Many people have sent me this ABC story, but I haven’t been able to get it to come up all day — probably because of a Drudge link. But at last it has come in, and Ixnay has kindly sent along some helpful commentary.
Here is Ixnay:
This is one of the worst apologist articles I have read in a long time.
The story starts out innocently with small lies, but there’s a big
payoff at the end. Here’s what ABC-news author Leela Jacinto claims:In the Netherlands — a country famed for its relaxed attitude to everything from pot smoking to prostitution — at least 14 Muslim buildings and schools were attacked in the troubled days following the killing of a Dutch filmmaker by a suspected Islamist extremist. Postings in online chat rooms showed a rising anti-Muslim feeling. “Today is the day I became a racist,” read one typical message. And when a TV contest recently asked viewers to name the “greatest Dutchman ever,” they chose Pim Fortuyn — a self-avowed anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant politician who was killed by a white animal rights activist in 2002.
And here’s the truth: Pim Fortuyn was NOT anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant. [I might add also that the “animal rights activist” who murdered him said he did it for Dutch Muslims.]
Although Fortuyn was part of a new wave of Dutch politicians and often perceived as an extremist, he insisted he was not like Jean-Marie Le Pen and wanted nothing to do with the French far-right leader.
He was at pains to point out that he was not against immigrants, but he questioned their ability to assimilate into a liberal and racially tolerant culture and argued immigration had to be curbed in order for the Netherlands’ liberal social values to survive.
“My policies are multi-ethnic and certainly not racist,” he said. “I want to stop the influx of new immigrants. This way, we can give those who are already here the opportunity to fully integrate into our society.”
In a recent interview, he argued: “In Holland, homosexuality is treated the same way as heterosexuality. In what Islamic country does this happen?”
Fortuyn’s platform seemed out of place in the ultra-liberal Netherlands, which he argued was full up with 16 million people.
While not advocating deportation, he criticised the country’s estimated 800,000 Muslims for not embracing Dutch life and said government benefits should be restricted to Dutch speakers.
Though tolerant of such subcultures, Fortuyn targeted a deep vein of
suspicion of immigrants and also blamed them for a rising crime wave.He said: “I’m not anti-Muslim. I’m not anti-immigrant. I’m saying we’ve got big problems in our cities.
“It’s not very smart to make the problems bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don’t assimilate. This country is bursting. I think 16 million people is quite enough.”
That’s from http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/05/06/fortuyn.profile/
More from the ABC News story, with some comments from me:
“There is definitely a rise in Islamophobia across Europe,” said Liz Fekete, deputy director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations. “Muslims collectively are being blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Center, and there is a general punitive climate toward Muslims. This has manifested itself in a variety of ways. On the ground, there has been a rise in racial violence on Muslim targets across Europe. And the biggest problem is that the scale of the problem has not been acknowledged,” Fekete said.
You know what else hasn’t been acknowledged? The extent of sympathy among European Muslims for the WTC attacks and other acts of terrorism. “Islamophobia” is on the increase in Europe because non-Muslim Europeans suspect, with good reason, that Muslim immigrants intend to remake European societies as Islamic states, in accordance with Islamic law. But that, of course, is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that ABC just can’t quite see.
Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has been widely viewed as a bastion of internationalism, moderation and social progressiveness — a haven of affluent, eco-conscious citizens in stark contrast to the perceived unilateralism and parochialism of the United States.
But across Western Europe, immigrant and civil rights experts say a xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim wave appears to be gripping a region once famed for its tolerance.
Incredible. Why are they picking on these poor innocent people? No one knows how many of them want to establish Sharia states in Eupoe, but who cares, right, ABC? After all, in ABC’s Chomskyite/Saidist paradigm, non-Western people can’t be the perpetrators. They can only be the victims.
Note how absurd the writer makes these concerns sound. Germans threatened by a measly two percent? Sounds like Hitler all over again, right? Until one considers that Milestones, unlike the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is no forgery.
More from ABC:
Europewide statistics on the extent of anti-Muslim attacks are hard to calculate. While Germany saw a 40 percent increase in reported racist crimes last year, and the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission has recorded a 13-fold increase in backlash complaints in Britain since the 9/11 attacks, such figures are difficult to collate in countries like France, where ethnic origins of complainants are not recorded.
Comments Ixnay:
Yessir, we’re on a roll now! Obviously ABC writer Leela Jacinto believes that if the “London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission” says it has recorded a 13-fold increase in backlash complaints in Britain, those numbers simply must be true and must therefore not be questioned.
But oh! Sadly the U.S. must also be given some credit:
“I don’t want to give the United States too much credit, but it is true that in the three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. continues to have a citizenship program that is far more speedy and accessible for people who meet the requirements,” said Julia Hall, senior researcher from Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division.
Surely this is just a glitch in an otherwise brilliant study in
dhimmitude.And yes, soon enough we’re back on track – maybe this Julia Hall is one of the “experts” who warn that
the lack of political representation, coupled with a growing intolerance of Islamic culture, increases the risk of increasing extremism among Europe’s young Muslim population. Certainly, the existence of the Hamburg, Germany, terror cell — which planned the 9/11 attacks — as well as growing evidence that the March 11 Madrid train bombings were masterminded by Islamic extremists in Spain have increased security concerns in Europe.
But Muslim community leaders say it’s unfair to castigate all of Western Europe’s estimated 12.5 million Muslims for the actions of a few. They point that contrary to popular European belief, extremism among the continent’s Muslims is not widespread. According to a report in the British magazine The Economist, for instance, out of about 1,500 mosques in Britain, only two were known to be run by extremists.Ah, all’s well then. Just 2 out of 1500 mosques spread extreme hate.
(“Look mommy, only two buildings full of people who are encouraged to
kill us!”)The message to the ABC News readers seem to be that whatever atrocities Muslims commit, them Europeans had it coming. Mustn’t be intolerant of those Muslims, or they’ll kill us all in the
name of multicultural diversity. Just like the Jews did, when Europe was intolerant of Jews. Wait – Europe still IS intolerant of Jews. But where are the Jewish suicide bombers?Oh, sorry – mustn’t ask those difficult questions. Be a good dhimmi
now.For here’s the best part of the story:
If the Dutch government had prosecuted van Gogh for his racism, he may have been alive. I’m not saying that anything, absolutely anything legitimizes a killing, but we also need to limit hate speech — on all sides [says Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission].
So it’s like “Look, I’m not saying anything, but you know what I’m
saying, don’t you? You’d better toe then line, because otherwise something really bad could happen to you. Or it might not. But why take chances?”
Thanks, Ix.