On Germany and Muslims

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.


In December 2004, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned European Union leaders that they would pay a heavy price in escalating violence from Islamic extremists if the EU rejected Turkey as a member and confirmed itself as a Christian club. Turkey is a member of a Muslim club, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), yet doesn’t face escalating violence from Christian extremists because of this. Mr. Erdogan failed to mention that, yet his thinly veiled threat was well understood by European leaders. In September 2005 Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary of Tony Blair’s Labour government in Britain, stated that snubbing Ankara’s EU membership hopes would give ammunition to Islamic extremists, while welcoming it into the EU would help avert a “clash of civilizations.”

Obviously pleased with this progress towards European submission to Muslim demands, PM Erdogan in February 2008 suggested that Germany should found Turkish-medium high schools and universities and pleaded for existing German high schools to hire teachers from Turkey. The suggestion took German Chancellor Angela Merkel by surprise.

In December 2007, a Turkish lawyer filed a complaint after the Italian football club Inter wore a shirt with an “offensive symbol.” The shirt’s scheme saw a big red Christian cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan. Swiss football referee Massimo Busacca vowed that he would wear a whistle with the Swiss Cross symbol on it during of the Saudi championship, despite the fact that many in Saudi Arabia had called for Busacca to sport a different whistle to avoid offending Muslims. The Swiss Cross is Switzerland’s national flag.

Muslims in European countries are busy building parallel societies, and there are now rapidly expanding no-go zones in various German cities where the natives, even the police, risk being physically attacked by Muslim gangs. A gym in the city of Cologne has been specially designed for Muslim women. In the Ehrenfeld city district, Muslim women who want to be physically fit can follow the lead of female personal trainers at the “Hayat” (which means “life” in Turkish) gym and still keep their clothes on. Others want to open up more fitness centers where Muslim women can get a great work-out while remaining “modest.”

In late August 2008 an elderly Cologne Council member, Hans-Martin Breninek, was beaten unconscious and sent to hospital by young Turks. The group of Turks, who had a “fighting dog,” managed to flee before the police arrived. Thanks to people passing by, Breninek was not more severely wounded as he lay on the ground. This happened in the heart of Cologne, yet this did not deter the “youths” from attacking the 67-year-old man. He was handing out information warning against the Islamization of his country and his continent.

Meanwhile, Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, considered the plans to hold an anti-Islamization congress in Cologne on Sept 19-20 2008 to be counterproductive to interfaith dialogues. “Any plan to organize an anti-Islam congress would be counter-productive to interfaith dialogs which also involve European nations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), of which Indonesia is a prominent member, expressed deep concern regarding the planned congress and expressed hope that all elements of the community in Germany and the rest of Europe would be strongly opposed to the planned congress and “reject hatred and racism.”
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The OIC has a newly established Islamophobia Observatory based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. At the same time, thousands of Christian churches have been destroyed by Muslim mobs in Indonesia in recent years, and practicing any other religion than Islam is banned by law in Saudi Arabia. Those violating this, even in their private homes, risk being deported or worse.

Groups in Switzerland, among them the Swiss People’s Party, managed to collect enough signatures to force a nationwide referendum on banning minarets, the distinctive towers of Islamic architecture. The president of Switzerland, Pascal Couchepin, said the government would recommend that voters reject the proposed minaret ban.

Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey warned that the anti-minaret campaign would provoke Muslim anger and cause security problems. (Swiss conservatives earlier criticized Calmy-Rey for wearing a headscarf during a visit to Iran, saying it was a sign of submission.) World Radio Switzerland said it was unusual for the government to take a position against a referendum initiative so quickly. It said “Swiss diplomacy and economic sectors are worried that this kind of initiative could unleash the same kind of anger [and] calls for a boycott” as those that met the publication of the Danish cartoons satirizing Muhammad, Islam’s founder.

Sticking to their usual pro-Islamic, Multicultural agenda, the headline in British newspaper The Guardian was: “Islamophobia: Swiss far right seeks vote on minarets ban.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ex-mayor of Istanbul, now Turkey’s Prime Minister and a “reformed, moderate Muslim,” has earlier stated that “the mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets, and the believers our soldiers.” As Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch says:

The minaret is merely a sign of power. It is a sign of dominion over the nearby churches and synagogues. Why do you think that, according to the Shari’a, no church or synagogue can be built higher than a nearby mosque? Why do you think that mosques were always built on the highest ground? For a nice example, see the mosque in Grenada that was opened a few years ago. The Spanish government thought it would be a great idea. They thought it would be a demonstration of real ‘tolerance’ for Muslims that would somehow be reciprocated. Of course it wasn’t. That mosque looms over a convent and a church, and with its Call to Prayer has disrupted the quiet lives of the nuns, who actually dared to protest. To no avail. Of course. Minarets are claims of power. They are claims to dominance. That is what they are. And that is what these Swiss, who were called — you know what they were called — ‘far right-wing’ Swiss, have properly identified.

The United Nation’s “expert on racism,” Doudou Diène, stated that the Swiss campaign is evidence of an “ever-increasing trend” toward anti-Islamic actions in Europe. In August 2008, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said there was room for improvement but that the Swiss authorities were motivated and taking the issue seriously. During the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review the Swiss had to answer numerous questions about the “xenophobic climate” in Switzerland and the “incitements to racial hatred by certain political parties.”

The UN committee was looking for “top-down” leadership from the Swiss government to help change the mindset of the general public and for it to be a “champion for this cause,” clearly a call for more Multicultural propaganda and public indoctrination through the media and the education system. The committee also addressed the absence of an anti-discrimination law in Switzerland. Switzerland is not a member of the EU, but the EU has in recent years, in close cooperation with pan-European organizations such as the Council of Europe and international Islamic organizations, passed a number of draconian anti-discrimination laws more or less ordering native Europeans to submit to continued colonization through mass immigration.

Norway, which is not a full member of the EU but an associated member and subject to most EU legislation, passed a radical Discrimination Act in 2005, covering all sectors of society. The Act says more or less explicitly that in cases of suspected discrimination, the natives are guilty of “discriminating” against immigrants until proven otherwise. It was passed by national authorities following transnational initiatives and recommendations by the Council of Europe, with virtually no public debate. Similar laws have been passed by the EU, in close cooperation with the CoE, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and others, in Sweden, Germany, Belgium and a number of other countries I am aware of.

The United Nation’s racism watchdog called on Germany and Switzerland to combat rising racial discrimination against ethnic minorities, specifically mentioning Muslims. Doudou Diène also levelled tough criticism at Switzerland in a 2007 report for what he said were “discriminatory tendencies.” During an international media conference in Oslo in June 2007, Mr. Doudou Diène, the United Nations Special Envoy for racism, xenophobia and intolerance, urged the media to actively participate in the creation of a Multicultural society, and expressed concerns that the democratic process could lead to immigration-restrictive parties gaining influence in Western nations, for instance in Denmark and Switzerland.

Diène said that it is a dangerous development when increasing numbers of intellectuals in the West believe that some cultures are better than others, and stated that “The media must transform diversity, which is a fact of life, into pluralism, which is a set of values.” Getting diversity accepted is the role of the education system, and acceptance is the role of the law. “Promoting and defending diversity is the task of the media.” Societies must recognize, accept and promote diversity, which for some curious reason always seems to imply Islamic sharia.

Mr. Diène represents Senegal, an African Muslim country which is a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations, sponsored by Arab oil money. The OIC has become increasingly aggressive in recent years in infiltrating UN organs and promoting concepts such as “Islamophobia” as dangerous trends which should be banned by international law. Western countries are still the greatest financial contributors to the UN, which means that we are supposed to finance a deeply corrupt organization increasingly dedicated to destroying our countries and turning them into obedient dumping grounds for the excess population growth in Islamic countries.

In Austria, the authorities have indicted politician Susanne Winter on charges of incitement and degradation of religious symbols and agitation after Ms Winter said that Muhammad was “a child molester” because he had married a six-year-old girl. She also said he was “a warlord.” The politician, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, added that Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.” She warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” saying that “in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim” if the present immigration policies continue. Following her remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Winter and she was placed under police protection. Later, the Justice Department in Vienna announced that Ms Winter would be charged with “incitement and degradation of religious symbols.”

It says quite specifically and repeatedly in Islamic religious texts that Muhammad married one of his wives, Aisha, when she was six years old, and had sex with her when she was nine and he was in his fifties. Since Muhammad is the “living Koran” and his personal example, his Sunna, is valid for time eternity, this is still allowed today according to sharia law. As Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu’bi, a Saudi Arabian marriage officiant, said on TV June 19, 2008: “The Prophet Muhammad is the model we follow. He took ‘Aisha to be his wife when she was six, but he had sex with her only when she was nine.” In August 2008, the Saudi mother of an eight-year-old girl was trying to stop her daughter marrying a much older man, one of many similar marriages in the country. The father’s consent is needed to validate the marriage contract between the girl and the man, who is in his fifties. When Susanne Winter suggested that Muhammad had sex with a child, she was stating a fact which is recognized in Islamic sources, and for this she gets legally prosecuted. Muslims have been at the gates of Vienna several times. This time, they are already on the inside and increasingly dictating the terms, turning the local authorities into enforcers of sharia rather than protectors and servants of their people. Sadly, Austria is far from unique in this regard.

When reading about a topic seemingly unrelated to Islam, about the creation of the first mechanical clocks (this innovation took place only in Europe), I found out that the Germans paid “Turk money” in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries until they became strong enough to refuse. [Correction from a reader: “You misunderstood the meaning of Türkensteuer or Türkenpfennig. It was not a tribute for the Turks, but in contrary money for financing the wars of the German Empire against the Turks!”] It is almost impossible to overestimate the prolonged impact Jihad has had on European history since the seventh century AD. The southern half of Europe obviously suffered the most, but almost no region of the continent totally escaped the Islamic threat. The Germans were never under Islamic rule, but even they had to pay tribute, or jizya, for a while.

I am increasingly becoming aware of how much Islam isolated Europe from the rest of the world. Even in Greco-Roman times, especially during the principate, the mature period of the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD, there were regular contacts between Mediterranean Europe and India via Egypt and the Red Sea. After the seventh century, this region was controlled by largely hostile Muslims, which made regular trade with the major Asian civilizations beyond the Middle East very difficult.

There were few Europeans travelling to the Far East before Marco Polo and others following the Mongol conquests. Not zero, but few. Europe was during this time surrounded to the south and east by largely hostile Muslims, and to the north there was ice and more ice. The only possibility Europeans had to escape the clutches of Islam was to go west or southwest, which is what they eventually did. Contact with the Americas was to a large extent triggered by a desire to get away from the Muslim stranglehold on the continent. Muslims kept Europeans in a state of artificial geographical isolation for the better part of a thousand years.

I know many Austrians and Germans still suffer from a guilt complex from WW2, but this is deeply misplaced with regards to Muslims, and Turks in particular. Turks are guilty of more than one thousand years of persecution and genocide against various European peoples and are in no position to complain, with their main victims in the Balkans. They threatened European freedom for centuries, and many Muslims both within and outside of Turkey now apparently want to resurrect the Ottoman Empire and use the Balkans as a launching pad for Jihad against Europe. They get help in this undertaking from the European Union.

The EU is, among other things, a continuation of the propaganda methods of Nazi Germany and the unaccountable bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, two entities that put together killed more than one hundred million people. This makes it all the more insane that the Eurocrats and their Multiculturalist cheerleaders get away with labelling their critics “extremists.” EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said in 2005 that Europeans had to vote “yes” to the proposed EU Constitution or risk a new Holocaust. Forget the part that the EU is in the process of turning itself into a pan-European totalitarian state, a process that would be more or less completed with the proposed Constitution/Lisbon Treaty. The EU is thus using the memory of a previous totalitarian state in order to create a new totalitarian state. The organization is directly responsible for triggering a massive wave of street violence and political violence across the European continent, at least the Western half of it.

The Germans have been — and still are — among the most dynamic of all European peoples. They are under no obligation to surrender they country and their dignity to barbarian and inferior cultures, and have every right to expel intruders from their lands and refuse to accept unlimited mass immigration. Original sin is a Christian concept, and in Christianity, it applies equally to all peoples, not to any particular nation. Young Germans should know their history, but they bear no guilt for what happened generations before they were born. I cannot see any particular reason why the Germans should be seen as the bad guys this time around. They are perhaps guilty of being too supportive of the EU, but I would still consider the EU to be primarily a French idea. As for Political Correctness, it has mainly been developed and spread from the English-speaking world, although it does contain seeds of earlier European ideas.

The entire Western world has been infected by the mental virus of Political Correctness. We are all sick, but some countries still have stronger immune systems than others. I don’t think Germany is any sicker than France, Britain or Spain. Germany will be weighed down by its history and thus prevented from taking an early leading role in Europe’s struggle for survival, yes. The early phases will likely be led by the Italians and smaller countries such as Denmark and Switzerland. But I wouldn’t count the Germans out in the longer term. They have a golden opportunity to redeem themselves and play a role as defenders of European civilization.

When Gandhi asked the British to leave India he said, “You must understand that India is for Indians the way that England is for the English.” As one American blog reader commented, Gandhi is considered a good guy and a hero while any German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, Serb or Greek who says that his country belongs to his people is vilified. It’s time we stop accepting this. Europeans have every bit as much right to fight for our existence as everybody else does.