"There are two reasons behind the problematic nature of European Islam: the fact that there has been no reform in Islam, and the fact that Sunni Islam has not internalized its minority status [in Europe].

“[As to the first reason:] Islam is still a primitive religion that has not been reformed, as has European Christianity. Nor has it been guided in the right direction, as European Judaism has been.

“[As to the second reason:] Sunni Islam, which has, for the past 15 centuries, been accustomed to always being the ruling majority, still has not taken in the fact that it is a minority in Europe - and in Iraq. One of the principle reasons for terrorism in Iraq is that the Sunni minority refuses to recognize the reality of its being a minority, as well as the resulting fact that it does not have a monopoly on rule over the Shi’ite majority and the Kurdish minority.

“The Sunni Muslim minority in Europe refuses to obey the universal laws and follow the universal values of European societies, because it subconsciously views the French majority as dhimmis who have no right to rule over their Muslim masters.

“It is this mentality that has, to this day, prevented the emergence of a [branch of] Sunni jurisprudence that would provide a theoretical treatment for the condition of the European Muslim minority and would present Muslims with jurisprudential rulings making it easier for them to conform to European laws and values.

“In the Talmud, there is a maxim that advises Jews that the laws of the state in which one lives are valid, obligatory, and apply to all. This Talmudic maxim could be a founding principle for a European Islamic minority jurisprudence that would make the European Muslim feel that he is a European citizen, and not just a temporary resident in the ‘abode of war.’

French Muslims Should Follow the Example of the French Jews Under Napoleon

“In truth, the Jewish minority’s cultural assimilation into the values of the French Republic presents a precedent that would be worthwhile for French and European Muslims to follow in order to effect their assimilation into the values of the Republic.

“In 1807, Napoleon convened the French Jews’ religious establishment, the Sanhedrin, in order to turn the French Jews into ‘proper citizens’ by bringing Jewish religious law into conformity with French secular values, so that the Jews would become part of the French nation after having formerly been an insular religious community.

“The Sanhedrin responded positively to Napoleon’s request, and in 1808 the institution called the Consistoire was established, and it declared that the political aspects of the Torah were no longer valid, since the Jews were no longer a nation.

“In this way, all forms of religious-legal independence were foregone. In practice, [this meant] that marriages and divorces could only be concluded through the civil registry, and mixed marriages were recognized, in accordance with French civil law.

“Thus French Jews were culturally assimilated into modern French society. The result was beneficial to both the Jews and to France, as demonstrated by the historical reality, and this has been recognized by discerning people among French Jews - and first and foremost by Joel Mergui, the head of the Israelite Consistoire for Paris and its suburbs, who recently said of the 1808 Sanhedrin pact with Napoleon: ‘This founding pact instituted the Jewish community as an assimilated part of the Republic, and it remained valid for 200 years.

“‘(…)The Jews of France demonstrated, under all circumstances, their threefold loyalty as included in the Sanhedrin’s reply in March, 1807: 1) loyalty to the laws of the Republic - not only have the Jews of France not put this in doubt or disputed this, but they are even the defenders of these laws and values; 2) loyalty to the nation - the Jews of France have never failed to defend their country; 3) and loyalty to their faith and to their history.’

“The French Muslim minorities should do as the Sanhedrin did, and pronounce that they are abandoning [those Koranic] verses that are obsolete and no longer valid for their place and time, and that they are abandoning the shari’a, accepting mixed marriages, and adopting ‘the pact of threefold loyalty’.

“It appears that the French Muslim elite has begun to draw inspiration from the French Jewish minority. Ghaleb Bin Sheikh, an important member of the French [Muslim] religious elite, has stated that ‘it goes without saying that there are passages in the Koran of a belligerent and aggressive nature… and (we need) to publicly state that the sociological ramifications of this part of the Koran are obsolete.’ [As the saying goes,] heavy rain begins with a trickle.”

“Cultural Relativism… Is a Nihilist Philosophy”

“MM: Why do some European intellectuals and some English and American newspapers support the orientation that is opposed to Muslims’ cultural assimilation in European societies?

“LL: This is a strange phenomenon. In my opinion there are three reasons for it.

“The first reason is [a matter of] ritual: If the right makes a decision when it is in power, or adopts a position when in the opposition, then the left must automatically oppose it - not out of conviction that the decision or position is wrong, but just to differentiate itself…

“Second: a feeling of culpability. A wide swath of European intellectuals is afflicted with what psychology terms moral masochism, that is, an unjustified feeling of culpability. Colonialism arose centuries ago, and like any historical phenomenon, it had its positive and its negative aspects. There is no objective justification for these intellectuals to support the hijab, or the slaughtering of the Feast of Sacrifice lamb in the bathtub, or female circumcision, or exorcising jinns from epileptics, using the Koran and beatings - sometimes to the point of death, as has actually happened in France. This support [for these phenomena] is a sick reaction, the explanation for which lies in [the field of] psychology.

“Third: cultural relativism. This orientation is incomparably more dangerous than the aforementioned two, because it starts out from a philosophical conviction that is nearly predominant not just in Europe, but in all of the West, as well as in the Islamic world.

“The preachers of this [cultural relativism] are the Islamists, who [use it to] justify their clinging to barbaric medieval religious values and practices - such as the claims that ‘a woman is deficient in her mind and her religion,’ as the hadith says; and that she is unfit for rule, because ‘a people who place a woman over them will not prosper,’ as another hadith says; and that a woman is ‘a perpetual minor,’ as Islamic jurisprudence says; and that the dissimilarity between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims is an essential one, i.e., that it is a divine decision that was written in the celestial Koran before the creation of men and women and Muslims and non-Muslims.

“Thus, this dissimilarity, which is the product of culture and history, is presented by [the Islamists] as something natural, or rather a universal law that is above discussion, and is above the lives of women and non-Muslims.

“MM: What are the mainstays of the philosophy of relativism, and what are its implications?

“LL: The philosophy of cultural relativism, especially when it claims to be an absolute truth, is a nihilist philosophy that bases itself on: 1) the denial of the existence of any fixed value, in particular the moral and humanist values that serve as a basis of human society; and 2) the equivalence of all values and the equivalence of all cultures - [the equivalence of] primitive, cannibalistic peoples to the cultures of civilized, modern nations…

“Cultural relativists turn historical relativism into an absolute ideological relativism. This is a mistake and a danger. A sound mind recognizes that there are universal human values, such as human rights. If these are not recognized and respected - be it with a minimal recognition - then society becomes Darwinist, with survival for the strongest, and the entire world becomes a jungle, ruled by the law of the jungle, and the boundaries between the values of good and evil disappear…”
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD172907