Amr Khaled on European Muslims

10 May 2008

Speakers: Amr Khaled

Amr Khaled believes that the realistic potential for Muslims to be the majority demographic in Europe in twenty years angers the West and leads it to perceive Islam as a threat. Khaled sees the Danish cartoons controversy as a clash between conflicting priorities: freedom of speech is sacred to the West just like the Koran and the Prophet Muhammed are sacred to Islam. He says the cartoons are part of a larger initiative to provoke Muslims, making them reactionary, and thereby creating a pretext with which to drive them out of Europe. What else, he asks, do Europeans gain by offending Muslims in different ways all the time?

Khaled says that the 25-30 million Muslims in Europe need to infiltrate mainstream society, to become firmly established and to show the West how respectable and successful they are. It is only then that the plan to drive Muslims out of Europe will be abandoned.