Geert Wilders in Berlin

A beautiful and important speech in Berlin yesterday by Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders is almost alone among European politicians (although that is changing) in taking Islam seriously. Liberal politicians don't take Islam seriously because they don't take themselves seriously.


"In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: 'A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.' Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology. ...

[T]he renowned Oxford historian J.M. Roberts wrote in 1985: 'Although we carelessly speak of Islam as a 'religion'; that word carries many overtones of the special history of western Europe. The Muslim is primarily a member of a community, the follower of a certain way, an adherent to a system of law, rather than someone holding particular theological views.' The Flemish Professor Urbain Vermeulen, the former president of the European Union of Arabists and Islamicists, too, points out that 'Islam is primarily a legal system, a law,' rather than a religion. ...

These are not just statements by opponents of Islam. Islamic scholars say the same thing. ... Abul Ala Maududi, the influential 20th century Pakistani Islamic thinker, wrote - I quote, emphasizing that these are not my words but those of a leading Islamic scholar - 'Islam is not merely a religious creed [but] a revolutionary ideology and jihad refers to that revolutionary struggle ... to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth, which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.' ...


(Listen to part three of Brian Fairchild's "Salafism: Understanding a Strain of Radical Islam" on "Reclaiming the Culture" to learn more about Maududi.) Wilders, continued:

"Politicians from almost all establishment [parties] today are facilitating Islamization. They are cheering for every new Islamic school, Islamic bank, Islamic court. They regard Islam as being equal to our own culture. Islam or freedom? It does not really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire establisment elite - universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians - are putting our hard-earned liberties at risk. They talk about equality, but amazingly fail to see how in Islam women have fewer rights than men and infidels have fewer rights than adherents of Islam. ..."

Wilders then addressed his German audience specifically:

"It is not up to me to define what Germany's national identity consists of. That is entirely up to you. I do know, however, that German culture, like that of neighboring countries, such as my own, is rooted in Judeo-Christian and humanist values. Every responsible politician has a political obligation to preserve these values against ideologies which threaten them. A Germany full of mosques and veiled women is no longer the Germany of Goethe, Schiller and Heine, Bach and Mendelssohn. It will be a loss to us all. It is important that you cherish and preserve your roots as a nation. Otherwise you will not be able to safeguard your identity; you will be abolished as a people, and you will lose your freedom. And the rest of Europe will lose its freedom with you."

h/t Powerline

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney