AT THE RISK of being accused of racism, I quote below excerpts from a speech at the Four Seasons, New York, of Geert Wilders, the controversial member of the Dutch parliament, on the proliferation of Muslim communities. His presentation was sponsored last September by the Hudson Institute.
* * *
ANOTHER WORLD: All is not well in the old world… and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.
I see looming the scenario of America as the last man standing, the United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: Who lost Europe?
The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks — the Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.
But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
* * *
MUSLIM GHETTOS: All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen.
It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity.
These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. 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, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe, with larger congregations than there are in churches.
* * *
TAKING OVER: Clearly, the signal is: We rule. Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods.
Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam, gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore.” Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.
In France, school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England, sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II.
* * *
ISLAMIZATION: Some 54 million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that 25 percent of the population in Europe would be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France.
One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. A study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.
* * *
INTIFADA: In my country we have gone from calls by one Cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another Cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia if there is a Muslim majority.
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers.” Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam.
Much of this street violence is directed against non-Muslims, forcing many natives to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
* * *
ePOSTSCRIPT: Read current and old POSTSCRIPTs at www.manilamail.com. E-mail feedback to fdp333@yahoo.com