Harry's Place

I don’t agree with the banning of any books, including the Koran. Nor do I agree with unfortunate comments about the birth rates of certain ethnic groups. Having said that, I don’t believe that Wilders is some kind of dangerous right-wing monster. Whether we like it or not, there is some validity in some of the things he says. For example, I happen to believe there is an irrefutable link between passages in the Koran and Jihadi violence, and I don’t not feel obliged to show respect for Koranic scripture anymore than I do say for the writings of L Ron Hubbard’s for the Church of Scientology.

For a tragic and very recent example of the link between Koranic texts and Jihadi violence one only has to look at the heart-rending final hours of the kidnapped Briton, Edwin Dyer, murdered by Islamic militants in the Sahara desert last week.

(From the Times online at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6446276.ece)
“Finally the kidnappers grew tired of waiting, decided to make an example of Dyer, who was unmarried, and killed him.

“They separated Dyer in front of us. I could tell it was a bad sign,” the intermediary said. “Negotiations were deadlocked. Britain was categorical that it would not give in to their demand to release Abu Qatada, the radical cleric who is imprisoned in Britain, in return for Dyer and, above all, it rejected paying ransom money for him.”

The negotiator said that Zeid, the leader of the Islamist group, was particularly hostile towards Britain. “Who are these British?” he asked. “Just western unbelievers. Islam tells us not to have any links with unbelievers. That is why this man [Dyer] will be executed in the name of God.”

“Instead of making outcasts of all Muslims, the focus should be on ‘education, education, education,’ to borrow a phrase from Tony Blair.”

I laugh, yet I cry.

Apologies for the poor grammar in the final sentence of the first paragraph of my previous posting; I should have said: “…than say for the texts of L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology”.

This article conflates many issues. One of them is not that `Islamism`is taking hold in the Netherlands, but that there is an ingrained and culture of criminal recidivism and anti-social behaviour that is reaching outrageous proportions. And it comes almost exclusively from one community. You cannot compare the situation with England.

Here’s a recent article from a respected Dutch newspaper:

http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article2249910.ece/Er_zijn_niet_slechts_een_paar_criminele_Marokkanen

It highlights:

Discrimination and serious abuse by Moroccan youth against Blacks, Gays and women. Jews cannot wear their kippot in Moroccan areas without being molested.
60% of Moroccan youth leaves school without any form of qualifications.
39% of Moroccan youth was unemployed in 2006 (!!!!!!!)
62% of Moroccans aged 40-64 are on some form of benefit.
An estimated 70% (!!!!!) of Moroccan youth younger than 24 has a criminal record.
A shortlist of 200 criminal youths in the Amsterdam area of Slotervaart was 199 Moroccan youth and 1 Turkish youth – yet in this area only 17% of the population is of Moroccan origin.
An estimated 80% of registered troublemakers in Amsterdam whose families are visited by social workers are of Moroccan origin.
That generation upon generation lapses into criminality and that this is considered an acceptable career path within that community.

The article outlines several relatively successful approaches to the problem (coaching, mentoring) but overall, it`s not really working.

There is no social contract. The social contract that bound the Huguenots, the Jews, the Catholics, the Surinamese, the Moluccans etc. has been ripped up and wiped with their arses.

Again, this is not an `Islam`thing – Turks are well integrated into Dutch society.

Wilders or no Wilders (personally I think he’s a criminal buffoon whose platform is illegal), there is a serious issue in the Netherlands. One major issue is that the majority of crime has been quantified as being committed by a sector of society that has turned against and is openly proud of rejecting that society.

You say:

“If Wilder truly believes the Koran is a fascist book, then why has he not demanded ‘Mein Kampf’ or any of the other fascist tracts that circulate in book stores be thrown into the book burning pyre as well.“

He doesn`t have to – Mein Kampf is banned in Holland. Poor research, wasted argument.

Poujadist-völkischness

You win.

Will and that Flight of the Concordes harpy loses.

Jum? That’s my best friend Jum. If we were friends you’d know who Jum was. Ah Jum, he’s a classic. You see that Brutt? Those are breasts.

I do believe that Wilders’ point is that if Mein Kampf is banned in Holland, as it is, then the Koran which is not short of a few passages encouraging violence against the unbeliever (pace Karen Armstrong and sundry Guardian bores) should also be banned. As Meir says, do your research old boy.

Meir and Vern,

I was speaking of Europe as a whole. There are plenty of far right books stores in Europe that sell fascist books and tracks. You may need to get out more often.

Meir, don’t deny the probelms with Moroccan unemployment. My question for you and for Geert Wilders is, will making all Muslims outcasts and banning their religious texts and keeping them from building more mosques going to help the situation or make it worse.

It appears that the cognitive dissonance that has allowed multiculturalism to desrtoy western civilisation is no longer effective, and the ruling political elites are in a mess.
Islam and the West cannot live together.

Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European.

-I’m not from Europe so I can’t determine for myself if this is true or not? Is this occuring or is this wishful thinking or somewhere in between?

We are in sore need of information to conduct this debate. Is it true, as some state, that Rotterdam is a Muslim majority city, or can be projected by population experts to become so in the forseesable future? If so, does it matter? Do we have any Rotterdams in England? If so, does it matter? Let’s have the info and then we can debate whether it matters?

As a rider to my previous post, does it matter if large numbers of Dutch people are converting to Islam?

Where you you get your fantasy ideas on assimilation or integration of Muslims with the host population?????
We live in different worlds. I live here in Peterborough and I can assure you there is very little integration socially, culturally or spatially or whatever. Muslims do not want to integrate with the host community. They are still encouraged to import spouses from the sub continent. The first thing Bliar did in 1997 was to change the primary purpose rule to allow them to do it as a reward for the Asian vote.
So come on bring out your evidence for assimilation or intermarriage. Your views sound like a sixth formers essay brown nosing teacher. Get in the real world

Colin – those converting to Islam have a political reason to do so.

It should scare the pants off any freethinker when religion becomes the spearhead of politics.

But of course the historically and economically illiterate left thinks its so delightful to see Islamism arousing identity passions and emotion-based activism in secular democratic society. After all, the left’s fight is also against democracy.

Muslims are a mere 4.5% of the population of Europe? Is that a mere 4.5% of the 0 – 10 age group? What will be the
percentage in – say – Blackburnistan fifteen years from now?

How many more British churches will be converted into mosques?

Muslims will intermarry with the host population and
their offspring will be perfectly integrated?

Like they have in Fiji?

Look! A flying pig!

I would suggest that it shows more bigotry to base projections on the assumption that another culture will change and adopt our ways than to base projections on the assumption that they will continue in the future as they have in the past.

Just as a matter of principle.

I certainly believe we should argue for our principles and ideals, but to simply assume that we will win without trying strikes me as convenient self-delusion.

“Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European.”

One of the problems is that often the children of Muslim immigrants are less assimilated than their parents and appear to define themselves by their religion to a much greater extent than their parents. This doesn’t mean that assimilation won’t happen but it can’t simply be assumed that it will occur automatically.

Readers of HP will have been pleased to find that Andrew Murphy gave links to Jihad Watch, Gates of Vienna and Mark Steyn.

It is not so long ago that even mentioning such ungoodthinkful sites merited expulsion; offenders were cast into outer darkness.

Talking of looking a ungoodthinkful sites, the BNP site unearthed a speech last year by the celebrated Shahid Malik M.P., the Martyr King himself, telling a receptive audience that the number of Muslim MPs in Parliament will grow and grow until – within perhaps 30 years – the U.K. has a Muslim as Prime Minister.

No sooner were the words out of the Martyr King’s mouth than he was seized with great dread lest any representatives of the press were present. Luckily for him, those who were proved to be dependable dhimmi ‘Guardianistas’ and the Martyr King’s unguileful utterances were duly airbrushed from the official history.

Unfortunately for our debate, Anrdew Murphy kicks off armed with nothing more than wishful thinking about immigration rather than hard statistics, the kind of information we need to if we are to back up our private opinions. I could for instance reminisce about my grandmother’s home in a district of a northern UK city that was to all appearance solid white, where the word Muslim was as unknown as brahmaputra, but which now to all appearance is solid Muslim, but I have no statistics to back up this feeling. And feeling it is, because I now feel a complete disconnect with the scene of my grandmother’s home. Hamid, I may be mistaken but I don’t get the impression that there are among the Muslims there many of the original inhabitants who have converted to Islam for political or for whatever other reasons.

As a matter of interest, at the moment I’m on holiday abroad in a country that has a large migrant worker population but no immigrant communities. Foreign workers are welcome to come and make there pile and take it home. They are not invited to apply for their family dependants to immigrate. Result, no ghettos. I haven’t seen a single sign of foreign customs – for example, burka – in the last five months. When I – an English-speaking athieist – leave this month, I’ll leave no trace behind except I hope a few pleasant personal memories iin locals’ minds.

But to return to the theme – information about immigration in the UK. Where’s Habibi?

in no connection UP assertions. – in one lifetime r

“will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European”

Yes, but likely to be European Muslims.

“instead of making outcasts of all Muslims, the focus should be on ‘education, education, education,”

In Muslim countries like Iran yes, but in the UK the educated second and third generations are as likely to be more radical than the first.

“Wilders refers to the Koran as a ‘fascist’ book.”

As did Churchill, who has some experience of battling Jihadis.

Colin asks – does it matter…?

To me yes, because I believe in certain values such as secularism, free speech, emancipation, democracy etc which are incompatible with radical Islam, and I want to live in a community that shares these values. Many (although not necessarily most, according to polls) Muslims would agree with me, however there will always be a sizeable minority who do not and seek to impose their views on the rest of us. This appears to be part and parcel of Islamic immigration.

There has to be a recognition that culture is at least as important to communities as economics and the impact of strong cultures like Islam, many of whose adherents reject Western values while wishing to enjoy the economic benefits, upon the European communities.

A recent Prospect article pointed out immigration by “alien” cultures is historically not necessarily “flattery” – look at Western migration to China and the Ottoman empires in the 19th Century, drawn there to exploit not admire. Much the same (albeit in a less power-based form) could be said of Islamic immigration to Europe.

I do not believe Islam is incompatible with the West, but it needs to be seen for what it is – and the impact of Islamic immigration properly understood – if we wish to maintain the values we believe in.

Wilders’ extreme reaction is symptomatic of a refusal of the ruling class to accept these somewhat inconvenient truths.

“Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!”

The statement that only 4.5% of Europeans are Muslims doesn’t ameliorate the point. If 40,50,60,70% of a place where you live is heavily populated by Muslims then you will feel that you are no longer in your own country. That is how BNP got its votes, by localities with special problems.

We can’t compare Bradford with Orpington.

I know well the history of antisemitism (as I posted elsewhere) but there is a difference between Jews and Muslims in host countries. The Jews never had groups who pushed political agendas to make chages to the societies in which they lived. A few loud-mouth Islamists in these European communities, along with higher densities of Muslims will convey to Europeans that there is a threat.

Last year Bishop Nazir talked about ‘no go’ areas. Were there ever any Jewish no-go areas where you were threatened in your own country for not being a Jew. I am sure that there are some places in Holland, Denmark, France and Sweden where this is true.

Also, you cannot state that the population is only 4% if the distribution is not equal amongst all European population. Local people will feel what most others never see. I don’t think the suburbs of Surrey believe they are being overun by Mosques replacing Churches.

Wilders like BNP are litmus papers as to what is happening at points of concentration. If Wilders talks about the Islamification of Europe its because he faces local issues that the vast majority of us don’t experience. In a sense he is the expert based on his own country and we are not.

The birth-rate of the Muslim immigrants IS higher than the European nations they have moved to. pointing this out is not racist in any way.

Meir, don’t deny the probelms with Moroccan unemployment. My question for you and for Geert Wilders is, will making all Muslims outcasts and banning their religious texts and keeping them from building more mosques going to help the situation or make it worse.

I don’t think any country in Europe ever tried to make Muslims “outcasts”. Its the statement by Islamists that the people of the host country were “unbelievers” who were to be converted to Islam if possible were somehow “wrong”. Its like inviting guest to your party who keep criticising you, your house and that they don’t actually like the party. “Islam will dominate” was a poster at the Mo-toons demo. It tells people that the desire is to seed yoru society and take you over. People see that, add it other loud-mouth statements and conclude they are under threat.

Building Mosques is also a political statement. They dominate the skyline and it says “We’re here!”. Add to this the Islamist policies of “We want Shariah” and the more extreme that everyone is really a Muslim who hasn’t yet converted and you might understand why people get edgy.

Boris Johnson proposed that the Koran be edited to take out the hateful passages when debating the religious incitement bill.

“Its like inviting guest to your party who keep criticising you, your house and that they don’t actually like the party. “Islam will dominate” was a poster at the Mo-toons demo.”

Just thought that was worth repeating.

“To me yes, because I believe in certain values such as secularism, free speech, emancipation, democracy etc which are incompatible with radical Islam”

I agree entirely. I’ve posted before on my objections to Multiculturalism and taken criticism for it. My objection to Multiculturalism is not based on a simplistic a priori antipathy to “the other” or a simple xenophobia. I am not hostile to other cultures ( generally speaking) except where it impacts on my sense of identity. It is essential that there is a commonality , a shared sense of identity for any society to work. Multiculturalism does not promote this. It promotes seperate cultural identity and hopes that the shared experience of civil society will simply bind us together. Sometimes it does…..(viz Marco Attilla Hoares describing the positive experience of growing up in a multi- ethnic, multi cultural environment). But sometimes it doesn’t…..The governments attempts to manipulate “cultural cohesion” is a tacit admission that there are fault lines. For me , the writing on the wall was the Satanic Verses affair. It should have been a point of principle that the book, and freedom to print it without fear of intimidation should have been a given. Instead, since then, we have seen operation creep, whereby the demands of the Muslim population are increasingly tolerated…whether it’s Lord Ahmed’s abiltity to intimidate the Government into banning Gert Wilders or its the Archbishop of Canterbury telling us that we should incorporate aspects of Sharia law into our society. I don’t see any evidence to suggest that the Muslims in Britain are becoming more integrated. If anything , it appears to be the opposite. They have reinforced their sense of a seperate identity, as promoted by multiculturalsim, and become emboldened in their demands for an increased Islamic identity in British society, and by the craveness of some our politicians who should have confronted this earlier on.

and their children and grandchildren will be very much European

Yup and plenty holding views like Like Mohammed Siddique Khan, how many Islamic terrorists and would-be terrorists in the UK – remember there are 2000 Islamic nascent terrorist cells being tracked by MI5 – are second or third generation Muslims? No, there really IS a problem with Islam and many Muslims, denying it will not make the problem go away.

Wilders makes the same mistake that people like Ken Livingstone make, which is assuming that radical Islamists speak for all Muslims.

I rather think we have ourselves a straw-man argument here; I’ve not seen any evidence of that assertion, indeed I’ve heard Wilders specifically qualify his views to say he does not hold all Muslims to the views of the extremists.

Alas, bog standard mainstream Islam is intrinsically extremist. What is clear, is that practicing Muslims often, if not usually, hold views incompatible with pluralist liberal democracy. 40% of UK Muslims are prepared to tell Polsters they want Sharia in the UK, and that includes the MINOS – Muslims in Name Only, who are fine and only become a problem if they suffer recidivism.

I for one don’t want mass Muslim immigrating to the UK to continue and they are flooding in as serial immigrants – an extraordinarily high proportion of UK Muslims source Muslim wives or husbands from Islamic countries, in the UK’s case often Pakistan. Around 50% marry first cousins. I’m quite positive the vast majority of Brits feel the same way.

The Netherlands is now 6% Muslim, given the above, that’s not even vaguely funny. The uncomfortable fact for touchy feely PC liberal types, is that on Islamic immigration Wilders is right.

The way to halt Islamic serial immigration is to simply stop issuing spousal visas for anyone under 35 from Muslim countries – in the UK Pakistan would head the list. All immigrants get in on a points based system based purely on the UK’s national interest; simple.

Wilders group will not be co-operating with any far-right groups:

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13832564

This was also reported in the Guardian of all places, following the results.

In Holland his is known as a ‘populist’ party, which also wants less powers from Brussels.

I don’t agree that Geert Wilders is beyond the pale; though I don’t agree with his statements about banning the Quran (although if Mein Kampff is also banned in Holland, it is just as logical to ban the Quran, for all its extremism against non-Muslims).

I think Andrew Murphy really does need to do his homework over this. Muslim immigration to Holland has been uncontrolled and criminal types and anti-socials have taken advantage of Dutch liberalism in the past 40 years. Many areas of Amsterdam are no-go areas for whites and most Jews have left.

A student of mine was attacked in broad daylight by thugs of an Islamic and North African origin ethnic group (out of respect, I won’t call them ‘Muslims’) merely for having wandered into a ‘Muslim’ area. He was in hospital for a year suffering from head injuries (they kicked his head in) and still isn’t right. He’s had to give up his hopes of ever gaining a degree because he suffers severe migraines.

Nobody told him there were ‘no-go’ areas in Amsterdam. The tourist brochures of course don’t mention it; such uncomfortable ideas gets no coverage in the Britush press; and even today there are parts of the Netherlands where the white native population is in denial that there is an ugly side to ‘Islamic’ immigration.

I think Holland shouldn’t ban ‘Islamic’ immigration – just be picky about the educational standards and economic contribution any immigrants might make – as Australia has done for many years. Where they have gone wrong is by letting just anybody in, and that includes many low-lifes and exploiters.

Spectrum says ‘We can’t compare Bradford with Orpigton’: true, except in this respect. There was a time in my life time [born 1937]when Bradford and Orpington were zero Muslim. Why is working-class Bradford now so Muslim and middle-class Orpington not so? Is it that Bradfordians are largely Sun readers and Orpingtonians Guardian or Independant readers? I don’t think so, except perhaps that Orpingtonians have no experience of the Islamification of their streets – or should I say their Laburnam Avenues – and so have no fears, and even look down on Bradfordian working-class fears? Wickedly, I almost wish the fate of Bradford would overtake Orpington.

Bradford and Orpington in 1937 started out at zero. Bradford is now what percent, Orpington what? Where’s the information I want: or is that too dangerous for dreamy Andrew Murphy and his followers?

Lets just throw some eggs at him.

On another matter, did anyone read the amusing post in the Times – when the BNP goes to Brussels, they will have to abide by equal rights legislation when hiring staff.

Link here:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/06/could-the-bnps-biggest-achievement-be-its-downfall.html

Anyone want to apply? (but not indigenous British please – you can tell just by looking at them)

Jews, at their peak, comprised about 0.7% of the British population. Within a generation they were well on their way to moving out of the ghetto and becoming the disproportionately well-educated and professional group they are now.

Muslims, at the last count, accounted for 11% of births in the UK (I cant say for certain because ive lost the link. feel free to prove me wrong). Btw please stop using population percentages as proof of anything – they are irrelevant and misleading, what matters is birth rates. One thing Europe doesnt lack is old white people.

Even if there is no more Muslim immigration, which wont happen because it would also mean Britain pulling out of UN asylum treaties, birth rates mean that figure will still go up. Not as much as the Eurabia crowd say but they will comfortably reach 15% if not 20%. If London, Lancashire and Yorkshire already have Muslim ghettos, what makes you think it wont have when the youth population reaches that total? And when were the British people asked about this massive change to their country?

Wilders might have be a bit of a loudmouth but he’s preferable to Griffin, which is what we’re going to get thanks to liberal complacency and our insane immigration rules over the past decade.

Excellent article, Andrew. The Wilders type of fascist and the Islamists are mirror images of each other and feed off one another. Demonising Muslims and treating them as the enemy within will hamper their assimilation and encourage the growth of extremism, just as Islamist extremism seeks to drive a wedge between ordinary moderate Muslims and the non-Muslim majority by claiming that the latter is irremediably racist and anti-Muslim.

Here in the UK, the assimilation of Muslims and other minority groups is hampered by our extremely poor education system, the existence of religious schools, and the reluctance of our political and intellectual elite to countenance the inculcation of national identity through our schools. We need to teach all schoolchildren in Britain, irrespective of ethnicity or religion, to be patriots and to love our multiethnic nation, a nation that should encompass them all. Our education system should be wholly secular.

David, you wrote: “Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European. ”

But,

“… nearly half of ethnic Indian and three quarters of ethnic Pakistani and Bangladeshi children aged 0-4 have a mother born in her country of origin. 30% of all children born in Bradford are born to foreign mothers; in Tower Hamlets the figure is 68%. And the Pakistani population of Manchester…

… as late as 2001, it was estimated that 60% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi marriages in Bradford were with a spouse from the country of origin….”

http://www.migrationwatchuk.com/BriefingPaper/document/128

Do you seriously believe that somehow Muslims in Europe will eventually assimilate and life will be peachy? Can you point to somewhere, anywhere, where this has happened? Just look at India. Look at Kosovo. Muslims, on the whole, don’t integrate. Ever. And whenever their numbers get very high, it leads to civil conflict. Because Islam is not designed to be subservient to other laws and values. Look at the world today. This pattern is nothing new.

Trust me mate, I know. I was born a Muslim in Iran.

And please, in future stick to subjects you know something about.

Ed West is 100% right.

The BNP is (superficially) expressing the well merited concerns of socio economic groups B & C. Their voters are not fascists, racists or anti semites, they are people who don’t want their children to suffer the indignities, crime & humiliation of fighting for jobs & housing with immigrants, many of whom are Muslim.

Already the middle classes in the South are being adversely affected by reckless immigration. Ask Ben Kinsella’s parents. What about the school in Woking which is 80% muslim & a great headmistress was sacked for being “islamophobic” ? – half a million compensation there well deserved, but not paid by the muslims.

If the 2 big political parties don’t like the BNP (& I don’t) then they should tackle immigration, Islam, multiculturalism, punishment of crime, asylum & all the other problems they have studiously ignored for 15 years

Martin

Andew Murphy – what in your dream world would happen if half a million non-Muslim Bradfordians decided to go and settle in the tribal homelands of of north-west Pakistan?

At an anti-Jihad conference this year, Wilders suggested his party and the Flemish Vlaams Belang could form an alliance.

As Devorgilla has already pointed out, this is bullshit.

“Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, et”

Why do you assume that is inevitable? Romanies have been in Europe for something like 600 years, and yet they are still ethnically and culturally distinct from their neighbours.

Yup and plenty holding views like Like Mohammed Siddique Khan, how many Islamic terrorists and would-be terrorists in the UK – remember there are 2000 Islamic nascent terrorist cells being tracked by MI5 – are second or third generation Muslims?

How many second and third generation Muslims are no nascent terrorists?

Orpingtonians Guardian or Independant readers

I laughed at this. You’ve never been to Orpington have you? It’s a solid Daily Mail, Daily Express and Sun part of the world

Just surmising from your surname, Andrew, but have you studied the intention and long term effects of the English government plantation policies in Ireland and compared these to Muslim immigration in England? The planters were in no way were going to be intergrated into native communities.

Amused- thanks for your information about Orpington – which I’m glad to say I don’t know much about. But tell me, if you can, what the Muslim percentage of population is with you, so I can assure my friends in Bradford who will be amused to know that your suffering is equal.

But tell me, if you can, what the Muslim percentage of population is with you, so I can assure my friends in Bradford who will be amused to know that your suffering is equal.

I doubt there are any official figures, but I’d imagine it’s very small. There is a small Asian population, but unlike some people on this thread, I can’t tell a Muslim just by looking at them

Rockall 666 said that Shahad Malik’s inflammatory speech went unreported. Not quite.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lWABGwFJn0

So I trust, Amused, that you’ve never been to Bradford? It would help your Muslim spotting skills – or perhaps more in non-Muslim spotting. Coming to a town near you.

So I trust, Amused, that you’ve never been to Bradford?

I haven’t. Tell me, how does one spot a Muslim – in non-religious garb obviously – just by looking?

@Marko Attila Hoare

“Demonising Muslims and treating them as the enemy within will hamper their assimilation and encourage the growth of extremism…”

“Here in the UK, the assimilation of Muslims and other minority groups is hampered by our extremely poor education system, the existence of religious schools, and the reluctance of our political and intellectual elite to countenance the inculcation of national identity through our schools…”

“Hamper assimilation”. Absolutely precious. Words which could only come from white, middle class, North European moral-relativist ‘believers’. Clearly logic, rationality, historical precedent and stark current reality are not enough to dissuade them from continuing to believe that this experiment in mass immigration and multiculturalism, unprecedented at any time in history, will turn out just peachy.

Clearly you have no idea about Islam. You have no idea about what it is to be a Muslim. You have chosen to disregard the indisputable fact that throughout history, there has NEVER been a case of the “assimilation” of a Muslim minority.

Whilst history is littered with civilizations made extinct by Islam. That’s the ONLY way “assimilation” goes.

I know. I was born a Muslim in Iran. I have a deep understanding of that religion and the views of many of its followers. I have very religious relatives who are not ‘extremists’. They’re ‘good’ Muslims. They abhor terrorism or any violence. They believe that Muslims living in the West should obey its laws. However, they make no secret of their sincere desire and confident belief, that one-day Allah’s law will reign in Europe. And they happily Muslim cite birth rates to support this belief.

I left Iran because I didn’t want to live in an oppressive Islamic hell-hole. For god’s sake, why are well-meaning, naive white liberals creating a situation where my children or grandchildren are also going to have to leave the country of their birth to escape Islam.

Wake up! This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s out in the open. We can see it happening. Many, many Muslims believe Islamification of Europe is inevitable and say so.

So should you.

Minority parties never get beyond minority. The so-called “far right” parties do serve a useful function though – they seize agenda like fighting Islamofascism that the main parties are to scared to tackle.

The popularity of these policies are reflected in the growth of their support – and when they steal votes from the main parties, the main parties change their agenda.

Well that’s how it’s supposed to work. It fails because we jump all over BNP, Wilders etc. instead of looking at the points they are making.

Worse still, we dump on the blogs that have the sense to keep their eye on the ball. Charles Johnson of LGF is the worst exponent of this. His blog has largely dropped the fight against Islamofascism and now seems to spend much of its time slamming the “far right” parties, attacking same blogs you mentioned and bigging up Obama. Wins him lots of Brownie points with the self-hating left, I’m sure, but the only ones laughing are the Jihadists.

It’s time to stop the squabbling, forget about the BNP & Wilders and concentrate on being a voice of strength and reason.

“We really had a strong message that we don’t want to spend our money in Romania and Portugal but here in Holland.”

This is part of Wilders first statement after the election results were known. Bearing in mind that Holland is one of the countries that most advantages take out of the existence of a large European internal market, thus of European integration and bearing in mind that it is not unlikely that one of these days this party gets strong enough to become part of a government coalition this is obviously bad news for Europe.

About the comment someone made in this thread about Wilders “”"Whether we like it or not, there is some validity in some of the things he says.”"” (on the first comment).

Of course he’s not stupid and everybody knows that a half truth is much more effective than a plain lie. What really matters is what does he offer as alternatives to the current situation.

It’s not surprising that Holland has problems. I remember watching and reading reports about portuguese immigrants being subjected to slave work and the authorities turning a blind eye, and this was quite recent.

But instead of asking themselves where is it that the Dutch society has failed comparing to others, it’s really easy to externalize the blame on immigrants, or on poorer EU countries. Next step??? European radicals are nowadays sophisticated enough to restrain themselves from openly saying what those next steps would be, so that they can capture the fantasies of part of the voters who dream of a purified society and exploit the collective paranoia about otherness.

@Reza V

So that makes them different to the Marxists who believe in the historical inevitability of the revolution and resulting communist state? Or the evangelical Christians that believe that one day the whole world will realise that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ?

Your comments come across like an ex smoker talking about smokers.

‘Words which could only come from white, middle class, North European moral-relativist ‘believers’.’

Reza V, it is you who is the moral relativist. I am either right or I am wrong. The colour of my skin and my social background are irrelevant to this discussion. Your own, presumably darker skin colour does not make you better able to judge these questions.

I would also venture that I have more personal, first-hand experience with British Muslims than you do. I know plenty of Muslims who are as culturally British as I am myself. Your belief in the unassimilability of Muslims is simply wrong.

I am happy that you were able to find a home outside of your native Iran, but other immigrants from Muslim countries have as much right as you do to seek a home elsewhere.

p.s. the birthrate issue is based on poor maths, and assumptions. Every immigrant group has a higher birth rate for the first or so generation, then it declines to match the host nation’s birthrate, for example.

@Oliver

Your point is disingenuous Oliver, read my post again. I base my prediction on “logic, rationality, historical precedent and stark current reality”.

“…throughout history, there has NEVER been a case of the “assimilation” of a Muslim minority…”

“…history is littered with civilizations made extinct by Islam. That’s the ONLY way “assimilation” goes…”

I understand that many people, particularly on the left, hold their opinions as a matter of faith, unhampered by constraints such as rationality, logic, history or the truth apparent in front of their own lying eyes.

But you ought at least to try to come up with a fact-based argument which refutes my points.

One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting a different result. Think about it.

Amused. Take a day return to Bradford. If you spot a pre-Muslim era Bradfordian on the streets, have a word with him/her about how life you used to be [shades of 1984!]. Talk [if you dare!] to a burkad women: or bearded men. Don’t worry about mistaken identy: you’re almost certain to be right.

Invite them to come and settle in a place near you in Orpington. Report back.

“Here in the UK, the assimilation of Muslims and other minority groups is hampered by our extremely poor education system, the existence of religious schools, and the reluctance of our political and intellectual elite to countenance the inculcation of national identity through our schools.” Marko Attila Hoare

You imply that a better education system will accelerate Muslim integration – certainly not ‘assimilation’, which Islam forbids – into British society. (Actually, Islam forbids ‘integration’ into an infidelic society, but we can leave that aside for the moment.) Can you name one single European country – Finland? Norway? Sweden? Denmark? France? Germany? etc? – that has succeeded through its superior education system to integrate its Muslim population?

The argument being made seems to be this: Wilders’s views of Islam and Muslims are wrong and dangerous because with some work on the part of Europeans, Muslims will stop being Muslims and become more like other Europeans. In other words, it is granting Wilders’s points in the negative. Which says that if Muslims remain Muslims, or their percentage population continues to increase, then Wilders is correct. This is not an argument that would be made about Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or Jews.

I do agree with Wilders, and Bat Ye’or, Bruce Brawer, and others, that Islam is in and of itself a danger; and that under EU laws, were the Koran to be written now, it could not be published.

@Marko Attila Hoare

“Your own, presumably darker skin colour does not make you better able to judge these questions.”

No, but my deep knowledge and understanding of Islam, my experience of what it is to be a Muslim and my experience of living in Iran does help. And my “darker skin colour” and Muslim heritage means that the Muslims I engage with will sometimes say things to me which they wouldn’t dream of saying to you.

“I know plenty of Muslims who are as culturally British as I am myself.”

Of course you do. So do I. Muslims are not a homogenous group. However, it would be stupid to deny that there are, have always been, and will always be, many, many Muslims who are not “culturally British” have no desire to integrate. It’s a question of numbers Marko. The bigger the Muslim population, the bigger the number of the latter type. And the bigger the problems for the rest of us.

“Your belief in the unassimilability of Muslims is simply wrong.”

Is it? Can you please, inform me of a single occasion in human history where Muslims have assimilated? Can you cite a single country, anywhere in the world, with a significant Muslim minority, which isn’t experiencing social conflict?

“I am happy that you were able to find a home outside of your native Iran, but other immigrants from Muslim countries have as much right as you do to seek a home elsewhere.”

No they don’t. Not unless they absolutely reject political Islam and sharia law. Not unless they support democracy. Not unless they are willing to reject the many intolerable aspects of Islam, particularly a number of particularly viscous hadith. Not unless they are willing to accept that Islam in Britain is not, and will never be allowed to be morally equivalent to Western, European, British, Judeo-Christian values. Not unless they accept that tolerance has limits.

Well, depends on what you mean by ‘assimilation’. If you mean integrating into society while keeping your religion, I suggest you read up on the Hui community in China. If you mean integrating into society and leaving islam, I suggest you read up on the Islamic community in Argentina…

that’s just for starters.

on population rates:
“However, the fertility rates of immigrants to the U.S. has been found to decrease sharply in the second generation, correlating with improved education and income.”
( from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate )

another definition of stupidity is ignoring data that don’t fit your simplistic world views.

“Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European”

What that mere anecdotal point doesn’t take into consideration is how seperatist Muslims across Europe are. The vast majority live in Muslim only areas where daughters are more likely to be abused if they like a nice white boy, then end up marrying him.

“Wilders wants to stop all immigration from Muslim countries to Europe”

Not a bad idea. Of course there are decent Muslims but how are we supposed to tell the diference, on the whole Islam in Europe is a massive problem, and we have every right to protest against it.

“Apparently, Wilders makes the same mistake that people like Ken Livingstone make, which is assuming that radical Islamists speak for all Muslims. It does occur to Wilders that the Muslim women who come battered and beaten to women’s centers throughout Europe are not friends of jihadists”

So? Why is it our job to deal with their barbaric behaviour? More importantly perhaps, why should we be helping abused Muslim women while failing to challenge the men that do it and the culture it comes from?

“The schoolgirls who wear their veil when their parents take them to school but take them off when they play in the playground with their friends, only to have to put them back on when their fathers comes to pick them up, are not future suicide bombers”

Statistically its unlikely, its not impossible, but thats not the point. The point is this stupid rubbish is massively offensive in a modern post feminist country. We don’t need this Muslim crap in Britain, basically.

“Instead of making outcasts of all Muslims, the focus should be on ‘education, education, education,”

Why? Instead of feeling its our job to modernise the backward Muslim world, we should be saying ‘modernise, modernise, modernise’ or you are not welcome here. If, perhaps, Muslims wanted our modern values and education we might extend our considerable charitable stance into providing it. They do not. Instead, they get angry and resentful towards a non Muslim culture that finds it unacceptable seeing women and girls treated like sexual and domestic cattle.

“The more educated women become in Muslim cultures, the less space fundamentalism has to maneuver”

Indeed. But try saying that to any Muslim leader, all of whom are patriarchal males. An educated woman in the Muslim culture is more likely to suffer abuse than admiration from these backward people – so get real.

@Reza V…. do you have a problem with every subsection of a religious group who are not “culturally British” and have no desire to integrate, or is it just the subset of muslims that you have a problem with?

Reza, I sympathise. I mentioned on another thread that I once had an Iranian girlfriend. She used to go bonkers with me on occasion over my reluctance to to find Islam intrinsically scary…! Now, as it happens, I’m still not as scared of Islam as you are, largely because I’ve known enough people like you (not only Iranians but also Algerians and Moroccans) to reassure me. I’m of Irish Catholic background myself and I’m very conscious that a lot of what is now said about the incompatibility of Islam with modernity – and particularly with liberal democracy – used to be said about Catholicism too. And it wasn’t just bigoted nonsense when they said it about Catholicism – there were very real issues. But over time, some Catholics stopped being Catholics, other Catholics became Catholics in name only, yet others pushed for change within the institutions of Catholicism, leading to things like Vatican II… and things reached a point where hardly anybody (apart from Morgoth… only joking… kind of) suggests that Catholics are a threat to the liberal democratic order.

But I still sympathise!

“The more educated women become in Muslim cultures, the less space fundamentalism has to maneuver”

Beg to differ.

It depends on what you mean by ‘fundamentalism’.

In Turkey you will find many highly educated women who are Islamists. One of the strange things we in the west have difficulty getting our heads round is that Islam (or rather, Islamism) is a political movement for the dominance of Islam – it only poses as a religion. Not all Islamists are medieval retards. Some, like Osama Saeed, the SNP candidate for Glasgow Central, are pretty cool and modern when it comes to women’s rights, Facebook, Youtube, etc.

But that doesn’t stop them cleaving to a political programme of Islamisation – meaning dominance of Islam and Islamic culture. These people intend to appropriate the West, change its culture, parachute its institutions for Islam – not integrate.

They won’t blow us up – but they have no intention of lauding the secular Enlightenment or putting J S Mill on a cultural pedestal. The programme is still a conservative attack on western values.

Latest:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6486033.ece

I like the way that Oliver homes in Reza V. A muslim who has seen the light is really dangerous to the likes of pre-historic Oliver.

‘pre-historic’ eh? What do you mean by that? I live in a hunter gather group, with a religious worldview which consists of an observation of nature through the prism of psychoactive substance? That I could do you a really good deal on bbq’d mamoth?

I honed in on some of the things he said because quite simply they were not true. Get that, they weren’t factually accurate.

Oliver, why do you find the ancient sequestered Hui community so admirable? Their remoteness in itself has protected them from extinction: fair enough, but hardly a model of integration. Argentinian Muslims: do you mean like those who blow up synagogues in South America?

I was also amused by the counterposing of Bradford and Orpington. If Orpington is the monocultural heaven to Bradford’s multicultural hell, then give me hell any day. Orpington is a racist, reactionary armpit of a place. Some commenters on this blog remind me of Orpington taxi drivers, except with this place you can shut Explorer. There’s no escape from 20 minutes of mindbending drivel about Muslims and Milwall in a taxi.

Actually, that goes for large swathes of Kent in general. I was not impressed the first time I went to Ramsgate to find some kind of neo-nazi convention going on by the beach, complete with seig heiling and songs about Jews. I’ve never heard such dirty language from the mouths of children as I did on Ramsgate high street.

I am not a big fan of Kent.

Colin,

“Some in the southeast coast are descended from Arab and Persian Muslim traders who settled in China and gradually intermarried and assimilated the surrounding population, keeping only their distinctive religion”
“Most Hui are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam,”
“Southeastern Muslims also have a much longer tradition of synthesizing Confucian teachings with the Sharia and Qur’anic teachings,”
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people )
That reads as pretty assimilated to me.

I was talking about the middle easten muslims who emigrated to Argentina in the early 20th century, and then mostly converted to Catholicism.

@Oliver

“Well, depends on what you mean by ‘assimilation’. If you mean integrating into society while keeping your religion, I suggest you read up on the Hui community in China. If you mean integrating into society and leaving islam, I suggest you read up on the Islamic community in Argentina…
that’s just for starters.”

“for starters” you cite the Hui community in China to support happy Muslim integration? 10 million Muslims out of 1.3 billion non-Muslims? That’s only 0.75% of the total. A tiny proportion, living in a totalitarian dictatorship which brutally suppresses Political Islam. If the Muslim population in Britain was so small then, I agree, we needn’t worry.

I don’t get your point about Argentina, but again, we have a tiny proportion, (1.5%), no significant Muslim immigration, and no significant growth of the Muslim proportion. So what? We wouldn’t have a problem with 1.5% either.

“on population rates:
“However, the fertility rates of immigrants to the U.S. has been found to decrease sharply in the second generation, correlating with improved education and income.”

That is not the case in Europe where the fertility rate amongst Muslims remains significantly higher in the second and third generations. In addition to this, the lack of a welfare state in the US means that you can only have as many children as you can afford to feed. Not so in Europe. If you’re suggesting that we could limit the Muslim birthrate by copying the US and dismantling welfarism, then I’d be behind you 100%. But somehow, I doubt you are.

On top of all your spurious justifications, you don’t get that even disregarding staggeringly high birthrates, there is a relentless and continuing mass immigration of Muslims into Europe. This is going to create a profound demographic change. Every country in the world which has a SIGNIFICANT Muslim minority is experiencing serious social problems, and you can almost correlate the severity of those problems to the size of that minority.

Yet you continue to live in denial.

@Reza V … are you admitting that your assertions that:

“…throughout history, there has NEVER been a case of the “assimilation” of a Muslim minority…”

and

“…history is littered with civilizations made extinct by Islam. That’s the ONLY way “assimilation” goes…”

are both factually incorrect statements, then?

oh and can you tell me about the “serious social problems” caused by Cameroon’s islamic population which consist of 20-22% of the population, or by the islamic population of Burundi (10% of the population)? Or is your statement that ” Every country in the world which has a SIGNIFICANT Muslim minority is experiencing serious social problems” not correct either?

Can you provide evidence about this ‘mass immigration of muslims into Europe’? Most of the recent immigrants have been African Christians, you know.

Er, Oliver, Reza’s two statements – whatever you may think of them – aren’t incompatible.

no, but they are incompatible with his attempting to reason out the assimilation of both the Hui community (which, despite what he said, wasn’t living under a maoist police state for over a 1000 years or so), and the wave of middle eastern muslims to Argentina in the early 20th Century….

@George

“…I’m very conscious that a lot of what is now said about the incompatibility of Islam with modernity – and particularly with liberal democracy – used to be said about Catholicism too.”

You should have listened to your Iranian girlfriend more. It is precisely views like yours, which need to be addressed by people who are knowledgeable about Islam. You cannot compare Islam to Christianity or even Judaism. The Christian Bible is a collection of parables and witness statements. However, the Koran is a medieval tape-recording of the voice of god. As we can see from history, Christianity is able to be reinterpreted, evolve and change. And as history has similarly shown, Islam cannot, to any significant extent.

Saying Muslims can reinterpret the Koran is like saying Christians can reinterpret the Ten Commandments, the only words universally accepted by Christians as the actual words spoken by god. It can’t happen, unless Muslims accept that the Koran is not the absolute word of god. Whereas the Koran states that to be a Muslim you must accept that it absolutely is. See the problem?

The other problem area is the hadith (similar to the ‘witness statements’ which make up the Jewish and Christian Bibles). Some of these are particularly nasty and used to justify the most brutal acts we see carried out by Muslim fundamentalists. There is a movement among Muslims to reject certain hadith as false, and if that were to happen then Islam would be improved to some extent. However, there is also a hadith which states that rejecting hadith is apostasy. And the penalty for apostasy is death. Again, see the problem?

People like me, people like the Algerians and Moroccans you’ve known shouldn’t reassure you. We are not ‘good’ Muslims. Indeed as someone who has rejected Islam, as an ‘apostate’, I have to live with the knowledge that a poll conducted by the Policy Exchange last year suggested that over a third of young British Muslims believe that the death penalty should apply for apostasy.

It’s these ‘good’ Muslims which I fear. And you should fear them too.

erm one thing, roughly 1/3rd of American believes that the Bible is the literal words of god.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/onethird-americans-believe-bible-literally-true.aspx

Oliver. No they havent. 95,000 immigrants from sub-continent in 2007, 23,000 from Middle East and 146,000 from ‘other’ (excludes Europe, North America, Australiasia, Middle East, Sub-continent, Caribbean) which will be a mixture of Africa and South America. Not sure what proportion of Muslim or Christian but either way that’s a hell of a lot of immigration.

hang on, are those stats (it would be nice to see where you got these numbers) immigration into the UK, or into Europe as a whole?

If it’s the UK then 264,000 is how much of a percent of 60,943,912?

Not quite “a hell of a lot of immigration” is it now?

carburettor,

Do you honestly think that Wilders ideas to solve the probelm of Islamic seperation and radicalism in Europe would make things better or worse?

Oliver

You appear to be saying that the Islamification of Europe isn’t happening. That the Muslim population of Europe isn’t growing significantly. That it won’t continue to grow. And that even if it did, it wouldn’t make much difference because the Muslims will integrate and even assimilate.

You support this viewpoint with certain assertions:-

1. The Hui community has not taken over China. A community which makes up only 0.75% of the Chinese population, which is reasonably static, not experiencing any significant growth from immigration and subject to a one-child-policy. From this you extrapolate that there is absolutely no risk of Islam taking over Europe.

2. Some Muslims emigrated to Argentina converted to Christianity. From this you extrapolate that a significant number of the 2.4 million Muslims living in Britain will convert to Christianity.

3. There isn’t a massive influx of Muslim immigrants into Britain.

4. The Muslim birthrate won’t remain high.

5. That Cameroon and Burundi are good examples of social cohesion. (!)

Can you really not see the irrationality of your reasoning?

Read this:-

Muslim population ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article5621482.ece

And read up on the exponential function.

I found figures albeit from 2006 which show that the main countries that immigrants to the UK are citizens of are Poland (60k), India (57k), Australia (26k), China (26k) and South Africa (15k). This does still leave 126k non-EU citizens but unfortunately Eurostat only gives the top 5 countries of origin for each country.

Incidentally, immigration in 2006 was around 7 immigrants per 1000 people, which is pretty much bang on the EU average.

Martin Adamson,

Great point. Why do you think Gypies are not full integrated into European society?

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that most countries in Europe treat Gypsies like second class citizens

Reza, you stress that you are not a ‘good’ Muslim (‘good’ from a liberal point of view, that is) but an apostate. I know that. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear.

When I say that I’m not as scared of Islam as you are, what I mean is:

(1) that people like you (or other apostates, such as my ex) are living proof that being born Muslim doesn’t have to mean staying Muslim;

(2) that the evolution of ‘Catholic’ attitudes over the past 50 years in particular (abandonment of Catholicism, nominal Catholicism, progressive catholicism, “à la carte” Catholicism, whatever) show that even aggressively anti-modern politico-religious ideologies can lose their ability to bite. And believe me, in a country like Ireland, the Catholic church was as much a political force as a religious one.

I get your point about the fundamental differences between the founding texts of Islam and those of Christianity or Judaism but you might not fully appreciate the extent to which the doctrines of the Catholic church, as formalised in documents other than the biblical texts, were considered immutable and timeless.

devorgilla,

Wilders has already open the door to an alliance with Vlaams Belang which is the Flemish equivalent of France’s National Front.

Don’t just take my word for it, check out the photo of the leadership of Belang hanging out with Le Pen.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32198_Geert_Wilders_and_Vlaams_Belang

Oliver

“erm one thing, roughly 1/3rd of American believes that the Bible is the literal words of god.”

No they don’t. They believe it is “literally true”. It makes an enormous difference in room for interpretation, as any lawyer would tell you.

100% of Muslims believe that the koran is the absolute, literal, verbatim, word of god, spoken in Arabic to Mohammed, in a cave, 1400 years ago.

Oh and btw, I’m not sure that the Hui – as a recognised ethnic minority – are covered by the one child policy. I’ll check that.

@Oliver
Just the UK. Total immigration was over 600,000 that year (that’s just the registered people). Over 1 per cent of the population. To put that in perspective, the Normans were less than 1 per cent of the population. The Huguenots 1/4 of a per cent. And in the USA, at the height of its immigration levels (1912-1914) immigration only just topped 1 per cent of the population, the overwhelmingly majority of them Europeans (mostly Christians/some Jews) in an enormous country with a growing economy, a very high native birth rate and a confident culture, none of which the UK has now.

@ Rez. I was just saying that your statements:
““…history is littered with civilizations made extinct by Islam. That’s the ONLY way “assimilation” goes…”
“…throughout history, there has NEVER been a case of the “assimilation” of a Muslim minority…”
and
Every country in the world which has a SIGNIFICANT Muslim minority is experiencing serious social problems”

are all hyperbolic untruths.

p.s. in Philip Jenkins, Demographics, Religion, and the Future of Europe, Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 533, summer 2006, he says that Europe will be 25% muslim by 2100. That’s hardly Eurabia is it?

And just to be clear, I find Reza’s alarmism more understandable than Oliver’s “move-along-there’s-nothing-to-see-here” approach.

@ res, so you didn’t actually read the article then as it starts with:
“About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word.”

Well, Oliver and marko H. have been given a drubbing by someone born and raised in Islam.

Mugged by reality.

100% of Muslims believe that the koran is the absolute, literal, verbatim, word of god, spoken in Arabic to Mohammed, in a cave, 1400 years ago.

Wow, do you know them all personally?

Yeah, the Hui are exempt from the one child policy. The lads down in the Zhongnanhai must be getting worried about a Han minority in, oh, 2525 or thereabouts.

Reza V,

As Oliver said, it all depends on what you mean by ‘assimilation’.

In Yugoslavia under Tito, the Bosnian Muslims were, of all Yugoslavs, among the least prone to national chauvinism and religious intolerance, and the most accepting of national and religious pluralism – their record was much better than that of the Christian Croats and Serbs. In that sense, they were more ‘assimilated’ into Yugoslavia than Serbs or Croats.

In Albania, the Muslim majority has, historically and in the present day, treated the Christian minorities there much better than Muslim minorities have been treated in Christian-majority countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece.

Muslim-majority Albania had a better record in protecting Jews during the Holocaust than just about any Christian nation in Europe.

But I fear that, if you have made your mind up that Islam is evil and that Muslims as a group are the problem, it’ll be rather redundant trying to have a discussion with you.

I’ve seen with my own eyes the effects of murderous Islamophobia in the Balkans: the mass graves full of Muslim skeletons; the ruined, desecrated mosques; the destroyed gravestones; the ugly giant concrete crosses erected by Christian chauvinists to humiliate Muslims.

As far as I’m concerned, it is the Islamophobes who are the murderous bigots we need defending against, not ordinary Muslims.

Islamism and Islamophobia are simply two heads of the same chauvinist monster.

Why do western liberals betray secular Muslims?

In Québec province the official gov’t funded women’s rights groups have been infiltrated by wahabbists pushing an agenda of islamisation. Just last month they convinced this womens group ( a coalition actually) that headcarves should be allowed in the civil service.

The secular Muslim women associated with this group, women who’ve excaped islamist violence in N Africa and elsewhere, were absolutely outraged by the betrayal. they presented very clear, concise arguments outlining just what the hijab represented, what it meant for the longterm status of women, how it was being forced on some muslim women against their, and just why allowing it into gov’t institutions was a major, MAJOR mistake.

They were given the lamest responses possible from white quebecois fem,inists, when they got a response at all.

Those women spoke with a clarity, a passion and an energy similar to that demonstrated by Reza on this thread.

Reza and the secular Muslim women cited above have it right; white western liberals, with their do-gooder attitudes, their pig-headed denials and ridiculous whatabouttery are the biggest obstacle faced by secular, democratic Muslims fighting to defeat islamism.

Here’s a thing. I’ve said nothing on islamicism, I’ve said nothing about the very commendable muslim womens groups, I’ve said nothing about the creeping evil of Saudi backed interpretations of Islam. I’ve said nothing about attempts to forge a more compatible version of Islam in europe.

All I’ve done is point out some hyperbolic lies.

@John P.

“…
Mugged by reality.”

Moral and cultural equivilism is a religion like any other. It relies on faith and it does it’s work in the same way; by ignoring or concealing evidence which contradicts its beliefs and by shutting down debate (for heretic you’ll get racist, for apostate you’ll get Islamophobe.)

And as we can seen, faith is a powerful thing. I believe that compassionate liberals experience a warm, fuzzy feeling whenever they say something that supports their vision of an imaginary, manufactured, multicultural Utopia. Such faith is like a narcotic, and just as a junkie will take refuge in drugs to become oblivious to reality, so a compassionate liberal will use their belief system as a refuge from reality.

It’s so depressing. So suicidal.

‘Why do western liberals betray secular Muslims?’

Give us a break, JP; you’ve made it abundantly clear in post after post here at HP that you viscerally hate all Muslims, secular or otherwise. It’s no good you now trying to pose as the defender of secular Muslims.

Where were you when the world’s most secularised Muslim communities were being slaughtered and raped, right in the heart of Europe, by your fellow Christian Islamophobes ?

Very well said, Reza.

@Marko

“In Yugoslavia under Tito, the Bosnian Muslims were, of all Yugoslavs, among the least prone to national chauvinism and religious intolerance, …”

Of course they were. Nothing works better at keeping competing ideologies in check than an oppressive dictatorship. Unfortunately however, we can see how easily that unravels when the yoke comes off. Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq…

“In Albania, the Muslim majority has, historically and in the present day, treated the Christian minorities there much better than Muslim minorities have been treated in Christian-majority countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece.”

It’s true. Historically Christians were treated better by Muslims than the other way round. As dhimmis. Second class citizens in a divinely stipulated ‘apartheid’ system. Difference is, that the Christian world evolved. The Muslim world hasn’t so much. Christians and Jews remain officially second-class citizens in many Islamic countries.

Whatever. Both sides have blood on their hands.

It’s not relevant in the debate we’re having about Britain becoming increasingly Islamified by staggering demographic change.

Perhaps it doesn’t worry you that, unless something changes, one day England will be 20%, 30%, 60% Muslim. Perhaps you’re unable to close your eyes and imagine what our society will look like. Perhaps, against all historical precedent, you feel that somehow, this time things will be different. Islam will have a reformation. Most Muslims will become secular. And we’ll all hold hands and sing.

Perhaps one day, you or your children may simply shrug and convert to that religion.

I know I will weep for yet another civilization made extinct by this aggressive, expansionist and uncompromising ideology.

One thing, The Reformation was a very bloody affair, marked by two things, firstly a communications revolution, and secondly, initially a very hard line uncompromising religious literalism, with a nasty line in anti-semitism.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps one day, you or your children

Say it ain’t so! No female of the species could withstand Marko’s incessant eulogising about the joys of multiculturalism long enough for copulation to occur ;-)

Perhaps it doesn’t worry you that, unless something changes, one day England will be 20%, 30%, 60% Muslim.

And unless something changes, you’re going to be drowning in a sea of your own hyperbole. I’ve been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together.

@Amused

I wrote:-
100% of Muslims believe that the koran is the absolute, literal, verbatim, word of god, spoken in Arabic to Mohammed, in a cave, 1400 years ago.

You responded:-
“Wow, do you know them all personally?”

A very good question, Amused. You deserve an explanation.

To be a Muslim one must accept a number of things. There is no god but Allah. Mohammed was his last Prophet. The Koran is the absolute, literal word spoken by Allah.

(On accepting hadith, scholars differ. There is a ‘Qu’ran only’ movement, many of whom have been condemned as apostates and live in fear for their lives, and there are significant differences of opinion between the Sunni and Shia.)

Of course, among the hundreds of millions of people who call themselves “Muslim” you will have a massive range of views. Just as you would with any other group of people. For example, many people will call themselves Muslim, may support Islamic culture and values, and yet not believe that the Koran is the absolute word of Allah. They may even not believe in god. They may call themselves Muslim as an identity, yet drink, dance, eat pork.

However, these ‘cultural’ Muslims are not considered as ‘true’ Muslims within the teachings of Islam. Indeed, many ‘true’ Muslims would consider them as apostates.

When I talk about ‘Muslims’ I am talking about people who believe “There is no god but Allah. Mohammed was his last Prophet. The Koran is the absolute, literal word of Allah.”

@ Reza:

I was ‘intoduced’ (though I,d read up on it before) to Islam by an Iranian ex-pat about 25 years ago. However, being a good liberal at the time I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe the horror stories he recounted about life in an islamic republic.

I didn’t want to believe it, but I do now.

In the intervening years I’ve met a good number of Muslim apostates ( mostly women from N. Africa) many of whom endured the incredible violence in Algeria during the 90s. They spent every cent they had and made every effort possible to escape islamist hellholes only to find western liberals, liberals who claim to embrace secular, democratic values, foolishly aiding, abetting and accommodating the same islamist agenda they were forced to flee.

I understand (at least I think I do) some aspects of your nightmare.

The following excerpt from an article by Wafa Sultan nicely sums up the problemes western libersls like B. Obama and soul-mates create for secular, reformist Muslims:

The president pandered to Muslims: praised their accomplishments, commiserated with their grievances, and apologized for injustices done to them by centuries of colonialism — without once mentioning the history of rampant and violent Arab colonialism. He avoided any mention of Jihadi tenets, or of the Islamic political ideology of supremacy over non Muslims — principles embedded in Sharia law. These are taught and sanctioned openly by Al-Azhar, the university that hosted him, the foremost center of Sharia studies. Obama underscored the supposed American mistreatment of terrorists and apologized for torture in Guantanamo, forgetting that Islamic regimes are brutal to their own people. The president also repudiated significant U.S. contributions in both the lives of its soldiers and humanitarian aid to Muslims across the globe made throughout history — despite Muslim attacks against America and Americans. In short, parts of his speech sounded like a new Pan-Arab messiah come to usher the Arab world back into its rightful world dominion.

Since arriving in the US, I have enjoyed the freedom to educate my Arab brothers and sisters in the Middle East, who yearn for real freedom – and I have seen successes. Mr. Obama calls these very successes into question rather than championing freedom.

Obama’s reality makes my work and that of others who speak up against intolerant Islamic doctrines more challenging. He undermines this mission by placating abusive, xenophobic policies and enabling those within the Islamic world to subjugate others, to coerce others to its beliefs, and to continue these pursuits with his blessing.

The president failed to join freedom-loving individuals, liberated Arabs like myself. He failed to lead the Muslim world into modernization and vital reform.

Rather than calling out, “The house is on fire.” Obama smiles and tells us how beautiful the house is as it burns out of control and threatens to destroy us.

I know I will weep for yet another civilization made extinct by this aggressive, expansionist and uncompromising ideology.

Jesus, how long are you planning on living? Will you be crying from your orbiting spaceship?

When I talk about ‘Muslims’ I am talking about people who believe “There is no god but Allah. Mohammed was his last Prophet. The Koran is the absolute, literal word of Allah.”

What about babies? What about babies born into Muslim families? Do they believe “that the koran is the absolute, literal, verbatim, word of god, spoken in Arabic to Mohammed, in a cave, 1400 years ago.”

@Cramphorn. “female of the species” eh, the very use of that phrase, rather than the more usual ‘women’, suggest you’ve spend far too much time weeping over empty pot noodle containers after emptying yourself over a copy of Razzle/free internet pr0n.

Rather than calling out, “The house is on fire.” Obama smiles and tells us how beautiful the house is as it burns out of control and threatens to destroy us.

Cause calling out “the house is on fire” has worked out real well till now

Reza V. is very wise & those in opposition to her/his views are disingenuous.

There is no country with an Islamic majority where non Muslims are not persecuted.

There is no country with a substantial Muslim minority which does not experience religious violence, caused by Muslims.
And that, obviously includes the UK

British not Racist

Perhaps it doesn’t worry you that, unless something changes, one day England will be 20%, 30%, 60% Muslim.

The thing is, that Government projections estimate that population will level off at around 75 – 76 million sometime around 2050. This means that even if every single one of those new people is a muslim, the country would be 23% muslims. For it to become 50% muslim in that timescale, close to 30 million non-muslims would have to leave the country or convert, and the shortfall be made up entirely by muslims.

If muslim immigration continues as a similar percentage of total immigration, according to the projections, by 2060, the muslim population will have doubled. This would make them 6% of the population.

‘Perhaps it doesn’t worry you that, unless something changes, one day England will be 20%, 30%, 60% Muslim. Perhaps you’re unable to close your eyes and imagine what our society will look like. Perhaps, against all historical precedent, you feel that somehow, this time things will be different. Islam will have a reformation. Most Muslims will become secular. And we’ll all hold hands and sing.’

I project things differently, Reza. Muslims will remain a small minority of the UK’s population. Most will remain moderate, law-abiding citizens. We’ll continue to have our Muslim extremists – the counterpart to the BNP among the white Anglo-Saxon population. But our democracy is strong enough to resist the extremists.

Sorry; I’ve grown up among Muslims; gone to school with them; had close Muslim friends all my life. I’m just not scared of them.

@ John P.

“They spent every cent they had and made every effort possible to escape islamist hellholes only to find western liberals, liberals who claim to embrace secular, democratic values, foolishly aiding, abetting and accommodating the same islamist agenda they were forced to flee.”

Excellent point John. I have no problem with a sensibly managed immigration of democracy supporting, secular Muslims. I do have a problem with the numbers of devout Muslims coming to the Europe, and the Europe’s appeasement of fundamental Islam borne of the insane and intellectually bankrupt ideology of moral relativism.

It is clear to me that most moral relativists have very little understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of Islamic doctrine.

One of the biggest confusions among non-Muslims is the term ‘moderate Muslim’. One imagines the democracy supporting, secular Muslims who the likes of Oliver and Marko imagine integrating into a multiculuralist Utopia. However, that is NOT what a moderate Muslim is. The MCB were once considered to be ‘moderate’. They certainly consider themselves to be ‘moderate’. After all, they oppose blowing up their countrymen and believe British Muslims should obey the law. However, as soon as you scratch the surface, you realize that they’re not moderate at all. As our government discovered.

They will continue to discover that there is no such thing as a ‘moderate’ Muslim. Not if that Muslim is devout. Not if they accept the Koran and hadith.

It is a very complicated area, hence the confusion of non-Muslim liberals.

I know that it is absolutely un-Islamic for a British Muslim to kill British people on British soil. However, I also know that it is perfectly Islamic for a British Muslim to go to Afghanistan and kill British soldiers on Afghan soil.

These subtleties of Islamic law are used to great effect by Muslim groups to mislead liberals.

@British not racist
http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-muslims-religion-rejects-all-violence
“In part, the warm atmospherics of today’s encounter can be explained by the strong tradition of Muslim-Christian harmony in Cameroon, which stands in contrast to the experience of some of its neighbors.”

@Reza V – so presumably you’d have ‘beef’ (as the young folk of east and south london might say) with Irish catholic immigrants who supported the IRA and other violent Irish Liberation movements?

@Amused

“What about babies? What about babies born into Muslim families? Do they believe “that the koran is the absolute, literal, verbatim, word of god, spoken in Arabic to Mohammed, in a cave, 1400 years ago.”

I was born a Muslim baby. I never wanted to be a Muslim. Yet my Iranian birth certificate describes me as a Muslim. Under Islamic law, I am a Muslim because my father was a Muslim. I don’t have a choice in it. That’s how it works. In several Islamic countries including Iran, I would not be allowed to call my self a Christian or even an athiest. In some, I would face the death penalty!

And a poll conducted by the Policy Exchange last year suggested that over a third of young British Muslims believe that I should face the death penalty. Nice.

I’m starting to get pissed off now, at the ignorance of some of the f*ckwitted, clueless appeasers out there, the moral relativists who know nothing of Islam and who close their eyes to the evil around them in the interests of their ignorant multiculturalist worldview.

Dear Oliver

It’s really amazing how much more you know about Islam and Islamic countries than Reza, who was born in Iran and raised a Muslim in a theocracy. You’ve really changed my mind about everything. Please keep it up, you’re amazing. I now realise that there are no problems at all in India, the UK, Holland, Thailand, Lebanon or anywhere else in the world with sizable Muslim populations- or if there are, it ‘ll all soon be cleared up. Why, look at the Hua in China. They’re lovin’ it!

Hallelujah!

Best,

A man whose eyes have been opened!

Oliver.

Irish nationalism was/is respectable & not wholly Catholic.
The Catholics had a ghastly record at various periods, on human rights, & no
liberal can call Catholicism other than “apparantly reformed”

Irish nationalism/Catholicism has nothing to do with Islam, because
1. Islam has never reformed
2 Islam is alien to the West, Catholicism is very much a Western phenomena
3 Islam has been after our lands for over a thousand years, & is more successful now than at any time since the Fall of Constntinople.

British not Racist

Part of this is also an argument about racism is. You are saying its an opinion. I’m saying its a threat. I would say by treating it as an opinion just like any other your already conceding half the argument. Of course I don’t mind if someone wanders around muttering vile obscenities under their breath. People are welcome to do it in private. Not in public spaces though. I’m not in favour of allowing people to be threatened and intimidated and frightened on the street in an organised way. At least not without having the right to frighten them righht back.
johng | 11 Jun, 18:48 | #

Again racism is not an ‘idea’ and it is not therefore open to the power of ‘logic’.
johng | 11 Jun, 18:49 | #

But the fascists have to be fought. And we need as many forces involved as possible. Part of what we stand for is a tradition of understanding why fascism must be confronted. And part of what we stand for is a tradition of understanding the importance of unity in fighting fascism. Hence the United Front against Fascism.
johng | 11 Jun, 23:40 | #

You be complacent Mike. After all your Party has been (has been in every sense of the word). yeah but wedge you throw in all these hidious stereotypes about the left which make it difficult for people to keep their temper.Particularly when you won’t acknowledge direct rebuttals, even to disagree with them, but just carry on regardless: I’m thinking in particular of the repeated canard that we gave ‘Griffin publicity’ which Lenin has on two occassions rebutted. I think its better that he had to slink away then that he got half an hour being treated like a normal human being: what do you think?
johng | 12 Jun, 00:33 | #

Yes typewriter kittens. My only problem was the idea that we stand alone making our points and everyone comes to join us. I think we do need to make alliances with people, and these alliances will involve their principles as well as ours.
johng | 12 Jun, 00:23 | #

well how wide do you want the net to be Wedge? The letter does not exclude anyone at all.
johng | 12 Jun, 00:51 | #

Excellent piece Lenin.

It baffles me why so many on the left are so concerned for the rights of Griffin et al, even going so far as to publicly criticise the UAF’s actions.

I just can’t see the left ‘uniting’ around this issue at all.
Tiberius Leodis | Homepage | 12 Jun, 02:16 | #

I get the impression that they are New Labour left haters of HP variety. What is so odd is that, outside their own minds, there has been no backlash at all.
johng | 12 Jun, 02:55 | #

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/06/look-who-wants-free-speech.html

Excellent point John. I have no problem with a sensibly managed immigration of democracy supporting, secular Muslims. I do have a problem with the numbers of devout Muslims coming to the Europe, and the Europe’s appeasement of fundamental Islam borne of the insane and intellectually bankrupt ideology of moral relativism.

I work with secular Muslims and enjoy their company immensely. If western gov’ts would make greater efforts to filter out the extremists while favouring secularists, it’d be a win-win situation for everyone.

Instead, we get wishful thinking bordering on outright fantasy as expressed by Marko and Oliver.

Muslims will remain a small minority of the UK’s population.

Just as they’ve remained a small minority in Rotterdam.

Most will remain moderate, law-abiding citizens

And only 35 to 40% will be radicals and call for sharia law.

We’ll continue to have our Muslim extremists – the counterpart to the BNP among the white Anglo-Saxon population. But our democracy is strong enough to resist the extremists.

Hmm…I’d no idea The House of Lords counted BNP members.

And we witnessed the strength of Britian’s democracy during its muscled response to Lord Ahmed’s “call to arms”!

Which brings everything right back to Wilders.

@I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT please learn some basic comprehension, and stop putting words in my mouth. Can you tell me where I said there were no religious tensions in India, Thailand, et al? I’ll say this again, for people with a limited capacity to understand the written word. Like yourself.
All I’ve done is point out some hyperbolic lies

@British not Racist. Islam is alien to the west? Best tell that the vast majority of Historians on the Renaisance, and the History of Science then… Perhaps “British but Bigoted and ignorant of history” is a better fit for you…

@Reza V yes I’d agree with you that the treatment of apostates in most Islamic countries/communities tends towards the shocking. But this is changing, slowly.

I quite simply don’t think that shouting ‘all islam is evil, EEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLL I tell you’ is a constructive or correct way to aid cultural muslims, secularist muslims, and liberal movements within Islam.

‘It’s really amazing how much more you know about Islam and Islamic countries than Reza, who was born in Iran and raised a Muslim in a theocracy.’

Yes, obviously Reza was born in Iran and raised a Muslim, so has the exclusive right to pronounce on all matters relating to Muslims and Islam all over the world. I guess the rest of us, non-Muslims by birth, should just shut up.

The term ‘moral relativism’ springs to mind…

so, basically, Johnp, et al, anything other than saying ‘all of Islam is evil, and Islam automatically creates problems with other cultures’ is appeasement, and being dangerously blind?

John P.: @ Reza: In the intervening years I’ve met a good number of Muslim apostates ( mostly women from N. Africa) many of whom endured the incredible violence in Algeria during the 90s.

People have forgotten how horrible it was. They would enter these small villages and decapitate everyone. Mo the Midget was the expert at cutting people’s heads off. Heard he is spending his retirement in Iran.

There is a real truth to the population statistics regarding Muslims. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world because of very high birthrates in Muslim majority countries. The fastest growing religion in the world by conversion is evangelical Christianity.

Losing your temper now, Oliver. You seemed to be extrapolating from the experience of a tiny minority in a totalitarian state that Reza’s larger point about Islam and assimilation was bogus. I didn’t realise that you were merely aiming to score an entirely technical, legalistic ‘victory’ in the debate. Apologies for my poor reading comprehension skills. One day, just maybe, they’ll be as good as yours and I’ll be able to find where I and everyone else on this thread who disagrees with you screamed Islam is EEEVILLLL or whatever. I live in hope.

And Marko I wasn’t saying that Reza’s knowledge denies others the right to pronounce, merely that he clearly has a far better understanding of the topic than Oliver. And probably you. and definitely me. Though we are all free to spout off obviously, some comments are a lot more informed than others, more interesting to read than others, and the reasons in this case are obvious… knowledge of the subject vs. a command of nice liberal talking points.

@I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT – you’re again proving that you need to read better. Here’s a clue, Hui islamic chinese culture has a history going back for over 1000 years, a maoist police state only 50 years, as I said before.

Basically I’ve been shouted down for saying that:
A:/ Historically some muslim communities have assimilated.
B:/ Not all muslim minorities of significant size cause problems.
C:/ The demographic arguement that Islam will take over!!!!!111111!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!11111!!!!!! is problematic at best.

@toatie… there are some moderately interesting islamicist bulletinboard threads out there about the 6,000,000 or so in Africa alone every year who leave Islam for evangelical Christianity

oh and my above post I should have written 60 or so years for the Maoist police state

oops, it’s as much catholic, as evangelical, conversion explosion in Africa.

Andrew Murphy:

Just one point out of many I could make.

“The schoolgirls who wear their veil when their parents take them to school but take them off when they play in the playground with their friends, only to have to put them back on when their fathers comes to pick them up, are not future suicide bombers.”

Has it occured to you that their succesful, well integrated, bloody teacher already got there first? And left behind a wife and baby he was devoted to? So why would these little girls not do likewise?

Your efforts to sweep the nature of islam under the carpet will not work on this forum. History is replete with sudden jihad syndrome, islamic supremacism, and islamic persecution of women, children, gays, apostates, and other confessional groups. And all of this is resurgent across the world today.

Your post is an insult to our intelligence.

George –

You say:

“that the evolution of ‘Catholic’ attitudes over the past 50 years in particular (abandonment of Catholicism, nominal Catholicism, progressive catholicism, “à la carte” Catholicism, whatever) show that even aggressively anti-modern politico-religious ideologies can lose their ability to bite. And believe me, in a country like Ireland, the Catholic church was as much a political force as a religious one.”

I agree. It’s not clear of course that such a transformation of Islam is possible, but the example of Catholicism suggests it might be.

However, you should ask yourself what really caused Catholicism to lose its grip. Did the mockery and jibes of irreverent writers and comedians not help? Did the refusal of Protestantism to give an inch in acceptance of Papal authority not help? Did the strict application of secular law not help?

@ I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT

“…knowledge of the subject vs. a command of nice liberal talking points.”

The problem with white, middle class liberals is that they are incapable of believing those wonderful brown minorities enriching their world are every bit as capable of racism, fascism and intolerance as the white folk they hate so much.

They also don’t realize that just as white racists will only discuss their more controversial views with other white racists, so Islamists will only discuss their more controversial views with other Muslims.

So when Oliver Jumps out of a cab having just had a conversation discussing couscous or curry with a lovely Algerian, Pakistani or Kurdish cabbie, I’ll jump in, say Salam Aleykum, sit back and listen to my ‘brother’ talk about how British women are whores, how the Jews blew up the Twin Towers, how MI5 did 7/7 and how ‘inshallah’ Britain will become Islamic very soon because British men drink too much to breed. Mahshallah!

Believe me. It happens. Very often. My brother and I make a point of saying nothing, except nodding and noting the views.

Get a grip people! Poll after poll, expose after expose, shows the frightening extent of extremist views within the Muslim community.

Brave former Muslims like Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan risk their lives to try to speak out, warn the world. And how do the liberals respond? By ignoring or even condemning them. “Mustn’t offend brown people”.

Shame on you!

I wish I were brave enough to speak out publicly on Islam, instead of hiding in a discussion board. But I’m frightened of dying. I don’t want to leave my kids fatherless. And death comes easily to those who criticize Islam.

So instead I hide and hope. Hope that one day, people will begin to understand this horrible ideology. They will look at an expose, or a statistic, or listen to a recording of a prominent Islamic scholar and say, for example, “wow, 40% of the brown British people I love to celebrate might think that a Muslim who rejects Islam should be killed. Hmm, that doesn’t sit well with me. Think I’ll get me a book and learn more. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to slow down the number of these people coming here and appeasing every demand of the Muslims already hear. Just until we’ve had some time to look into these opinions.”

‘The problem with white, middle class liberals is that they are incapable of believing those wonderful brown minorities enriching their world are every bit as capable of racism, fascism and intolerance as the white folk they hate so much.’

Reza, do you really think brown-skinned or working-class liberals are more alert in identifying the Islamist threat ?

It sounds to me like you’re in the grip of politically correct prejudices against white and middle class people. Frankly, I find it rather offensive that you use the terms ‘white’ and ‘middle class’ to disparage your opponents and silence their arguments.

Let me repeat this: your skin colour and your social background do NOT make you a more astute political observer. And the fact that you come from Iran and used to be a Muslim does NOT mean you are a world expert on Islam whose opinions are above question.

(For the avoidance of confusion, my use of the term ‘brother’ in italics denotes the term some Muslims, especially Islamists, use to adress each other. My use of brother without the italics denotes my younger brother, who happens to be every bit as f*cked off as me about blinkered, irrational, clueless, appeasing white liberals.)

Hoare,
What gives you the right to grandly talk down to the rest of us?

You don’t come across as wise, or thoughtful, to me. Just arrogant and condescending.

@Marko

“It sounds to me like you’re in the grip of politically correct prejudices against white and middle class people.”

Not true. Of course, the vast majority of moderate white middle class people are perfectly rational. The problem is the minority of white middle class liberal extremists. These are the people who ignorantly appease Islam and refuse to acknowledge inconvenient truths, even when they smack them in the face.

Fortunately however, there is no need to fear the growth of the white middle class liberal extremist demographic. They’re far too environmentally guilty to have more than one child.

Unlike Islamists.

Reza: your comments have been the most enlightening and informative ones to appear in an HP discussion on Islam in a very long time. The viewpoint of an ex-muslim who has actually experienced life in an Islamic theocracy is invaluable.

But it’s painfully obvious that you’re wasting your time with Marko and Oliver. The rose-tinted spectacles are firmly bolted to their temples, and cannot be removed by something as inconsequential as the personal testimony of someone who has experience of the muslim world from the inside. They’ll still be extolling the benefits of Islamic colonization when the Queen is in a burqa and dead homosexuals are hanging from cranes all across Britain.

MAH: “Islamism and Islamophobia are simply two heads of the same chauvinist monster.”

It is interesting that both pretty much agree on what Islam *is*, and only diverge on whether that is a good or a bad thing.

Reza, Marko knows more than you. After all, you have only BEEN a Muslim. Better tug yuor forelock to him and say Yes, Massah.

MAH

The Wilders type of fascist and the Islamists are mirror images of each other and feed off one another.

Demonising Muslims and treating them as the enemy within will hamper their assimilation and encourage the growth of extremism, just as Islamist extremism seeks to drive a wedge between ordinary moderate Muslims and the non-Muslim majority by claiming that the latter is irremediably racist and anti-Muslim

Here in the UK, the assimilation of Muslims and other minority groups is hampered by our extremely poor education system

Reza

“Hamper assimilation”. Absolutely precious. Words which could only come from white, middle class, North European moral-relativist ‘believers’.
Clearly logic, rationality, historical precedent and stark current reality are not enough to dissuade them from….
Clearly you have no idea about Islam. You have no idea about what it is to be a Muslim. You have chosen to disregard the indisputable fact that throughout history, there has NEVER been a case of the “assimilation” of a Muslim minority.
I know. I was born a Muslim in Iran. I have a deep understanding of that religion and the views of many of its followers. I have very religious relatives who are not ‘extremists’. They’re ‘good’ Muslims. They abhor terrorism or any violence. They believe that Muslims living in the West should obey its laws. However, they make no secret of their sincere desire and confident belief, that one-day Allah’s law will reign in Europe. And they happily Muslim cite birth rates to support this belief.
I left Iran because I didn’t want to live in an oppressive Islamic hell-hole. For god’s sake, why are well-meaning, naive white liberals creating a situation where my children or grandchildren are also going to have to leave the country of their birth to escape Islam.
Wake up! This isn’t a conspiracy

MAH
Reza V, it is you who is the moral relativist. I am either right or I am wrong. The colour of my skin and my social background are irrelevant to this discussion. Your own, presumably darker skin colour does not make you better able to judge these questions.
I would also venture that I have more personal, first-hand experience with British Muslims than you do. I know plenty of Muslims who are as culturally British as I am myself. Your belief in the unassimilability of Muslims is simply wrong.

Reza
‘’Your own, presumably darker skin colour does not make you better able to judge these questions.”
No, but my deep knowledge and understanding of Islam, my experience of what it is to be a Muslim and my experience of living in Iran does help. And my “darker skin colour” and Muslim heritage means that the Muslims I engage with will sometimes say things to me which they wouldn’t dream of saying to you.
“I know plenty of Muslims who are as culturally British as I am myself.”
Of course you do. So do I. Muslims are not a homogenous group. However, it would be stupid to deny that there are, have always been, and will always be, many, many Muslims who are not “culturally British” have no desire to integrate. It’s a question of numbers Marko. The bigger the Muslim population, the bigger the number of the latter type. And the bigger the problems for the rest of us.

MAH
But I fear that, if you have made your mind up that Islam is evil and that Muslims as e least prone to national chauvinism and religious intolerance,

Reza
There is a movement among Muslims to reject certain hadith as false, and if that were to happen then Islam would be improved to some extent. However, there is also a hadith which states that rejecting hadith is apostasy. And the penalty for apostasy is death. Again, see the problem?
People like me, people like the Algerians and Moroccans you’ve known shouldn’t reassure you. We are not ‘good’ Muslims.
To be a Muslim one must accept a number of things. There is no god but Allah. Mohammed was his last Prophet. The Koran is the absolute, literal word spoken by Allah.
(On accepting hadith, scholars differ. There is a ‘Qu’ran only’ movement, many of whom have been condemned as apostates and live in fear for their lives, and there are significant differences of opinion between the Sunni and Shia.)
Of course, among the hundreds of millions of people who call themselves “Muslim” you will have a massive range of views. Just as you would with any other group of people. For example, many people will call themselves Muslim, may support Islamic culture and values, and yet not believe that the Koran is the absolute word of Allah.

MAH

I’ve seen with my own eyes the effects of murderous Islamophobia in the Balkans:
As far as I’m concerned, it is the Islamophobes who are the murderous bigots we need defending against, not ordinary Muslims.
Islamism and Islamophobia are simply two heads of the same chauvinist monster.

Reza
Europe’s appeasement of fundamental Islam borne of the insane and intellectually bankrupt ideology of moral relativism.
It is clear to me that most moral relativists have very little understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of Islamic doctrine.
One of the biggest confusions among non-Muslims is the term ‘moderate Muslim’. One imagines the democracy supporting, secular Muslims who the likes of Oliver and Marko imagine integrating into a multiculuralist Utopia.

However, that is NOT what a moderate Muslim is. The MCB were once considered to be ‘moderate’. They certainly consider themselves to be ‘moderate’. After all, they oppose blowing up their countrymen and believe British Muslims should obey the law. However, as soon as you scratch the surface, you realize that they’re not moderate at all. As our government discovered.

It is a very complicated area, hence the confusion of non-Muslim liberals.

MAH
Reza. Muslims will remain a small minority of the UK’s population. Most will remain moderate, law-abiding citizens. We’ll continue to have our Muslim extremists – the counterpart to the BNP among the white Anglo-Saxon population. But our democracy is strong enough to resist the extremists.
Sorry; I’ve grown up among Muslims; gone to school with them; had close Muslim friends all my life. I’m just not scared of them.
Reza V

I was born a Muslim baby. I never wanted to be a Muslim. Yet my Iranian birth certificate describes me as a Muslim. Under Islamic law, I am a Muslim because my father was a Muslim. I don’t have a choice in it. That’s how it works. In several Islamic countries including Iran, I would not be allowed to call my self a Christian or even an athiest. In some, I would face the death penalty!
And a poll conducted by the Policy Exchange last year suggested that over a third of young British Muslims believe that I should face the death penalty. Nice.
I’m starting to get pissed off now, at the ignorance of some of the f*ckwitted, clueless appeasers out there, the moral relativists who know nothing of Islam and who close their eyes to the evil around them in the interests of their ignorant multiculturalist worldview.

MAH
‘It’s really amazing how much more you know about Islam and Islamic countries than Reza, who was born in Iran and raised a Muslim in a theocracy.’
Yes, obviously Reza was born in Iran and raised a Muslim, so has the exclusive right to pronounce on all matters relating to Muslims and Islam all over the world. I guess the rest of us, non-Muslims by birth, should just shut up.
The term ‘moral relativism’ springs to mind…[sic]

The Times
May 14, 2009

Moderate Muslims in Pakistan stir silent majority against Taleban
Here, however, they are learning a different doctrine that is music to the ears of Pakistani, US and British officials.

“The Taleban is a stigma on Islam,” says Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, a Sunni cleric who heads the madrassa

Until recently it was unusual to hear a cleric denounce the Taleban in the country that helped to create the movement and has long resisted Western pressure to engage it militarily.

That changed on Friday when Dr Naeemi took the unprecedented step of founding an alliance of 22 Islamic groups and political parties with the explicit goal of opposing the Taleban.

The Sunni Ijtehad Council claims to represent about 85 million Pakistani followers of the moderate Barelvi school of Sunni Islam, which incorporates music and mysticism and venerates saints and their shrines

Pakistan’s biggest Islamic party has opposed the Swat campaign, as has Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician.

Analysts say, however, that the alliance still marks the first time that the silent majority of moderate Pakistanis have found a voice.

There are no precise statistics but experts believe that at least half of Pakistan’s 173 million people are Barelvi, and about 20-25 per cent Deobandi. Another 20 per cent are Shia — and most of them fiercely oppose the Taleban.

The Taleban are mostly products of Deobandi madrassas set up with Saudi money in the 1980s

They follow an extreme version of Deobandi Islam which is heavily influenced by the Wahhabi ideology of al-Qaeda and advocates using violence against Shias and Barelvis.

Sectarian tensions have intensified in recent months because the Taleban have been attacking Shias and destroying Barelvi shrines across the northwest.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6283118.ece

Times Online
June 12, 2009

Leading Muslim cleric killed in suicide bomb attack in Lahore

A prominent Pakistani Muslim cleric who founded a religious alliance against the Taleban was killed today in a suicide bomb attack on his Islamic college in the eastern city of Lahore.

Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi appeared to have been the target of the blast in his office at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa, which he headed and where he had just conducted Friday prayers.

“I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed towards the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain,” Waqar said.

Dr Naeemi appears to have been targeted because he had been integral in helping to generate political, religious and public support for the army’s campaign in Swat over the last few weeks.

Last month, he established the Sunni Itehad Council, an alliance of more than 22 Islamic groups and political parties with the explicit goal of opposing the Taleban.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6486033.ece

MAH

‘I am either right or I am wrong.’

As far as I’m concerned, it is the Islamophobes who are the murderous bigots we need defending against, not ordinary Muslims.

Islamism and Islamophobia are simply two heads of the same chauvinist monster.

—————————–

You are wrong

“As far as I’m concerned, it is the Islamophobes who are the murderous bigots we need defending against, not ordinary Muslims.”

Well I think Hoare has stated his position quite clearly there.

SOC

The thing is, that Government projections estimate that population will level off at around 75 – 76 million sometime around 2050. This means that even if every single one of those new people is a muslim, the country would be 23% muslims.

Clearly you didn’t get maths O level.

The person who wrote this piece is hopelessly out of his depth.

This for one example among many of a total lack of understanding and disconnect from reality:

Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European.

I think you’re going to have to define ‘many’ and also ‘European’.

I could waste more of my time ripping the rest of the article to pieces, but when something’s such obvious total crap masquerading as something of any worth, why bother?

“Apparently, Wilders makes the same mistake that people like Ken Livingstone make, which is assuming that radical Islamists speak for all Muslims.”

Qaradawi is considered a moderate.

You should pay close attention to what marko says about Islam. If you look at the take he has on current Turkish politics, in his blog, he has a greater insight into the workings of that religion than Mustafa Kemal had and a more informed view of how much presence it is safe to allow it to display in state institutions, than the officer corps of the entire Turkish army.

Mettaculture, don’t forget to mention that my skin colour, social class, name, profession and lifestyle all collectively disqualify me from having any opinion different from your own on any subject whatsoever. And justify you in vomiting out a torrent of vulgar personal abuse against me in the even that I’m unfortunate enough to find myself on the same thread as you.

Wally, Mustafa Kemal died in 1938. In such circumstances, I don’t think he can have much of an insight into the extent of the Islamist threat in Turkey today. Do you ?

One of the “concerns” raised by the likes of Wilders and parties of the far right, is the larger family size and higher birth rate of Muslims.

At present the Muslim birthrate is higher (in some cases a lot higher) than that of the Christian population throughout Europe. If this trend continues it will certainly result in much higher percentages of second generation Muslims in Europe in ten years time than at present.

However where Muslim children are educated in secular state schools (and not poorly regulated madrassas) evidence shows that they come to realise that a high birthrate is associated with a lower standard of living and they start to limit their families. Turkey after Attaturk is indeed a good example of this.

Putting it into practice (educating women and emancipating them) is of course harder for “devout” Muslim men to accommodate than women. Wife at home as mother and servant, with a limited education, is an outward expression of a man’s status as a good Muslim for less well educated first generation Muslims. Hence also the liking by UK Pakistani Muslims for importing less well educated girls from back home to marry. (They will not challenge their subservient role in the family).

Improving education for Muslim girls in particular, is essential in this respect. Religious schools, poorly regulated and with a restricted curriculum urgently need attention. At present many of these Muslim schools appear to be getting a free pass from government inspectors.

The jury is out on the way Muslim birthrate will go in future. However it is definitely rising faster than the birthrate of the Christian inhabitants who currently comprise the greater majority of the population of western Europe. The far right makes great use of this information. We need arguments to advance against this.

Nick SA, perhaps you’d like to show where I’m wrong, rather than childishly insulting me. To help you, here is a calculation (not the one I actually did, but close):

Current population of UK = ~60
Current muslim population = ~2
76-60=16
16+2=18
(18/76)*100=23.7%

Incidentally, I don’t have an O level in maths. I do however have an A in GCSE maths and an A in A level maths, as well as a masters and PhD in a science subject (not maths). I have also spent some time as a rocket scientist. Not that any of this matters, because the maths needed to show that a 50% muslim population in Britain is close to impossible is so mind blowingly simple that a 10 year old could do it.

But not you, Reza, John P or Field apparently. Funny that.

@Short order cook

“…because the maths needed to show that a 50% muslim population in Britain is close to impossible is so mind blowingly simple that a 10 year old could do it.”

As a self declare scientist you ignore the fact that demographics are cumulative. You must take into account continued immigration and the effect of the much higher birth rate of those immigrants.

Today the total Muslim population in England is only 5%. Yet the proportion of Muslims under the age of 11 is around 11%.

As a rocket scientist, I assume you understand the exponential function.

Read this:-

Read this:-

Muslim population ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article5621482.ece@Short order cook

“…because the maths needed to show that a 50% muslim population in Britain is close to impossible is so mind blowingly simple that a 10 year old could do it.”

As a self declare scientist you ignore the fact that demographics are cumulative. You must take into account the effect of continued immigration and the subsequent effect of the much higher birth rate of those immigrants. And you have to take into account that even second and third generation Muslims in Britain continue to have significantly more children than the indigenous population.

Consider, today the total Muslim population in England is only 5%. Yet the proportion of Muslims under the age of 11 is around 11%.

As a rocket scientist, I assume you understand the exponential function.

Whatever the actual result will be, it is ignorant to deny that we aren’t currently and won’t continue to experience a dramatic demographic change and growth of Islam in this country.

The question we should ask ourselves is whether this is a good bad or neutral thing.

Well, we have eyes don’t we? We can all read, can’t we? Let’s look for ourselves and ask the question: Is the growth of Islam here making our society a better place? Have our European neighbours, who’ve experienced even greater growth of Islam in their society fared? Or are they better or worse off?

And except for the most blinkered denier and moral relativist, the unavoidable truth is that any significant growth of Islam is something we all should be very concerned about.

Sorry, the above link was corrupted. Here it is again:

Muslim population ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article5621482.ece

Actually the whole post was corrupted. Here’s the verion you should have got:

@Short order cook

“…because the maths needed to show that a 50% muslim population in Britain is close to impossible is so mind blowingly simple that a 10 year old could do it.”

As a self declared scientist you ignore the fact that demographics are cumulative. You must take into account the effect of continued immigration and the subsequent effect of the much higher birth rate of those immigrants. And you have to take into account that even second and third generation Muslims in Britain continue to have significantly more children than the indigenous population.

Consider, today the total Muslim population in England is only 5%. Yet the proportion of Muslims under the age of 11 is around 11%.

As a rocket scientist, I assume you understand the exponential function.

Read this:-

Muslim population ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article5621482.ece

Whatever the actual result will be, it is ignorant to deny that we aren’t currently and won’t continue to experience a dramatic demographic change and growth of Islam in this country.

The question we should ask ourselves is whether this is a good bad or neutral thing.

Well, we have eyes don’t we? We can all read, can’t we? Let’s look for ourselves and ask the question: Is the growth of Islam here making our society a better place? How have those European neighbours, who’ve experienced an even greater growth of Islam in their societies fared? Or are they better or worse off?

And except for the most blinkered denier and moral relativist, the unavoidable truth is that ANY significant growth of Islam is something we all should be very concerned about.

Andrew Murphy’s contribution is lazy, facile, and smug.

Re: Mein Kampf, he is either misinformed or happy to perpetuate the canard. Selling copies of Mein Kampf is ALREADY illegal in the Netherlands (and in some other European countries, such as Austria). It has been for as long as I’ve been alive.

More to the point, though I’m hardly a big Wilders fan, the man is actually being entirely consistent here, and merely expecting consistency of others. Wilders’ point is that BECAUSE Mein Kampf is considered so dangerous that the state has declared the sale of the book illegal, THEN the same limitation ought to be placed on the hate-filled tract that is the Koran.

The Dutch are seriously wedded to the idea of ‘gelijke monnikken gelijke kappen’ (roughly translated as equal treatment, though the closer English expression that comes to mind is ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander’). Wilders is furthering this ur-Dutch principle. Nothing wrong with that — on the contrary. (For the record, I think banning books is by definition spectacularly wrong, and I will always fight for the unfettered availability of Mein Kampf, the Koran, the Bible, and even anything written by Robert James Waller.)

Murphy fails to show how allegedly overblown Wilders’ fears are when the politician warns of Western culture being overtaken by unenlightened religionists whose beliefs are incompatible with most everything the West stands for. Why worry, Murphy writes blithely, when Muslims only make up about 4.5% of the entire population of Europe.

For Murphy’s stat to be of any real-world consequence, you’d have to suppose that the spread of Muslims is more or less geographically even; that you can take a sample of a thousand people anywhere on the European continent and come up with 45 Muslims, give or take. But the reality for millions of Europeans is that they live in neighborhoods and cities where Muslims are now either a majority, or very nearly so. The population of the Schildersbuurt district in The Hague, for instance, now consists of 90.6 percent immigrants (no typo), most of them Muslims. Citywide, the percentage is 46.2 — and growing. The nearby city of Rotterdam is on the verge of having a majority-immigrant population, with Muslims again making up by far the biggest demographic slice. If current trends continue, it’ll be Amsterdam’s turn in about a dozen years (this seems irreversible, considering that already, more than 50% of Amsterdam’s children have a “non-Western background.”

A reasonable question is “So what?” Yes, there is something enormously appealing about the idea of a polyglot, harmonious, multicultural society where hookah bars appear next to Japanese restaurants, and where the Turkish rug-store owner can be seen shooting the breeze with the tattooed white guy from next door, working on his motorbike. I savor such scenes. Parts of Amsterdam are like that. I am as susceptible as the next guy to pangs of positivity when I read that my erstwhile city is home to the largest number of nationalities in the world (177, compared to New York’s 150).

But you don’t have to be a bigot (as many of Wilders’ fans are) to see the problems outweighing the benefits.

Just step back for a moment and focus on your own town or neighborhood. Mentally remove half the current population, and substitute lots of women in burkas, and men who’ve grown up in a culture where honor killings are widely tolerated and Sharia justice is preferred. Now imagine that virtually none of the women are gainfully employed, and that only about 38 percent of the 40-to-64-year-olds are (that’s the official number for the Morrocan population in the Netherlands). The others — 62 percent — depend on welfare.

When you picture your now-transformed living environment, sprinkle in a lot of Muslim teenagers (school dropout rate roughly 60 percent) who, in the Netherlands, are disproportionately responsible for petty street crime. Almost 70 percent of under-24 Moroccan males in Amsterdam have been detained at least once, and many have an actual criminal record. Then imagine that there are in fact many more nasty young street hooligans than the official crime statistics let on. Moroccan youth, especially, are widely observed to act out with great disrespect; calling Dutch girls hos, pubicly hurling insults at white people and black Dutch citizens from Surinam for no apparent reason, openly jeering at gays, and so on. (Incidentally, the dropout rate alone makes an instant mockery of Murphy’s belief that the way out of this problem is the “education, education, education” of immigrants.)

Seriously, how would you like to live in THAT social environment? I imagine Andrew Murphy’s rainbow-colored opinions would be quite different if he were forced to live in The Hague’s Schildersbuurt district, or in Amsterdam’s Slotervaart neighborhood.

By the way, the stats which I’m quoting do not come from Mr. Wilders or some organization of Aryan weasels. They were revealed last month in the broadsheet NRC Handelsblad, Holland’s newspaper of record, and the closest Dutch journalism comes to a London Times or a Washington Post.

So I ask again: post-sea-change, how do you like your city or your neighborhood?

I’ve never seen the Muslim-immigrant rise of Europe’s major cities acknowledged or understood in American or even U.K. media. This, I think, is the proper analogy: take Chicago or New York or Manchester, and subject those cities to the thought experiment above. If you can honestly say that you wouldn’t mind living in a city in your own country where foreign fundamentalists with a welfare addiction and a crime problem have begun to outnumber the original population, you’re a more tolerant person than I am.

Well, ARE you?

I stopped reading here: “One slight problem: Muslims only make up about 4.5% of the entire population of Europe. Wilders doesn’t take into consideration that eventually, many of these first generation immigrants will have assimilated into society and intermarried with Brits, Germans, French, etc– and their children and grandchildren will be very much European. ”

No point in continuing to read, because this is simply not true, the vast majority of Muslims brings in cousins from their homelands to marry, Muslim women do only very rarely marry non-Muslim Men, and many of the Muslim children are not culturally European at all but actively get raised to reject any assimilation. Many Muslims do not arrive here to join us, but unfortunately have bought into the Arab street meme that Europe in 30 will be Islamic.

With all respect, the 1980’s are long over, you need to update your knowledge before you start to pontificate about the here and now.

If people support Geert Wilders its because they are fed up trying to conform to multiculturalism (that they didn’t ask for), Mass immigration, without integration (that they didn’t ask for) and massive influx of Muslims with all the problems that come with them (that they didn’t ask for).

Now the people can see the writing on the wall, they were apathetic for so long, but now Geert Wilders has given them hope especially the educated young.

It wont be long before parties like his are established in other countries in Europe. A party like his in Britain will attract Working Class and Middle Class Voters, because they will address the problem that other parties will not address, yet also be more centralist on other issues. And I like millions of others will vote for them and they will win.

The stage is already set in Britain as the main parties are not particularly liked by the people but up to this point there has been no party that both the working class and middle class would find expectable to vote for that would address the issues of mass immigrations of Muslims, so if Geert Wilders is successful you can expect his paradigm in western Europe within 5 to 10 years.
Either way its civil war make no mistake, many innocent people will die on both sides in this one and we can do absolutely nothing to prevent it.