Posted on February 28, 2012

The Islamic Threat

Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance, March 2, 2012

Filip Dewinter, Inch’Allah? The Islamization of Europe, Uitgeverij Egmont, 2012, 332 pp.

Like the United States, Europe is being invaded. In our case, by Mexicans; in theirs, by Muslims. In America, there is not one politician who dares say that Mexicans and other Hispanics threaten our way of life, and must stop coming. In Europe, a few stand openly and proudly for their own people, and Filip Dewinter of the Flemish independence party known as the Vlaams Belang is one of them.

Elected twice to the European Parliament, and now a member of the Belgian Senate and Flemish Parliament, Mr. Dewinter is at the very center of the fight to save Europe. Since 2008, he has headed an organization called “Cities Against Islamization,” a coalition of urban associations fighting to maintain European values against the Muslim onslaught. Inch’Allah? is Mr. Dewinter’s manifesto for the preservation of the West. It is one of the most comprehensive books ever written about Islam’s designs on Europe, how it carries out those designs, and why it must be stopped.

Click on the book cover for a high-resolution image.

Mr. Dewinter begins with history, pointing out that Islam was intent on world domination from the beginning. Mohammed preached his new religion for only 21 years before his death in 632, but had by then conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula. His followers quickly overran Syria, Egypt, Persia, Iraq, and Armenia, and by 710 — just 78 years after the prophet’s death — dominated all of North Africa. Islam crossed into Spain the next year, and in just 10 years occupied nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula.

Islam then swept over the Pyrenees, marched north, and was stopped only at Tours, not far from Paris, in 732. Rapid, continent-wide conquests — such as those by Alexander and Genghis Khan — usually do not endure, but Islam was tenacious. It held almost all the lands it conquered, and was not pushed out of Spain for two and a half centuries.

Mr. Dewinter points out that until modern times, Islam was at almost constant war with Christendom. In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Muslims, and Hagia Sophia, the very symbol of Eastern Christianity, became a mosque. During the second great press into Europe, Islam pushed all the way to Vienna before it was stopped in 1683. From the 16th to the 19th century, Muslim pirates terrorized the coasts of Spain, Italy, France, and even Britain, Ireland, and Iceland, taking as many white slaves as blacks taken out of Africa. When Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece threw off Ottoman rule in the 19th century, they had been under the Muslim yoke for four centuries. Mr. Dewinter is hardly exaggerating when he writes that “the Koran is not a religious book so much as a manual for conquering other peoples’ countries.”

The nature of Islam

Mr. Dewinter argues that Islam must be understood as it really is, not as the religion-of-peace partisans fancy it to be. First, Islam means “submission,” and “worshiping Allah is akin to the absolute submission of a slave to his master.” The Koran is said to be the literal, infallible word of God, so all good Muslims are fundamentalists in the Christian sense. Islam sees no distinction between government and religion, and seeks to regulate every aspect of life.

The Koran also makes it clear that Muslims have an absolute duty to wage war on unbelievers. The prophet himself set the example, at the head of his armies, and slaughtered prisoners after they were taken in battle. As the Koran says, “fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye shall find them,” and “when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks.” It would be hard to find a more striking contrast than that between Mohammed and Jesus.

Mr. Dewinter notes that Western apologists refuse to accept the obvious truth: the problem is not how Islam is interpreted; the problem is Islam itself. As he puts it, “there are ‘moderate’ Muslims only in as far so there are ‘bad’ Muslims.” The idea of peaceful, reformed Islam is a contradiction.

This is why there is so much conflict whenever Islam meets other religions. In Nigeria, Muslims massacre Christians and burn their churches. In Indonesia, they have burned 800 churches since 1980. In the Sudan, Muslim Arabs in the north tormented black non-believers in the south to the point the country split in two. Virtually no Muslim country permits any public display of a religion other than Islam.

Traditionally, Muslims who renounce the faith are punished by death. According to one school of thought, an exception may be made for women, who are to be flogged until they reconvert. Sudan and Malaysia still have the death penalty for apostasy on their books. In Saudi Arabia, Mauretania, and Iran, death for apostasy is not officially codified in law, but outraged family or community members may execute heretics. Even in Europe there is tremendous pressure and even violence against apostates, who form groups for mutual support and to call attention to persecution.

Western concepts of freedom are alien to Muslims. The 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, to which apologists point when they want to make Islam sound cuddly, has meaningless guarantees such as this: “Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia [Muslim religious law].”

Islam is well known for its contemptuous treatment of women: A woman’s testimony is worth less than half that of a man, so a rape victim can prove her case only if she can produce four male witnesses to the attack. Otherwise, she is considered an adulterer and may be stoned to death. The prophet himself specified a lingering death, with stones too small to kill quickly.

Muslims take their views of women with them overseas. In 2006, an Imam in Australia explained that women who do not cover themselves up are asking to be raped: “If you lay unpackaged meat out on the street and the cats come and eat it, who is at fault then, the cats or the meat? The meat’s the problem, not the cats that have eaten it.”

It is traditional for Muslim men to kill daughters, sisters, or wives who disgrace Islam through unchaste behavior. The United Nations estimates that there are about 5,000 such “honor killings” world-wide every year. Honor killing is moving to the West, along with Islam. In 2009, there were 25 in Germany alone.

The intransigence of Muslims embarrasses even the most fawning Westerners. In 2008, Nordine Taouil, the president of the Belgian Muslim Council, appeared on a program of the Flemish public broadcasting service and said evolution was nonsense. The radio hosts were desperate to dispel the notion that all Muslims think that way, and looked very hard for a Muslim who accepted evolution. They failed. The Koran says we descended from Adam and Eve, so evolution is folly for Muslims. There can be no disputing the word of Allah — and therefore no reform.

The Koran says we are descended from Adam and Eve so evolution is unthinkable.

At the same time, Islam permits and even encourages deceit — known as “taqiyya” — as a strategy of religious conquest. Again, Mohammed, whom the Koran refers to at times as “the schemer,” set the example. Mr. Dewinter explains that “moderate” clerics who seek subsidies and favors from European governments are often practicing taqiyya. Dutch Imams, for example, received public money on the promise that they would preach only in Dutch — and then promptly broke their promise after they got the money.

Islam in Europe

In 1960, Western Europe had only two million Muslims; immigration and high birth rates have now raised that figure to more than 20 million. Muslim immigration began in the 1950s, with the arrival of what were to be “guest workers,” but no government had the spine to send them home when they were no longer needed.

Twenty percent of the population of Germany are now immigrants, as are 18 percent of France and 17 percent of Austria. These figures may seem low to Americans, who live in a country that is already 35 percent non-white, but as Mr. Dewinter notes, “Europe is going through one of the fastest population transformations in history.” At current rates, France will be majority non-European by 2060, and Britain by 2066. Russia, with its large domestic Islamic population, could be majority Muslim by 2050.

Every year, there are about 1.5 million immigrants to the European Union and yet more uncounted illegals. There are now five million black Africans in Europe, and 2.2 million South Americans, mostly in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Sixty to 70 percent of European Muslims send back to their home countries for spouses rather than marry Muslims who have lived in Europe. An estimated 80 percent of these marriages are arranged, 10 percent are forced, and only 10 percent are thought to reflect the free choice of the partners. These marriages swell the number of Muslims and help maintain ties to Islamic homelands.

Mr. Dewinter notes that Europe, which has seen its share of the world population shrink from 25 percent to 15 percent in the last 75 years, “is completely surrounded by regions that are going through a population explosion.” According to one survey, 97 percent of young Moroccan men would like to emigrate to Europe.

In Germany, there are an estimated 2,600 mosques, and in Britain some 1,600. All over Europe, Saudi money is building giant mosques, such as the East London Mosque, which can accommodate 5,000 worshippers. For Muslims, every mosque built in the land of the unbelievers is a mark of conquest.

Mosques are not just religious buildings. A 2003 raid on the Finsbury Park mosque in London turned up weapons, gas masks, suits to protect against chemical attack, and 100 stolen passports and credit cards. A mosque in Perugia, Italy, was a storehouse for tons of chemicals, and manuals for weapons and bomb-making.

Europe goes through bouts of amnesty: Between 1996 and 2008 about 3.5 million illegals were “regularized,” most of them Muslims. In 2006, Spain alone amnestied 700,000 illegals. As Mr. Dewinter notes, this just encourages more illegal immigration. In the 10 years between 1998 and 2007, European Union countries granted citizenship to 6.37 million immigrants. Many countries granted easy citizenship in the hope that it would encourage assimilation. Mr. Dewinter points out that they got it backwards: citizenship should be granted only as a reward for complete assimilation, not as a usually futile incentive.

Far from assimilating, Muslims expect accommodation. In 2006, immigrant parents of children attending school in Linz, Austria, demanded that all female teachers wear headscarves. In some French and Belgian schools, Muslim students put up so much resistance that it is impossible to give lessons about the Holocaust. During the month-long fast of Ramadan, so many students stay away that some schools close and send staff home. Any teacher known to be homosexual fears physical violence, and female teachers report that some parents refuse to shake hands or even look at them. Some schools in Antwerp permit only mothers to come to parents’ meetings so that Muslim women need not mix with men.

At the time of the Festival of Sacrifice in 2007, Muslims in Belgium slaughtered an estimated 21,000 sheep, many of them in backyards and other unconventional places. The government of Brussels kindly gave out free containers for the offal.

Muslims assert their identity aggressively in those parts of European cities where they are the majority. In London, they put up signs that say “Sharia Zone,” and try to keep non-Muslims out. A Belgian journalist of Moroccan origin studied immigrant neighborhoods in Brussels and found that Muslims no longer considered themselves as living in Belgium. They wanted to keep the area free of non-believers, and young men routinely spoke of attacking infidels. A police officer who patrolled the area said that “it’s like driving around in Beirut.” Immigrants pelted patrol cars with rocks and full cans of soda, and routine police work required armed backup.

Living in Europe certainly does not make Muslims sympathetic to the West. Forty-eight percent of Dutch Muslims said they approved of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and only 6.5 percent disapproved. The rest were not sure. One quarter of British Muslims said they approved of the 2007 attacks that killed 52 people in London. These are official answers to polls. In private, probably many more approve of the attacks.

Mr. Dewinter points out that Muslims make no secret of their long-term intentions. In 1974, the prime minister of Algeria, Houari Boumedienne, told the United Nations:

One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere and go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.

Imam Abu Baseer, one of Al Qaida’s religious leaders, is just as blunt:

One of the goals of immigration is the revival of the duty of Jihad and enforcement of power over the infidels. Immigration and Jihad go together. One is the consequence of the other and dependent upon it.

In 2008, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan told a gathering of 20,000 Turks in Cologne, Germany, that for them to assimilate would be “a crime against humanity.” The Turkish government has a special department that keeps in touch with overseas Turks — especially elected officials — and makes sure they stay Turkish. Indeed, Ergun Top, a Christian Democrat member of the Belgian parliament, said in 2007 that he would do his military service in Turkey, adding, “In case of war, I would fight against Belgium if necessary.”

The government of Morocco has a Minister for the Moroccan Community Residing Abroad. He calls Moroccans in Europe “the 17th province of Morocco,” and sponsors loyalty-building trips to the homeland for businessmen and politicians.

Western capitulation

Mr. Dewinter points out that Islam could never have advanced as it has without Western capitulation. Europeans tell themselves that mass immigration is compensation for colonialism — even for countries such as Ireland and Norway that never had colonies. Lefty politicians want Third-World immigrants because they vote for the Left, though it should be obvious that Muslims have nothing but contempt for liberals and are using them only as tools to increase their numbers and get state subsidies.

Mr. Dewinter quotes Andrew Neather, a former advisor and speech writer for Tony Blair and other Labour government bigwigs, who reported in 2009 that Labour supported massive non-white immigration out of a deliberate desire fundamentally to change Britain and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity.” Labour spokesmen never said this publicly because they knew even their own core voters would be horrified.

Just like Americans, Europeans have been tricked into thinking that any criticism of outsiders — no matter how hostile or repellent they may be — is “racism.” Every journalist, film-maker, author, TV personality, and politician must purge his language of any whiff of discontent. Otherwise, there will be swift punishment, and “rehabilitation” through self-abasement. Mr. Dewinter cites proof of the beginnings of the police state: People look over their shoulders before they say what they really think about immigrants or Islam.

Comedians and satirists who take pride in poking fun at everything draw the line at Islam. Muslims insist on “tolerance and diversity” for themselves, but demonstrated angrily all across Europe in 2005 when a Danish newspaper printed a few cartoons depicting Mohammed.

Anti-racism has become the new class struggle, and non-whites have replaced the proletariat as the darlings of burned-out revolutionaries. Mr. Dewinter decries the “armies of tax-sponsored bureaucrats [that] endlessly promote multiculturalism and minority rights.” He says they “enjoy generous salaries and job security as the pay-off for betraying their own kind.” Kindergarteners go off on class trips to gleaming mosques, where they are indoctrinated about the glories of Islam.

Many people do not realize they are being played for fools. When the city of Munich held a “Grand Integration Festival” to celebrate assimilation of the Turks, the Bavarian minister of culture was the guest of honor. He understood none of the speeches because they were in Turkish. All the women wore headscarves, and beer and pork were banned.

Muslims exploit misguided European laws against “incitement of racial or religious hatred” — which are somehow never invoked against their own blatant hostility to Christianity and the West. In Britain, the standard of proof for such offenses is that incitement was “likely under the circumstances” — and truth is no defense. Mr. Dewinter writes that the only thing holding back dozens of prosecutions is that these cases must be tried before juries, and ordinary Britons are still too sensible to punish their countrymen for expressing common-sense opinions.

The Church, which used to take the lead in defending the West against Islam, now welcomes it. Tiny Muskens, Bishop of Breda in the Netherlands, said in 2007 that “Allah” is a good name for God, and proposed that all Christians henceforth call God “Allah.” Churchmen apologize for the Crusades, without a thought of asking for an apology for Islam’s repeated invasions.

In 2006, a working committee of the European Union announced it was writing a new lexicon for our “tolerant” times. It insisted that we speak no more of “Islamic terrorism” but of “terrorism that invokes an abusive interpretation of Islam.” Terms like jihad, Islamism or fundamentalism were to be banned. The British police never talk about “Muslim terrorism;” instead, it is “international terrorism.”

Since Muslims must never be offended, businesses and government offices have cut back or even eliminated Christmas decorations. Banks that used to give away piggy-banks to children or feature them in ads, no longer do so because Muslims consider pigs unclean. In the Dutch city of Almelo, Muslims were offended by construction workers wearing shorts, so the developer ordered the men to wear trousers despite the heat.

Muslim rule?

What would Muslim rule be like? Perhaps there are lessons in what it used to be like. Jews and Christians are “people of the book,” so need not be killed or driven off, but under traditional Islam, they are inferiors known as “dhimmi.” In the traditional Muslim world, dhimmi paid a special tax called the “jizya,” often extracted under humiliating conditions. Under some rulers, dhimmis had to identify themselves by wearing distinctive clothing. They were not allowed to ride a horse or camel; only donkeys — and they rode sidesaddle, like women. Dhimmis could not repair their houses of worship or build new ones. Their men could not marry Muslims, but Muslims could take dhimmi wives. They could not testify against a Muslim, which in practice meant they had no legal rights. The Ottoman Empire passed its last dhimmi laws in 1837, and there were dhimmi codes in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Persia, and Iraq into the 19th century.

Even today, in Iran, a Christian may not supervise a Muslim, and in Egypt — a country said to be moderate — Copts have sharply limited professional opportunities. In 2008, the Medical Association of Egypt banned organ transplants between people of different religions.

Fighting back

Mr. Dewinter closes his book with a call to arms in defense of the West. He calls multiculturalism a “colossal utopian experiment to which the entire Western world has been subjected, contrary to the clearly expressed wishes of the vast bulk of its population.” He points out that Islam has only as much power over us as we grant it because, apart from oil, it is technologically and economically insignificant.

Mr. Dewinter would end all Muslim immigration and deport all illegals now in Europe. He would grant asylum only to deserving Europeans; Africans and Middle-Easterners would have to find refuge among their neighbors, not in Europe. All preaching in mosques would be in European languages, with prompt deportation for violators. Any Imams who called for the imposition of Sharia in Europe or for the overthrow of secular governments would also be deported. Immigrants who did not want to eat pork in school cafeterias or swim in mixed-sex swimming pools could go back where they came from. “The cultural identity of our society,” writes Mr. Dewinter, “is not negotiable.”

In most cases, all that would be necessary is to let Europeans speak for themselves. In 2009, the Swiss people voted for a ban on minarets — because they had the chance — and this was in the face of a huge media campaign telling them such a vote would be an act of “hate.” What would the 75 percent of Austrians who think Islam is incompatible with democratic values do if power were actually in their hands?

As Mr. Dewinter notes, we live in aberrant times, in which an insane minority forces its will on the sane. But the continent is waking up. More Europeans now see that Mr. Dewinter is right when he calls this struggle a “fight for a future for Europe and for our children.”

Europe is well ahead of the United States. It is not possible to imagine an American congressman or senator writing this book, yet Belgium has an entire political party of men and women who think as Mr. Dewinter does — and so do Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and France. If sanity ever returns to the West, it will be thanks to the dedication and vision of men like Filip Dewinter.