RUTHFULLY YOURS

Germany will be Islamic in about two decades. The process by which this happens and the results of this transformation will be consequential beyond measure, not just for Europe, but for the world. And Germany’s acceptance of Islam as its national religion will be peaceful and seamless. In making this prediction, I am certainly not alone; many books are being written about the fall of Europe. Yet while many assume this is the “end” of Europe, that the wave of Islamic immigration and migration will cause a collapse,. I am not so certain.

Europe is not “dying.” Western Civilization as we have known it for two millenniums is dying, but Europe as a grouping of over 700 million people with technology and economies that match America and China is far from dying.

Germany, a little over 70 years after the utter destruction of the Third Reich and Hitler’s dream of ruling Europe, is now the dominant European power. The Wehrmacht may not be blitzkrieging its way through France and Poland anymore, but Germany does rule Europe. We call Europe weak, old and dying. Maybe someday, but Germany, at this point in time, is none of those things. Possessing the fourth largest economy in the world, with its exports and manufacturing, its education system and workforce, Germany’s financial might is anyone’s envy. Berlin is the de facto European capital.

But despite the past decades of progress and the build-up of technology, Western Europe is racked with guilt; a bloody century that left tens of millions of dead will do that to a continent and a civilization. WWI itself seemed to pull the cord out of what remained of Christian Europe. By the time of the Armistice, Christendom had collapsed. With the breakup of the Royal Empires came the guilt of colonialism, imperialism, and the shadow cast by the “white man’s burden” loomed large over European culture. And that is just Western Europe. What specifically of Germany?

The culture and the nation that gave the world so much wonder and beauty had been betrayed by its own hubris. The culture of Bach, Goethe, Beethoven and Schiller became the nation of Hitler and the SS and the death of over 11 million in the camps, 6 million of them Jews. The horror of Auschwitz, the vision of the camps, the death pallor will hang over Germany, and Germans, forever.

Christianity, which died on the fields of Flanders in the First War, utterly failed Germany. Yes, there were the Bonhoeffers and thousands more Christian martyrs that died in the camps at the hands of the Nazis, but on the whole, the churches, Lutheran and Catholic alike, share in the nation’s guilt. The Lutheran Church of old Prussia, in particular, acquiesced and was silent, its head bowed in forever shame.

Muslim immigration can’t be stopped, nor the superiority of Western cultural and social conventions actively promoted. A safe and encouraging environment can’t be offered to Muslims who wish to leave behind their intolerant creed. We are stuck, I’m afraid, with just a hope and a prayer.

We live only in a thin slice of evolving history. It is impossible in our short adult lives to know in what ‘age’ our lifetimes will be placed by future historians. Those living in the so-called Dark Ages in Europe in 600; those living in the Renaissance in 1450, or in the Enlightenment in 1750, didn’t know they were living in such defining times.

What I would like to do is to take a trip to the future and speculate on how the mullahs will describe our current age, say, from the beginning of this century to its end. The mullahs, you say? Well, yes, I’m simply going where time and tide appear to be taking us.

How about the Age of ‘…Renaissance Reversed?’ or ‘…Mohammed’s Mastery’, ‘…Sharia Supremacy’ or …Christendom Crushed? The Age of Papal Delinquency has the ring of verisimilitude to it. ‘Ottoman Mark II (bigger and better than ever before)’? These are all possibilities which might pass mullah muster.

Or maybe those in charge of such things will have a sense of humour. The Age of Useful Idiots might prompt a chuckle? The Age of Refugees are Welcome Here strikes a sense of delicious irony and might occasion a wry smile. The Age of the Great Hoax is a bit too cryptic and might be confused with global warming — which long since will have been consigned to the box of infidel tricks designed to damage Arabia.

My pick is none of the above. I suggest that the Age of the Religion of Peace has everything going for it. It carries authenticity for believers while leaving incorrigible infidels clueless and, in point of fact, headless. It marries Allah’s forgiveness with his righteous wrath. It can’t be bettered, and to think George W. Bush more or less invented the term after 9/11! The moral of that story is that killing thousands of people is no barrier to being anointed as peaceful by those desperately desperate not to offend.

The game is being lost and we don’t know it because we occupy only a thin slice of passing events. We can’t comprehend the big picture. But we are not akin to beings in a two-dimensional world for which up and down is unseeable. We can surely spot the portents of the evolving future. Here, very broadly, is what we know.

Muslim populations of Christian (Western) countries have grown sharply in recent decades and are continuing to grow disproportionately; both because of immigration and relatively high fertility rates. Christian populations of Muslim countries have declined sharply in recent decades and are continuing to decline sharply because of oppression. (There is a clue in there somewhere.) Islamism is growing in Turkey and in Muslim nations in Southeast Asia; and, in fact, wherever you look.

Muslim scripture is supremacist in its nature and demands that Muslims rid the world of other faiths and establish Dar al-Islam. Tens upon tens of thousands of resolute and devout preachers carry this message to 1.7 billion (and growing) Muslims; including to so-called ‘moderate’ ones. The spiritual counterweight is flimsy and getting flimsier.

With perhaps the possible exception of the United States, Christianity in the West is a pale imitation of its former state. Its feckless and faith-emaciated leaders proffer inter-faith dialogue to “ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15); they shouldn’t wonder at the grisly fate likely awaiting their successors. Assertive atheists show more conviction than do Christian leaders. And good luck if you expect anyone to die in a ditch for atheism.

It is one thing to spot the trend towards Islamic dominance; it is quite another to arrest it. In particular, tolerant societies in these politically correct times have no feasible way of countering intolerance when it is practised and preached by a minority religion ready to claim victimhood at the drop of a hat. I entertained the thought that it could, but it can’t be done. And it certainly can’t be done when Muslim populations become large enough to have political clout; and that isn’t too large.

This is the tragic legacy of the post colonial movement in Africa which was called “the emerging continent” and with exceptions like Botswana, Namibia, and Kenya so many nations are riddled with tribal warfare, starvation, epidemics and genocide….and the so called “African-American” caucus in Congress and the Black Lives Matter movements do nothing and care not a whit….It is an appalling apathy…..rsk

YANGWALI, Uganda—The day Bungwile Mabuya discovered her husband’s mangled body near her house in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kasai region, she grabbed her children and ran.

The mother of five, who found refuge in a sprawling lakeside refugee camp here, is one of roughly 1.5 million Congolese fleeing a brutal power struggle pitting President Joseph Kabila against traditional chiefs, who still administer large swaths of the vast central African nation.

Government forces and local militias have killed more than 3,300 people in Ms. Mabuya’s home region since October, according to the Catholic Church, which has had its priests count the bodies since then. On Tuesday, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, accused Mr. Kabila’s government of arming a new militia he said has slaughtered hundreds of villagers—including pregnant women and toddlers—in Kasai. A government spokesman has denied the allegations.

The killings reflect the unraveling of a complex network of power trading and patronage, backed by amateur fighters unchecked by the official security apparatus, that has helped secure Mr. Kabila’s rule for the past 16 years.

Ms. Mabuya said her husband, Constantine Masumbe, had stepped outside their hut one December night when she saw three men wearing army uniforms drag him away, accusing him of being a member of Kamuina Nsapu, an antigovernment militia the U.N. says is recruiting child soldiers and raping underage girls in the central Kasai region.

Ms. Mabuya, who found her husband’s body the next morning, denied that her husband belonged to Kamuina Nsapu and said he was a victim of a government crackdown that has intensified since Mr. Kabila’s official mandate expired in December. Mr. Kabila, who is barred from running again by the nation’s constitution, has put off elections, citing a lack of funds and security issues.

“We could not even hold a burial ceremony. Everyone was running,” Ms. Mabuya said.

Tensions in impoverished Kasai escalated last year, when Mr. Kabila refused to recognize Jean-Pierre Mpandi, a chief who founded Kamuina Nsapu and was friendly with Mr. Kabila’s political opponents. In August, government forces fighting Kamuina Nsapu killed Mr. Mpandi. Aid agencies say more than a dozen other traditional chiefs across five provinces have since been killed.

Traditional chiefs are selected according to local custom and perform religious ceremonies, but receive government salaries. Under Congo’s constitution they are required to be apolitical and resolve local disputes, forming a vital link between the capital Kinshasa and remote villages. CONTINUE AT SITE

Saudi Arabia has resisted modernity since its founding in 1932. But the political sands are shifting, and the change will accelerate with Wednesday’s appointment of Mohammed bin Salman as Crown Prince.

King Salman broke with decades of tradition with his royal decree that ousted his nephew, security czar Mohammed bin Nayef, in favor of Salman’s son, Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi crown has typically passed from one octogenarian or septuagenarian brother to another, so the rise of the 31-year-old son as heir designate is a monumental development.

This is all the more remarkable given the young leader’s reformist inclinations. The Saudis face a triple challenge in falling oil prices, a youth demographic bulge and Iranian imperialism. The Crown Prince believes the answer is an assertive foreign policy that unites Sunni Arab states against Tehran, combined with domestic reform that weans the Kingdom off oil.

This regional vision took shape soon after King Salman ascended the throne in 2015. As Defense Minister (a portfolio he will retain), the Crown Prince emerged as the architect of the Saudi-led military campaign to oust the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen.

The Yemen operation has been long and hard, but it has largely succeeded in cutting off Iranian supplies to the Houthis and boosted the confidence of Arab states. Mohammed bin Salman has also spearheaded efforts to diplomatically isolate Qatar over its two-faced policy of cooperating with the West while funding Islamist groups like Hamas.

Last year the Crown Prince launched Vision 2030, a reform program to diversify the Saudi economy and expand the role of private enterprise. The heart of the plan is to boost the private share of the economy to 65% by 2030 from about 40%, and reduce the government’s dependence on oil for revenues, now at 70%.

That’s a tall order in a Kingdom that has historically offered its citizens oil-funded, cradle-to-grave welfare in exchange for little say in politics. Many Saudis have grown up to expect high-paying government jobs that are increasingly hard to subsidize with oil at under $50 a barrel. Unleashing the private economy will also require liberating Saudi women to enter the work force—the right to drive would be a start—and that has already triggered clashes with the Wahhabi clerical establishment.

Earlier this year the government was forced to reverse a pay cut for state employees. Yet Mohammed bin Salman has made progress in other areas. A plan to offer public shares in the state-run oil company, Aramco, is moving ahead. Concerts are performed and movie theaters are opening for the first time in the Kingdom, allowing young Saudis access to entertainment and social interaction that their peers nearly everywhere else take for granted.

His appointment as Crown Prince will strengthen his hand by putting to rest competing claims to the throne from more conservative corners of the House of Saud with its 7,000 princes. A moderate and prosperous Saudi Arabia would bolster stability across the Arab world and is squarely in the U.S. national interest. Washington should support and encourage the young prince as he pursues change.