Like your earlier books, Eurabia has attracted enormous attention around the world. What are your aims and purposes in these works? What do you hope to accomplish through them?

I had no aim or purpose, but simply a curiosity and a desire to study this history. My research began soon after I was obliged, with my family, to leave Egypt in 1957 as a stateless refugee, as did nearly a million Jews who fled or left Arab countries precipitously from 1945 to 1975. I felt that I belonged to this tragic exodus. It gave me a new identity.

You conclude that “Europe is weakened by its own divisions, while the Muslim world becomes ever more united under an Islamist anti-Western ideology.” Do you think this is likely to change in future?

I do not think it will change because the Muslim world is becoming even more radicalized. This is an old trend, which is more exposed today by the failure of Muslim governments and their intelligentsias to answer the needs of their ever-growing demography, as well as challenges of modernization. Recent UN Arab Human Development Reports, researched by Arabs, have detailed these problems.

The Islamist movements have never made a secret of their desire and ultimate aim to restore a global caliphate in order to establish sharia and Islamic rule and eventually gain supremacy over the entire world. In clear terms, this means a Jihad a war or struggle in one form or another against those who would resist this Islamization, whether they are modernist Muslims or infidel non-Muslims. The fact that Western governments have soft-pedaled this trend and obfuscated it for decades does not mean that it does not exist rather it only exposes the Wests unwillingness to face it.

You state that “like Judeophobia, anti-Americanism is a planned policy, whose masterminds are determined to maintain it as long as America does not comply with the Islamic world order.” How should America respond to this situation?

One should first acknowledge that anti-Americanism is not based on alleged American evilness, wrong policies or injustices, whether political or economic, but on an Islamic and often a European strategy to weaken, isolate and dominate the United States. The self-flagellation policy adopted by European leaders in relation to the Islamic world will not contribute to the amelioration of American relations, but will only provide ammunition for the demise of Americas fortitude.

This is not to say that Americans should dismiss criticism, but it only emphasizes that anti-Americanism is triggered by other factors. America should stand firm on its democratic heritage and principles, its laws and universal human rights values.

How do you account for the differences between European and American responses to the Euro-Arab dialogue?

There are many factors that have contributed to these differences. On the historical level, the Holocaust, which was the culmination of the hatred of Jews and Judaism happened in Europe and not in America. The Euro-Arab alliance against Israel that I examined in my book can be seen as a disguised European revival of antisemitic trends, both religious and political. America fought Nazism and Communism two totalitarian ideologies while major currents in Europe’s intelligentsia and its political leaders often ceded to them, or promoted them. Europe was devastated by two World Wars which led to a pacifist culture. Besides, Europe had controlled nearly all of Africa and much of Asia through colonial empires, unlike America.

On the political level, Europe hoped to end the horrible cycle of inter-European wars by building an integrative system that would unite it and destroy petty prejudices and old rancor. But, by the same token, this led to the establishment of a totalitarian type of super-power the European Union whose lack of transparency, particularly at the European Commission level, has no equivalency in the American system of political checks and balances institutions.

Lastly, America is still deeply immersed in its Judeo-Christian heritage and spiritual values that are at the core of Western civilization, while Europe has rejected them for a number of reasons, one of which is its profound antisemitism. This anti-Israel animosity is built within the modern Euro-Arab culture that the UE had promoted. It feeds on the rejection of the Bible and a trend toward the Islamization of Christianity by rooting Christianity and the Gospels in an Islamized Palestinian Liberation Theology (“Palestinianism”), which is a major current in most Western Churches inspired by the Arab Eastern Churches. Today, it is undermining the very essence of Christianity and its core values, while Jesus, himself, is slowly being accepted in his dimension of a koranic Muslim prophet not a Jew, “born in Bethlehem of Judea.”

What, if anything, has changed since the publication of Eurabia?

Realizing the dangers for America, I wrote Eurabia in English, rather than in French as with my previous books that were translated and published by Fairleigh Dickinson (1985/1996 /2002). Many people worldwide have read Eurabia or my articles on that subject , published since 2003 and they understood that we are living in a state of transition between a society that relies on Western concepts and laws, and another society which I have called “Eurabia” that is slowly accepting an Islamic pattern of life, and of history.

Recently, there has been much controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. What are your feelings about these cartoons and the responses to them in the Islamic world?

I was invited to participate with four other speakers at a Conference on November 19, 2005 sponsored by the Danish Free Press Society and the Jyllands Posten newspaper and held in the Danish Parliament on the subject: “Should we curtail free speech in deference to Islam.” The cartoons had been published two months earlier and in Norway too soon after but there was not much excitement on this subject then, and the manifestations and killings began in earnest much later after deliberate clerical manipulations.

I place the Danish cartoons in a European context. Many Europeans feel that some of their hard-won “rights” are being infringed, if not superseded by some unofficial sharia rules. This “Danish Affair” is testing, within the law, the freedom of the press in Denmark, Norway, and elsewhere. Cartoons frequently offend political and religious sensibilities. This has happened to Christians and to Jews, and others, including politicians. Cartoonists do not target only Muslims or their faith. Hence, one can say that in the European context, the cartoons had a specific meaning. They also illustrated the wide and dangerous division between the European political leadership and their societies.

Neo-Nazi and Islamist groups and others invoke double standards in opposing the cartoons and the recent David Irving’s condemnation in Austria. But cartoons differ from historical knowledge; these are two separate domains. Condemnation of the cartoons relates to the Islamic law of blasphemy but the majority of Denmark’s population is still Christian and not under the rule of sharia law. On the other hand, the Irving’s condemnation is in conformity with the legislation of Austria similar laws exist in other European countries that forbids incitement to hate. This is related to European history because of the dehumanization and the genocide of a whole people in its heartland perpetrated only 60 years ago. The two contexts should not be confused. Besides, the law that punishes racism and incitement to hate in some European countries also protects Muslims, Africans and others not only Jews.

As for Muslims, I would say that we should feel sorry about hurting their religious sensibilities, as much as one would express the same feelings toward other religious groups offended by cartoons. However, the Muslim world regularly produces a plethora of insulting cartoon, writings, and sermons usually in the state-controlled press, on TV, and in mosques, without contemplating apologies.

It is outrageous that so many Muslims died and Christians too, with churches destroyed because Muslim politicians used the cartoons issue to settle old scores. This developed after the Third Extraordinary Session of the Islamic Summit Conference held in Mecca on December 7-8, 2005, when three additional cartoons were added to the twelve in order to enflame passions even more.

–Lorna Marie McManus