The Islamization of Europe

Original article
by Geert Wilders
February 2, 2009

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.

The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome's ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.

But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see - and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Moslem mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Moslem neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well.

It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity.

These are Moslem ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Moslem neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Moslem: just take Amsterdam, Marseille, and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities over 50% of the under-18 population is Moslem.

Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Moslem neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal (Moslem kosher) food to all pupils.

In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Moslems. Non-Moslem women routinely hear "whore, whore." Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in their country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Moslems, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin.

The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Moslem sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Moslems in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Moslems now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Moslem just 12 years from now.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Moslem-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Moslems see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Moslems do not object to suicide attacks.

The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Moslem students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Moslems admit they "understand" the 9/11 attacks. Moslems demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up.

In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Moslem holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Moslem majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Moslem demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus.

Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Moslem intifada. I call the perpetrators "settlers." Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Moslems, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Moslems are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Koran. The Koran is Allah's personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet.

This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Koran is Allah's word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Moslem and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam.

Sure, there are a lot of moderate Moslems. But a moderate Islam is non-existent. The Koran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Koran calls for Moslems to kill non-Moslems, to terrorize non-Moslems and to fulfill their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Moslem, Islam is to rule the world - by the sword. The Koran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Moslems and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem.

But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, and a pedophile. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves.

Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Koran as Allah's own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a hereafter, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology.

It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia.

If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies. This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam "the most retrograde force in the world," and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Koran: Mein Kampf, he said, is "the new Koran of faith and war."

Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.

I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Koran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.

Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic . The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Moslem population.

The Dutch branch of the Islamic organization Hizbut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.

A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.

It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Moslem immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties.

Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe's history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honor our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level.

Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in what President Reagan so aptly called: "the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom."

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Moslems as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity.

I don't think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries. Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls.

The same is true of all similarly-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time. Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences.

It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe's last chance. It is called the Alliance of European Patriots.

This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose Jihad and Islamization. This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks to its location, it is safe from jihad and sharia.

But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger, an even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing.

The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives.

All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe's children in the same state in which it was offered to us.

We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so. This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have e seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before.

And yet, then, freedom prevailed. These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1941:

"Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."