Eleven self-styled “sharia police” vigilantes who patrolled the streets of a town in western Germany and attempted to dissuade people from drinking alcohol were recently arrested on charges of unlawful assembly and misuse of uniforms. The young men, who were led by a German convert to Islam, wore fluorescent orange jackets with the words “Shariah Police” on the back, and told drinkers they had declared the area around Wuppertal railway station to be a “sharia-controlled zone” (“These few teen yobs do not speak in our name,” said Aiman Mazyek, of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims).
Separately, four Islamists went on trial accused of planning to bomb the railway station in Bonn in December 2012. And in an unconnected incident, three suspected members of al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group, were arrested at Frankfurt airport.
Epicureanism is a “live-and-let live” philosophy that stands for moderation, empathy for the poor, friendship, and working together towards a pleasant life, free of poverty and fear. On all countsradical islamism is intolerable. You can choose to believe in supernaturalism if you wish, and that is fine, just as long as you don’t try to convert me or my fellow Epicureans. But when vigilantes appear or heads are cut off …….well, words fail me.
Radical islamism is a symptom of reaction against a century or more of powerlessness, secularization and lousy, autocratic rule in the Middle East. As the West is perceived to be losing overwhelming power, the settlement so arrogantly acheived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire has fallen apart, and the religious schism within Islam has come to the fore. We are powerless to sort this out. It is a mirror image of the 30 Years War in Europe, and will eventually lead to a new order, just as the religious wars of the 17 th Century led to a new order in the West. To get ourselves between the warring parties is a recipe for failure.
But what we could do, supported by many thoughtful people everywhere, is to listen to the criticism of Western media and social values (bin Laden said it all!). It has become license posing as liberty, coarse, common and socially destructive. I refer to the violent films, videos, hooking up, gun violence, cyber-bullying and anonymous vulgarity and lack of manners, tolerance and consideration. On this decline of civilization I agree with the islamists.