A Report on the Counterjihad Summit

Counterjihad Brussels 2007 was planned and coordinated by the Center for Vigilant Freedom in order to bring together various European groups — members of political parties, interest groups, bloggers, and writers — to discuss the common danger they face from radical Islam in their respective countries, share reports on the encroachment of Islam and sharia in their countries, and outline the measures being used to resist it.


The event was more than just a talk-fest, with the second day of the conference dedicated to working groups.

The role of CVF in all of this was to act as the network cable and routers for all the different groups that are already grappling with the issue of the Islamization of Europe. We are just one such group performing this function; others such as SIOE are also working all across Europe for the same ends. We applaud and support all the networks of people who are striving towards the common goal.

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The first day of the conference met at the European Parliament for a combination of featured speakers and reports for each European country represented at the conference. We adjourned and reconvened at dinner in the Flemish Parliament building for additional speakers, the award to Bat Ye’or, and informal discussion and networking.

Agenda

1.		Keynote speeches “Eurabia — How Far has it gone?” Bat Ye’or “Creeping Dhimmitude at the United Nations” David Littman
2.		Country reports Ten-minute summaries with statements of problems, current and planned activity
		a.		Belgium (Paul Belien/Filip Dewinter)
		b.		Germany (Stefan Herre)
		c.		France (Nidra Poller)
		d.		UK (Gerard Batten)
		e.		Sweden (Ted Ekeroth/Reinhard — FOMI)
		f.		Denmark (Lars Hedegaard)
		g.		Norway (Jens Anfindsen)
		h.		Finland (KGS)
		i.		Netherlands (Johannes Jansen)
		j.		Italy (Adriana Bolchini Gaigher)
		k.		Switzerland (Arnaud Dotezac)
		l.		Romania (Traian Ungureanu)
		m.		Austria (Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff)
3.		Working Lunch
4.		What can we learn from Israel’s ongoing fight with terrorism? (video, H/T Atlas Shrugs) Dr Arieh Eldad, member of Israeli Knesset
5.		From Dawa to Jihad (presentation is not public, but here is a video interview, H/T Atlas Shrugs) Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, Director, Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity and of the Barnabas Fund
6.		Opposing Jihadism Dr. Marc Cogen, professor of International Law, Ghent University
7.		The War Against Jihad : Understanding the adversary (presentation not public) Sam Solomon, ex-Muslim and shariah law expert, author of the “Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding”
8.		Reception and Dinner Islam — Is it the real problem? (video, H/T Atlas Shrugs) Robert Spencer The First and Last Enemy — Jew-Hatred in Islam Andrew Bostom

In an earlier post I excerpted from Bat Ye’or’s opening speech in the European Parliament. Below are some additional excerpts from several speakers. Full texts of these and other speakers are available at Counterjihad Europa, as are the speakers’ biographies.

From David Littman’s speech:
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I would like to start with a prologue. In January 1971 I discovered a rare gem in the library of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford and — encouraged by Professor Bernard Lewis, then in London — I co-edited a slim volume, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel under the pseudonym, “D.F. Green.” (1)

It contains a brief introduction and extracts from 25 lectures pronounced by senior Muslim scholars in 1968 at The Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, under the auspices of Al Azhar University. These scholarly Islamic transactions were published in 1970 (in Arabic and English) by the Egyptian Government Printing Offices, thus providing official backing.

Forty years ago it was disheartening to witness the principal religious leaders of the Arab-Muslim world convening for the sake of glorifying a Jihad ideology and vilifying another religion and an entire people, shunning neither expressions of abuse, nor the worst invectives — with lecture titles such as, The Jews are the Enemies of Human Life as is Evident from their Holy Book. The Supreme Judge of Jordan spoke on The Jihad is the Way to Gain Victory, and various forms of Jihad were strongly recommended by speakers. Jews are frequently denoted as the “enemies of Allah” or the “enemies of humanity.” This latter expression is even to be found in the opening speech of Egypt’s then vice-president. The Mufti of the Lebanon preferred the expression — “dogs of humanity”. (2)

These clerics affirmed then — as do others nowadays, and also the Iranian and Syrian presidents — that they differentiate meticulously between Zionism and Judaism and are against Zionism, but not against Judaism. There cannot be a more trenchant disproof than the arguments used at this 1968 Conference. Zionism’s odium is described as emanating from the perversity of Judaism. Zionists and Jews are treated synonymously. And this theological mindset has remained intact 40 years later — even greatly magnified — yet it is minimized by those who still refuse to see with their eyes and hear with their ears the clear message from Syria and Iran, from Hizbollah and Hamas, and from the Jihadist hosts .

Perhaps it’s time to republish a fourth edition, titled: Muslim Theologians on Jihad and on Jews and Israel — in the hope that readers may learn that today’s ‘culture of hate’ and of Jihad is nothing new.

Dr. Abdul Halim Mahmoud, then Head of the Islamic Research Academy and Rector of Al Azhar University, later published Jihad and Victory in which he made the same point about the Jews according to Scripture: (3)

Allah commands the Muslims to fight the friends of Satan wherever they are found. Among the friends of Satan — indeed among the foremost friends of Satan in our age — are the Jews. The Jews have laid down a program for the destruction of humanity, through subverting religion and ethics. They have already begun their control of the mass media, and their propaganda. They have falsified knowledge, violated standards of literary truth, and put conscience in the service of breaking down to implement this program with their money, and destroying humanity. As a consequence of such activities, the Jews have succeeded in gaining control and seizing power. But Allah — praise be to Him — will wreck the edifice that the Jews have built and eliminate their destructive machinations and double-dealing.

On 4 April 2002, Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi — the highest ranking cleric in the Sunni world — referred to the Jews as “the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.” (3)

And fatwas by Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi use racist, genocidal language. (4)

In any counter-Jihad context, it would be advisable to reiterate, ad nauseam, hard irrefutable facts. For instance, the slogan of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement, founded in 1928, which is the blueprint for all the “Jihadist Martyrdom” Bombers states: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” This is virtually identical to article 8 of the 1988 Hamas Charter 60 years later, whose article 2 states that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Palestine.“ (5)

From Lars Hedegaard’s country report on Denmark:

It is by now quite clear that the Danish cartoon crisis that erupted a few months after Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the Muhammed drawings on 30 September 2005 was deliberately triggered to test if Denmark was ripe for a take-over in the sense that the Danes were willing to bow to sharia law and accept their place as dhimmies.

Bernard Lewis went even further and observed that the death sentences against the Danish cartoonists and editors were a sign that the Islamic strategists were already considering Denmark to be part of the Dar al-Islam where the sharia applies.

As subsequent research has revealed, it is equally evident that the main instigator of the troubles in the shape of embassy and flag burnings, violent demonstrations, death threats and boycotts were Muslim states in cahoots with The Muslim Brotherhood.

I shall refrain from speculating as to why the leaders of the umma thought of Denmark as a soft spot ready to be conquered. Perhaps they had been looking for a suitable place to show off their global reach and decided that it might as well be Denmark since it presented itself as a target at the right time.

Recently the entire charade has been repeated following the Swedish artist Lars Vilks’ publication of a drawing of a prophet (he didn’t say it was Muhammed) as a dog in a traffic circle. The same death threats were issued although the street demonstrations were not as well organised or violent as in the case of Denmark.

Interestingly the Swedish experience sheds new light on the Danish case. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was roundly blamed and vilified for his refusal to meet with the ambassadors from Muslim states who would like to lecture him on the proper “tone” in the press and demanded an official apology. Rasmussen’s unwillingness to see the Muslim emissaries was then cited by Danish apologists for the imams as the true cause of the subsequent troubles. Had the Prime Minister only agreed to listen to the well-founded grievances of the concerned ambassadors, matters would never have got out of hand.

Well, the Swedish prime minister did receive a deputation of Muslim ambassadors to discuss internal Swedish affairs and he got precisely the same result as his Danish colleague - death threats.

The refusal of the Danish Prime Minister to issue a formal apology for activities that were perfectly legal under Danish law to countries that do not allow freedom of expression may be seen as proof that Denmark did not surrender. But the picture is mixed.

If we look at most members of the Danish elites - among writers, journalists, academics, the Lutheran Church and several political parties - particularly on the left - they were only too eager to apologise and publicly condemn Jyllands-Posten for using free speech for purposes for which it had never been intended, i.e. to cause dismay among Muslims. While paying lip service to the principle of free speech, these elites were perfectly willing to accept guidelines for its appropriate use issued by the self-proclaimed spokesmen for “1.6 billion Muslims”.

Most disturbing of all was the fact that leaders of the Danish security police, known as the PET, reacted to the well-orchestrated onslaught against Danish interests at home and abroad by lauding the calming and benevolent influence of the Danish imams and declaring its intentions to collaborate more closely with them in future. The very people who had been instrumental in stirring up trouble by travelling around in the Middle East showing pictures that had not been printed in any Danish newspaper - including a photo that they claimed to be showing Muhammed as a pig, but was in reality a photo of a man participating in a pig-squealing contest in France.

The most important outcome of the Muhammed affair - undoubtedly Denmark’s most serious foreign policy crisis since 1945 - was that by and large the common man stood firm in his defence of free speech. Several subsequent opinion polls have confirmed that despite some erosion of support for Jyllands-Posten and the right to offend and ridicule religion, there is still a majority of unbowed Danes behind our old freedoms. We are thus faced with a truly remarkable state of affairs, where those who make a living out of writing are more than willing to stay within guidelines dictated by representatives of powers where teenage homosexuals are whipped and hanged in public, whereas the common folks defend the very freedom of speech for which the professionals have little use.

The resilience of the commoners makes Denmark stand out among so many of our neighbours as a country to watch.

From Andrew Bostom’s after-dinner speech:

Antisemitism did not exist in the traditional Islamic world… Antisemitism is, in fact, a relatively new phenomenon in the Arab world, gaining ground particularly since the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mid-twentieth century. Nazi-style antisemitic books and publications have been produced openly. For example, there are at least nine different Arabic translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which was translated into Arabic for the first time in the 1920s…The development of European-style antisemitism in the Arab countries is related to three major factors: first penetration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of a variety of European ideologies and concepts into the Arab world, among them antisemitism; second, the collapse of traditional political systems and of the loyalties and practices associated with them, giving way to the emergence of nationalistic government structures less tolerant in their treatment of religious, ethnic, and ideological minorities; and third, and most crucial, the development of the conflict over the domination of Palestine, beginning with Jewish resettlement in the late nineteenth century, followed by the establishment of the State of Israel and the ensuing Arab-Israeli conflict…Themes borrowed from European Christendom were adapted by incorporating references in them.

But this very flawed construct ignores primary, uniquely Islamic components of Muslim Jew hatred, both past and present. Indeed, for the Muslim masses, basic Islamic education in the Koran, hadith, and sira (earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad) may create an immutable superstructure of Jew hatred on to which non-Muslim sources of Jew hatred are easily grafted.

The uncomfortable examination of Islamic doctrines and history is required in order to understand the enduring phenomenon of Muslim Jew hatred, which dates back to the origins of Islam. We can no longer view Muslim Jew hatred as a “borrowed phenomenon,” seen exclusively, or even primarily, through the prism of Nazism and the Holocaust, the tragic legacy of Judeophobic Christian traditions, or “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” from Czarist Russia.

Below are some excerpts from a few of the speakers’ biographies.

David Littman:

Born in London, he graduated in history and political science from Trinity College Dublin (B.A. with Honors and M.A), followed by postgraduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology (London University). In 1959 he married and he and his wife moved to Switzerland where they settled. In 1971, under the pseudonym, “D. F. Green”, he compiled and edited jointly with Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (English/ French/German, 1971-1976), and published historical articles in academic periodicals from 1975-1985. From the mid-1970s he translated, from French into English, many studies by Bat Ye’or on the condition of Jews and Christians under Islam (“dhimmitude”), co-translating three of her books. Since 1986, he has been active at UN human rights bodies in Geneva as a non-governmental organization (NGO) human rights defender, known for addressing many taboo subjects. He is currently the accredited representative of two NGOs: the Association for World Education (AWE) and the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), recently addressing the UN Council on Human Rights four times at its Sixth Session in September 2007.

Gerard Batten:

Gerard Batten was a founder member of the UK Independence Party in September 1993 and the first party secretary from 1994 to 1997. He fought local elections, a by-election, a European election, and two general elections as a UKIP candidate before being elected as the MEP for London in June 2004. He also serves as a member of UKIP’s National Executive Committee. In July 04 he was appointed to the Security & Defence Committee of the European Parliament and as the UKIP spokesman on Security & Defence.

Lars Hedegaard:

Lars Hedegaard is a historian, author, journalist and President of The Free Press Society — a Danish organization founded in 2005 for the protection of free speech. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the Free Press Society’s web magazine www.sappho.dk specializing in articles and commentaries on Islam, free speech and Western civilization that most of the mainstream press will not touch. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Copenhagen daily newspaper Information. Since 2000 he has been a commentator with the national daily Berlingske Tidende and a frequent contributor to radio and television programs.

With degrees in history (University of Aarhus) and English (University of Copenhagen) he has worked for publishing houses in the USA and Denmark and for several journals and newspapers. He is the author of a number of books on contemporary world history. During the 1990s he worked for the Nordic Council of Ministers, specializing in North European area studies. Since then he has devoted most of his time to the study of Islam’s impact on European and Western civilization, on which subject he has published a large number of articles in the Danish Press.

Adriana Bolchini Gaigher:

Journalist and national president O.D.D.I.I. Observatory of Italian and International Law. Director of the on-line magazine Lisistrata. She is also a campaigner for social problems and participates in an independent capacity in the administrative elections of the PSI. (Partito Socialista Italiana). In 1978, she was a victim of a terrorist attack carried out by the terrorist group Prima Linea in Milan.

She is active in the social and political field, writing reviews on problems in the cities and she founded the on-line magazine, Lisistrata and an associated blog, plus hosting a network of various other websites. Some years before 2001, she began to notice problems with immigrants, particularly Muslims and began to investigate. She learned about the Muslim Brotherhood, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the terrorist strategies of Wahabbi Sunnis and its associated anti-western hatred and the conflict arising from the Khomeini revolution with the appearance of martyrs and suicide bombers which led to the massacres of the American and French military in Lebanon. After the 11 September, the nature of the Muslim invasion became an incontrovertible truth. Finally she realised that Italy is becoming infiltrated by Islamic traditions and usage, leading towards the application of Sharia, to which she is vehemently opposed and for which she has received death threats.

Aryeh Eldad:

Prof. Aryeh Eldad, M.D. (אריה אלדד‎, also spelt Arie Eldad) is a member of the Israeli Knesset and a physician. He belongs to the Moledet party, part of the National Union list in the Israeli Knesset. Eldad is a professor and head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem. He studied medicine at Tel Aviv University, where he earned his doctorate. He served as the chief medical officer and was the senior commander of the Israeli Defence Forces medical corps for 25 years and reached a rank of Tat Aluf (Brigadier General). He is renowned worldwide for his treatment of burns and won the Evans Award from the American Burns Treatment Association. He heads the Ethics committee of the Knesset. He is head of the sub-committee for anti corruption struggle, member of labor welfare and health committee, head of sub committees for organ transplantation and Para-Medical Professions. He is a member of the Science and Technology committee, and head of the Lobby for Anti-corruption struggle.

A reminder: the complete text of the above selections, along with much more material from the conference, can be found at Counterjihad Europa.