Europe sees itself as a liberal-minded society. It has no desire to be, nor can it be, a "Christian club.

Where it is the majority religion, Islam does not recognize religious freedom, at least not as we understand it. Islam is a different culture. This doesn't mean that it's an inferior culture, but it is a culture that has yet to connect with the positive sides of our modern Western culture: religious freedom, human rights and equal rights for women.

One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn't confuse desire with reality.

Europe sees itself as a liberal-minded society. It has no desire to be, nor can it be, a "Christian club.

The conflict with Islam has, after all, existed throughout European history.

The end of World War I also marked the end of bourgeois culture. An inner emptiness developed that, in the 19th and 20th centuries, paved the way for two ideologies that dragged Europe and the world into an abyss and plunged it into a catastrophe.

There is no such thing as one Islam. The Koran is ambiguous and Islam is not a monolithic entity.