There are many reasons why Islamization is a problem. The following is a selection:
1. Islam is a religion that is alien to Europe and has a long history of hostility to the West (Huntington, pp. 209-210; Lewis, p. 13).
2. Islam is incompatible with the principles and ideals of Western democracy. Traditional Islamic society is a form of religious dictatorship or, as described by Islamic scholars like Ayatollah Khomeini, "the rule of divine law (as interpreted by Islamic scholars) over men".
In consequence, according to Khomeini, Islamic government is based on Islamic Sharia law as found in the Koran and related writings known as Sunna while the only accepted legislative power is the god of Islam. Khomeini also declared that "to juxtapose 'democratic' and 'Islamic' is an insult to Islam" and "Islam is superior to all forms of democracy" (Algar, pp. 55, 337-8).
3. Islam is incompatible with Western culture. For example, wine and other alcoholic drinks, music, certain types of clothing, such as skirts, and food, such as pork - which are fundamental to Western culture - are unlawful in Islamic Sharia law (see the manual on Islamic law Umdat al-Salik, certified by the al-Azhar authorities in Cairo, quoted in Spencer, p. 46, Koran, etc.).
It follows that while a small, integrated Muslim minority would not be a problem, the spread of Islam beyond that would result in the erosion, suppression and disappearance of Western indigenous culture.
4. Islam is incompatible with Western religion whose scriptures and beliefs it rejects. For example, the Koran rejects beliefs that are central to Christianity such as the divinity, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ (al-Maidah, 5:75; al-Nisa, 4:157-8, etc.).
Similarly, it is evident from the writings of Church Fathers and later Church leaders like St John of Damascus, al-Kindi, Martin Luther and others that traditional Christianity does not accept Mohammed, the founder of Islam, as a true prophet, nor Islam (also referred to as "the heresy of the Ishmaelites") as a true religion (see Sahas, Muir, Luther, under References).
It follows that the spread of Islam represents the spread of teachings and practices that are contrary to Western religious tradition and is detrimental to the latter.
5. Islamization is being promoted by groups with an anti-Western agenda, such as Muslim fundamentalists, left-wing extremists and international financial interests.
6. Islamization is being enforced against the will and interests of the indigenous Western population who does not wish to live in a society dominated or ruled by Islam.
THE ISLAMIZATION OF BRITAIN
The rise of Liberalism in the 19th century began to erode traditional Western culture. In particular, Liberalism undermined the authority of Church and King on which the established social order was based. Liberalism's offshoot, Socialism, continued this process, leading to a breakdown of traditional culture.
In the midst of this cultural decline, alternative (fabricated) anti-Christian religions like Freemasonry and "Theosophy" began to proliferate. It was at that point that Muslim missionaries and agitators, with establishment encouragement, began to infiltrate British society. Many of these missionaries were connected with the Islamic revivalist Aligarh movement, led by Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in the city of Aligarh in India.
British orientalist and Islamic propagandistIn 1896, Khan's friend and collaborator Sir Thomas Walker Arnold wrote The Preaching of Islam and between 1921 and 1930 taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at the London School of Oriental Studies, later named School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
In the 1930s, Khan's and Arnold's disciple Muhammad Iqbal, who became the leader of the All-India Muslim League, pioneered the idea of a separate Muslim state in India and collaborated with Fabian Society member Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the creation of Pakistan.
Another Islamic revivalist movement that sprung up at the time was the Lahore-based Ahmadiyya. In 1912, Arnold appointed the Ahmadi Kwaja Kamal-ud-din as imam of the Woking Mosque in Woking, Surrey.
Kamal-ud-Din established the Woking Muslim Mission which was instrumental in converting a number of Britons to Islam, including Lord Headly, who wrote A Western Awakening to Islam (1914) and became a Muslim missionary himself.
Sufism as a Trojan horse for Islam in BritainHowever, except among sections of the degenerate intellectual classes, traditional Islam failed to evoke wide interest in Britain. Therefore, Muslim missionaries and their British collaborators resorted to promoting "softer" brands of Islam, such as Sufism.
Sufism and particularly the writings of Iranian poet Omar Khayyam (said to have been a Sufi), had long been a favorite with Britain's left-wing elites. Nor was interest in Sufism, whether genuine or affected, always innocent.
Khayyam's verse "[shatter it to bits, and then] remould it nearer to the heart's desire" - used by Bernard Shaw as the Fabian Society's logo - was a hidden reference to the reconstruction of the world order in line with international oil and related interests: the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had been recently formed and, together with the Imperial Bank of Persia, marked the region as Milner Group territory. [*]
[*] My note.
The Milner Group is an influential faction of the British ruling class whose stated goals are:
1) to extend the power of the British ruling class throughout the world using supranational governing bodies such as the League of Nations, the UN and the United Europe;
2) to transform the United States into an instrument for achieving this goal,
3) to establish British control over the planet's key strategic mineral resources.
Curious publications like "A Pilgrimage to the Tomb of Omar Khayyam" (Travel and Exploration, London, Sept. 1909) by dubious characters like Percy Molesworth Sykes began to appear on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the interests of the Anglo-American Establishment.
Muhammad Iqbal himself had been preaching a mixture of Sufism and Islamic revivalism. Sufism, along with Iqbal's writings, was promoted by British orientalists like Thomas Arnold of SOAS, Arthur John Arberry of SOAS (later Cambridge University) and Reynold A. Nicholson of Cambridge University.
In 1916, the London "Sufi Order of the West" was founded by the Indian Hazrat Inayat Khan, who taught that prophet Mohammed had brought a "divine message of democracy" (The Sufi Message of Hazrat lnayat Khan).
In the 1960s, Sufism and Islam were promoted by the Indian-born impostor Idries Shah and his left-wing British collaborators like Robert Graves and Doris Lessing, in addition to Left-dominated institutions like those mentioned above.
What becomes evident is that we are dealing with the systematic promotion of Islam by individuals and groups connected with shadowy organizations like the Fabian Society, representing political and economic interests that were unknown to the general public.
These groups were involved in shaping developments in South Asia, Iran and the Near East. For example, in 1921, High Commissioner Herbert Samuel (later Lord) - a close friend of the Fabian leadership and leading member of their Rainbow Circle club appointed Mohammad Amin al-Husseini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Husseini later played an important role in the Muslim Brotherhood, the Caliphate (Islamic State) Movement and the Arab League (see below).
Muslims in alliance with the Fabian Society create Pakistan
Meanwhile, Fabian Society member Muhammad Ali Jinnah in collaboration with Fabian International Bureau chairman and Commonwealth Secretary Philip Noel-Baker and Labour's Fabian Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin promoted the creation of Pakistan as well as the annexation of Kashmir to Pakistan (Curtis, pp. 3233).
In August 1947, Pakistan was created with Jinnah as Governor-General. In October, it invaded and occupied Kashmir. Soon after these events, substantial Muslim communities, particularly from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir - all areas promoted by the Fabian/Labour combine - began to establish themselves in Britain.
The Fabian Society establishes a policy of Multiculturalism
In the 1960s, the same Fabian Socialist Labour Party under Home Secretary (and former Fabian Society chairman) Roy Jenkins, began to introduce policies replacing assimilation and integration of immigrants with state-enforced "cultural diversity" or multiculturalism, which also implied multireligionism. The main beneficiary of this was the rapidly growing Muslim community.
Muslim immigrants had already shown little interest in adopting British language, culture and religion (Joppke, p. 233). Labour's new multiculturalist policies only enabled them to become more assertive. In addition, the rise of oil prices in the 1970s created wealthy Islamic regimes like Saudi Arabia, which began to pump millions of pounds into the building of mosques and Islamic centres in the UK in the 1980s and 90s (Joppke, p. 253).
Government support, financial backing by oil-rich Islamic regimes, inspiration from Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, as well as guidance and support from Muslim fundamentalist groups like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood led to the rise of militant Islam. Muslim activists began to make demands such as the extension of the Blasphemy Law to include Islam; laws against religious discrimination; and state funding of Muslim schools.
The publication in 1988 of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" was used by Labour leaders like Roy Hattersley and Jack Straw to side with the Muslims. While Muslim extremists were firebombing bookshops, Hattersley infamously claimed that expecting Muslims to behave like non-Muslims was "racist" (Joppke, p. 254).
Even the Church of England, which had long been infiltrated and subverted by the Fabian Left, sided with Islam. Its leader, the leftwing Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, demanded a change in the Blasphemy Law to include Islam.
"New Labour" and state-sponsored Islamization
State-sponsored Islamization began in earnest with the coming to power of Tony Blair's "New Labour" in 1997, which began to promote a "new understanding" of Islam. In 2000, Blair declared that
"There is a lot of misunderstanding about Islam. It is a deeply reflective, peaceful and very beautiful religious faith and I think it would be hugely helpful if people from other religious faiths knew more about it" (Muslim News, March 2000).
Following the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, large amounts of tax-payers' money were ostensibly spent on "fighting Islamic extremism". In reality, most of it (about 90 million) went to groups linked to extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its counterpart Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Party) in Pakistan.
Other beneficiaries included the Muslim Council of Britain, the United Kingdom Islamic Mission (UKIM) and the Islamic Society of Britain. In an attempt to win Muslim votes, in Luton alone the Home Office project "Preventing Violent Extremism" funded seven Muslim centres ("How the Government pays Muslims to vote Labour", Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar. 2009).
In particular, more than 10 million were allocated to the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), which aims to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state. Moreover, the Islamic Forum was allowed to infiltrate the Labour Party itself, becoming a secret party within Labour and influencing votes in favour of Islam ("Islamic radicals 'infiltrate' the Labour Party", Daily Telegraph, 27 Feb. 2010).
Other organizations which Islamic fundamentalists were allowed to infiltrate at will during the Labour regime were MI5, MI6, Scotland Yard and the Territorial Army. The same Labour regime also appointed Muslims as ministers, beginning with Shahid Malik in 2007.
Meanwhile, while Britain's political elites were promoting Islam, the Church of England -with a few notable exceptions like that of the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali (ironically, a Pakistani) -virtually surrendered to Islam.
In October 2003, the new left-wing Anglican leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (appointed by Fabian Prime Minister Blair in July 2002) speaking at Chatham House, went so far as to declare that Islamic terrorists had "serious moral goals" (Bat Ye'or, p. 157).
Clearly, when even the Church takes a pro-Islamic stand, the Islamization process has advanced to a point where it has become almost unstoppable. If it is to be stopped, this will have to be done by the British people themselves, not by the treasonous political and religious elites (see pp. 361-6).
Islamic preacher Prince Charles
The promotion of Islamization in Britain has not been restricted to political and religious figures. The latter have enjoyed the support of other members of the Establishment, notably the Prince of Wales.
Prince Charles's well-known infatuation with Islam has given rise to fears that he may be a secret Muslim convert [*]. Indeed, closer analysis shows that such fears are not unfounded. His interest in Islam, which became public in the 1980s, goes far beyond the usual official pandering to Muslim interests.
[*] My note.
Fears that Prince Charles (now King Charles III) was a secret Muslim convert were not unfounded. In 1996, the Grand Mufti of Cyprus, Nazim Al-Haqqani, confirmed them, stating: "Did you know that Prince Charles has converted to Islam. Yes. He is a Muslim. It happened in Turkey."
In 1993, Prince Charles gave a speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), of which he is a patron. In his speech, he rejected the view that Islamic Sharia law - which prescribes public beheading, stoning to death and limb amputation for various offences - is cruel, barbaric and unjust as "unthinking prejudice" peddled by newspapers. In the same speech, he claimed that Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance (Prince of Wales, October 1993).
Not only is it absurd to interpret the invasion of non-Muslim countries and their subjection to Islamic religion and culture as an act of tolerance, but this interpretation is contradicted by the historical evidence showing that Islam brought death, slavery and destruction to the nations it invaded and conquered. Moreover, such claims are an insult to the memory of those who died defending their country, their people and their faith against Muslim aggression, as well as of those who suffered, and continue to suffer, under Muslim occupation.
Speaking at OCIS again in June 2010, Prince Charles urged Western environmentalists to follow the Islamic approach to nature, describing the Islamic World as the custodian of mankind's wisdom and spiritual knowledge (Prince of Wales, June 2010).
Similarly, speaking at the opening of a new building at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education (MIRE), he played the old revisionist record on Islam's supposed contribution to the European Renaissance, after which he emphasized the need for the study of Islam (Prince of Wales, January 2003).
As holder of a university degree in history, the Prince ought to know better: by definition, the Renaissance was a movement inspired by Classical European (Graeco-Roman) culture (Oxford English Dictionary). Authentic European spirituality is firmly rooted in Classical and Christian tradition and has nothing to do with Islam (see p. 433 and note 1, p. 493). If any religion, apart from Christianity, qualifies for special royal patronage for its contribution to the Renaissance, it is Classical Paganism, not Islam.
Unfortunately, logic has never been something apologists for Islam would knowingly endorse. After all, Logic was one of the first "foreign sciences" which Medieval Islam, for reasons of self-preservation, chose to reject and suppress (this explains the logical - and moral - contortions of those who see Muslim aggression against other faiths as an expression of "tolerance").
Moreover, Prince Charles had the misfortune of being an alumnus of Milner-Fabian-controlled Cambridge University at a time when fraudsters like Idries Shah were on the prowl, peddling Arabian tales about the alleged wonders of Islam (see Ch. 2, The Fabian Conspiracy).
But even if the Prince is unaware of the true roots of the Renaissance, he ought to know what he has chosen to promote.
Markfield Institute of Higher Education (MIHE) was established in 2000 by The Islamic Foundation UK to "bring together the excellence of the British higher education and the richness of traditional Islamic education". Its rector is Islamic Foundation founder and chairman Khurshid Ahmad who is also a member of the Pakistan Senate and vice-president of the Islamist Jamaat-e lslami (cf. "British Islam colleges 'link to terrorism,"' The Times, 29 July 2004).
Charles himself, in his Markfield speech, acknowledges that for many years, the Foundation's aim has been to propagate the tenets of Islam and expresses his delight at opening the new building of the Islamic Foundation which "embodies the vision of its founder and chairman, Kurshid Ahmad". This is no longer about "tolerance" and "mutual respect": the Prince consciously endorses the Foundation's proselytizing mission.
However, the strongest supporting evidence for Prince Charles's conversion to Islam comes from what is known about his private life. Apart from making frequent public statements in support of Islam and endorsing Islamic missionary initiatives, he has reportedly taken to wearing a djellaba (long, hooded gown worn by Arabs) while relaxing and studying the Koran at his Highgrove residence (News of the World, 11 May 1997).
In 2001, Prince Charles also had an Islamic garden installed at Highgrove called the "Carpet Garden", after the Turkish carpet designs on which it is based - and has instigated similar projects across the country such as at a primary school in Cardiff and at OCIS ("Prince Charles inspires Islamic garden", BBC News, 16 Oct. 2003). It may be noted that he also proudly displays his Islamic prayer beads while on visit to mosques such as al-Azhar.
Prince Charles's behaviour is psychologically revealing. If wearing Islamic or "Sufi" outfits and symbols in public may be explained away as a diplomatic gesture, wearing them in private betrays a psychological commitment to the tradition they represent.
Quite clearly, such behaviour is inspired by an intimate intellectual and emotional proximity to Islam indicating a commitment to that religion which amounts to conversion.
Being a Christian and a Muslim at the same time is consistent with both the perennialist teachings of Charles's left-wing New Age guru and government adviser Laurens van der Post (a member of the Bloomsbury group, who had his writings published by leading Fabian Leonard Woolf) and that old Islamic Trojan, Sufism, for which the Prince appears to harbour an incurable mania ("Prince Charles wowed by whirling dervishes", Asian News, 8 Feb. 2010; menmedia.co.uk).
It is also a classic example of the double-thinking, multiple-identity personality which Milner-Fabian society mass-produces for its own purposes.
In the light of this we can see why, in a speech on "building bridges between Islam and the West" delivered at Wilton Park in December 1996, Prince Charles called for more Muslim teachers in British schools, claiming that while everywhere in the world people want to learn English, in the West we need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to "learn with our hearts" (Prince of Wales, December 1996).
"Learning with our hearts from Muslims" and similar statements are of course staple sound bites taken straight from the propaganda writings of the Idries Shah Sufi industry which were massively promoted in the 1970s by left-wing outfits like the BBC and UNESCO - the successor to the Milner-Fabian League of Nations' International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC).
Incidentally, both Charles's mentor van der Post and Shah have long been exposed as fraudsters in J. D. F. Jones, "Story teller: the many lives of Laurens van der Post" and James Moore, "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah".
Thus, those who insist on learning with the heart as opposed to learning with the head may be practising (self-)deception.
For example, they may overlook the fact that "Islamic gardens" are of Persian origin (and ought to be called by their true name) and that promoting them as "Islamic" and as the chief representatives of Islam can only serve to obscure the more sinister aspects of that religion. The same applies to Prince Charles's (and other members of the establishment) construction of Medieval Islam as a force for cultural, scientific and technological progress.
The fact is that Medieval Islam's architects, scientists and scholars were often Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Indians or Jews who, despite their Arabic (or Arabicized) names, were not necessarily followers of Islam (Smith, pp. 113 ff.).
While Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, produced few learning or cultural centres of note, such places were mainly found (as one might expect) in the advanced countries conquered by Islam. After all, water is clearest and light shines brightest near the source and so does knowledge.
Islamic bankers are financing the Islamization of Europe
Needless to say, the lavish promotion of Islam indulged in by Britain's establishment requires vast amounts of cash which even Prince Charles does not have. So where is the money coming from? As the Prince reveals in the same speech, he had found that the subject of "understanding" between the Islamic and Western worlds captured "a remarkable degree of attention" from international financiers.
The attention of which international financiers his ideas had captured becomes clear from a speech on the same lines at an Investcorp dinner in July 1996 (Prince of Wales, July 1996). Investcorp is an Arab League bank created in 1982 by the Arab League (through its sub-organization, the Arab Monetary Fund, AMF) and Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank (www.jmhinternational.com).
The Arab Monetary Fund was headed by Jawad M. Hashim, a graduate of the Rockefeller-funded Fabian London School of Economics (LSE) and member of the Group of 30 (G30), a Rockefeller Foundation outfit. Investcorp itself is run by the London-based Iraqi Nemir Kirdar, a former Chase vice-president who was in charge of the Chase banking network in the Persian Gulf and was instrumental in promoting its business throughout the Gulf (Rockefeller, p. 298).
The Alwaleed Foundation funds the Alwaleed Centre of Islamic Studies at Cambridge which in turn interlocks with an international network of likeminded outfits and, according to its own website, has developed a "global reach". In addition to being a notorious Islamist (Roberts, pp. 239-40), bin Talal is a shareholder in the Rockefeller-controlled Citigroup Inc.
Similarly, in 1997, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated $33 million towards a new building for OCIS in order "to establish Islamic studies at the heart of the British education system" ("$33 m gift to Oxford Islamic centre", Financial Times, 30 May 1997).
Given the identity and background of the said international financiers, it cannot be altogether "remarkable" that they were captivated by the Prince's pro-Islamic speeches. The Prince must be either remarkably naive or remarkably disingenuous.
Prince Charles as a lobbyist for Islamization
The final and incontrovertible proof of Prince Charles's commitment to Islamization is the honorary doctorate from the Cairo al-Azhar Mosque and Islamic University, awarded to him in March 2006, which he accepted as "the greatest honour", giving Islamic Spain as a model for the world (Prince of Wales, March 2006).
While officially, the award was meant to be in recognition of Charles's promotion of "inter-faith tolerance", al-Azhar director Abdel Sabur Shahin revealed the true intention behind the award as being "to encourage him to support [i.e., advance] Islam against the obstacles it faces in Europe" ("Row as ancient Arab university honours Charles", Daily Telegraph, 21 Mar. 2006).
Indeed, Prince Charles does not merely promote "inter-faith tolerance". He promotes Islam as a system superior to others. In particular, it must be indisputable that his promotion of Muslim occupied Spain as a "model" for the world amounts to nothing less than Islamism.
The Prince's connections with al-Azhar are particularly disturbing in light of the fact that in 1991 al-Azhar certified a manual of Islamic law outlawing all musical instruments and declaring that a Caliph (Muslim ruler) makes war on all non-Muslims until they either become Muslims or pay a non-Muslim poll tax (Spencer, p. 46).
Equally ominous is that British citizens interviewed on the subject by this writer appear to be either ignorant or in denial about Prince Charles's pro-Islamist activities. Among reasons for this is that Charles's promotion of Islam is barely mentioned by the media, while his pro-Islamist speeches are zealously guarded by the apparatchiks of Clarence House (Prince Charles's Westminster residence). The combined effect of this is that the general public is kept in the dark about the anti-British activities of some members of the royal family.
Prince Charles's subversive influence is further evidenced by the Prince's Trust which is notorious for its fund-raising events featuring rock bands, rap singers and fashion designers, as well as being sponsored by anti-culture idols and representatives of the money power.
The Foreign Office and Islamization
Another section of the Establishment involved in the Islamization programme has been the Foreign Office. As pointed out by former Conservative Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Michael Portillo, the British Foreign Office has a deserved reputation for being Arabist and partisan (The Sunday Times, 1 Aug. 2004).
Exactly how Arabist (pro-Arab) and partisan the FO became under Labour is illustrated by the statements of Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy. It will be recalled that in January 2006, quoting the Sufi Sheikh Ba, Frances Guy declared that bringing Turkey into the European Union is "a way of binding these two great religions together proving that there's no clash of civilizations" ("Policies of the West towards the Muslim World", Speech to Chevening Scholars, Birmingham, 27 Jan. 2006).
Needless to say, no member of the Establishment has asked British and other European Christians whether they want to see their religion bound together with Islam.
Meeting in Beirut: British Ambassador to Lebanon Francis Guy and Shiite Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah (AxisofLogic).
On 5 July 2010, in a post on the Foreign Office blog, Guy praised Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a supporter of Iran with links to Hizbollah terrorists, as a "true man of religion", insisting that the world needed more like him (also note the extraordinary fawning posture assumed by "Her Majesty's Ambassador" Guy in her meeting with Fadlallah).
The post was removed a few days later on the orders of the new (Conservative) Foreign Secretary William Hague ("The passing of decent men", Guardian, 9 July 2010). However, in an illustration of how the British system works, Guy was allowed to keep her job until July 2011, during which time she was free to promote her peculiar vision of the nation's (and the Western world's) future.
THE ISLAMIZATION OF EUROPE
Sufism is a Trojan horse for Islam in Europe
Islamization has followed a similar pattern on the Continent. As in Britain, Sufism was a forerunner of mainstream Islam. This was no coincidence. As noted earlier, Sufism (Arabic "al-sufiyya" a.k.a. "al-tasawwuf') originated in Christianized neo-Platonic traditions involving prayer and contemplation (Smith, pp. 124, 253-6).
As the Persian scholar al-Biruni tells, the word "sufi" itself comes from Greek "sophia", wisdom. Similarly, the Spanish-born Muslim historian and philosopher Sa'id al-Andalusi admitted that Arabic "faylasuf' derived from Greek "philosophos", i.e., philosopher (literally "lover of wisdom") (Rosenthal, p. 39). The son of lnayat Khan, Vilayat Khan, conceded that Sufism originated in the Ancient Greek Mystery traditions (Khan, 1974). Idries Shah himself admitted that "Sufis existed in pre-Islamic times" (Hall, 1975).
The fact is that all the key elements of Sufism, such as the Oneness of God, His identity with Truth, Intelligence and Light, along with recitation of God's name, contemplation, etc., as a means of experiencing unity with Him, are found in the spiritual traditions of the pre-Islamic Classical and Christian worlds (note 2, p. 493).
Thus, there is no need to resort to Islam (even less to style the latter the source of Sufism) unless there is an ulterior motive for doing so. These pre-Islamic traditions were adopted by Muslim rulers in the 8th and 9th centuries to lend a veneer of spirituality and cultural respectability to Islam and to facilitate the conversion of culturally advanced conquered populations. Having been successfully tried and tested in Persia and India, this tactic was now applied to Europeans.
In France, Sufism was promoted by the likes of Alfred Le Chatelier, founder in 1902 of the chair of Muslim Sociology at the College de France and his successor Louis Massignon, who wrote extensively on Sufism and Islam and counted among his prominent disciples Ali Shariati, a major ideologist of the Iranian revolution.
With the first wave of large-scale Muslim immigration from North African colonies, especially Algeria, in the 1920s, Sufi groups were set up by Hazrat lnayat Khan and the Algerian Ahmad alAlawi. This Islamic presence in France was reinforced by a second wave of immigration in the 1950s and 60s.
As in France, German interest in Sufism has a long history. Indeed the modem word "Sufism" (Latin and German "Sufismus") itself was coined by the New Birth theologian Friedrich Tholluck as early as 1821 in his Sufism: The Pantheistic Theosophy of the Persians. In spite of this, it was only in the early 20th century that Sufism began to be planted on German soil.