Category Archives: Belgium

Antwerp: Vlaams Belang protest against mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

VlaamsBelangprotest2

Vlaams Belang held a protest yesterday against the mosque at the Sint-Bernardsesteenweg in Antwerp.

According to the party, with an area of 4,000 sqm, this would be the biggest in Flanders and would also have a koran school and imam training.

In recent days the VB gave out 50,000 flyers against the mosque which according to them would be a symbol of the Islamization of Antwerp and Flanders.

According to VB leader Filip Dewinter, the Jisr Al Amana mosque is everything but a good idea. “Islam is like a cuckoo which lays its eggs in our European next. We hatch them and will in the end be cast off,” he said.

The party walked through the local market with three women dresses in a burka with the slogan “Islam can harm your freedom”.

Islam in Europe, 5 June 2009

Europe’s far Right turns towards the Jewish community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thurrock Patriots

A wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric in Europe is being met by a surprising countertrend: right-wing political factions, including those rooted in Nazism, who have embraced Jews and Israel as “the quintessential guardians of European culture.”

So argues Matti Bunzl, director of the program in Jewish culture and society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who contends that the European far Right is becoming “genuinely philo-Semitic.”

Such parties have thrown their support behind Jewish candidates, have had their leaders appear at pro-Israel rallies, and have written extensively about the virtues of Jews. “It is not an aberration,” said Bunzl, an anthropologist who specializes in the history and culture of European Jewry.

Bunzl cited numerous instances of this newfound fondness for Jews. Austria’s Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis after the war, has run Jewish candidates, and its website “celebrates Jewish contributions to civilization.” Filip DeWinter, a Flemish nationalist in Belgium, whose party grew out of Flemish Nazism, has praised Jews as law-abiding citizens.

One explanation he offers is Islamophobia – antagonism toward Muslim immigrants or Muslims whose families have migrated to European countries in recent generations.

“Even strong support of Israel among the Right is driven by Islamophobia and perception of Israel as a bastion of European civilization,” said Bunzl, author of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe. For European nationalists, “the Jewish state is trying to preserve its European values against the onslaught of Muslims.”

New Jersey Jewish News, 30 March 2009

Fox News boosts Belgian far-right racist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams_BelangA clash of civilizations may be taking place on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s also happening a lot more quietly in European cities.

Old Europe’s population is dwindling even as immigration and high birth rates among Muslim groups are swelling in cities all over the continent.

And in Belgium, it is no different.

Filip Dewinter, a leader of the far-right separatist party Vlaams Belang, predicts there will eventually be a kind of civil war when the longtime residents of Brussels – the nation’s capital and administrative seat of the European Union – realize their city is about to be taken over by Muslim immigrants.

Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city’s 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a “duty,” claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities. “In those neighborhoods it’s not our government that’s in power,” he said, “but the Muslim authorities – the mosques, the imams – who are in charge.”

So instead of being a melting pot, Brussels has become a city that does everything possible to appease Islam, he claims. “Halal food is served in the schools, not only for Muslim children, but for all the children,” said Dewinter, adding that municipal pools in Brussels now have separate hours for men and women to swim.

The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang, once considered a pariah party, now controls about 24 percent of the Belgian vote, a trend matched in other European countries with burgeoning Muslim populations.

Though the immigration debate has not yet reached the fever pitch it has in the U.S., a real test will come when a major European city has a Muslim majority. The first could be Marseilles, in France, or Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. But don’t count out Brussels, the heart and capital of Europe.

Fox News, 24 March 2009

‘We are losing Europe to Islam’ – US political commentator says far right is the answer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana WestSo claims US columnist Diana West. But don’t give up hope, all is not lost:

“Of the parties dedicated to resisting Islamization that I examined in Europe last summer, the most promising range from the sizeable Vlaams Belang in Belgium to the tiny Sweden Democrats, and include the Lega Nord in Italy, the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders in Holland, the Danish People’s Party, the Swiss People’s Party and the Austrian Freedom Party.

“Such parties are unknown here, or ignored. Worse, they are shunned. Why? I believe it’s because their respective political opponents – the leftist media and governing establishments that are increasingly dependent on Islamic support, by the way – have successfully slandered these parties as ‘extremists’, ‘racists’, ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis’.

“Is advocating freedom of speech ‘extreme’ or ‘fascist’? Is opposing Islam’s law, which knows no race, ‘racist’? Is supporting Israel (which these parties do far more than other European parties) ‘Nazi’? The outrageously empty epithets of the Islamo-socialist left seem calculated to stop thought cold and trigger a massive rejection reflex. In this way, resistance becomes anathema, and Islamic law, unchecked, spreads across Europe.”

TownHall.com, 18 September 2008

Vlaams Belang, to take just one example of the far-right parties that West endorses, is the successor organisation to the Vlaams Blok which formally disbanded in 2004 after being successfully prosecuted for “incitement to hate and discrimination”. It can trace its origins back to Nazi collaborators in the Second World War who assisted the occupation forces in sending thousands of Belgian Jews to their deaths.

Anger at Europe’s far right ‘anti-Islam’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nein zur IslamisierungA German far right group has stirred Muslim anger worldwide by holding a three-day “Anti-Islamisation Conference” to protest against the construction of mosques and Muslim immigration.

Prominent members of Europe’s far right, including French “Front National” leader Jean-Marie le Pen and Belgian far-right politician Filip Dewinter, have said they will attend the meeting in Cologne which is aimed at forging a European alliance against “Islamisation.”

The conference will include a rally in the centre of Cologne tomorrow which police say could lead to clashes with left-wing groups that plan a counter-demonstration. Trade unions, churches and other groups have also announced plans to protest against the conference.

The conference organiser is a local protest group called “Pro-Cologne” which campaigned against the city’s recent decision to allow the construction of a large new mosque with two 55-metre tall minarets. Around 330,000 immigrants live in Cologne, about a third of the city’s population.

Mosques are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms, the muezzin call and headscarves are flooding our streets,” Pro-Cologne said on its website. It said 150 “politicians and publicists” from all over Europe and 1,500 other participants will attend the conference at which it plans to launch a petition “against the Islamisation of our cities”.

The meeting has drawn fierce criticism from German politicians and city leaders in Cologne. The premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, said: “Those who abuse the cosmopolitan and democratic city of Cologne as a meeting place for right-wing radicals are against tolerance, against reconciliation, against humanity.”

Times, 18 September 2008

Racists gather for Cologne anti-Islam rally

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racists gather for Cologne anti-Islam rally

By Hans-Peter Killguss

Searchlight, September 2008

SEVERAL HUNDRED racists from all over Europe are expected to flock to a so-called Anti-Islamisation Congress staged by the German fascist pro Köln (pK) organisation to discuss “the foreign infiltration of our cities”.

The congress, in Cologne from 19 to 21 September, comes amid growing racism in Germany. According to one poll, more than 50% of the population favours a ban on mosques. Echoing this, Markus Wiener, a “scientific staff member” of pK, claims there should be “no mosques, no minarets, no muezzin” because “the native population is justifiably worried about creeping Islamisation and the danger of Islamist terror.”

PK was set up in 1996 to campaign against prostitution and only really targeted Muslims after 2000. It recently protested against a new mosque in the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne, distributing tens of thousands of stickers, leaflets and posters and gathering almost 20,000 signatures on a petition.

Although many pK officers and members have been well-known activists in fascist and openly nazi parties, pK claims to be a democratic citizens’ initiative. It styles itself as a “populist” party for the man-in-the-street in contrast to the other parties, which it denounces as corrupt, arrogant and “in hock to the false ideology of multiculturalism”.

After pK gained seats on Cologne city council in 2004, a carbon copy called pro-Deutschland emerged in 2005 followed by pro NRW (Nordrhein Westfalen) in 2007. The primary purpose of September’s Anti-Islamisation Congress is to kick-start the racist campaign for next year’s regional elections in NRW.

Another aim is to improve collaboration between ultra-right groups in Europe ahead of next year’s European Parliament elections. PK already has close links with the Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang whose chairman, Filip Dewinter, will speak at the gathering alongside Andreas Mölzer and Heinz-Christian Strache from the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).

Henry Nitzsche, a former Christian Democrat from Saxony, will also appear. Nitzsche, who is still an MP, once claimed patriotism was vital to prevent Germany from being ruled by what he termed “Multi-Kulti-Schwuchteln” (multicultural poofters). He is an important figurehead because pK is now trying to appeal mainly to conservatives.

The most prominent speaker invited is Jean Marie Le Pen, president of the French Front National. Another well-known speaker will be Mario Borghezio of the Italian Lega Nord (see below).

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Belgium: How Islam corrupts the schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Le Vif Comment l'Islam Menace l'EcoleBelgian French-language magazine Le Vif/L’Express has come out with a five page spread in its August 29th issue about Islam in the Belgian school system.

The headline on the cover – “How Islam Threatens the School” – and the article’s title – “How Islam Corrupts the School” – have already drawn criticisms.

Sadly, the article itself is not available freely online, though I understand it doesn’t really bring any new data. Most schools in Brussels ban the veil, but there are other Muslim requirements from the school system – offering halal food or banning pork, enabling girls to drop gym and swimming classes and not to attend school outings, enabling students to fast at Ramadan, and giving students a place to pray at school.

The article claims that teachers and principles feel they can’t handle the situation. Not only in the case of science and creationism, teachers feel they’re being forced to adapt the curriculum in other subjects such as geography and history so as not to offend students.

Part of the criticism is that besides noting that 30% of schoolgirls in Brussels are Muslims, the article does not give factual data on how many such cases of demands there are from Muslim students and parents.

I received a response from Karim Chemlal, head of the League of Muslims in Belgium, who accuses the exposé of being shallow and not going into the real debate. He points to a study that says Islam is sometimes used as an excuse by students whose true motive is to provoke the system.

Islam in Europe, 4 September 2008

OIC slams anti-Islam congress in Germany

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln (2)The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has expressed serious concerns about reports that an far right group is holding an anti-Islam conference in the German city of Cologne in September.

A spokesman for the OIC’s Islamophobia Observatory in Jeddah said in a statement issued yesterday that the proposed conference was aimed at arousing anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe and that it would pose a threat to inter-communal peace and harmony in society.

The right-wing extremist group Pro Koln is organizing the event on Sept. 19-20, with the aim of issuing a declaration against the purported “Islami-fication” of Europe. The meeting is expected to be attended by some of the most inflammatory names in European race politics, including Jean-Marie Le Pen of France, Austria’s Heinz-Christian Strache, and Belgium’s Filip Dewinter.

The organizers of the conference are motivated by racial hatred and xenophobia, said the OIC spokesman. “The OIC hopes that all segments of society in Germany and other parts of Europe will come out strongly against the holding of such a conference, and reject the proponents of hatred and racism,” he said in the statement.

Various international groups have condemned Pro Koln for organizing the conference and called for public initiatives to confront efforts to spread the right-wing propaganda against people of other ethnic or religious groups.

Meanwhile, German Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano has come out strongly against the planned conference. He said his protests against the “symptoms of a political and militant Islam” have always been based on his desire to “protect the constitutional state based on fundamental rights”. “Pro Koln doesn’t want any democracy at all,” Giordano said, adding that he would “defend any Muslim who is affected by anti-foreigner feeling or xenophobia.”

Arab News, 10 August 2008

See also Deutsche Welle, 8 August 2008

Mosques increasingly not welcome

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cologne mosque protestEuropeans are increasingly lashing out at the construction of mosques in their cities as terrorism fears and continued immigration feed anti-Muslim sentiment across the continent.

The latest dispute is in Switzerland, which is planning a nationwide referendum to ban minarets on mosques. This month, Italy’s interior minister vowed to close a controversial mosque in Milan.

Some analysts call the mosque conflicts the manifestation of a growing fear that Muslims aren’t assimilating, don’t accept Western values and pose a threat to security. “It’s a visible symbol of anti-Muslim feelings in Europe,” says Danièle Joly, director of the Center for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick in England. “It’s part of an Islamophobia. Europeans feel threatened.”

The disputes reflect unease with the estimated 18 million Muslims who constitute the continent’s second-biggest religion, living amid Western Europe’s predominantly Christian population of 400 million, Joly says. The clashes also represent a turnaround from the 1980s and ’90s, when construction of large mosques was accepted and even celebrated in many cities. “I think the tide has turned,” Joly says.

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School ban sparks Belgian hijab campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Belgian hijab campaignBRUSSELS — The decision of a Brussels school to deny Muslim girls the right to wear hijab has motivated them to champion a protest campaign, the latest episode of the hijab debate in the European country.

“The hijab ban has no ground and the administration offered no explanation and did not consult with teachers or parents,” reads a petition circulated by Muslim students in the Institut des Ursulines in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek.

The Catholic school, where Muslims comprise some 85 percent of the students, has decided to ban hijab starting the next academic year. The controversial decision promoted Muslim students to launch a protest campaign, including a rally outside the school, which is located in an area with a large Muslim population.

“The decision, a violation of women rights, is unacceptable,” says the petition. “It has caused us much distraction during our exam period and will threaten the educational future of tens of students next year. It was never reported before that the hijab has caused any disruption of the educational process.”

Many students have already announced they will leave the school if forced to take off their hijab.

Islam Online, 28 May 2008