by Giulio Meotti
“I don’t know if the United States will survive in a recognizable form for my generation,” laments the great playwright David Mamet, the screenwriter of The Untouchables and other film classics, who has written an essay worth memorizing, titled: “This is a time of terrifying change.”
I know that Europe will not survive in a recognizable form for my generation. It is already happening.
Once I stopped for a local beer, the famous Stella Artois, in Leuven’s splendid square, the Oude Markt. What a postcard: magnificent buildings dating back to the seventeenth century, the grand architecture of Flemish Brabant, outdoor cafés, tree-lined avenues, civic order.
At the time, Leuven even had a white left-wing mayor, one of those who had traded class struggle for the intoxication of power but who still practiced “old Europe.”
Now the mayor of Leuven is named Mohamed Ridouani. He is still on the left, but he is Muslim, and he has just banned the UEFA Europa League match between the Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise and the Israeli side Hapoel Be’er Sheva, citing “security reasons.”
“We cannot guarantee security,” the mayor declared.
It does not matter that a third of the Israeli team is made up of Arabs (how many Arab teams have Jewish players?).
Meanwhile, the Belgian flight attendants’ union does not want to fly to Israel. They invoke “ethical reasons.”
Brussels Airlines’ African network includes 18 sub-Saharan destinations: dictatorships with leaders in power for decades, military juntas, and sham elections. Burkina Faso: military junta after coups. Burundi: authoritarian regime. Cameroon: Paul Biya in power for 40 years. Guinea: military junta. Uganda: Yoweri Museveni in power for decades.
Do you think the good Belgians have a problem flying to those countries and to every Islamic country? No, because the Caliphate has already arrived.
They also canceled the soccer match between Belgium and Israel in Brussels. There too it was “simply impossible” to guarantee security. Then Israeli frisbee athletes were driven out of Ghent, which excluded them from an international tournament over “security problems.”
“If we look at what is happening in Belgium, there is reason to fear the emergence of an emirate in the heart of a contrite Europe, blinded by guilt and cowardice,” wrote the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud, author of The Meursault Investigation (Bompiani).
The Caliphate does not arrive with black flags on the cathedrals. It arrives through liberal institutions that call “inclusion” what is, in reality, a permanent negotiation of their own principles.
“Soon a Belgian Caliphate,” comments the courageous Moroccan-Belgian Fadila Maaroufi.
All that’s left is to toast with another Stella Artois to the end of Europe?
When the mayor of the capital Brussels advertises “Salaam Cola,” the halal Coca-Cola, the Caliphate has arrived.
When an imam goes to Parliament to recites the Quran, the Caliphate has arrived.
When the mayor of the capital says that “all the mosques in my city are in the hands of Salafists,” the Caliphate has arrived.
When there is a reenactment of October 7 with terrorists dressed in keffiyehs and military clothes simulating deadly attacks, the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can found a party that wants to impose sharia, the Caliphate has arrived.
But it is above all from what you can NO longer do that you understand.
When you can no longer organize a conference of conservative intellectuals and the mayor sends the police like his private militia to bar the doors, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer celebrate Christmas and Easter at school, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer walk through certain neighborhoods without a veil or in revealing clothes, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you are sentenced to six months in prison for displaying a banner that says “Stop Islamization” as “incitement to hatred,” be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer talk in school about the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, or Voltaire mocking Turkish culture, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer organize museum tributes to massacred cartoonists, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer go into the largest bookstore and order a book critical of multiculturalism, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When Jews abandon certain neighborhoods and cities, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
When you can no longer walk around wearing a kippah, be certain: the Caliphate has arrived.
It has arrived, the Caliphate. Be certain of it.