A worthwhile piece from Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard, with thanks to Ruth King:
THE SMALL CITY of Schiedam, on the Nieuwe Maas river near Rotterdam, has played a big role in the Dutch imagination of late. Five years ago, the historian/journalist Geert Mak entranced the country with a long narrative called My Father's Century. It is still in bookshop windows and is now in its 27th printing. It begins in Mak's great-grandparents' sail-making business in Schiedam, and follows the lives of his family members as they collide with Dutch history in the twentieth century: the Dutch Reformed faith they drifted in and out of, the herring they ate, how much money they made, what it felt like to live under Nazi occupation, their shyness (or boldness) about sex, the jokes they told, and how they faced the 1960s. The book consoled Dutch people that however tumultuous the changes the 20th century had wrought, there was an ineffable "Dutchness" that somehow perdured. Schiedam played the role in the Dutch imagination that Macomb County, Michigan, or Luckenbach, Texas, did in the American imagination in the mid-1980s: You could look there to see how the "real" people in the country lived.Early this month, another Schiedam native, a 30-year-old man known in his police dossier as Farid A., was found guilty of issuing death threats over the Internet. When the conservative Dutch politician Geert Wilders described Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last year as a "terrorist leader," Farid A. posted a picture of him on an Islamist website urging: "Wilders must be punished with death for his fascistic comments about Islam, Muslims, and the Palestinian cause." That was a year ago, and since then, Wilders has done even more to tick off Muslim radicals. He left the conservative Freedom and Democracy People's party (VVD) after a personal spat with the party leadership, promising to launch his own "Geert Wilders List," along the lines of the one-person movement that turned the gay populist Pim Fortuyn into the most popular politician in the Netherlands in early 2002. Wilders has focused on Turkey, crime, and the unsustainability of high immigration. He has warned that many of the more than 1 million Muslims who live in the Netherlands "have already opted for radical Islam," and has urged closing extremist mosques.
There is a market for his forthrightness. In early November, a poll in the left-leaning daily de Volkskrant showed that Wilders could win several hundred thousand votes, which would translate into nine seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the national legislature. When the gadfly filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and knifed in southeastern Amsterdam on November 2, the letter that his killer pinned with a knife to his corpse contained a promise to do the same to the Somali-born feminist VVD member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Wilders got similar threats shortly thereafter. There were two results for Wilders. First, his popularity shot through the roof: A second poll in de Volkskrant showed Wilders would now win almost 2 million voters, taking 28 seats, or a fifth of the parliament, and that he was drawing support across party lines and in every single sector of Dutch society, despite--or perhaps because of--perceptions that he is a single-issue candidate.
But Wilders also had to go into hiding. He now appears in public only for legislative sessions in the Hague, where he travels under armed guard. He complained in mid-December that the death threats had hampered his ability to build his party. The head of a conservative think tank told newspapers he had been advised by security personnel to stay away from Wilders. Anyone who declared himself for one of those 28 seats that looked ripe for the plucking would thereby place himself on a death list, too. One strange but highly professional video that can be downloaded off the Internet shows drawings of machine guns, then photographs of Wilders with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and then captioned panels reading:
name: geert wilders
occupation: idolator
sin: mocking Islam
punishment: beheading
reward: Paradise, in sha AllahIn early December, an appeals court in the Hague confirmed the punishment of Farid A. of Schiedam. He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.
With all of the trouble caused by Moslem immigration to Europe, in this case the Netherlands, one wonders just what exactly it will take to end the nonsense and do whatever is necessary to save the Netherlands for the Dutch people.
With the same process visible in all European cities with a significant Moslem presence, one can reasonably assume there will be an Islamic Europe sometime in the near future. It could begin in Marseille, France's most Moslem city or Malmo, Sweden or even in Berlin, where some districts are almost exclusively Turkish, but eventually the puzzle will begin to take form as segments of Europe become Moslem majority and link together.
These Moslem immigrant communities are assumed to be a part of Western society and need time to assimilate into the larger culture. But this is an error that Mr. Caldwell points out as incorrect with the Dutch experience with Islam. The Dutch idea of "Pillarization" wrongly assumed that Moslems would after being greatly assisted in building an Islamic foundation in Dutch society, eventually discover the rewards of Dutch freedoms and values and eventually it (Islamic ideology and cultural baggage) would "collapse under its own postmodern individualism", creating Moslem Dutch citizens. This is proving FALSE not with all immigrant groups, but primarily with Moslem immigrants.
The wonderful theories that Dutch social scientists came up with to calm the legitimate fears of their people is criminal. These educated, learned and confident elites built a theory which uses the imagery of a hierarchical structure, “pillars” of society if you will and based their premise on the assumption that once any group of people are grounded within the society, they will eventually begin to blend into its fabric as they experience its splendor. This has worked for Judeo-Christian newcomers precisely because they are part of Western civilization. The social scientists however did not do their homework with Islamic civilization before opening the citadel on the hill to those who wish to do as they have done throughout their history, conquer and convert. This mindset is still supremely alive as news of Islamic terrorism is a daily event, the Islamists do not deny nor try to hide their intent to create an Islamic empire.
The Dutch subversives (intellectual/political elites) even made sure they assisted in eliminating the scapegoat problem other EU countries are pointing to as a CAUSE of the growing Islamic chaos within their societies, lack of assimilation. Not that anyone has the courage to question Islam itself as the problem.
But their reasons for the failure to assimilate doesn't hold water. The Dutch went out of their way to assist assimilation of Moslem immigrants by doing everything possible including using public money to build mosques and community centers, accepting asylum seekers and immigrants without much difficulty, paying generous welfare benefits and transforming entire communities to accommodate Moslems at the expense of their own populations fleeing these areas. And yet, what they have built is a multicultural fantasy that only exists in their minds and is not borne out by any objective reality of the relations between non-Moslems and Moslems in the Netherlands. In fact the one way street known as multiculturism is emboldening Europe’s Moslem population further towards the extreme.
Why are Moslems despite the efforts of one of the most accommodating, tolerant and generous western societies in existence, stubbornly clinging to their primitive Islamic civilization and culture and exporting their Islamic civilizational norms, violence, intolerance and dhimmitude to such an accommodating host society?
Can it be that the civilizational difference and methods used by Islam to propagate and spread itself are simply too incompatible with our remaining post Judeo-Christian values? If so, then we are being sold to dhimmification and extinction by those who are in power and refuse to admit that their cause is a lost out of fear of their Moslem populations.
So what is the next step? Do we continue to fantasize about all that is clearly not right until suddenly one day we are forced to evacuate the Netherlands the way the British evacuated Dunkirk? It is already happening as reported in a recent article that there is an exodus of Dutch people fleeing the "multicultural" Netherlands. What they are fleeing from is the infiltration and colonization of region after region by Islam, nothing more.
Moslems cannot and will not be changed by the West. They are instead transforming the West into a version of an Islamic society. If something is not done, Europe will become as Balkanized and fragmented as anywhere on earth where Islam appears, before it finally succumbs to total Islamic cultural transformation.
Anyone with an awareness of the seriousness of the situation can look at a map and see the Islamification of Europe from Scandinavia, through the Netherlands to France and Germany and beyond. This is happening, and any comfortable theory to explain away the end result is intellectually dishonest and criminally negligent.
If I were Dutch politician Geert Wilders, I would spend a lot of time talking about my possible assassination by muslims, and ask the Dutch people to avenge my death, if it were to occur, by any means available to them. Up to and including chasing all muslims out of the Netherlands. This would put islamos on notice that if they touch Mr. Wilders that the backlash would be so severe that it would not be worth bothering him. A sort of modern day MAD (mutually assured destruction).
Sheik C:
I agree. Furthermore, Wilders should be on the airwaves or internet transmitting from "an undisclosed location," reminding the Dutch that he, a Dutchman exercising his right to free speech, has to hide in his homeland because of muslims.
Andrew, very much impressed by your superb analysis concerning the sorry state of the multicultural project in Holland (and elsewhere), let me elaborate constructively to your paragaraph: 'Can it be that the civilizational difference and methods used by Islam to propagate and spread itself are simply too incompatible with our remaining post Judeo-Christian values?', by saying that besides a common language or at least the possession of some translation device, we humans also need a shared perception of good and evil to engage in a fruitful dialogue, this being the magical method invented and assiduously practised by our Christian civilization to solve the differences among us. Even so, there is no guarantee of success, as shown by the many times in History when we have failed to avoid war.
Imagine now what the chances are when, as it happens nowadays with the Muslim world, we engage in the dialogue proposed by our liberals and socialists fools with people that wouldn’t agree on the universal validity of the following propositions:
-All humans wish and seek the same basic things: life, liberty, peace and happiness.
-Life, human life in especial, has a supreme value and meaning.
-Men and women are equal and have exactly the same legal and social rights and duties.
-Only individuals -as opposed to parents, sons and family in general- are legally responsible for their punishable actions.
-Shame and pride are universally felt sentiments, upon same conducts.
-Doesn’t matter how opposed believe-systems and religion creeds are, there always is room for them all in advanced, illustrated societies through dialogue and compromise. The same applies to all sorts of value- systems, mainly political ones included.
-Freedom of choice granted, all humans will opt for pleasurable things and will reject pain on all its forms and manifestations.
-Democracy is the best form of governance and it should be made universally available.
-Education is an intrinsically good factor and the best method available to solve most social and individual problems in all places and time.
-Science is the shortest cut to success.
-Beggars and derelicts always feel gratitude to the samaritan hand that helps them in their plight.
-Land frontiers are sacrosanct.
-‘Man is a rational animal’ is a definition that provides a solid base for the understanding of all individuals and peoples.
-The ‘do not do unto others what you wish not to be done by’ is a principle that enjoys universal acceptance.
-Empathy, tolerance and hospitality are virtues always seen favourably by the ones benefiting from them.
-Nobody would call ‘religion’ anything resembling a recipe for war, death, booty, torture, enslavement and at the same time seeking the physical elimination of those who share not that particular creed and finally dictates a death sentence for any of their folk gone astray.
It seems to me that the present situation is akind that offered in some movies involving a Martian expedition arriving to Earth, the first basic interrogation mark being put on their peaceful or belligerent intentions.
Forced to a posture of wait-and-see simply because there is no way to establish any sort of meaningful dialogue, it is the actions and gestures of the alien visitors what permits we poor earthlings decide whether to welcome or fight them.
When it comes to Muslims, the situation is like trying to scrutinize the intentions of a bunch of Martians and the solution is the same: analyzing their actions disregarding any attempt to speak or listen, a meaningless endeavour it always is when we have in front brains that respond to an altogether different kind of stimuli from that that governs our actions.
In fact the situation is far worse in the real life instance insofar as we know for starters that the answer to all sixteen propositions above is NO.
The chapter of deeds is equally unequivocal.
So when you hear the ‘lets dialogue’ thing, think of a fool…or of a traitor.
As has been pointed out before, islam does not include the Christian concepts of good and evil in its ideology - only "halal" (that which is specifically allowed by "allah") and "haram" (that which is specifically forbidden by "allah"). Since it's all already codified, there's no need for self-examination or conscience in the way we think of them. That's why there will forever be a disconnect between behavior that Christians find acceptable and behavior that muslims find acceptable.
An insurmountable clash of ideologies, indeed.
BTW, I just noticed the pun in the title of this article. That sly Spencer has the same sense of humor I do - lame. :-)