Support for further enlargement of the European Union has fallen in the UK and Spain in the past six months, in a further sign that the policy is losing public favour. However, religion is not at the root of such sentiment says George Parker and John Thornhill in FT.
Tony Barber in No last rites yet for Catholic Europe says ".....A shortage of priests is an acute problem for European Catholicism in an age when the Vatican perceives Europe as the world’s most secularised continent and the one most exposed to competition with Islam..........Before he was elected pope in April 2005, Benedict, then head of the Vatican’s powerful agency for defending doctrinal orthodoxy, wrote: “Europe seems, in the very moment of its greatest success, to have become empty from the inside. Crippled, as it were.” According to this rather pessimistic view, the majority of “Christian” Europeans, having lost their religious faith, are less able than Muslims to resist the seductive lure of self-indulgent modern materialism. Yet this may also signal more room for dialogue between European Christians and Muslims if their common adversary is selfish secularism. “May Christians and Muslims work together for mankind, life, peace and justice,” Benedict said after his visit to Turkey last month.
And according to Victoria Burnett, Islam returns to a tolerant Andalucia where is predominantly Catholic.
Then one should have a look at Why the French Don't Like Headscarves in Anthropologi.Info
The Reflection Cafe has a post that contains a substantive number of links on Islam, Islam-the West Relations
Mustafa Akyol has two religion related posts: Christmas Wars—Even In Turkey and The Pope on Turkey, Secularism and Islam
Posted by erkan at December 18, 2006 01:23 AM | TrackBackFor the 1st time in my life I heard the term "christian club" was in Turkey and I'm from an EU country. Religion and EU are two different things that we shouldn't mix. We should keep that in mind.
Posted by: Nikolia at December 18, 2006 03:50 AM