Первая половина XXI века: исламский вызов.

Перед человечеством сегодня стоят две важнейшие проблемы: его чрезмерный численный рост и ухудшающаяся экология. Притом первая проблема ускоряет и усугубляет вторую. Ключевые слова: ислам, исламский вызов, цивилизационные конфликты. THE FIRST HALF OF THE XXI CENTURY: ISLAMIC CHALLENGE. “The First Half of the 21st Century: An Islamic Challenge” is an essay written by Robert Yengibaryan, a well-known legal scholar and a doctor of law in which he focuses on recent global tendencies in the conflict of Christian and Islamic civilizations. The author states that humankind entered the 21st century with unprecedented developments in science, technology, and IT. The modern Western civilization has achieved the high level of economic, political and cultural prosperity. In the author’s opinion, the opposite pole is the Islamic world. They are behind the rapidly developing European countries, and it is unrealistic for them to reach the level of the West in a very distant future. For tens of millions of Muslims emigration is the only way to avoid backwardness and poverty. To the author’s mind, however, poverty and rightlessness would be a biased explanation for today’s unprecedented emigration of Muslims to Europe and other countries. The Islamic world pursues the goal of rebuilding a global Islamic state, the Caliphate. The first phase of this plan is to support population growth and continuous migration, first to Europe and then to Russia. The second phase, according to the author, is the construction of mosques and madrasas in European countries and the sending of imams and paramilitary activists to such countries in order to prevent any attempts of assimilation into local culture. The mosque will consolidate such people and transform them into a powerful political force. An undisputable truth in the world of Islam is that any mosque build on a non-Islamic land will be deemed an area conquered by Allah. In contrast, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and other Muslim countries strictly prohibit, under the threat of criminal punishment, to build Christian temples, to wear Christian symbols, to celebrate New Year, Epiphany, etc. Another negative trend in the Islamic world is highly influenced by international Islamic organizations which seek to coordinate the internal and external life of Muslims both within particular countries and globally. As an example, the author mentions the Muslim World League (MWL), the World Islamic Congress (WIC), the International Association of Islamic Banks, and finally, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the most influential and the only intergovernmental among numerous other Islamic international organizations. The situation is aggravated by the neoliberal ideology of the leaders of the European Union using the tactic of concessions and compromises together with declaring populist, unrealistic social programs. The author gives an example from French reality where at the latest presidential elections socialist Francois Holland got the votes of 80% of the Muslims who had received French citizenship, whereas hardliner Sarkozy, who had started to deport jobless or criminally involved immigrants, lost. The author concludes that Islam has become extraordinarily dangerous, and, if not combated, can lead to the fast growth of nationalist movements in European countries. He offers a number of measures that can be taken in order to remedy and mitigate this conflict of different civilizations. He believes that best efforts should be exerted by Christian communities all over the world in order to overcome the existing Islamic challenge. Keywords: Islam, Islamic challenge, civilizational conflicts.