BRUSSELS Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: More people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be
reconciled with European values.
"You saw what happened with the pope," said Patrick Goeman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in central Antwerp, half an hour outside Brussels. "He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.
"Rationality is gone."
Goeman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
His worry is shared by centrists across Europe disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years, those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates - ordinary people as well as politicians - are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have
limits.
Jack Straw, the former British foreign secretary and prominent Labour Party politician, seemed to sum up the moment last week when he wrote that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil.
The veil, he wrote, is a "visible statement of separation and difference."
When Pope Benedict XVI made a speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam "evil and inhuman," Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.
The line between open criticism of another group and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.
Whatever the motivations, "the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme," said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. "It has become politically correct to
attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable."
Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.
The worries about extremism are real. A far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in Belgian city elections on Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. But in Antwerp, its base, its performance barely improved, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.
In Austria this month, right-wing parties also did well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants.
Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested "repatriation" for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.
The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day - or at least a
debate on the topic - may be one terroristic attack away.
"I think the time will come," said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and says he does not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, "We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes."
Many experts note the centuries of bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam, including the Muslim conquest of Palestine in 635 and the subsequent Crusades, and the Moors' conquest of Spain and Portugal in the eighth century and the Christians' victory in 1492.
A sense of guilt over Europe's colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.
Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted
Europe into new awareness and worry.
The subsequent Madrid and London transit bombings and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Muslim stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans - even those who generally support immigration - have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims' deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women's rights and homosexuality.
"A lot of people, progressive ones - we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right - are saying, 'Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the '60s and '70s,'" said Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party who is active on Muslim issues.
"So there is this fear," he said, "that we are being transported back
in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again."
So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government introduced a primer on those values last winter for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: Embrace our culture or leave.
Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and _expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.
In France last month, a secondary school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad "a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist." In
Germany, a Mozart opera with an additional scene showing the severed heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon was canceled because of security fears.
With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly.
"Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam," Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera's cancellation. "It makes no sense to retreat."
The backlash is showing itself in other ways. Last month, the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. "There's no nice way of saying this," he told a Muslim group in East London. "These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others."
Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that
Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized "citizenship and human rights," the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.
"Then someone comes and says it's different than that," said Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. "You have to dump your culture and religion. It's a different deal now."
Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.
