The emails between British and American top scientists, published by hackers and allegedly proving that information about climate change was tampered with, are taken out of context and even forged, it is revealed.
Server hacked
Last weekend it came out that a server of the reputed department of climate change (CRU) of the university of East Anglia has been hacked. A Russian website published the emails, which allegedly prove that scientists were lying about climate change. They even published excerpts of the emails on a website. Now it has been revealed that the content of these emails have in fact been manipulated.
Most emails have been changed and many paragraphs are used so completely out of context that they acquire a different meaning.
"Too bad for fans of conspiricies"
The CRU keeps track of long term changes in temperature and plays an important role in gathereing information for reports by the United Nations.
"Too bad for conspiracy fabs, but the Royal Society, the US National Academy of sciences, NASA and the worlds most reputed climate specialists turn out to not be lead actors in a clandestine global movement to manipulate the truth. The incident has generated quite some web traffic, but that is what happens with conspiracy theories. And as things go with conspiracy theories, this theory has been overtaken by the facts."(hlnsydney)
(source)
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Amsterdam Court of Appeal orders the criminal prosecution of the Member of Parliament of the Dutch Second Chamber Geert Wilders
Amsterdam Court of Appeal orders the criminal prosecution of the Member of Parliament of the Dutch Second Chamber Geert Wilders
LJ Nummer
Bron: Gerechtshof Amsterdam
Datum actualiteit: 21 januari 2009
On 21 January 2009 the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam ordered the criminal prosecution of the member of parliament Geert Wilders for the incitement to hatred and discrimination based on his statements in various media about moslims and their belief. In addition, the Court of Appeal considers criminal prosecution obvious for the insult of Islamic worshippers because of the comparisons made by Wilders of the islam with the nazism.
The Court of Appeal rendered judgment as a consequence of a number of complaints about the non-prosecution of Wilders for his statements in various media about moslims and their belief. The complainants did not agree with the decision of the public prosecution which decided not to give effect to their report against Wilders.
The public prosecution is of the view, amongst others, that part of the statements of Wilders do not relate to a group of worshippers, but consists of criticism as regards the Islamic belief, as a result of which neither the self-esteem of this group of worshippers is affected nor is this group brought into discredit. Some statements of Wilders can be regarded as offending, but since these were made (outside the Dutch Second Chamber) as a contribution to a social debate there is no longer a ground for punishableness of those statements according to the public prosecution.
The Court of Appeal does not agree with this view of the public prosecution and the considerations which form the basis of this view.
The Court of Appeal has considered that the contested views of Wilders (also as shown in his movie Fitna) constitute a criminal offence according to Dutch law as seen in connection with each other, both because of their contents and the method of presentation. This method of presentation is characterized by biased, strongly generalizing phrasings with a radical meaning, ongoing reiteration and an increasing intensity, as a result of which hate is created. According to the Court of Appeal most statements are insulting as well since these statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic worshippers. According to the Court of Appeal Wilders has indeed insulted the Islamic worshippers themselves by affecting the symbols of the Islamic belief as well.
Secondly, the Court of Appeal has answered the question whether a possible criminal prosecution or conviction would be admissible according to the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court based thereon, which considers the freedom of expression of paramount importance. The Court of Appeal has concluded that the initiation of a criminal prosecution and a possible conviction later on as well, provided that it is proportionate, does not necessarily conflict with the freedom of expression of Wilders, since statements which create hate and grief made by politicians, taken their special responsibility into consideration, are not permitted according to European standards either.
Thirdly, the Court of Appeal has answered the question whether criminal prosecution of Wilders because of his statements would be opportune in the Dutch situation (the question of opportunity). According to the Court of Appeal the instigation of hatred in a democratic society constitutes such a serious matter that a general interest is at stake in order to draw a clear boundary in the public debate.
As regards the insult of a group the Court of Appeal makes a distinction. In general the Court determines that the traditional Dutch culture of debating is based on tolerance of each others views to a large extent while Islamic immigrants may be expected to have consideration for the existing sentiments in the Netherlands as regards their belief, which is partly at odds with Dutch and European values and norms. As regards insulting statements the Court of Appeal prefers the political, public and other legal counter forces rather than the criminal law, as a result of which an active participation to the public debate, by moslims as well, is promoted.
However, the Court of Appeal makes an exception as regards insulting statements in which a connection with Nazism is made (for instance by comparing the Koran with “Mein Kampf”). The Court of Appeal considers this insulting to such a degree for a community of Islamic worshippers that a general interest is deemed to be present in order to prosecute Wilders because of this.
The Court of Appeal concludes that the way in which the public debate about controversial issues is held, such as the immigration and integration debate, does not fall within the ambit of the law in principle indeed, but the situation changes when fundamental boundaries are exceeded. Then criminal law does appear as well.
Otherwise, the Court of Appeal emphasizes that this is a provisional judgment in the sense that Wilders has not been convicted in this suit of complaint. The Court of Appeal has only judged whether there are sufficient indications – at the level of a reasonable suspicion – to start a criminal prosecution against Wilders. The penal judge who will ultimately render judgment in a public criminal trial will answer the question if there is ground for conviction, and if so, to which extent.
LJ Nummer
Bron: Gerechtshof Amsterdam
Datum actualiteit: 21 januari 2009
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Statement by the Dutch government on Jami film
The Dutch government has issued a statement on Mr Jami's film, in which he expresses his personal opinions about Islam.
The Dutch government has taken notice of Mr Jami's film, in which he expresses his personal opinions about Islam. The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of religion and belief as well as a tradition of freedom of expression. We also have a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Offending other people is not in keeping with these traditions. Conversely, free and unrestricted debate and respectful treatment do reflect these traditions. In this light, the government regrets the fact that Mr Jami's film deeply offends the feelings of many Muslims.
Reports in the foreign media have given rise to concern in the Dutch government about the image of the Netherlands that has emerged in some other countries. Islam occupies a fully respected place in the Netherlands. The Dutch government highly values the good relations that exist, both in the Netherlands and abroad, between Muslims and people of other faiths and beliefs.
The government emphatically rejects the way that some have misused religion to spread hate and intolerance. Respect for the deeply held convictions of others is something that we share with people in many countries. The Netherlands will continue striving to ensure that freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression are respected both in this country and worldwide.
(source)
The Dutch government has taken notice of Mr Jami's film, in which he expresses his personal opinions about Islam. The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of religion and belief as well as a tradition of freedom of expression. We also have a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Offending other people is not in keeping with these traditions. Conversely, free and unrestricted debate and respectful treatment do reflect these traditions. In this light, the government regrets the fact that Mr Jami's film deeply offends the feelings of many Muslims.
Reports in the foreign media have given rise to concern in the Dutch government about the image of the Netherlands that has emerged in some other countries. Islam occupies a fully respected place in the Netherlands. The Dutch government highly values the good relations that exist, both in the Netherlands and abroad, between Muslims and people of other faiths and beliefs.
The government emphatically rejects the way that some have misused religion to spread hate and intolerance. Respect for the deeply held convictions of others is something that we share with people in many countries. The Netherlands will continue striving to ensure that freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression are respected both in this country and worldwide.
(source)
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Top Policeman Spied for Moroccan Secret Service
THE HAGUE, 17/09/08 - A policeman in the Rotterdam police corps has been unmasked as a spy for the Moroccan intelligence service. He led a project that was training immigrant youngsters as airport workers.
TV current affairs programme NOVA discovered that the man of Moroccan origin had already been sacked last spring. Although the police confirmed that the man was dismissed for "serious dereliction of duty," the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) decided not to prosecute him. The case has been hushed up by criminal investigation authorities and politicians, according to NOVA.
The officer, Re Lemhaouli, had a leading post. He was the initiator of Project Maxima, named after Princess Maxima. The project trained 57 Moroccan problem youngsters as ground personnel for Rotterdam Airport.
Princess Maxima, the wife of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, was ambassador of the project and Lemhaouli was allowed to sit next to her during the presentation of the project on 1 February. Vice-Premier Andre Rouvoet praised Lemhaouli in a speech. "The participants in this project who are receiving their diploma today were a few weeks ago still considered as 'deprived youngsters.' Education not completed, no work experience and in some cases, also a criminal record," said Rouvoet.
According to NOVA, the Dutch AIVD secret service discovered last spring following a tipoff that Lemhaouli was a spy for the Moroccan secret service. What information he passed on NOVA was unable to discover. The Dutch authorities are refusing to give any information whatever about the case.
The programme suggests that the OM did not prosecute him because this could generate negative publicity about the 'multicultural society'. NOVA also said the case may have led to the replacement of diplomats at the Moroccan embassy in The Hague.
(NIS News)
Friday, 29 August 2008
Mark Steyn: Lights Out on Liberty
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 13, 2008, while Mr. Steyn was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism.
On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, “The lamps are going out all over Europe.” Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.
Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression,
which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise “prudence” on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter “I.” At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci—after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty—was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other “anti-racist groups” who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.
In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called “flagrant Islamophobia”—filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress—attributes to me the following “assertions”:
You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.
These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, they’ve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading “Behead the Enemies of Islam” and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected
by a phalanx of London policemen. Thus we see that today’s multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance.
It’s been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentine’s Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to “play it cool.” The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to “Push off” (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but letthat pass) “or I’ll arrest you.” Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. “I well understand the devout Muslims’ reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for,” said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: “There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying.” And that’s the way it’s gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant “Islamophobia,” it’s usually only the other party who is “in any danger of dying.”
War on the Homefront
I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terror—an insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.
Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim “honor killings,” for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.
The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bonds—that is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual places—in this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovationmarks “one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world.”
At about the same time, The Times of London reported that “Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims.” Now, I’m no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. There’s not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.
I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, “First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, I’d be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, ‘Th-th-th-that’s all folks!’, and bring the nightmare to an end.”
What all these stories have in commonis excessive deference to—and in fact fear of—Islam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you don’t remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you don’t need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.
I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cave—the “extremists”—believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. That’s not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia—in Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.
Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I don’t begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the “anti-hate” movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.
As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history.
Slippery Slope
Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. They’ve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, they’re increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.
It’s a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europe’s consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.
Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was “inevitable.” Within days of His Grace’s remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.
If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly “superbugs.” I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic.
I mentioned to some of Hillsdale’s students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously “tolerant” cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, “With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays.”
Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: “Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder.
Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.” Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, don’t you think?
Our Suicidal Urge
So don’t worry, nothing’s happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you’d suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn’t seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.
The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to “hold the line”? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.
My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isn’t even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when they’re in the majority.
Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. It’s not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. It’s not about them. It’s about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.
To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.
On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, “The lamps are going out all over Europe.” Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.
Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression,
which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise “prudence” on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter “I.” At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci—after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty—was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other “anti-racist groups” who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.
In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called “flagrant Islamophobia”—filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress—attributes to me the following “assertions”:
America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.In fact, I didn’t “assert” any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrigno’s novel, Prayers for the Assassin. It’s customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the government’s human rights investigators who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.
You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.
These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, they’ve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading “Behead the Enemies of Islam” and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected
by a phalanx of London policemen. Thus we see that today’s multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance.
It’s been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentine’s Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to “play it cool.” The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to “Push off” (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but letthat pass) “or I’ll arrest you.” Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. “I well understand the devout Muslims’ reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for,” said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: “There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying.” And that’s the way it’s gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant “Islamophobia,” it’s usually only the other party who is “in any danger of dying.”
War on the Homefront
I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terror—an insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.
Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim “honor killings,” for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.
The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bonds—that is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual places—in this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovationmarks “one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world.”
At about the same time, The Times of London reported that “Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims.” Now, I’m no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. There’s not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.
I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, “First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, I’d be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, ‘Th-th-th-that’s all folks!’, and bring the nightmare to an end.”
What all these stories have in commonis excessive deference to—and in fact fear of—Islam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you don’t remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you don’t need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.
I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cave—the “extremists”—believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. That’s not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia—in Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.
Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I don’t begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the “anti-hate” movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.
As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history.
Slippery Slope
Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. They’ve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, they’re increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.
It’s a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europe’s consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.
Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was “inevitable.” Within days of His Grace’s remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.
If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly “superbugs.” I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic.
I mentioned to some of Hillsdale’s students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously “tolerant” cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, “With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays.”
Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: “Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder.
Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.” Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, don’t you think?
Our Suicidal Urge
So don’t worry, nothing’s happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you’d suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn’t seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.
The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to “hold the line”? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.
My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isn’t even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when they’re in the majority.
Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. It’s not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. It’s not about them. It’s about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.
To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Van der Vlies aan Bos
Beste Wouter,
Dank voor je lovende woorden. “Gezaghebbende nestor”, wijsheid en ervaring”, “zuivere manier en verstandige toon” en ga zo maar door. ’t Is dat ik al een dagje ouder ben, anders zou ik er bijna van gaan blozen.
Na dit zoet volgt evenwel het zuur. Dat zit ‘m met name in jouw waarneming dat ik op de film van PVV-leider Wilders “zo ongeveer de meest positieve reactie geef van iedereen.”
Ter toelichting op mijn reactie het volgende. Toen ik gisteravond door ettelijke journalisten gebeld ben met de vraag wat ik van de film vond, heb ik een paar dingen gezegd.
Het eerste was dat de film eigenlijk geen nieuws bevatte. Zo staat het ook op onze website. De film was conform verwachting: aan elkaar gemonteerde beelden van gruweldaden die door moslimterroristen zijn aangericht. Daarmee heeft de heer Wilders de volle schijnwerpers gezet op de donkere kanten die aan de islam (kunnen) zitten.
Vrij algemeen is het oordeel, ook uit kringen van de Nederlandse moslims, dat de film eigenlijk wel meevalt. Dit wordt nog eens onderstreept door het unieke en toch ook wel heugelijke feit dat vandaag zowel Geert Wilders als de minister-president de Nederlandse moslims uitvoerig gecomplimenteerd hebben. Ik ben zo vrij hieruit, ook achteraf, te concluderen dat de Nederlandse moslims helemaal niet zo gekwetst zijn. Hun incasseringsvermogen verdraagt dit kennelijk, en dat is winst.
Wat ik gisteren ook gezegd heb en onder andere door het Radio-1 journaal is uitgezonden, is dat ik als SGP'er zo’n film nooit op die manier gemaakt zou hebben. Je weet dat ik in de Kamer al jaren een punt maak van waardigheid en respectvolle omgang met elkaar. Daarbij passen geen generalisaties, als zouden alle moslims terroristen zijn. Uit mijn mond zul je dat dus ook nooit horen.
Tenslotte je vraag hoe ik het zou vinden als een dergelijke film over het christendom en de bijbel zou gaan. Met die vraag kan ik niets beginnen. Om de eenvoudige reden dat zo’n film niet te maken is.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Bas van der Vlies
Dank voor je lovende woorden. “Gezaghebbende nestor”, wijsheid en ervaring”, “zuivere manier en verstandige toon” en ga zo maar door. ’t Is dat ik al een dagje ouder ben, anders zou ik er bijna van gaan blozen.
Na dit zoet volgt evenwel het zuur. Dat zit ‘m met name in jouw waarneming dat ik op de film van PVV-leider Wilders “zo ongeveer de meest positieve reactie geef van iedereen.”
Ter toelichting op mijn reactie het volgende. Toen ik gisteravond door ettelijke journalisten gebeld ben met de vraag wat ik van de film vond, heb ik een paar dingen gezegd.
Het eerste was dat de film eigenlijk geen nieuws bevatte. Zo staat het ook op onze website. De film was conform verwachting: aan elkaar gemonteerde beelden van gruweldaden die door moslimterroristen zijn aangericht. Daarmee heeft de heer Wilders de volle schijnwerpers gezet op de donkere kanten die aan de islam (kunnen) zitten.
Vrij algemeen is het oordeel, ook uit kringen van de Nederlandse moslims, dat de film eigenlijk wel meevalt. Dit wordt nog eens onderstreept door het unieke en toch ook wel heugelijke feit dat vandaag zowel Geert Wilders als de minister-president de Nederlandse moslims uitvoerig gecomplimenteerd hebben. Ik ben zo vrij hieruit, ook achteraf, te concluderen dat de Nederlandse moslims helemaal niet zo gekwetst zijn. Hun incasseringsvermogen verdraagt dit kennelijk, en dat is winst.
Wat ik gisteren ook gezegd heb en onder andere door het Radio-1 journaal is uitgezonden, is dat ik als SGP'er zo’n film nooit op die manier gemaakt zou hebben. Je weet dat ik in de Kamer al jaren een punt maak van waardigheid en respectvolle omgang met elkaar. Daarbij passen geen generalisaties, als zouden alle moslims terroristen zijn. Uit mijn mond zul je dat dus ook nooit horen.
Tenslotte je vraag hoe ik het zou vinden als een dergelijke film over het christendom en de bijbel zou gaan. Met die vraag kan ik niets beginnen. Om de eenvoudige reden dat zo’n film niet te maken is.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Bas van der Vlies
Bos aan van der Vlies
Beste Bas,
Vandaag las ik je reactie op Fitna. Ik was stomverbaasd. Je vond dat Wilders zorgvuldigheid had betracht, je vond de film een prikkelende inzet voor het debat en je meende dat hij niet bewust probeerde te kwetsen.
Hoe zou je reactie zijn geweest als deze film over het christendom en de bijbel zou zijn gegaan?
Bas, je staat bij vriend en vijand bekend als de gezaghebbende nestor van het parlement. Jou wordt niet onterecht de nodige wijsheid en in ieder geval ervaring toegedicht en in je optredens krijg je in het algemeen waardering voor de zuivere manier en verstandige toon waarop jij je van je taak kwijt.
Juist van iemand met zo’n reputatie had ik deze reactie op Fitna niet verwacht. Juist van iemand die in ons parlement in het algemeen bindend te werk gaat en met een groot gevoel voor de positie en belangen van minderheden in de samenleving politiek bedrijft verwacht je niet dat hij op Fitna zo ongeveer de meest positieve reactie geeft van iedereen.
Jij vertegenwoordigt in het parlement een partij die een op religieuze basis afgebakende minderheid vertegenwoordigt. Jij vraagt met het oog daarop regelmatig begrip voor de positie van minderheden, de ruimte die hen geboden moet worden, het belang van hun godsdienstovertuiging, de noodzaak van begrip en respect.
Dat je al die uitgangspunten kennelijk minder belangrijk vindt nu het om een andere levensbeschouwing dan de jouwe gaat, vind ik niet democratisch en stelt me diep teleur.
Met onverminderd vriendelijke groet,
Wouter Bos
PvdA leider
Vandaag las ik je reactie op Fitna. Ik was stomverbaasd. Je vond dat Wilders zorgvuldigheid had betracht, je vond de film een prikkelende inzet voor het debat en je meende dat hij niet bewust probeerde te kwetsen.
Hoe zou je reactie zijn geweest als deze film over het christendom en de bijbel zou zijn gegaan?
Bas, je staat bij vriend en vijand bekend als de gezaghebbende nestor van het parlement. Jou wordt niet onterecht de nodige wijsheid en in ieder geval ervaring toegedicht en in je optredens krijg je in het algemeen waardering voor de zuivere manier en verstandige toon waarop jij je van je taak kwijt.
Juist van iemand met zo’n reputatie had ik deze reactie op Fitna niet verwacht. Juist van iemand die in ons parlement in het algemeen bindend te werk gaat en met een groot gevoel voor de positie en belangen van minderheden in de samenleving politiek bedrijft verwacht je niet dat hij op Fitna zo ongeveer de meest positieve reactie geeft van iedereen.
Jij vertegenwoordigt in het parlement een partij die een op religieuze basis afgebakende minderheid vertegenwoordigt. Jij vraagt met het oog daarop regelmatig begrip voor de positie van minderheden, de ruimte die hen geboden moet worden, het belang van hun godsdienstovertuiging, de noodzaak van begrip en respect.
Dat je al die uitgangspunten kennelijk minder belangrijk vindt nu het om een andere levensbeschouwing dan de jouwe gaat, vind ik niet democratisch en stelt me diep teleur.
Met onverminderd vriendelijke groet,
Wouter Bos
PvdA leider