Naser Khader: there are now those with a vested interest in making matters worse

Naser Khader, a Syrian-born member of the Parliament of Denmark and a founder of Demokratiske Muslimer, points out that Muslims are being deliberately provoked and manipulated into causing trouble for the West, in this article from the National Review Online (via Tao of Defiance):

As for Khader, the cartoons hadn’t bothered him too much (“if you don’t like them, don’t buy the newspaper”). There had been “such cartoons before,” and there hadn’t been any trouble. The real significance of Jyllands-Posten’s impious portfolio was that it had appeared “at the right time, and in the right place” to be exploited by people who wanted to foment “confrontation,” which could be milked for “money and support.”

To grasp exactly why Khader thinks that “money and support” might be required, and by whom, is to glimpse a far darker future than conventional pessismism about Europe would have it. Given profound cultural differences, made even more difficult by continued mass immigration, integrating the continent’s new Muslims minorities was never going to be easy, but as Khader sees it there are now those with a vested interest in making matters worse. He’s not a believer in the much-advertised clash of civilizations, an idea with something of a bleak, tectonic inevitability to it, but in a different sort of conflict altogether: something more controlled, planned, and directed.

It’s a conflict being promoted, Khader believes, by Islamists (“well organized,” he argues, and established worldwide) set on “controlling Muslim society in the West.” After that, the next objective will be to establish regimes more to their liking in the Muslim heartland. And then? “A global jihad. That’s why we have to stop them now.” [...]

I had made the same observation in a previous post about the reaction to the Pope's lecture at the University of Regensburg:

But I suspect that is precisely what these provocateur Muslim clerics want. [...] The political clout and personal prestige of many Muslim clerics depend precisely on maintaining the ignorance of their followers and limiting their followers' exposure to ways of thought not sanctioned by them. If the common Muslims could examine their situation dispassionately, they would realize that they are being manipulated into acting in a way that is beneficial to their leaders but harmful to themselves. Thus the Muslim clerics use every opportunity and find any excuse that they can to inflame the masses.

It is very clear that the protests against the Pope, as well as earlier protests against Danish cartoons and anything else that offends Islamic sensibilities (which seems to be pretty much everything), are staged. The theatrics are carefully managed to create the impression that the clerics are more powerful and influential than they really are. [...]

As more and more people, Muslim and non-Muslim, realize this, it will become increasingly difficult for the provocateur clerics to maintain their grip on power.

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