
>is that much better? There are fundamentalist Muslims and there
>are fundamentalist Christians. None of them are very nice guys.
>Thankfully none of them seems to prevail in Europe.

Responding to this paragraph, let me outline something that 
many participants of this discussion seem to be missing:

Turkish tribes marching from central Asia, marched and conquered
lands (and people) that used to be Christian/European.  Those
people were Muslim.

The conquered people had to fight to gain their independence.
The conquerors were seen as "barbarians," ruthless warriors
on horses, who conquered by using their fighting skills.  They were
never seen as contributors to Western style civilazations, but 
rather as people who destroyed (and not adopt) the civilizations
that they came to conquer.

They were the last wave of "outsiders" who tried - sometimes successfully -
to penetrate the walls of the already existing and older Western European 
civilizations.

This was the case from the 13th century until about the 
beginning of this century when the Ottoman Empire was reduced
in size gradually, until it gave way to modern Turkey.

Presently, it is the West that holds the wealth of this planet,
it is the West that has aggressively imposed itself on all the
Continents, often exterminating or pushing aside the local 
populations (American Indians, blacks in South Africa, etc.),
it is the West that holds the power and dictates its will on 
the rest of the planet.  

So far I have only presented the facts and - whether anybody
likes it, or not - that's the way it is.

To the West, the Muslim world today, as represented by the Saddam
Husseins, the Moammar Khaddafis, the Khomeinis, the Emirs of 
Kuwait, the regimes that will cut thieves' arms, and execute 
people who have committed adultery, the lack of a single 
democratic regime in all of the Muslim world, etc., etc., is
something that is frightening, alien, and threatening.

To get back to Erland's paragraph, no, the West does not 
want a Muslim state in the heart of Europe, because it is
afraid that it will align itself with the Eastern powers
of Islam, and will be a threat to it!

As well as people (Westerners, especially leaders), mask this
fear, it is all too evident.  It would be extremely nice if
we could have Christians, Jews, Muslims, Confucians, etc.
coexist peacefully in one world.  Just like it would be 
great if we could have "people" instead of Americans, Pakistanis, 
Italians, Chinese... But humans will always find something, be it
religion, be it national sentiments, be it regional sentiments, 
whatever, to use as a means of distinguishing them from each 
other.  

If we take all this into consideration, it is all too obvious, why 
the West confronts the East, why black Americans and white
Americans have problems coexisting, why Pakistanis and Indians 
have 2 different countries to live in, etc., I hope you get my point... 

I know that the East has similar views of the West as being "evil"
And they probably have some very valid arguments to support that
view...

But I am trying to be realistic here, and I cannot see any reason
why the West - from a position of absolute power - would ever
want to give away any of that power voluntarily to someone else
(Muslims, Easterners, Martians...).  

To claim that the strengthening of Muslims/the East would even 
remotely benefit the West, is a grand illusion, and is just not
realistic in today's world!

Tassos Anastassiades
Mountain View, CA