Mark William Paules,
I admire Sufism, but it is also much under attack by radical Islamists as an aberrant, incorrect and “wrong” version of Islam.
Its peaceful practitioners and whirling dervish dancers would be more on the radar screen as targets if their numbers were greater. As would that transcendently beautiful Persian poet of yore, Rumi.
The notion that most drove the (madman) Sayyid Qutb, and, by extension, Ayman al Zawahiri, is a notion of “purity” (oddly enough) and the extreme mindset cannot and will not tolerate anything on this Earth that it judges to be not it.
Even the bloodshed and blood itself is tied in with notions of purification.
Muslims have lived in Europe, relatively peacefully, for a long time. Maybe that is the more “secularized” version of Islam to which you refer, Muslims who understand that they are subject to the laws of the country in which they’re living. “Moderate” Muslims embraced “western enlightenment values” a long time ago. Or, if not completely embraced, at least made some kind of peace with them.
However, I don’t see much possibility of integration into European culture of this relatively “new” and virulent strain of Islam.
Nor do I think radical Islamists want to be integrated into the European countries to which they’re migrating, see, for example, recent statements of Islamists in Great Britain who teach exclusion and aloofness from the corrupt, infidel culture surrounding them.(links below)
The extremist slayer of Theo Van Gogh has no regrets for his heroic act in service to the glory of Allah and Allah’s plan for this Earth.
Given declining European birth rates and increasing immigrant birth rates, it is not a stretch to imagine that Islam will rise in Europe through sheer numbers alone.
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2402973.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nislam106.xml
(another Amir Taheri essay)
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={1F890361-DF36-4B4B-823C-77A0F7442FA9}
