“Here entire neighborhoods look like the Middle East, women walk around veiled, the mayor is a Muslim, sharia law is applied in the courts and the theaters. An extensive report from the most Islamized city in Europe.”
Category Archives: Netherlands
Wilders’ plan to save the West
Over at Pickled Politics Sunny Hundal reveals Geert Wilders’ 10-point programme to save Western Civilisation from the Muslim hordes.
CAIR denounces Wilders’ hate speech at Florida synagogue
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today call on members of the Jewish community to condemn the anti-Islam hate of a speaker who was recently given a standing ovation at a Florida synagogue.
CAIR said the speech by Dutch anti-Islam extremist politician Geert Wilders took place at a “large synagogue in Palm Beach.” In the speech, Wilders went through his usual laundry list of hate-filled views, including his claim that “Islam is not a religion” and “the right to religious freedom should not apply to this totalitarian ideology called Islam,” all to the applause of the audience. Wilders also called for stopping immigration from Muslim countries and urged “voluntary repatriation” to those countries.
“A synagogue should be the last place that Geert Wilders’ Nazi-like propaganda would find a warm reception,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Members of the Jewish community know all too well what happens when a religious minority is demonized by demagogues. Wilders uses the same scurrilous attacks on Muslims and Islam that the Nazis used against German Jews and Judaism in the 1930s.”
CAIR press release, 28 April 2009
Update: See “ADL condemns anti-Islam remarks made by Dutch parliamentarian during appearances in S. Florida”, ADL Florida press release, 28 April 2009
Further update: See “CAIR Commends Fla. Jewish group for condemning hate speech”, CAIR press release, 30 April 2009
For an alternative view, by the inimitable Pamela Geller, see “ADL stabs Israel’s staunchest ally, Geert Wilders, and Jews along with him again“, Atlas Shrugs, 30 April 2009
Thankfully, the ADL are a lot more representative of the US Jewish community than the lunatic Geller.
Ramadan fallout leads to political crisis in Rotterdam
The right-wing liberal party VVD has quit the Rotterdam local authority over its refusal to sack theologist Tariq Ramadan as adviser.
Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan (46) was hired by Rotterdam in 2007 to help bridge the divide between the city’s Muslim and non-Muslim communities. He is also a guest lecturer at Rotterdam’s Erasmus university.
Last month, the Gay Krant, a newspaper for the homosexual community, accused Ramadan of making homophobic and mysogynistic statements in taped speeches. The VVD promptly demanded that Ramadan be dismissed as city adviser, but it backed down after consultations with coalition party GroenLinks (the Green party). The local authority meanwhile carried out its own investigation of Ramadan’s past statements and concluded that the Gay Krant’s accusations were baseless.
Now, the VVD has decided to quit the Rotterdam city authority over the Ramadan affair. Its two aldermen, Mark Harbers (economy) and Jeannette Baljeu (transportation) gave their resignations on Wednesday evening. Harbers said Ramandan’s views are at odds with “the freedom of its individual to choose his or her own lifestyle”.
Wilders announces ‘Son of Fitna’
Populist broadsheet De Telegraaf reports that Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders is going to produce a sequel to his anti-Islam film Fitna.
Wilders said his new film, which will be finished by 2010, is intended to show the Western world how far Islamisation has progressed. “It is not going to be a copy ofFitna,” said the Freedom Party leader who warns that the film would be “no less controversial than the first film”.
The first film was mainly an indictment of the Qur’an, but “I now want to show people the consequences of mass immigration from Islamic countries, for which we have opened the door here.”
The MP also said professionals from the US will assist him in the production of the film. “I have received offers from people from New York and Hollywood, people who in the past have made films that were screened in the Netherlands.”
However, De Telegraaf writes that Wilders refused to name any names, and has yet to find sponsors to finance his latest production. He will travel to Florida next week to raise funds and talk about his film.
Meanwhile, over David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine we find an enthusiastic defence of Wilders:
“To label Wilders a racist, a xenophobe or a fascist is false. Instead, he should be seen as a democrat who seeks to protect modern democratic societies against the realistic threat of a stealth Islamic revolution, evolving from mass immigration, step by step introduction of Sharia law, and restriction of freedom of speech.”
Tariq Ramadan not homophobic, Rotterdam rules
The city of Rotterdam is extending its contract with Tariq Ramadan for another two years, dismissing claims that the Swiss philosopher made homophobic and misogynistic statements.
Last month, the Gay Krant, a newspaper for the homosexual community in the Netherlands, accused Tariq Ramadan of making homophobic and misogynistic statements on tapes in Arabic destined for the immigrant communities in Europe.
Ramadan (46), a Swiss philosopher and theologist of Egyptian descent, was hired by the city of Rotterdam two years ago to “help lift the multicultural dialogue to a higher level”. He dismissed the Gay Krant‘s accusations as slander.
The city of Rotterdam has since carried out its own investigation, the results of which were presented on Wednesday. The city had 54 Arabic-language cassette tapes translated and examined. According to council executive Rik Grasshof of the Green party GroenLinks, the Gay Krant‘s reporting was incomplete and inaccurate.
As a result, Ramadan’s contract with the city will be extended for another two years, during which he will lead public debates in an effort to bring the various communities in Rotterdam closer together.
The right-wing liberal party VVD, one of four coalition parties in the city government, had demanded Ramadan’s resignation following the Gay Krant‘s accusations. “He can think what he wants but he cannot spread homophobic ideas in the name of the city of Rotterdam,” VVD council member Bas van Tijn said.
Van Tijn also questioned what Ramadan brought to Rotterdam. “How can someone who doesn’t speak Dutch bring the communities in Rotterdam together? Especially if that someone is constantly accused of having a double discourse?” Van Tijn asked.
Wilders to appeal British ban
Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, best known for the anti-Islam film “Fitna,” said Friday he had appealed against a decision by Britain to block his entry to the country in February. “I have appealed to the British asylum and immigration tribunal,” the Dutch member of parliament told AFP, adding that he had a British and Dutch lawyer working on his case.
Wilders was detained by immigration officials on arrival at London’s Heathrow airport on February 12 before being sent home. British authorities said he was turned back to stop him spreading “hatred and violent messages,” but the action was condemned by the Dutch government.
Wilders had been invited to screen his 17-minute film in the House of Lords. The private screening later went ahead in his absence. The film, which likens Islam to Nazism and juxtaposes images of the 9/11 attacks with pictures of the Koran, has been described as “offensively anti-Islamic” by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Wilders declined to say whether his appeal had been accepted by the court, but said he would find out in 28 days when his first hearing would take place.
The right-wing coalition behind Wilders’ US visit
The fiercely anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been traveling through the U.S. this week on a highly-publicised trip to meet with politicians, promote his controversial film “Fitna”, and raise money for his legal defence back home.
Although Wilders’s stated goal has been to campaign for free speech, his trip has been sponsored and promoted by an unlikely coalition of groups united primarily by their hostility towards Islam. His backers include neoconservative and right-wing Jewish groups on the one hand and figures with ties to the European far right on the other.
Since he was charged with incitement to hate and discrimination in the Netherlands in January and denied entry to Britain earlier this month on public safety grounds, Wilders has become something of a cause celebre for the U.S. right.
This week, he gave a private viewing of his 17-minute anti-Islam film in the U.S. Senate, where he was hosted by Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican. He also appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s and Glenn Beck’s popular right-wing TV shows, met privately with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and hobnobbed with former U.N. ambassador John Bolton at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
On Friday, he capped his busy week with an appearance at the National Press Club. At the event, he reiterated his calls for a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and pronounced, to raucous applause from the audience, that “our Western culture based on Christianity, Judaism, and humanism is in every aspect better than Islamic culture”.
His chief sponsors during the trip have primarily been neoconservative organisations such as Frank Gaffney’s Centre for Security Policy, David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre, and Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum, which is also helping to raise money for Wilders’s legal defence.
An event he held at a Boston-area synagogue was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential group whose board members include casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, and neoconservative writer David Frum, who attended Wilders’s Friday event in Washington.
His trip has also been heavily promoted by conservative blogger Pamela Geller, who sponsored a reception for him in Washington on Friday. Geller is perhaps best known for alleging during the 2008 presidential campaign that now-President Barack Obama is the illegitimate child of the late Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X; she also continues to argue that Obama is a secret Muslim.
A less well-known but key backer of Wilders’s trip has been the newly-formed International Free Press Society (IFPS), which is headed by Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard and upon whose advisory board Wilders sits. The IFPS has been instrumental in promoting Wilders’ case as a free-speech issue, joining him in calling for an “International First Amendment”, and it was a co-sponsor of Friday’s event at the National Press Club.
While the IFPS has strong ties to neoconservatives – its staff includes members of Pipes’s and Gaffney’s organisations – it also has ties to the European far right, and specifically the Belgian rightist party Vlaams Belang (VB), or Flemish Interest.
The IFPS’s vice president Paul Belien is married to Vlaams Belang MP Alexandra Colen, and has been a fierce defender of the party against its critics. And in 2007, Hedegaard and Belien – along with IFPS board members Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, and Sam Solomon – appeared with VB leader Filip Dewinter at the CounterJihad conference in Brussels. Although “the VB did not organise the conference, it provided an important part of the logistics and the security of those attending,” according to Belien.
Inter Press Service, 28 February 2009
See also “Synagogue hails Dutch lawmaker as a hero”, Jewish Telegraph Agency, 27 February 2009
Sun backs Wilders
“Britain recently disgraced itself by banning democratically elected Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country. His planned ‘crime’ was to screen a short documentary at a private viewing in the House of Lords…. Our cringing surrender to this authoritarian, book-burning mentality was ordered by mealy-mouthed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith under pressure from Labour peer Lord Ahmed…. Wilders’ visit would have gone unnoticed but for Jackboot Jacqui, whose Government has prostrated itself to accommodate Islam’s nastier fringes….
“It gave oxygen to rabble-rousing imams who brainwashed thousands of young British-born Muslims, not least the 7/7 murderers. It turned a blind eye to migrants who refuse to assimilate and instead colonise whole suburbs and cities where welfare has become a way of life. It encouraged multi-culturalism which, far from spreading tolerance, has entrenched primitive tribal customs, including forced marriages and honour killings. As a result, our security services are at breaking point keeping tabs on an army of shadowy troublemakers who flit back and forth to Pakistan — many to be trained in OUR mass murder.
“… it is impossible to disagree with what Wilders has to say about extremists. He told an American audience recently: The Europe you know is changing. You have seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings, the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago. But a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world very few visitors see.
“Throughout Europe a new reality is rising, entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. It’s the world of headscarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands – or slaveholders, if you prefer – walk three steps ahead.
“With mosques on many street corners, shops have signs you cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.
“There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches.And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: We rule.
“Sounds about right to me.”
Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun, 23 February 2009
Why the Wilders ban was right
“I was disappointed by your one-sided coverage of the Geert Wilders controversy. Neither your editorial (‘Ban on Wilders was folly‘) nor your columnist Catherine Bennett (‘Geert Wilders has just made our leaders look truly idiotic‘, Comment) appeared able to distinguish between causing offence and inciting racial hatred. It is on the latter charge that Wilders faces prosecution in the Netherlands. While the principle of free speech covers the right to offend people, it certainly does not allow racists the right to whip up hatred against minority communities. For this reason, I and many others fully supported Jacqui Smith’s decision to ban Wilders from entering Britain.”
Letter from London Assembly member Murad Qureshi in theObserver, 22 February 2009