June 19, 2007

Conference on the Collapse of Europe: What Makes Jihad so Effective - and What to Do About It

Leon de Winter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Henryk Broder, Andy Bostom, Daniel Pipes and Greg Davis

(This photo is merged from two smaller photos.)

(This is the second in a series on the international conference on the Collapse of Europe, organized by Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance, and the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The first article is here.)

At 11:30 am, the event divided into a number of panels taking place simultaneously. I opted for the one titled "Eurabia: Is Muslim domination of Europe inevitable?" particularly in order to have a chance to see the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Born a Muslim in Somalia, Ayaan was raised with terrible violence directed against her in her own home, as is not uncommon for children born into the Islamic culture. From the Townhall review of her autobiography, Infidel:

Instead of finding within her family a refuge from the cruelties of the wider world, Hirsi Ali found persecution instead. She loved both of her parents, but her mother was her father's second of three wives. He was often away (sometimes in prison for his political activities), and her mother was sometimes hysterical and frequently violent. Hirsi Ali relates being beaten with a rolling pin and being beaten while tied hand and foot. As a Muslim female she was expected to be obedient, servile and meek. All of the housework fell upon her, not her brother. He bullied her mercilessly and got away with it because he was the boy. When she was naughty and disobedient toward her Quran teacher, he cracked her skull and nearly killed her. She was also tortured -- there is no other word for it -- by female circumcision. She writes, "In Somalia, like many countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made 'pure' by having their genitals cut out." This was done to Hirsi Ali when she was 5. Her description is graphic and blood-curdling.

Because of her father's prominence in the anti-Siad Barre forces, the family was kept constantly in motion. They lived in Saudi Arabia, where Hirsi Ali heard the cries of women being beaten by their husbands, and in Kenya, where she saw young boys who had stolen something beaten to death by crowds cheering and jeering. She lived in Ethiopia among Christians her mother regarded as "despicable."

Her mother found Christians, with their beautiful Judeo-Christian culture of "love they neighbor", despicable - but not the evil all around her and in her own home, of family members beating, torturing and killing other family members. That is a crushing, devastating indictment of Islamic culture.

Such evil practices are imported into Western nations by Islamic immigrants, as seen in this article from the UK's Guardian, last Saturday: "Special units to crack down on honour killing" - "honour killing" being what Islamists call it when a Muslim kills a female member of his own family. Islamic culture considers to be honorable, things that Western culture rightly identifies as being evil.

After introducing the panel, moderator Andy Bostom asked Ayaan to speak first. She detailed what Europe can do to avoid Islamic domination. (All quotes are transcribed from audio recordings.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Is Muslim domination of Europe inevitable? I can't predict the future. But looking at the way things are in Europe, at least what we see is that it is urgent to address this issue. And probably now in some neighborhoods, in some cities in Europe, Islamic domination is visible. Europeans have a taste of how things can look like if Islamic domination becomes Europe's future. I think it's avoidable. And it is avoidable, if European leaders and European civil society at least approach four policies in a radically different way than what we see now.

The first is of course the immigration policy. The EU have removed the borders in between the countries, without thinking about the consequences of that, inviting the people to come from other countries, mainly Muslim countries, and even those who are not invited, when they came still. The immigration laws that made it possible for a large number of people to come to the EU have not been reformed. There is no central EU policy, even though the member states no longer have borders. So either you have a planned European immigration policy, or the member countries go back and say, "You know what? We are going to take care of that part of our problems."

...The next policy that should be approached differently is what is now in many European countries called, the integration policy. Integration is just another euphemism for multi-culturalism. I think we should be honest about this and I think if Europeans adopt an assimilation policy, that that is going to prevent a complete Muslim domination in Europe.

Now that assimilation policy, should not be left to government. I think that civil society - that's the main thing that I've learned from the United States - is that civil activism is the thing that needs to change, and not top-down change. As the guiding of the Muslim movement in Europe is a grass-roots movement, not coordinated from a central command somewhere, so I think the reaction to it must be also grass roots, civil activism, and where the government should do its bit, the government should do its bit, which is [indistinct on audio]. And that policy is economic reform, meaning, to reduce government, where government is unnecessary, and especially the welfare state. You don't need Islamic domination - look at the aboriginals in Australia. If you have generations of people depending on welfare, you're just freezing them in poverty. It's an inhuman policy, I think. It's been instigated by compassion, but it's very inhuman. And if you have generations of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, on welfare, feeling alienated, then the agents of radical Islam just target that group, and take advantage of that resentment.

And the fourth, and that's where I'm going to end, is an intervention policy, what today in Europe is known as, development aid. So the idea is, we are going to help Muslim countries, or countries where immigrants come from, and trade with them through aid. But we are not going to reform our own markets. We are not going to have crops grown in Africa, we are not going to allow them into our countries, but we are going to give them some money. And when we need oil, instead of having our defense system up-to-date, we are going to persuade them to do - we are actually going to bribe them. That's what it amounts to. And I think that approach - bribing nations where immigrants come from, should change. I think we should adopt a carrot-and-stick, the old carrot-and-stick approach, where help - I'm not a proponent of indefinite help - I think that a nation should help themselves. But ultimately, the idea that military intervention is unavoidable and that before that you need a proper defense system.

If all those policies - and some of them are changing. The debate is open. There are people like Leon de Winter and Henryk Broder and many other Europeans who are debating this, and I hope that that's going to lead to something more positive. If that has not happened, then yes, the Muslim domination of Europe is unavoidable, but it's something that Europeans have to take upon themselves.

One of Ayaan's observations - that one of the four keys to avoiding Islamic domination, is to do away with the welfare state - parallels my previous post, "Report: How Socialism and Islam work Together to Destroy Europe."

Leon de Winter spoke next. (Bios of the panelists are here.)

Leon de Winter: ...There is absolutely no Islamization of Dutch society. Can you imagine? Okay, Amsterdam changed, to some degree. We have areas now, which we didn't have 20, 25 years ago, that are more or less, no-go areas. Especially when you're a Jew. This is worrying. It's of great concern to all of us. The general public is as tolerant, and at the same time, as - this sounds paradoxical - as Calvinistic as it has been since centuries. We are not changing. On the contrary. There is a vast undercurrent among the general public of the feeling that we have had enough of it. We are fed up. We want to stop it.

Henryk Broder. 

Henryk Broder then described in detail how jihad functions, that is, how it can be effective in destroying a culture from within:

Henryk Broder: ...Our best allies in this in Germany, the same is the case in Holland, are secular, united, Liberal Muslims who come out and defend our civil rights. And they are much more reliable than my colleagues from the liberal German daily newspapers. But what happened all over Europe after the attacks in Ankara, in Madrid, in London, after some attempted attacks in Germany - there is now a culture of angst established, all around the world - a culture of fear. And you know it from personal experience, if you are afraid of something, so you have basically two options. You can react by submission to the aggression, hoping to save your life, or at least to reduce the confrontation. Or you can do something, actively, by doing something. But unfortunately most people don't do something, what they could do. So this is the main question I'm always asked when I present my book, when I give lectures and speeches - what can we do? And the number of people asking themselves the question, is rising. But it's a quite natural thing that most people prefer submission, capitulation, they prefer surrender, to any kind of active resistance.

And things are happening now in Germany that could not have happened 10 or 15 years ago. I will give you a couple of examples to illustrate the situation. Protestant churches are celebrating this year and last year, Mohammed's birthday. This was unheard of. [.....] So on the grass roots level, church and state, it's a good idea to celebrate Mohammed's birthday, together with our Muslim citizens, simply to appease them - to accommodate them - to make them feel better, hoping that they will not let out any aggression on us.

And I'll give you another example, a very recent example. Three or four weeks ago, the council of religion was established in Hamburg. Hamburg was traditionally a very liberal city. Even the Catholics are liberal there. I know the bishop of Hamburg, and he is the first one to promote birth control and gay marriage, because, this is Hamburg. And if he wouldn't behave like this, he would have no people coming to his church. So in Hamburg a religious council was established, and the members of different religions and denominations were invited to participate in this council. And then, some Muslim groups protested against the participation of the Bahai. So what happened? The Bahai are very progressive, very liberal, very education-minded - there is total equality between man and woman. And there is some progress, some very progressive books written in Islam, so it's the Bahai. So the traditionalist Muslim groups in Hamburg protested against the participation of the Bahai, and what happened? The city of Hamburg was organizing this council, asked very politely, the Bahai, to give up the seat, that was decided to them, because of the protest of other Muslim groups. Instead of telling the other Muslims, please go home, and insist on taking the Bahai with us, the Bahai were sent home. This is something, beyond everything.

A year ago there was, a young girl in Iran was hanged, because of indecent behavior. She was 16 years old. And there was some kind of astonishment in the German media that still the Iranians do that kind of cruel things. And in the [name of a German newspaper] which is a very liberal paper there was a long story about the sentence, the trial and everything, and the tragic end of this young girl. And the lady, the colleague who wrote this story wrote, that simply the fact that the girl was hanged, and she was not stoned to death, shows already that Iran is making some progress [laughter] - I'm not kidding - I'm not kidding - is making some progress in the direction of human rights. How far the policy of appeasement has progressed!

I'll give you one more example, because it is so unbelievable. There was an auction recently at Christy's in London. A couple of days ago. There was going to be an auction, but there was already a catalog out for this auction. And two pictures in the catalog have been worked on in some detail, and intimate details were erased. And there was a footnote to those pictures saying, 'out of respect for cultural sensibilities, this image has been distorted. Please refer to the department of Christy's, for an accurate representation.' [Laughter.] Out of respect for cultural sensibilities, they distored some classical pictures, with the great titles, "In the Harem," and "The State Market," showing some naked women.

So that's the way that leads us into submission, into surrender, into capitulation - without any pressure applied on us! It's enough to keep them in this culture of fear, where you know there may be a kind of violent attack happening next day or next time. That's enough! That's enough to exercise this terrible amount of discipline on you and to make you surrender, before the crisis occurs.

Daniel Pipes: The main problem with the Bahai is that they recognize a prophet other than Mohammed, and therefore are another religion, and that's not acceptable [to the Muslims]. A post-Mohammed religion.

Through these speakers we have had something of a virtual tour of Holland, Germany, and England, and have seen how in each nation Western freedoms are being attacked by the cancer of jihad. The Islamist culture preaches - to Muslims - hatred of all things non-Islamic; so much so, that there are always a sufficient number of Islamists ready sacrifice themselves in a violent attack. The Western culture is paralyzed, thinking that it cannot identify which Islamists are about to attack, and believing that as a result, it cannot do anything.

But as Ayaan Hirsi Ali outlined, there is much that can be done. 

Additionally, it appears that it may be necessary to crack down on the mosques that instill this hatred in Muslims. These mosques are just manufacturing walking human time bombs, which (as Henryk shows) the Islamists then use to threaten us. There couldn't be a plainer example than this week's story about the knighthood of Salmon Rushdie. In knighting Salmon Rushdie, England has courageously stood up to Islam. A government minister in Pakistan then called for suicide bombings against England. This government minister is threatening England with England's own Muslim citizens, who have been filled with hate by their mosques and upbringing. Such mosques must not be tolerated. They are incubating and releasing the equivalent of a cancer into any society that is foolish enough to harbor them.

Such a crackdown is to be accomplished, not merely by the government, but primarily, by a grass-roots movement - by the people. As Ayaan is quoted above: "...that's the main thing that I've learned from the United States - is that civil activism is the thing that needs to change, and not top-down change. As the guiding of the Muslim movement in Europe is a grass-roots movement, not coordinated from a central command somewhere, so I think the reaction to it must be also grass roots, civil activism..."

Such grass-roots movements are beginning. In England, TV reporters exposed the hatred being preached at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, England. And in America, an organization is doing the same for mosques in the U.S.: 

“Our initial investigation has concluded there are between 400 to 500 radical Islamic centers in the U.S.,” said David Gaubatz, the director of counterintelligence and counterterrorism for the Society of Americans for National Existence. “In those places, they preach an extreme version of Islam that says America and the West is the enemy. They espouse violence, hatred and the need for terrorism.”

Gaubatz is a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who now works for the Mapping Shari’a in America Project (www.mappingsharia.com), which is supported by SANE, a national non-profit group devoted to investigating the 2,300 Islamic centers in the U.S. for extremist activity.

Gaubatz and his investigators are currently active and will soon form a team of about 12. They pose as people interested in converting to Islam or who are current Muslims. Their goal is to infiltrate mosques and Muslim centers. Recently, he and his team penetrated the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, located in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Sporting a beard and Muslim dress, Gaubatz said he went on May 18 to the center, pretending to be an American interested in becoming a convert to Islam. He discovered the center espoused terrorism and jihad against America.

“They are teaching what they call Jihad Qital, which means physical jihad,” Gaubatz said. “They’re teaching violence and hatred of the United States.”

Gaubatz said that he met the two primary clerics at Dar Al-Hijrah, Imam Shaker Elsayed and Imam Johari Abdulmalik. Both men have been trained in Saudi Arabia. He says another key individual is Yusef Estes, an informal senior leader at the center and an internationally influential Muslim scholar who was trained in Saudi Arabia.

“They put me through the process of learning their faith and ideology,” Gaubatz said. “They felt close to me and they gave me literature and CDs. They told me to study. The literature is very Jihad Qital.”

He said that the Islamic center has deep ties to Saudi Arabia and espouses Wahhabism, a virulent and puritanical version of Islam.

“Many members of the mosque provided me literature to study. Most of the literature they gave me was from Saudi Arabia,” he said. “Their literature preaches that America and the West are decadent and evil, and that Muslims have a moral duty to engage in violence against the infidels.” 

It is inevitable that with such Muslim leaders working hard to instill hate into their Islamist congregations, there will be Muslims itching to sacrifice their lives in order to commit violent acts. As Henryk Broder showed, this strategy can be very effective in getting a Western culture to surrender its freedoms. Why should we tolerate these bomb factories, that produce walking, human time bombs, intended by their leaders to kill us?

We must shut down the mosques that instill this hatred into Muslims, in order to protect our freedoms.

Update 6-27-07: Part 3 in this series is now up, here.

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Categories: Counter-Terrorism, Counter - Jihad, Sharia Culture, What's Going on Inside the Mosques
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