Rearing into the sky like the Bat-Signal over Gotham, the Eyyûb Sultan Mosque in Strasbourg should serve as a call to action. The enormous complex, which is intended to become one of Europe’s largest mosques, stands in contradiction to many of the principles the city claims to represent.
A Monument to Foreign Influence
Located only a few kilometres from the European Parliament, the mosque is controlled by the Turkish-founded Millî Görüş movement and has reportedly received financial support from Qatar.
Turkey continues its military occupation of northern Cyprus, territory belonging to the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state. Qatar, meanwhile, has been accused of attempting to influence European policymaking through the corruption scandal commonly known as Qatargate, allegations that Doha denies.
Strasbourg’s municipal authorities also approved, in principle, a €2.5 million grant towards the mosque’s construction, despite France’s established tradition of separating religion from the state.
We are told that the complex is necessary to serve Strasbourg’s growing Muslim population. Yet it is being completed at precisely the moment when the European Union has failed to control irregular migration and Europeans are becoming increasingly alarmed by Islamist terrorism, attacks on churches and the erosion of public security. It would certainly raise eyebrows if the Russian Orthodox Church attempted to construct a vast new cathedral in Kyiv with the support of the Russian state.
The socialist and Green factions that encouraged this project should therefore understand that their provocation has failed. The Eyyûb Sultan Mosque has not produced the reaction they expected because most Europeans do not recognise themselves in the values that the project appears designed to challenge. Europeans are not “Islamophobic” for questioning why foreign states and political movements are financing monumental religious complexes in the cities where European policy is made.
When the EU Turns Against Europe
There is something almost vindictive about the modern European Union. Having failed to capture the hearts of Europe’s peoples, it increasingly attempts to weaken their identities, replace them with something artificial and punish anyone who objects. It is no mystery why Strasbourg’s authorities welcome the attention of wealthy foreign patrons.
The Eyyûb Sultan Mosque’s principal backers are not rooted in Europe. The project is led by Millî Görüş, a Turkish-origin political and religious network. Both France and Turkey officially describe themselves as secular states, yet Strasbourg has a substantial Turkish population whose votes matter to the incumbent Green authorities. When political survival is at stake, secular principles suddenly become negotiable.
Follow the Money
Qatar’s role must be understood as part of a much larger influence operation.
One investigation estimated that Qatar gave more than €770 million to 288 organisations in Western countries between 2004 and 2019. Since 2016, it has reportedly spent nearly $250 million on lobbying and public-relations firms registered in the United States. It has also poured billions into American universities and think tanks.
In Europe, Qatar has reportedly spent approximately €70 million financing mosques. The Qatargate investigation has meanwhile exposed allegations of a cash-for-influence network involving serving and former members of the European Parliament, parliamentary staff and associated foundations.
Belgian authorities seized approximately €1.5 million in cash during raids connected to the investigation. Among those originally arrested was Eva Kaili, then a vice-president of the European Parliament, who has denied wrongdoing. Qatar has likewise denied attempting to purchase political influence.
As Upton Sinclair observed, it is difficult to make someone understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. If lavish foreign spending is the price of Western ignorance regarding Qatari interference in European politics and media, then Qatar evidently believes that price is worth paying.
The Red-Green Bargain
Qatar’s deference to the socialist and Green authorities of the European Union may be temporary. The average MEP serves for only a few years.
The ideology being accommodated, however, has much greater ambitions. Political Islam is fundamentally hostile to the European civilisation that the EU was supposedly created to protect. Its most radical adherents openly seek the eventual establishment of Islamic government in Europe.
Europe has confronted such ambitions before. Ottoman rule extended across the Balkans to the gates of Vienna and persisted in much of Greece for centuries, ending only in the early twentieth century. This gradual political and cultural transformation, long visible throughout the Balkans and now represented on the skyline of one of the EU’s principal capitals, is producing two increasingly powerful forces.
The first is a resurgent nationalist right that takes pride in Europe’s national and Christian inheritance and rejects the secular ideology imposed by Brussels. Its growth can already be seen across Europe, and every Greek understands the historical memory that drives it when we commemorate our liberation after centuries of Ottoman occupation.
The second is Europe’s ancient adversary in a new political form: the ambition to restore a caliphate on European soil. Yet rather than confronting this movement, Europe’s left-wing authorities appear willing to use it as an electoral vehicle. They should remember that vehicles do not always travel in the direction their passengers intended.
