Window on Eurasia: Resistance to Islamization in Europe and Russia Growing, Chudinova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 8 – Elena Chudinova, who gained fame for her 2005 dystopian novel, “The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris” about the Islamization of the European Union in 2048, has now published another book in which she argues that resistance to Islamization in Europe and the Russian Federation is “no longer a marginal phenomenon.”

            Her new book, “The Kidnapping of Europe: Islamization and the Trap of Tolerance” (Moscow: Veche, 2012, 2500 copies), argues that over the last seven years, Europeans including Russians have become more disturbed by the threat Islamization poses and are more willing than before to violate the norms of political correctness to oppose it.

In an interview with Sergey Ryazanov of “Svobodnaya pressa,” Chudinova says that the threat Islamization poses to all European countries has grown but that “resistance [to it] is no longer what one might call a marginal tendency,” and consequently, she is more optimistic about the future than she was in her earlier work (svpressa.ru/society/article/62769/).

Chudinova argues that in addition to the recent statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the failure of multi-culturalism and the recent referendum on mosques in Switzerland, she is especially encouraged by the seizure of a mosque in Poitiers by members of the French group, Génération identitaire.

            Because that city is the French equivalent of Russia’s Kulikovo field, she continues, that action and especially the “masterful” way it was carried out is especially noteworthy.  She adds that she has sent “a letter of greetings” to those involved. But even with such encouraging signs, “the path to the resolution of this most important civilizational problem will not be short.”

            According to Chudinova, Russia has much more freedom of speech than does Western Europe because it has not been trapped by political correctness about Islam and other issues.  But she suggests that Russians need to be alert to the threat that some political figures may seek to impose the same sort of controls.

            The Russian writer argues that there is no such thing as multi-culturalism; there is only “the wrestling of cultures.” Those who promoted multi-culturalism in Europe after World War II were motivated by good intentions, but they failed to see that what they were doing would open the way for Muslims to challenge the fundamental building blocks of European civilization.

            She then suggests that Europe, including Russia, will survive only if it works together.  “Unfortunately,” Chudinova notes, “atavistic attitudes of the communist worldview are dictating a fashion for isolationism and opposition to outsiders.  This is a fatal path, a path to nowhere” that Russia must avoid.

            The French right understands this and is pro-Russian, Chudinova continues, but the French left doesn’t and doesn’t like Russia at all.

            The Russian writer insists that she is not opposed to all immigration or to assimilation. “Up to a certain limit, the inclusion of any particular number of non-indigenous peoples in the titular mass does not represent a threat.  More than that, it is something entirely natural” and the Russian people has various bloodlines in its background.

            According to her, “one Arab of Peter the Great gave [Russia] Aleksandr Pushin, but a million Arabs will lead our people beyond the borders of the historical field, as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky would have said.” The whole issue is thus one not of ethnic exclusiveness but of “balance; everything is a question of balance.”