[SpecialOFFER]

I am quite pessimistic about the future of Europe and countries like Australia that have a large percentage of Muslim migrants e.g. in France the population is 10% Muslim. Muslims have lots of children, sometimes up to 10, and this ensures that they do not need to work because they receive child endowment payments higher than an average working wage. It also means that they very quickly become a force to be reckoned with and start to cause trouble as they did in the Kosovo area of Yugoslavia.
Thanks for the interesting (as always) post Effie. It is good to have people of charity who live in countries outside the U.S. offer different perspectives.

Yes, indeed, Islam (the idealogy) is something to be feared moreso, necessarily than the good Muslim individual. The good Muslim individual loves God and is peaceful like the good Christian.

On the other hand, the good Muslim's idealogy/religion (Islam) is a bit cultlike, so although they themselves, as individuals are very often lovely people, the 'submission' to their religion is often what is frightening-- and that includes having the large families which they have (despite living in terrible financial circumstances) in Europe. Islam is only tolerant of others when it is in control, and I (as well as others) believe that this is what the intention of the large families are.

This realization of the double threat to Europe from Islam on the one hand and secularism on the other, is the reason that there is increasing charitable cooperation between Orthodox and Catholic hierarchs from Russia to England, and this is a good thing.

I remember one official representative of Islam in England saying on CNN or some other such news station on television, (a day after the 9/11 attacks) that Islam does wish to restore the caliphate and also wishes to see its flag on the White House. We are living in very tense times (especially in Europe where the threat is far more palpable than it is in the U.S., where Muslims are a small minority) and most immigrants are Christians. However, the public needs to differentiate betwee the official idealogy of Islam and individuals who are simply Muslim or there will be unfortunate hate crimes. Such a crime was done to a visiting Greek Orthodox priest from Greece in Florida, there for a convention, when he asked a clean cut man for directions. The man mistook him for a Muslim and attacked him in the name of 'fighting a terrorist'.

Alice