The Green Danger

Martin Bosma is a Dutch member of parliament for the PVV (Party for Freedom), and a close associate of Geert Wilders. Back in September, immediately prior to the start of Mr. Wilders’ trial, we reported that Mr. Bosma had just released a new book about Islam and the Left.

Below is an excerpt from De schijn-élite van de valse munters (“The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters”, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker 2010), taken from chapter 12, pp. 178-181. Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for sending this translation:

According to the elite, Islam is a religion, and therefore we must have respect for it. All excesses are whitewashed by referring to religions that also had their little problems. But religion is at best a small part of the ideology. Islam aims primarily at worldly goals, such as the introduction of Sharia law and world domination through perpetual war. According the southern-Dutch [Flemish] Islam expert Dr. Urbain Vermeulen, Islam is only ten percent a religion. “The problem lies with the remaining 90 percent, Islamic law. As the proportion of Muslims in the population increases, they will increasingly seek to build their own legislation in addition to our own laws.” He finds himself pessimistic about the willingness of Muslims to adapt to European societies.^[30]

Then, what is Islam? When I studied in Paris, I found a book (notably in the library of the ‘Institute du Monde Arabe’) by Islamologist G.H. Bousquet. He describes Islam in “Le droit Musulman” as a dual totalitarian system, which not only strives for world domination, but also to control the lives of its followers down to the smallest detail.^[31]

Our own Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, the first Dutch expert on Islam and a professor at Leiden, came to the conclusion one hundred years ago that Islam has very far-reaching, essentially political, ambitions. “The control of the religious, social and political life of man in all aspects, the life of its followers without reservation and controlling the lives of ‘tolerated religions’ so that they will not form a threat to Islam.”^[32]

Is criticism of Islam based on new insights that recently have come to us? Are they the chimaera’s of populists looking for volatile electoral begat? Not quite. Hugo de Groot [Hugo Grotius], Dutch most renowned jurist, forerunner of the Enlightenment, founder of international human law and fighter against the intolerant state-religion, already knew it in 1622, one year after his famous escape in a bookcase. He then writes the poem “The refutation of the Mohammedist” containing the lines:

The Quranic law, not in the least humble, nor longsuffering, but inclined to vengeance and bloodthirstiness, renders the work of her outer appearance weird, as it was constituted for the petrifaction of the state, and takes the books out of the average man’s hand, yes, forbids him with corporal punishment to examine those.^[33]

Church reformer Martin Luther said “Islam causes chaos in three areas of life: religion, political life and that of marriage and family.”^[34] Erasmus appointed an entire book on Islam: ‘The war of Turks’. He says: “It is one ongoing story of wealth acquired by cruelty, increased by robbery. Of pernicious marriage issues, wicked fratricide, deposition of fathers and sons: of flagrant disloyalty and inhuman cruelty. Not to mention their morals and beliefs.”^[35] The philosopher Baruch Spinoza said: “I would not believe there is even one church more suited for cheating the people and controlling the minds of people, except the Mohammedan church, which exceeds this.”^[36]

Voltaire wrote the play ‘Le Fanaticism ou Mahomet le Prophete’ [Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet], as he himself says, ‘written to oppose the founder of a false and barbarous sect.”^[37] Montesquieu wrote in his famous ‘Esprit des Lois’ [The spirit of the Laws]: “It is highly unhappy for human beings when the faith is imposed by a conqueror. Islam, which talks of nothing else but the sword, still enforces upon people the same destructive spirit in which it was founded.”^[38]

The philosopher Hegel compares the terror after the French Revolution, with the fanaticism and the bloody rise of Islam: “ ‘Religion and terror’ was the principle here as with Robespierre it was ‘Freedom and terror’”^[39]. Alexis de Tocqueville, author of ‘Democracy in America’, wrote in 1843 in a letter to his friend Gobineau: “I have carefully studied the Koran. I ended the study with the conviction that there are few religions in the world as deadly as that of Muhammad.”^[40] Arthur Schopenhauer calls Islam “the worst of all religions”.^[41] Gustave Flaubert wrote: “The arrogance of defending Islam (while Islam itself is something monstrous) makes me outraged. I demand on behalf of humanity that the Black Stone be shattered, the debris scattered in the wind, that Mecca be destroyed and the tomb of Mohammed be ravished. That is the way to discourage fanaticism.”^[42]

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, understands why American ships were repeatedly being attacked by Muslim pirates, namely because of the belief in the law of the prophet, as embodied in the Koran, and the obligation arising from this, namely “that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”^[43]

Many see the similarities between Islam and other totalitarian ideologies, For instance Bertrand Russell, the English philosopher. He says, “Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world. Their founders would not have resisted the third of the temptations in the wilderness. What Mohammedanism did for the Arabs, Bolshevism may do for the Russians”. ^[44]

Nobel laureate Elias Canetti devoted to “People and Power” a chapter on “Islam as a religion of war.” “The religious war is a sacred duty. […]” Mohammed, “says one of the best scholars of Islam, the prophet of the battle and the war. What he initially did in his Arab environment that shows he is a testament to the future of his congregation: fighting infidels, rather than expansion of the faith, of his power as sphere, that of Allah.”^[45]

Winston Churchill called Mein Kampf, “the new Koran full of faith and war.”^[46] In “The River War”, he pulls no punches:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. … Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”^[46]

All these people saw what in the West only a few people want to see: Islam is the green danger.

Notes:

[30]		De Telegraaf, February 18, 2006
[31]		G.H. Bousquet, ‘Le droit Musulman’, Paris, 1950
[32]		C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Selected Works’, ed. G.H. Bousquet and Joseph Schacht, Leiden: Brill 1957, p. 164
[33]		Hugo de Groot [Grotius], ‘Bewys van den waren godsdienst: Mitsgaders zyne andere stichtelyke gedichten’, 1683 [gathered from p. 125: 20-23, 126:10-15, 128:21-22, en 128:29-30; see also HoeiBoei and Google Books.
[34]		A.S. Francisco, ‘Martin Luther and Islam, A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics’, part 8 of ‘History of Christian-Muslim Relations’, Leiden: Brill
[35]		Desiderius Erasmus, De Turkenkrijg, translated from Latin to Dutch by John Piolon, Rotterdam: Ad.Donker, 2005 — As quoted in ‘Capitulatie versus polemiek’, the preface of Afshin Ellian in: ‘Islamisten en Naivisten’, Amsterdam: Jespersen en Pittelkow 2005
[36]		S. Nader, ‘The Lift of Spinoza’: Cambridge 1999, as cited in ‘Justitie treedt op als verlengstuk van dicatatoriale regimes’ at ‘Het Verraad van Links’ http://tinyurl.com/2a6hku8
[37]		Wikipedia (play).
[38]		Montesquieu, ‘Esprit des Lois’, Book xxiv, chapt. iv and iii, Amsterdam 2006; p. 560
[39]		Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, ‘Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschicht’, Stuttgart 1989; as cited in ‘Capitulatie versus polemiek’, the preface of Afshin Ellian, Jespersen en Pittelkow 2005
[40]		Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘Notes sur le Coran et autres textes sur les religions’, with introduction and commentary by Jean-Louis Benoit, Bayard 2007, as cited in ‘Jewish Political Studies Review’ no. 19, April 3, 2007
[41]		E. Vermaat, Nazi’s, communisten en islamisten, Soesterberg 2008, p. 12
[42]		G. Flaubet, Haat is een deugd, Amsterdam 1978, p. 262
[43]		Christopher Hitchens, “Jefferson’s Quran, What the Founder Really Thought About Islam”, on Slate.com, January 9, 2007
[44]		Bertrand Russell, Arthur William 3rd, Earl, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London 1920, pp. 114-115 (See also Google Books , p. 74)
[45]		E. Canetti, ‘Mensen en macht’ [People and Power’], Amsterdam 1983, p. 160-161
[46]		Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, ‘The River War’, first edition, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899; Vol. II, pp. 248-250