The late Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, predicted that Islam would conquer Europe without even firing a shot. To understand and explain the fate awaiting Europe, it is necessary to listen seriously to what the upper echelons of Islam say to each about their own intentions -- in Arabic. These messages are quite different from those on Western television. What they say to one another is that the mission of Islam is to lead the whole world and eradicate all other religions, as they have been made irrelevant by the Qur'an.
Their doctrine appears openly and without reservation in books and on websites. It is spread in local languages in mosques by the imams in their communities throughout Europe. These communities operate according to an ancient Islamic code: They command immigration; then the forming of enclaves in the host country, then the eventual violent takeover of the host.
Once this process is complete, all the Islamic communities will unite to form the Islamic Caliphate. It will have no borders and no other identity. Then there will be Peace. This, they say, was the state of affairs under Muhammad and this will be the state of affairs in the future.
It is markedly apparent to us, however, that the world refuses to listen to what the Islamists are saying. Anyone who dares to issue a warning is called, among other names, an alarmist or a racist.
On the rare occasion when an expert does warn of the coming danger, the global media turn him into an object of scorn and derision. There seems to be less than no wish even to look at Islamist ideology. Al Jazeera, run by the Emir of Qatar to promote radical Islam, has instructed its American division not to use the words "terrorist," "militant," "extremist," "jihad" and "Islamist." Does anyone seriously think they are doing that to promote transparency?
Throughout history, society has disregarded -- and often even persecuted -- any messenger who says things it does not like, such as Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600 for wounding the world's narcissism by proposing that stars were other suns that could have other planets. Recently, global terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who made the 1994 documentary "Terrorists Amongst Us: Jihad in America," about the dangers the U.S. would face from radical Islam, has been vilified and ridiculed for an exaggerated comment about Birmingham. His apology may have reflected an error about the facts, but his central message was right. It did not negate his warning about the future danger these Muslim enclaves will present to Europe. Paris is not the only city with areas off-limits to police. Every tourist who goes to Marseilles, Köln, Berlin and Frankfurt is warned by local inhabitants about places to be bypassed.
The same is true of Stephen Coughlin, who was a Major in a Military Intelligence unit of the U.S. Army. Asked, as a lawyer, to prepare a report on Islamic sharia law, he delivered, in July 2007, the most meticulous, painstaking, thoroughly-documented report: "To Our Great Detriment": Ignoring What Extremists Say about Jihad." He was promptly fired. He had apparently come up with the "wrong" answer. The U.S. Army, it seems, had expected to hear that sharia law was not much different from the Magna Carta.
Commentators in Europe all had opinions about the terrorist attacks at the Charlie Hebdo office and the kosher supermarket in Paris. They reverentially discussed the motivation of the terrorists, the anti-Muslim atmosphere in Europe and concern over additional global jihad attacks, but showed distressingly little understanding of the meaning of jihad. If jihad is an inner struggle, and the people who practice it are mujahideen, there are a dizzying number of bloodthirsty, cut-throat, knife-wielding men out there waging inner struggle.
Charlie Hebdo's cover after the attack illustrates the very weakness of Europe that is exploited by the Islamists. The cover shows Muhammad, with a tear, aligning himself with European humanism. To every Muslim on the planet, it shouted France's weakness, its increasing surrender to the Islamist threat, and the growing strength of Islam.
The real threat to Europe does not come from local Muslims who went to fight in the ranks of ISIS and have already been returning. The real threat comes from the Muslims already in their enclaves in Europe, who are about to attack their host countries. They have seen that their riots, arson, vandalism and robberies result in frightening away the Westerners, the fire department and the police. Last New Year's Eve alone in France, "only" 940 cars were torched – down, the French Interior Ministry proudly announced, from 1,067 the year before.
This tendency -- either to kill the messenger or scorn him -- also often results in blaming the victim. The Jews must have "done something," the notion goes, for the Nazis to want to exterminate all of them; they "should have fought back," and "it must have been their own fault."
Radical Islamists assure the world that the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket were just a Zionist plot. They claim that the motive for the attack on the kosher supermarket was to convince Jews to immigrate to Israel, to help Benjamin Netanyahu win the upcoming Israeli election. Iran's accomplice, Argentina's President Cristina Fernández Kirchner, tried the same tactic, hinting that the Jews were behind the recent murder of Alberto Nisman, the federal prosecutor who was about to testify how Argentina's leaders covered-up Iran's responsibility for the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center (AMIA) in Buenos Aires.
There has also been collaboration between European governments and terrorist organizations in cynical deals, supposedly to prevent attacks on European soil. This collusion is most likely the reason France has refused to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization for so long. It is also most likely the reason Hassan Nasrallah was so ridiculously quick to condemn the terrorist attacks in Paris, despite his relentless support for killing "infidels" and those who "disrespect" Islam. This list includes such international "criminals" as Salman Rushdie for his book, Satanic Verses; Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel, and Yasser Arafat for signing the Oslo Accords.
Another suspicious example of "cozy" international relations is the "temporary" EU removal of Hamas from its list of designated terrorist groups, despite it being crystal-clear that Hamas is devastating its own people as well as the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and that it never misses a chance to sabotage any attempt to reach a peace agreement.
What is not clear so far is what France and the rest of Europe will receive in return for their stupidity, apart -- as we keep seeing -- from the perpetually broken promise of "no further attacks."
Europe, hedonist and dishonest, is apparently willing to cut a deal with any violent dictator, including the most potentially violent: a nuclear-threshold Iran.
Today's apologists for terrorist organizations are tomorrow's victims.
Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.
Paul Leslie