“Islamophobia is a Duty for Everyone”

“The riots in the Parisian suburbs and AEL-riots in Antwerp illustrate it: we are at the beginning of an ethno-religious civil war, having as its objective the future of Europe.”

Filip Dewinter, one of the leaders of the Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang, has written a book whose publication is timed to coincide with the election campaign in Belgium. Our Flemish correspondent VH has compiled and translated some material from Dutch-language sources about Mr. Dewinter and his book.

VH includes this introduction:

This Monday Filip Dewinter, an eminent veteran Islam-critic, conservative, and chairman of the Antwerp chapter of Vlaams Belang will present his new book Inch’Allah? The Islamization of Europe.

Dewinter was amongst the very first in Europe to openly criticize Islam and multi-culture, nearly thirty years ago. In those days critics were regarded as lepers, heavily smeared and attacked (verbally and physically), pushed out of mainstream society, and sometimes even lost their jobs.

This violent and vicious opinion-terror full of lies and slander by the Left and Center-Left did not stop Dewinter from remaining steadfast in his warning calls against the Islamization of society, mass immigration, and political correctness.

The first translation is an interview with Filip Dewinter about his new book Inch’Allah? The Islamization of Europe in the Flemish newspaperGazet van Antwerpen (The Dutch text can be read here):

“Islamophobia is a duty for everyone”

By Lex Moolenaar, Gazet van Antwerpen

Filip Dewinter will present a new book this Monday, in which his tone is harder than ever before. His target: the Islam, that according to him is out on conquering Europe. We were the first to read Inch’Allah?.

A book about the dangers of Islam, three months before the elections: it looks like a stunt à la Fitna, the controversial film by the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders. When Fitna was released it was an anti-climax: was that all?

“I seek to open the debate. I have great respect for Geert Wilders, but a book is different from a film,” says Filip Dewinter. “I have long studied Islamization. It is time to warn and to sketch the outlines of an alternative. I chose the form of a book, which is not the most spectacular medium. This is thus not meant to be provocative and is certainly not an electoral stunt.”

Does ‘Inch’Allah tell us anything we did not already know?

“It is a book that provides insight into the true nature of Islam. My message is: with mass immigration and Islamization we invite in a Trojan horse. It is an insidious poison, and nothing less than the third Islamic invasion in the history of Europe.”

Your description of the multicultural society is partly in line with that of the Dutch author Paul Scheffer [the author of The Multicultural Disaster]: first, there is alienation, then conflict. The third phase according to Scheffer is that of harmony.

“I do not agree with that. The aging island Europe is annually flooded with two million new Muslims, who want to live according to their own set of rules and laws. If we are not cured of our excessive tolerance and are not prepared to confirm the superiority of our European identity, then Europe is like a bird to a cat.”

Conservative Islam is reminiscent of the Catholic Church fifty years ago. But may Islam not also evolve that way?

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“A moderate European Islam is a multicultural illusion, meant to soothe our own European conscience. There is no European Islam, but an Islamized Europe. Jesus Christ preached non-violence; Mohammed was a conqueror with a scimitar. If he were living in the current era, his followers would hail him as a freedom fighter, but others — including me — would call him a terrorist. Islam seeks world domination; it leaps like a predator on the weakest in the herd: Europe. Our problem is the “multi-culture”, which — like AIDS — weakens the resilience of the European body. During the Enlightenment in the 18th century, the Catholic Church committed itself to the principles of separation of church and state and the equality of men and women. A medieval, totalitarian religion like Islam will never accept those principles. Islam has no freedom; everything is about God’s will: Inch’Allah. Moreover, the Islam is not only like a religion but also a political ideology which even has its own legal system. That is what Europe is not prepared to grasp.”

Islam as described in your book is actually the radical wing of Islam. Most Muslims do not think like that at all.

“I am aware of that, but moderate, ‘cultural’ Muslims unfortunately have nothing to say. The radicals hold the majority of mosques in their grip. To them, violence and terrorism are legitimate means force the submission of the world under the universal umbrella of Islam. Most radicals carry out their jihad not by force but through conversions, immigration, and demographics. In Antwerp, for instance, more than one third of the youth in the schools are Muslim, and 17 percent of the total population is Muslim. This expansion must come to a halt; it has already gone too far.”

According to you, the Muslims in the Flemish municipalities are all playing a game?

“They are not seen as leaders by the Muslim population, they are “alibi-Muslims” who are necessary for political parties to lure the Muslim vote. The SP.a [Flemish Socialist Party] especially collaborates disgracefully with Islamists, an ideology that is at right angles to Socialism’s pretension of emancipation.”

Your ideas gain little support in Europe, and in Flanders there is the cordon sanitaire drawn around you. Are you not tilting against windmills?

“On the contrary, for thirty years we have been whistle-blowers and iconoclasts on these subjects. That is what the people demand of us, not that we should join governments without any power and leaving our principles behind.”

Your conciliatory statements from a few years ago now have completely disappeared. Has the broadening of the Vlaams Belang come to a halt?

“Different circumstances require different strategies. In those days the cordon sanitaire against us in Antwerp was on the brink of collapse — what would have happened if the murders by Hans van Themsche had not occurred? [Van Themsche shot two “immigrants” and a child in cold blood in revenge for the bullying by immigrants he supposedly had suffered from at school; this was immediately used by politicians and the print media to wrongly scapegoat Vlaams Belang for “having caused an anti-immigrant atmosphere in which this could happen”.] Now we have two “VB-light” competitors in the right-wing field [LDD (liberal conservative separatists) and N-VA (New Flemish Alliance, center-right separatists)], and thus we are more clearly profiling ourselves. Only in this way can the original outshine the copy.”

Do you agree that practicing a chameleon style of politics is honest towards the electorate?

“The packaging may change somewhat every once in a while, but the content remains the same. Our seventy-points program [see note below] of decades ago is of course no longer the issue these days. The VB is not a fossilized party, Karel Dillen [one of the founders of the Vlaams Belang] did not compose a “bible” that we have are not allowed to change in next eight hundred years, like the Koran. Positions evolve according to social circumstances, but the principles remain the same. For that is the way it works in politics.”

You attack Islam quite ruthlessly for its attitude towards women and gays. But where are the women at the top of your party? And is VB now suddenly pro-gay-marriage and -adoption?

“Equal rights for men and women are evident for us, but it is not so easy to find women who are willing to step into the macho world of politics. And as far as homosexuality is concerned, that should not be a reason to discriminate; we do not call for the stoning of gays or for having them exiled from society, like Islam does. But I do not agree on gay adoption. The exception should become the rule.”

You write: “Is Islam a backward religion, as Pim Fortuyn claimed?” But you answered that question with “no”.

“I consider the word ‘backward’ to be pejorative and insulting. The use of that term blurs the discussion. But there are plenty of rational arguments to correctly call the Islam medieval and petrified.”

You also refer to Kemal Attatürk, the founder of the secular state of Turkey. He called Islam “a rotting corpse which poisons our lives”. Do you agree with that?

“Attatürk was speaking from experience, wasn’t he? He was well aware of why he said that. We seemingly forget how Attatürk was once generally praised for his struggle to prevent Turkey from becoming an Islamic state again. It now risks becoming one anyway, with leaders like Erdogan, who state that integration is a crime against humanity.”

In your book you sketch a pitch-black future. Had you not better come forward with a positive project?

“At the end of the book I explain how Europe may turn the tide of this third Islamic invasion, such as Charles Martel did in 732 in Poitiers, and as happened again in 1683, in the battle of Vienna. I know that I am sticking my neck out, but we really need to stop the “multi-culture” and dare to communicate the superiority of our civilization. Europe is a continent of citadels and cathedrals, not of mosques and minarets.”

You call for a “civilizational offensive” in which you want to deny Muslims access to hate messages via their satellite dishes and the Internet. How do you propose to achieve that?

“Three quarters of the dishes are illegally placed. They are not there to watch Disney Channel. You can implement strict controls and a tax levy to discourage it. On the Internet you can attempt to remove radical Islamist websites. The message to the Muslim community should be clear: we want no Muslim community with its own shops, banks, schools and mosques. For this will only lead to apartheid.”

Apartheid? Did your party not have sympathy to that regime?

“That is comparing apples with lemons. The apartheid regime in South Africa is past history.”

How about the mosques, do they all have to be closed down?

“No, they don’t have to, but they do have to be supervised. We do not want radical imams, and the same goes for tall minarets that serve as a symbol of the conquest of a district. Islam as a social structure belongs to the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, not here.”

“Islamophobia is a duty,” you say. And yet you say that you do not want to provoke. Do you really mean that?

“Again: I want to provoke debate. A recent study by the KU Leuven shows that the Flemish population has a very critical view of Islam. But those who openly express this criticism are immediately accused of racism and Islamophobia. While you receive an award for insulting the Catholic Church. The Left prefer a minaret in their garden over a crucifix in their kitchen. If this criticism by me is called Islamophobic, then I say: Islamophobia is a duty.”

VH adds this note on the seventy-point plan:

In the “70-point program for solving the immigration problem”, put together by Filip Dewinter in 1992, he stated that Islam was an “anti-Western and intolerant religion”. In Filip Dewinter’s view it had become increasingly obvious during the past several years that there was a “fundamental and irreconcilable antagonism between Islam and Western values”.

Therefore, it was of paramount importance to do everything possible to stop and reverse the expansion of Islam in Belgium, particularly by drastically reducing the number of mosques in the country. Given the fact that mosques served not only as houses of worship but also as community centers, they contributed to the formation of separate ethnic and cultural communities and thus to the “Maghrebization” (megrebijnisering) of whole districts in Belgian cities.

Putting a stop to the construction of new mosques was thus the best way to respond effectively to the formation of ghettos in the country’s cities. At the same time Dewinter warned of the growing danger posed by Islamic fundamentalism. As early as 1993, the party [then Vlaams Blok] maintained that fundamentalism was intrinsic to Islam, for a doctrine that “preaches holy war, assassination, forced conversions, oppression of women, slavery, and extermination of ‘infidels’ will automatically lead to what we now call fundamentalism.”

[Source: Christina Schori Liang; “Europe for the Europeans: The Foreign and Security Policy of the Populist Radical Right”; Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007; p.40]

Some brief quotes from the book Inch’Allah? The Islamization of Europe, as translated by VH:

Immigration is a Trojan horse

“Through immigration, family reunification, and import-marriages Islam constantly puts new cuckoo eggs in the European nest. We then hatch them and will sooner or later be kicked out the nest.”

Europe becomes an island full of elderly people

“The aging European island is surrounded by an ocean of young and poor third world citizens. We must therefore have a demographic policy that places the family in the center.”

A civilizational offensive is needed

“Immigration from Islamic countries must stop. And we have to cut off the Muslims in Europe from hate messages on radical fundamentalist TV channels and websites on the Internet.”

Islamophobia is a duty

“Criticism of Islam automatically leads to accusations of racism and xenophobia. As criticism of a political ideology is synonymous to Islamophobia, then I consider Islamophobia as a duty.”

The ethnic civil war has already started

“The riots in the Parisian suburbs and AEL-riots in Antwerp illustrate it: we are at the beginning of an ethno-religious civil war, having as its objective the future of Europe.”

The Koran is a ‘license to kill’

“Islam is only a religion of peace and tolerance for Muslims themselves. The Quran explains that all its followers have the obligation to perform jihad, to wage holy war.”

‘European Islam’ is a smokescreen

“There will not arise a softer, integrated, European Islam, because the Quran does not evolve and is not open to any interpretation. Most Muslims are moderate, but the radical fundamentalists are the deciding factor.”

Multi-culture is a politically correct dictatorship

“The multicultural society is similar to AIDS, it affects the resistance of the European identity. The establishment of the mono-cultural Eurabia will be the end of the European culture.”

Islam conquers Europe via the mother’s womb

“Algerian President Boumédienne said in 1974: ‘Victory will be decided in the womb of our women.’ Muslim women give birth to more children and create a demographic time-bomb in Europe.”

Islam uses a ghetto strategy

“In all European cities Muslim enclaves are growing. In a short while Brussels will be the largest Maghreb city outside the Maghreb countries. The ultimate goal is the Islamic domination of Europe.”

Filip Dewinter is of the opinion that Islam seeks to conquer the world with a holy war in three stages, which are described in the Koran:

Phase 1:		Dar-al-sul or “House of temporary peace.” Muslims swarm and feign tolerance.
Phase 2:		Dar-al-Harb or “House of war.” The jihad breaks loose in full force.
Phase 3:		Dar-al-Islam or “House of Islam.” The world is dominated by Muslims and the Sharia, the divine law of Islamic ideology.

And finally, VH’s translation of a report, also from Gazet van Antwerpen:

Dewinter declares war on Islam

“If Mohammed were living today, I would call him a terrorist,” Vlaams Belang leader Filip Dewinter started his campaign for the Flemish elections. He accompanies this with his book ‘Inch’Allah?. In the book, Dewinter provides an insight in the true nature of Islam.

According to Filip Dewinter, the Islamization of Europe is ‘a time bomb’. “My message: with mass immigration and Islamization we bring in the Trojan horse.”

“Insidious poison”

“It is an insidious poison, and no less than the third Islamic invasion in the history of Europe. Islam is out for world domination and a moderate European Islam is an illusion.”

Dewinter says that of course he understands that the majority of Muslims do not adhere to the radical tendencies. “But unfortunately they have nothing to say in this, because the majority of mosques have long been in the hands of radicals,” Dewinter says.


“Superiority”

He sketches a black future of an Islamized Europe, and refers to the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of Vienna in order to clarify how Europe can reverse “the third Islamic invasion”.

“We need to stop the ‘multi-culture’ and dare to communicate the superiority of our civilization. Europe is a continent of citadels and cathedrals, not of mosques and minarets.”