European Union Will Soon Outlaw Criticism of Islam and Homosexuality

Patrick Madrid
October 26, 2009

I recently returned from two weeks in Spain. As I have done while on other visits to that country (where my father's side of the family has its roots), I made a point of asking Spaniards about their attitudes toward Muslims.

Without exception, the responses were always negative, often bitterly so, and usually based on their fear that Islam was rapidly reconquering the Iberian Peninsula through immigration and fertility. Huge numbers of Muslims emigrate to Spain each year, especially from Morocco. As is widely known, this emigration trend is happening throughout the European Union.

These Spaniards say they're worried that before too long, Islam will reassert itself as the dominating religious force, due to the vacuum which the Catholic Church, now moribund there, has left in the wake of its steadily receding presence and influence among the Spanish people. Spain is a veritable treasure house of Catholic cultural artifacts — churches, shrines, convents, castles, monasteries, martyrs' tombs — but the vitality of the Catholic Faith is very weak indeed among the largely Catholic population. the rest