Fox News has disgraced itself over its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing by providing a platform for a succession of notorious Islamophobes to whip up fear and hatred of Muslims. Not to be outdone, the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian has commissioned a piece from Geert Wilders on the subject.
Wilders writes:
No, I was not surprised when the Tsarnaev brothers, the terrorists involved in last week’s Boston bombing, turned out to be Islamic radicals…. Nor will I be surprised if a similar attack happens in Australia – or Europe, or anyplace where the authorities remain blind to the true nature of Islam….
Read the Koran and you will find the explanation. “Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it,” the Koran tells the faithful (2:216). In case anyone doubts what is meant by fighting: “I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, maim them in every limb!” (8:12).
And yet, most Western intellectuals, journalists and politicians keep declaring that the “true” Islam can be found in the occasional non-bellicose sentences of the Koran. “Islam is a religion of peace,” they say. And whenever adherents of this “religion of peace” blow up pressure cookers full of nails amid innocent bystanders, we hear that “they are not acting in accordance to Islamic teachings”.
The article concludes with Wilders engaging in his usual double-talk about how he distinguishes between Islam as an ideology and Muslims as people. Of course this doesn’t prevent Wilders from targeting Muslims, for example by calling for a ban on Muslim migration into Western countries.
As one of his supporters puts it, in a letter endorsing Wilders’ article:
It is a source of constant amazement to me that our society tolerates, and even panders, to the demands of Muslims who migrate to Australia and other Western nations…. Not every Muslim is a terrorist but the overwhelming number of terrorists are Muslim, and it is time that a conservative government gave some consideration to their migration to Australia.