Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi: Europe Should Embrace Islam
Posted: Sunday, September 12, 2010
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
Libyan strongman Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi has once again surprised the western press with his views. This time it had to do with a call for Europeans to turn to Islam.
Colonel Gaddafi said this during a lecture in Rome before an audience of young women, mostly university students, who were paid 70 - 80 euros (90 - 100 US dollars) to listen to his wisdom and views on Islam.
The Libyan leader reportedly told his audience that women are more respected in Libya than in the west and that he was willing to help them find Libyan husbands.
Many thinkers would agree with Gaddafi that Europe has mostly lost her spiritual roots and drifted into aimlessness. As there is no such thing as an ideological void, many Europeans have hastened to embrace a variety of views that can hardly be characterised as rational. No wonder, then, that new age, astrology and extreme forms of environmentalism have come to be part of the new Europe.
Gaddafi's timing was probably not the best possible one, coming as it did on the eve of the ninth anniversary of 9/11 2001. He could, of course, have done it on purpose to give the popular media something else to think about than potential Qur'an burning and angry protests, by providing a more human face to Islam with bodyguards who look like fashion models.
Whether he succeeded in this is an altogether different issue.
However, the trouble the west in general and Europe in particular is facing cannot be solved by embracing a foreign religion that is known to cause more problems than solutions. Perhaps we should heed the advice that the British author G. K. Chesterton gave a century or so ago: " Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."
Chesterton was right. Christianity does not promise an easy road for us but it provides a way that protects us from the swamps caused by post-Christianity's often irrational detours.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Great article, Joel. Very informative and thought-provoking. My question is: Are Gaddafi's angels exempt from the Sharia Law? Well-written and interesting piece.Thanks, Nenita. I think Gaddafi is above the Sharia Law. At least he seems to think so.
Nicely done. Gaddafi is a news-hound and his fifteen minutes expired long ago. He wants others to embrace what he himself has not, and that is Islam. He talks the talk, yet in the Middle East and here he is seen as a fool. Good job.Thanks Michael. Yes, he seems to enjoy being in the limelight.
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