Category Archives: Netherlands

The racism behind integration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IRR report cover“In most European countries, integration is simply a euphemism for assimilation, the report says. The driving force is the notion of a national culture. In Germany this expresses itself through blood-based citizenship and a Leitkultur(dominant culture) and in France through citizenship by birth and earth and by laïcité (secularism). Norway has the idea of likhet (sameness); the Netherlands has verzuiling (religious/cultural blocs).

“One expects the extreme right to embrace such notions, but the report finds centre-left parties also using these racist sentiments to strategise. They may be liberal about immigration but, when it comes to Muslims, they fall prey to an Islamophobia that is ‘nourished by a mixture of feminism and secularism’.”

Ziauddin Sardar reviews Liz Fekete’s Integration, Islamophobia and civil rights in Europe, a new report published by the Institute of Race Relations.

New Statesman, 22 May 2008

Arabist Hans Jansen causes irritation among his peers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam_Voor_VarkensIn his recent book Islam for pigs, monkeys, donkeys and other animals, Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen has put a cat in among the scientific pigeons. However, it looks like the media are taking him more seriously than his fellow Islam experts are.

Fellow Arabist Professor Martin van Bruinessen from the Institute for Studies in Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden expresses the growing irritation with Hans Jansen among his colleagues.

He remembers when in the 1990s, Dr Jansen wrote facetious pieces about Islam. But since the Netherlands became obsessed by fear of Islam after 9/11, the professor from Utrecht has grown into a real phenomenon in the media, in which he presents himself as the only Dutch expert who dares to talk about the inconvenient truth of Islam without political correctness getting in the way.

Dr Jansen’s work is an important source of inspiration for anti-Islamic MP Geert Wilders. In the days after his film Fitna was put on the web, Dr Jansen appeared in several television programmes to explain its content.

In Islam for pigs, he sets out his vision by answering 250 questions about Islam. In the book, Islam is portrayed as a dangerous and violent religion. The Qur’an preaches peace, Dr Jansen admits, but only once everyone has submitted to the religion. Up to that time, evil and unbelievers have to be conquered, using violence if necessary.

The number of Dutch Muslims that reject al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism could be “lower than we think”, according to the professor. Most Muslims do not see Bin Laden as a madman, but rather as a “super-activist, who is taking the ultimate steps according to Islamic rules in the fight against infidels.”

The title of the book refers to the terms used by the Qur’an for unbelievers and Jews, explains the author in the introduction. Professor Van Bruinessen says: “If you take the time to look at the passages in question – for example on the bibleandkoran.net site, you will see that this is just not true. The Qur’an tells about a people in the past that disobeyed God and was turned into pigs and monkeys as a punishment.”

Professor van Bruinessen thinks this is typical of Mr Jansen’s style. “Since Mr Jansen received the title of professor, but in particular since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he has set all scientific scruples aside. He has become an anti-Islam polemist who has no reservations about completely misrepresenting the issues on purpose.”

Radio Netherlands, 24 April 2008

Anti-Wilders video depicts ‘violent’ Christianity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Saudi man has created a riposte to films criticising Islam in a video which portrays Christianity as a religion of violence. The film, entitled Schism, was made by Raed al-Saeed. It splices together Bible verses and Iraq war images – including British soldiers beating civilians. Other images show Christian extremists in America apparently encouraging children to fight a “war” for Jesus.

The film, which was posted on the internet last month, was initially removed by YouTube, the video sharing site. Mr Saeed complained to the site and it has been restored.

Mr Saeed said his film was not intended to outrage or provoke, but rather to illustrate how all religions could be depicted as preaching violence. “It is easy to take parts of any holy book and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written,” reads the closing image in the six-minute film. Schism is a response to the recently released film Fitna by Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, in which acts of violence by Islamic extremists are inter-cut with Koran verses.

It had been feared that Fitna would prompt violent global outrage amongst Muslims. So far, however, reaction has been muted. Instead it has spawned a host of parodies as well as more serious responses such as Mr Saeed’s film. “In Schism I have used the same methodology that Wilders has used and that involves taking texts out of context,” he said.

Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2008

See also “Schism — Saudi blogger’s answer to Wilders film”, Arab News, 10 April 2008

All is not lost – Europe can resist Islamification says Pipes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pipes5“Some analysts of Islam in Western Europe argue that the continent cannot escape its Eurabian fate; that the trend lines of the past half-century will continue until Muslims become a majority population and Islamic law (the Shari’a) reigns.

“I disagree, arguing that there is another route the continent might take, one of resistance to Islamification and a reassertion of traditional ways. Indigenous Europeans – who make up 95 percent of the population – can insist on their historic customs and mores. Were they to do so, nothing would be in their way and no one could stop them.

“Indeed, Europeans are visibly showing signs of impatience with creeping Shari’a. The legislation in France that prohibits hijabs from public school classrooms signals the reluctance to accept Islamic ways, as are related efforts to ban burkas, mosques and minarets. Throughout Western Europe, anti-immigrant parties are generally increasing in popularity.”

Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, 2 April 2008

Pipes names Dutch far-right racist Geert Wilders as one of the “staunch individuals” who “may represent the vanguard of a Christian/liberal reassertion of European values” and who could “provide a crucial boost for those intent on maintaining the continent’s historic identity”.

‘Jihad comes to Wall Street’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages – and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process – is now chasing the very kind of ‘sharia finance’ against which Wilders’s movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco….

“Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such ‘ethical’ mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.”

Alex Alexiev at National Review Online, 3 April 2008

Update:   Mad Melanie Phillips entirely agrees: “Of all the manifestations of the Islamisation of the west sharia finance is perhaps the most deadly, because it effectively sells the west to Islam.”

Melanie Phillips’s blog, 7 April 2008

Dutch Jewish group condemns Wilders film

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The newly-released anti-Islam film by right-wing Dutch legislator Geert Wilders drew condemnations from the Netherlands’ Central Jewish Board, which Friday called the film’s focus on anti-Jewish preachings by Muslims “counterproductive” and “generalizing.”

In keeping with Wilders’ belief in a Judeo-Christian partnership in the face of “the threat of Islam,” the 15-minute film, entitled “Fitna” – Arabic for strife – shows clerics calling to behead Jews, Koran passages equating Jews to “apes and swines” and photos of demonstrators promising “another Holocaust” and praising Adolf Hitler.

In a statement following the film’s online release, the board said that Wilders – the leader of the Party for Freedom – was guilty of serious generalizations. “Wilders presented demographics on the increase of Muslims in Europe with pictures from scenes of terrorist attacks, suggesting all Muslims are potential terrorists,” head of the Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, Dr. Ronny Naftaniel, Saturday told Haaretz.

While the anti-Semitic material Wilders compiled “demonstrates some Muslims have terrible ideas about Jews,” the way Fitna portrays reality serves to “polarize Dutch society,” the board said, adding this was counterproductive to the fight against extremism.

Haaretz, 30 March 2008