Juan Cole has penned an excellent and important article that puts to rest the Islamophobic claims of bigots that Muslims are more violent than people of other religions.

He mentions murder rates in the Muslim world which are very low compared to the USA and analyzes 20th century political violence by European Christians vs. Muslims. He comes to the low estimate for violence by Christians of European descent as 100 million and 2 million for Muslims. If one were to compare the higher estimates between the two groups it wouldn’t alter much.

Terrorism and the other Religions

by Juan Cole (Informed Comment)

Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions. Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States.

As for political violence, people of Christian heritage in the twentieth century polished off tens of millions of people in the two world wars and colonial repression. This massive carnage did not occur because European Christians are worse than or different from other human beings, but because they were the first to industrialize war and pursue a national model. Sometimes it is argued that they did not act in the name of religion but of nationalism. But, really, how naive. Religion and nationalism are closely intertwined. The British monarch is the head of the Church of England, and that still meant something in the first half of the twentieth century, at least. The Swedish church is a national church. Spain? Was it really unconnected to Catholicism? Did the Church and Francisco Franco’s feelings toward it play no role in the Civil War? And what’s sauce for the goose: much Muslim violence is driven by forms of modern nationalism, too.

I don’t figure that Muslims killed more than a 2 million people or so in political violence in the entire twentieth century, and that mainly in the Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 and the Soviet and post-Soviet wars in Afghanistan, for which Europeans bear some blame.

Compare that to the Christian European tally of, oh, lets say 100 million (16 million in WW I, 60 million in WW II– though some of those were attributable to Buddhists in Asia– and millions more in colonial wars.)

Belgium– yes, the Belgium of strawberry beer and quaint Gravensteen castle– conquered the Congo and is estimated to have killed off half of its inhabitants over time, some 8 million people at least.

Or, between 1916-1917 Tsarist Russian forces — facing the Basmachi revolt of Central Asians trying to throw off Christian, European rule — Russian forces killed an estimated 1.5 million people. Two boys brought up in or born in one of those territories (Kyrgyzstan) just killed 4 people and wounded others critically. That is horrible, but no one, whether in Russia or in Europe or in North America has the slightest idea that Central Asians were mass-murdered during WW I and looted of much of their wealth. Russia at the time was an Eastern Orthodox, Christian empire (and seems to be reemerging as one!).

Then, between half a million and a million Algerians died in that country’s war of independence from France, 1954-1962, at a time when the population was only 11 million!

I could go on and on. Everywhere you dig in European colonialism in Afro-Asia, there are bodies. Lots of bodies.

Now that I think of it, maybe 100 million people killed by people of European Christian heritage in the twentieth century is an underestimate.

As for religious terrorism, that too is universal. Admittedly, some groups deploy terrorism as a tactic more at some times than others. Zionists in British Mandate Palestine were active terrorists in the 1940s, from a British point of view, and in the period 1965-1980, the FBI considered the Jewish Defense League among the most active US terrorist groups. (Members at one point plotted to assassinate Rep. Dareell Issa (R-CA) because of his Lebanese heritage.) Now that Jewish nationalsts are largely getting their way, terrorism has declined among them. But it would likely reemerge if they stopped getting their way. In fact, one of the arguments Israeli politicians give for allowing Israeli squatters to keep the Palestinian land in the West Bank that they have usurped is that attempting to move them back out would produce violence. I.e., the settlers not only actually terrorize the Palestinians, but they form a terrorism threat for Israel proper (as the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin discovered).

Even more recently, it is difficult for me to see much of a difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the Hebron massacre.

Or there was the cold-blooded bombing of the Ajmer shrine in India by Bhavesh Patel and a gang of Hindu nationalists. Chillingly, they were disturbed when a second bomb they had set did not go off, so that they did not wreak as much havoc as they would have liked. Ajmer is an ecumenical Sufi shrine also visited by Hindus, and these bigots wanted to stop such open-minded sharing of spiritual spaces because they hate Muslims.

Buddhists have committed a lot of terrorism and other violence as well. Many in the Zen orders in Japan supported militarism in the first half of the twentieth century, for which their leaders later apologized. And, you had Inoue Shiro’s assassination campaign in 1930s Japan. Nowadays militant Buddhist monks in Burma/ Myanmar are urging on an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya.

As for Christianity, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda initiated hostilities that displaced two million people. Although it is an African cult, it is Christian in origin and the result of Western Christian missionaries preaching in Africa. If Saudi Wahhabi preachers can be in part blamed for the Taliban, why do Christian missionaries skate when we consider the blowback from their pupils?

Despite the very large number of European Muslims, in 2007-2009 less than 1 percent of terrorist acts in that continent were committed by people from that community.

Terrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents.

It takes a peculiar sort of blindness to see Christians of European heritage as “nice” and Muslims and inherently violent, given the twentieth century death toll I mentioned above. Human beings are human beings and the species is too young and too interconnected to have differentiated much from group to group. People resort to violence out of ambition or grievance, and the more powerful they are, the more violence they seem to commit. The good news is that the number of wars is declining over time, and World War II, the biggest charnel house in history, hasn’t been repeated.

Please make sure to click the link to the video below as well, it disturbingly portrays the viciousness and growth of the once marginalized Golden Dawn.:

Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

Link to video: Golden Dawn party infiltrates Greece’s police, claims senior officer

Helena Smith in Athens

Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to expand ‘wherever there are Greeks’

Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to “create cells in every corner of the world”. The extremist group, which forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn entrenching its position as Greece’s third, and fastest growing, political force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by polling company Public Issue.

The group – whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to give Nazi salutes – has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as the only force willing to take on the “rotten establishment”. Amid rumours of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party offices across Greece.

It is also concentrating on spreading internationally, with news last month that it had opened an office in Germany and planned to set up branches in Australia. The party’s spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, said it had decided to establish cells “wherever there are Greeks”.

“People have understood that Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] tells the truth,” he told a Greek-language paper in Melbourne. “In our immediate sights and aims is the creation of an office and local organisation in Melbourne. In fact, very soon a visit of MPs to Australia is planned.”

Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris (centre) leaves an Athens court this month where he denied assisting in a 2007 assault and robbery. He has said the party will spread ‘wherever there are Greeks’. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

But the campaign has met with disgust and derision by many prominent members of the Greek diaspora who represent communities in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

“We don’t see any gold in Golden Dawn,” said Father Alex Karloutsos, one of America’s leading Greek community figures, in Southampton, New York. “Nationalism, fascism, xenophobia are not part of our spiritual or cultural heritage.”

But Golden Dawn is hoping to tap into the deep well of disappointment and fury felt by Greeks living abroad, in the three years since the debt-stricken nation was plunged into crisis.

“Golden Dawn is not like other parties in Greece. From its beginnings, in the early 80s, it always had one eye abroad,” said Dimitris Psarras, whose book, Golden Dawn’s Black Bible, chronicles the organisation since its creation by Nikos Michaloliakos, an overt supporter of the colonels who oversaw seven years of brutal anti-leftist dictatorship until the collapse of military rule in 1974.

“Like-minded groups in Europe and Russia have given the party ideological, and sometimes financial, support to print books and magazines. After years of importing nazism, it now wants to export nazism,” added Psarras. By infiltrating communities abroad, the far-rightists were attempting not only to shore up their credibility but also to find extra funding and perhaps even potential votes if Greeks abroad ever won the right to cast ballots in elections.

“[Golden Dawn] not only wants to become the central pole of a pan-European alliance of neo-Nazis, even if in public it will hotly deny that,” claimed Psarras, who said party members regularly met with neo-Nazis from Germany, Italy and Romania. “It wants to spread its influence worldwide.”

With its 300,000-strong community, Melbourne has pride of place in the constellation of Greek-populated metropolises that dot a diaspora officially estimated at around 7 million.

A Golden Dawn election rally in Athens in April.

As part of its international push, Golden Dawn has also focused on the US, a magnet for migrants for generations, and Canada, which attracted tens of thousands of Greeks after Greece’s devastating 1946-49 civil war.

“It’s a well-studied campaign,” said Anastasios Tamis, Australia’s pre-eminent ethnic Greek historian. “There is a large stock of very conservative people here – former royalists, former loyalists to the junta, that sort of thing – who are very disappointed at what has been happening in Greece and are trying to find a means to express it. They are nationalists who feel betrayed by Greece over issues like Macedonia, Cyprus and [the Greek minority] in Voreio Epirus [southern Albania], who cannot see the fascistic part of this party. Golden Dawn is trying to exploit them.”

The younger generation — children of agrarian and unskilled immigrants – were also being targeted, he said. “They’re the generation who were born here and grew up here and know next to nothing about Greece, its history and social and economic background. They’re easy prey and Golden Dawn will capitalise on their ignorance.”

Tamis, who admits that some of his students support the organisation, does not think the group will gain traction even if Australia’s far-right party has been quick to embrace it. But the prospect of Golden Dawn descending on the country has clearly sent tremors through the Greek community.

“This is a multicultural society. They are not wanted or welcome here,” said one prominent member, requesting anonymity when talk turned to the group.

Greek Australian leftists have begun collecting protest signatures to bring pressure on the Australia immigration minister, Brendan O’Connor, to prohibit Golden Dawn MPs from entering the country. In a statement urging the government not to give the deputies visas, they said the extremists had to be stopped “from spreading their influence within the Greek community and threatening the multicultural society that Greek Australians and other migrants have fought to defend”.

The neo-Nazis have been given a similar reception in Canada, where the party opened a chapter last October. Despite getting the father of champion sprinter Nicolas Macrozonaris to front it, the group was quickly denounced by Greek Canadians as “a black mark”.

The culture of intolerance that has allowed racially motivated violence to flourish in Greece – with black-clad Golden Dawn members being blamed for a big rise in attacks on immigrants – had, they said, no place in a country that prides itself on liberal values.

“Their philosophy and ideology does not appeal to Greeks living here,” insisted Father Lambros Kamperidis, a Greek Orthodox priest in Montreal. “We all got scared when we saw they were giving a press conference. But it was a deplorable event and as soon as we heard their deplorable views they were condemned by community leaders and the church.”

“We are all immigrants in Canada,” added Kamperidis, referring to Golden Dawn’s tactic of tapping into anti-immigrant resentment. “The conditions that apply in Greece do not apply here, so there is no justification for the party to flourish. The really bad thing is that in opening here it gives the impression, to people who don’t know the situation, that it is supported by a lot of Greeks, which is not the case. It has hurt Greece, the Greek cause, and Greeks’ reputation more than anything else.”

Anti-racist activists outside the appeals court in Athens this month for the case involving Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty

Despite the resistance, the far-rightists have made concerted efforts to move elsewhere, with Golden Dawn supporters saying Toronto is next. But the biggest push by far to date has been in the US. As home to close to 3 million citizens of Greek heritage, America has the diaspora’s largest community. At first, cadres worked undercover, organising clothes sales and other charitable events without stating their true affiliation. Stickers and posters then began to appear around the New York suburb of Astoria before the organisation opened a branch there.

But while Greek Americans have some of the strongest ties of any community to their homeland, senior figures have vehemently denounced the organisation for not only being incongruous with Greece’s struggle against fascism, during one of Europe’s most brutal Nazi occupations, but utterly alien to their own experience as immigrants.

“These people and their principles will never be accepted in our community. Their beliefs are alien to our beliefs and way of life,” said Nikos Mouyiaris, co-founder of the Chicago-based Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), whose mission is to promote human rights and democratic values.

The victims of often violent persecution at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan as well as wider discrimination (in Florida in the 1920s restaurant noticeboards declared “no dogs or Greeks allowed”) Greek Americans proudly recount how, almost alone among ethnic minorities, they actively participated in the civil rights movement, their spiritual leader Archbishop Iakovos daring to march alongside Martin Luther King. “Our history as a diaspora in the US has been marked by our fight against racism,” said Mouyiaris.

Many in the diaspora believe, like Endy Zemenides who heads HALC, that Golden Dawn has deluded itself into believing it is a permanent force because of its soaring popularity on the back of the economic crisis. “The reality is that it is a fleeting by-product of failed austerity measures and the social disruption this austerity has caused,” he said.

In Greece, where Golden Dawn has begun to recruit in schools, there are fears of complacency. Drawing parallels with the 1930s Weimar period and the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ party, the historian Mark Mazower recently warned against underestimating the threat posed by a party whose use of violence was so disturbing. “Unfortunately, the Greek state does not seem to realise the urgency of the situation,” he told an audience in Athens.

After spending almost 30 years following Golden Dawn, Psarras agrees. Only weeks ago, he claimed, Michaloliakos held talks in the Greek parliament with two German neo-Nazis posing as journalists. Golden Dawn rejected the claim as “old mud”.

“It is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and do I think it will get worse? Yes I do,” Psarras said, lamenting that, with living standards plummeting, the organisation was opening offices in traditional middle-class neighbourhoods. There remained a simple fact too big to ignore: in 2009 the party was a political pariah, gaining a mere 0.29 % of the vote; today it had global ambitions.

“Ten years ago, if you had said Golden Dawn would become the third biggest force in Greece, you’d be called crazy,” said Psarras. “Now look where it is.”

Original post: Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

Austrian Right-Wing Populists Lose Ground

(Spiegel.de)

The southern Austrian state of Carinthia was long a source of inspiration for right-wing populists across Europe. As early as 1989, the Freedom Party of Carinthia (FPK) briefly nabbed the governor’s mansion in the state. In 1999, the right-wingers — behind the charismatic leadership of Jörg Haider — emerged victorious in state elections once again, and have managed to hold onto the state since.

Until Sunday, that is. In a key state election seen as a bellwether for the Austrian general election approaching in September, Carinthian voters delivered a painful blow to the FPK, the state chapter of the national Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Sunday evening exit polls indicated that the FPK managed a mere 17.1 percent of the vote — a veritable collapse since their 45 percent result four years ago. It was the largest vote-on-vote disintegration ever seen in postwar Austria.

The Social Democratic party SPÖ won with 37.1 percent of the vote, while the center-right ÖVP landed in third place with 14.2 percent. Notably, the80-year-old billionaire businessman Frank Stronach managed to win 11.3 percent of the vote just a half year after bursting onto the Austrian political scene.

The right-wing populists’ poor showing comes afternumerous corruption allegations stemming from the time when Jörg Haider set the tone on the Austrian right. Members of the FPK and the Haider splinter party Alliance for Austria’s Future (BZÖ) — which received just 6.5 percent in Carinthia on Sunday– have been accused, investigated or indicted for just about every form of corruption imaginable in recent years.

‘Extremely Disappointing’

Among the most notable cases is the purchase of Eurofighter jets under the aegis of BZÖ member Herbert Scheibner during his stint as defense secretary. He is under investigation for money laundering as part of that deal. In addition, the FPK has been heavily implicated in irregularities surrounding the sale of the Hypo-Alpe-Adria-Bank.

While politicians from other parties were also allegedly involved in bribery related to the sale, the reputation of Jörg Haider, who initiated the sale, has taken the biggest hit, particularly given his party’s longstanding pledge to do away with the corruption endemic in the country’s more established political camps. Haider died in an accident while driving drunk in 2008.

Sunday’s result — combined with their meager 8.2 percent showing in the other Austrian state election on Sunday, in Lower Austria — does not bode well for the right-wing populists this autumn. “It was a clear rejection and a … clear demand for a restart,” said a visibly irate FPÖ head Hans-Christian Strache on Austrian television on Monday morning. “There is no way around it. A renewal is necessary. The result is extremely disappointing, but the voters are always right.”

As recently as last year, the populists under Strache’s leadership had been in pole position, briefly leading in public opinion surveys. Lately, nationwide surveys have indicated sliding support, though, with the FPÖ now in third place behind the center-left SPÖ and center-right ÖVP.

Annika Rydh

The following article does an excellent job at revealing the hypocrisy of self-professed “pro-life” advocates. One can only hope that some forced sterilization program is not stealthily enforced by a paranoid government fearful of its Muslim population.

STOKING FIRE: Islamophobia Trumps “Pro-Life” Ideology

by Eleanor J. Bader, RH Reality Check

Just three days into 2013, Annika Rydh, a Swedish government official from the town of Almhult, issued a shrill call to both her colleagues and neighbors. Worried about the perceived growth of the Muslim population in her homeland and beyond, she urged the European Union “to act by having some kind of restriction, like the one-child policy in China.” If Muslims don’t like the proposed rule, she continued, they can go back where they came from.

Rydh’s appeal comes on the heels of a decade-long campaign to curtail Muslim immigration into western countries and reduce the number of babies born to Muslim families. International in scope, the anti-Islam movement relies on scare tactics that, more often than not, imply that the Judeo-Christian traditions are in danger of being trampled by Sharia law.

Joseph D’Agostino of the virulently anti-abortion Population Research Institute makes the case: “Because Christians and Jews are refusing to have children, refusing to get married, and having such low birth rates, the Muslims are going to inherit the earth.”
His boss, PRI founder Steven W. Mosher, goes even farther: “Many security experts have long believed that excessive population growth in Muslim countries is a national security threat to the west.”

And not to be outdone, Daniel Pipes’ Mideast Forum rails that “indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union the overall rate is one-third short, at 1.5 a woman and falling… To keep its working population even, the EU needs 1.6 million immigrants a year. Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious.” Pipes then goes on to posit reasons for the diminishing birthrate amongst people of traditional European backgrounds, blaming “the education of women, abortion on demand, and adults too self-absorbed to have children” for the alleged Muslim takeover.

“Islamization will happen,” Pipes writes, “for Europeans find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilized senility.”

Lest you think Pipes can be summarily dismissed as little more than a ranting crackpot—or as someone who has himself succumbed to “civilized senility”—beware. Pipes is now a Taube Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, has taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard, and has served as an advisor to former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former President George W. Bush. What’s more, Pipes surrounds himself with fellow travelers including noted racist Pamela Geller and bloggers at sites including muslimpopulation.com, exposingliberallies.blogspot.com, FrontPageMagazine.com, and shariaunveiled.com.

And don’t forget the burgeoning population of anti-choice bedfellows. Surprising as it seems, a host of  anti-choicers have demonstrated a clear tilt toward population control when it comes to Muslims. Indeed, it seems apparent that, for them, racism and Islamophobia trump unbridled procreation for Mohammed’s adherents.

“The Muslims have said they will destroy us from within,” Flip Benham of Operation Save America reports. “Today’s 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22 percent of the world’s population. ..Muslims will exceed 50 percent of the world’s population by the end of the century.”

Similarly, Donald Spitz’ Army of God advocates violence against abortion providers as well as against “satanic Muslims” and anti-choice candidates Randall Terry of Operation Rescue and Gary Boisclair of the Society for Truth and Justice coupled ending legal abortion with limiting Muslim immigration in their unsuccessful 2012 bids for elected office.

Ibrahim Hooper, Press Secretary of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, attributes the increasing hysteria over the purported rise of Islam to an age-old trend to demonize anything or anyone perceived as different. “Whenever a minority is targeted by bigots, they start by saying that ‘they’ are going to take over the world. It’s always the same language, and the bigots simply insert the offending group—at different times it has been Muslims, Jews, and Hispanics. In each case the opposition assigns the disliked group far more power than they actually have. The scary thing is that the folks that promulgate this irrational fear and hatred operate in a bubble of unreality that can’t be penetrated with truth, logic, or facts.”

Ah, yes, facts. According to Doug Saunders, author of The Myth of the Muslim Tide, [Vintage, 2012] “the family size of Muslim immigrant groups are converging fast with those of average westerners—faster, it seems, than either Catholic or Jewish immigrants did in their time. Muslims in France and Germany are now having only 2.2 children per family, barely above the national average. And while Pakistanis in Britain have 3.5 children each, their British-born daughters have only 2.5.”

As for the United States, Saunders writes that there are presently 2.6 million Muslims living in the 50 states, and while this number is expected to increase to 6.2 million by 2030, the overall Muslim population will still comprise just 1.7 percent of the total. In other words, 17 years from today, Muslims will account for the same proportion of the American body politic as Jews and Episcopalians.

Incompatible with “Britishness.”

by Mooneye

For Euro-Western supremacists and their Islamophobic allies negative attitudes toward Islam and Muslims are in no way related to xenophobia against immigrants or age old hostilities to Islam and Muslims.

It’s all the Mooslims fault, don’t ya know, “the Mooslims they’re here!!”

In the face of globalization, economic crises and anxiety over immigration, many in Western Europe are returning to redefining their identities in opposition to the “East,” i.e. to Islam and Muslims.

France

In France, practicing Islam apparently means that one is not French. According to a recent survey, 74% of the French believe “Islam is incompatible with French society.” Obviously, the question is: what does being French mean? Clearly, to be French you have to be White with a name like “Jacques” and not a “Mohammed” from amongst those who immigrated from France’s former colonies in the past 50-60 years.

PARIS – A new survey has found that French are growing concerned with immigrants, politicians, globalization and media, with 74 percent believe Islam is not compatible with French society, The Inquisitr reported.

“The French, or at least the vast majority of them, seem to be afraid of everything,” French historian Michel Wincock told Le Monde this week.

The survey, carried out by polling institute Ipsos and the Jean-Jaures Foundation, reflected a growing distrust of Islam and belief there are too many foreigners in France.

It found that only 29 percent of French people believe the “vast majority of immigrants who have settled in France are well-integrated”.

Forty-six percent of respondents believe that unemployment levels can only be cut by reducing immigration.

The poll, which included 1,000 people, showed that 62 percent of respondents say they no longer feel at home in France.

There was also worrying news for President François Hollande, with 87 percent of respondents agreeing with the notion that “France needs a true leader to restore order”.

The survey also revealed that the media is not held in high regard in France, with 73 percent of the belief it is not independent and a similar figure (72 percent) of the view that journalists are “not doing their job”.

France is home to a Muslim minority of six millions, Europe’s largest.

In October, a poll by Ifop’s opinion department found that almost half of French see Muslims as a threat to their national identity.

The poll also found that most French see Islam is playing too influential role in their society.

In 2004, France banned Muslims from wearing hijab, an obligatory code of dress, in public places. Several European countries followed the French example.

France has also outlawed the wearing of face-veil in public.

French Muslims have also complained of restrictions on building mosques to perform their daily prayers.

Britain

In the UK the question of “Britishness” is also an issue. What makes someone British? According to data presented by Baroness Warsi, it seems for some the unenlightened opinions haven’t changed much from the days when Anglican clergymen described Islam as the “most nauseaous of all abominations, Mohammedanism.” (In an 1877 letter from Stuart Poole to Henry Liddon)

Fewer than one in four people now believe that following Islam is compatible with a British way of life, Britain’s most senior Muslim minister will warn today.

Highlighting unpublished research showing that a majority of the country now believes that Islam is a threat to Western civilisation Baroness Sayeeda Warsi will say that “underlying, unfounded mistrust” of Muslims is in itself fuelling extremism.

And she will cite new figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers showing that between 50 to 60 per cent of all religious hate crimes reported to police in Britain are now perpetrated against Muslims.

“My fear is that seeing one community as the ‘other’ is a slippery slope that will enable extremists to advance their twisted interests unchecked,” she will say.

“I don’t have to remind anyone what happens when an unfounded suspicion of one people can escalate into unspeakable horror.”

…

She will cite new research by academics that shows that just 23 per cent of a representative sample questioned said that Islam was not a threat to Western civilisation.

Just 24 per cent thought Muslims were compatible with the British way of life – with nearly half of people disagreeing that Muslims were compatible.

This compares with research among Muslims that showed 83 per were proud to be British, compared to 79 per cent of Britons overall.

Germany

German attitudes towards Islam and Muslims don’t fare much better, 66% of Western Germans and 74% of Eastern Germans have “negative attitudes towards Muslims.”

[A] new study has revealed that Islamophobia has become culturally acceptable in the country and that the society is shifting its attention from xenophobia to religious bias against Muslims, The Local newspaper reported.

“It’s no longer ‘the Turks’ but ‘the Muslims’,” Wilhelm Heitmeyer, head of the institute for research of interdisciplinary conflict and violence at Bielefeld University, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, The Local reported.

A research by the Bielefeld University found that Islamophobia has become culturally acceptable in Germany.

Heitmeyer said that the general hostility against foreigners had given way to a growing rejection of Islam in Germany.

This bigotry, moving from the confines of ethnicity towards religious bias against Muslims, does not exist only in the far-right, he said.

Heitmeyer noted that anti-Muslim sentiments were also present in more left-leaning and centrist circles, appearing throughout the country from the highest echelons of society to the lowest.

The findings of are not new.

An earlier study from Munster University in 2010 found that 66 percent of western Germans and 74 percent of eastern Germans had a negative attitude towards Muslims.

A more recent study from the Allensbach Institute suggested that this had not changed over the past two years.

Asking German people about Islam, only 22 percent said they agreed with Germany’s former president Christian Wulff’s statement that Islam, like Christianity, was part of Germany.

Germany has between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims, making up some 5 percent of the total 82 million population, according to government-commissioned studies.

…

Aiman Mazyek, Head of the Central Council for Muslims in Germany, said police and intelligence officials still refuse to rank violent attacks against Muslims independently, grouping them with the broad category of xenophobia.

“By doing this, hostility against Islam is being blurred out,” said Mazyek, calling on the government to publish a yearly report about racism.

Germany has been recently gripped by a fierce debate on immigration and integration.

In 2009, central banker Thilo Sarrazin sparked a debate on integration after accusing Muslim immigrants of undermining the society which is becoming less intelligent because of them.

Chancellor Merkel weighed in, saying that multiculturalism has failed in Germany.

But the remarks have drawn angry reactions, with German president Wulff stressing that Islam is part and parcel of German society.

German politicians have also called for recognizing Islam as an official religion in the Christian-majority country.

But Germany’s new President Joachim Gauck sparked a storm of criticism last year by contradicting his predecessor’s view that Islam is part of Germany.

Of course, if the Islamophobes are to be believed these opinions have nothing to do with Islamophobia, xenophobia, fears with regards to the economy, globalization and identity politics. In their view French, British and German Muslims are to be blamed for such attitudes.

It is a time for real soul-searching in Western Europe, enough of the blame game and scapegoating. The duties of informed citizenship don’t lie only with Muslim citizens but also with non-Muslims, primarily those who make judgements of their Muslim neighbors and fellow citizens without having ever bothered to meet, talk, break bread with or learn about the Muslims in their midst.

Sheila Musaji takes on a ludicrous article in Arutz Sheva that discusses the strange predictions and analysis of a billionaire religious Israeli businessman by the name of Moti Zisser. The article  on Zisser was authored by Gil Ronen who previously was hawking fabricated reports about Oslo Rapists all being Muslim. (h/t: Fred A.)

by Sheila Musaji (The American Muslim)

An article by Gil Ronen was just published in Arutz Sheva, Israel National News Europe Preparing Holocaust for Muslims.  This article discusses the predictions of Moti Zisser an Israeli businessman.  I looked up Moti Zisser, and he is a billionaire real-estate developer.  Here is the published article:

Well-known religious businessman Moti Zisser predicted Saturday evening that Europe will unleash a second Holocaust – but this time, the victims will be Muslims, not Jews.
“I think another Holocaust is brewing in Europe,” he told congregants at Bnei Brak’s Heichal Shlomo synagogue, according to Maariv-NRG. “I said it five years ago and everyone laughed at me. Today nobody is laughing; today they only argue with me over when it will happen.”

The entrepreneur, who has businesses in Israel as well as Poland and other European countries, explained that Muslims are increasingly gaining control of the European economy, and that the Europeans are bound to lash out at them. He said that he meets businessmen in Europe who ask him how he thinks the “Muslim problem can be solved.”

“I would give you numbers regarding what is happening with Muslims in Europe,” he said. “They control things that are in people’s pockets. It is much more painful than with the Jews, and for this they killed six million Jews, so for the other things they will kill 60 million too.”

“Don’t get this wrong,” he explained. “This continent knows full well where it is headed. Today there are cities in France with a Muslim majority that do not belong to the French. For those who don’t know, the city of Marseilles, for instance, belongs to the Arabs. The new demon in Europe is the Muslims, and it is being built up just like the Jewish demon was built up at the start of the previous century.”

“This new demon is being built in the way that Europe knows how to build and annihilate something when it is defending itself against it.”

Zisser added that in Europe’s eyes, Israel is an ally vis-à-vis the Muslim threat. That is why Israel need not be concerned about the European criticism of its policies in Jerusalem or elsewhere, he explained. On the contrary, he said, “If Israel knew how to take advantage” of the fact that it is perceived as an ally against the Muslims, “there is no doubt that this could give Israel great status in the big game in the next 50 or 100 years.”

What I get from this article is that Europe is feeling threatened by the Muslim presence, just as they once were by the Jewish presence.  The economy in Europe is in trouble, and just as with the Jews in the last century, Muslims are seen now as having too much control on the economy.  Anti-Muslim feeling is growing, and being actively promoted.  This could very easily lead to another holocaust.

BUT, and this last paragraph containing the big BUT deserves repeating:  In Europe’s eyes, Israel is an ally vis-à-vis the Muslim threat. That is why Israel need not be concerned about the European criticism of its policies in Jerusalem or elsewhere, he explained. On the contrary, he said, “If Israel knew how to take advantage” of the fact that it is perceived as an ally against the Muslims, “there is no doubt that this could give Israel great status in the big game in the next 50 or 100 years.

He seems to be saying that the Jews should ally themselves with the forces that are currently moving towards this new holocaust against the Muslims and in that way improve Israel’s position in the world after Muslims are murdered.  The author of this article is predicting a mass murder of Muslims, and suggesting that it might be a good thing for Israel.

Not one word in this article about how wrong any of this would be, not any concern about the victims of this possible holocaust against Muslims. No mention of NEVER AGAIN for anyone.  Simply a dispassionate prediction that this will probably happen and that Jews should take advantage of the situation.

The article has been picked up by many other Jewish newspapers, including the 5Towns paper in New York   This is the Jewish newspaper that back in 2008 published an article by Lawrence Kulak about which I wrote Jewish Newspaper Article Calls for Murder of Innocent Muslims in which I said:

… A few quotes from Mr. Kulak’s article:

“Moreover, the only way to deal with Islamic terrorists is the same way in which they deal with their victims. Muslims believe in the literal interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of an eye for an eye, and they do not have respect for anything perceived as a lesser standard of justice. They killed our innocents, and unless we kill theirs, they will go on killing ours.  The Torah, however, preaches a doctrine which, if implemented by the West, could finally put an end to all Islamic terror: If somebody is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

“Any and all collateral damage in the form of casualties to friends, relatives, or anyone connected to the lives of these terrorists should be swiftly ignored.”

It is surprising that a religious publication would carry an article calling for the deliberate killing of civilians as a form of collective punishment, especially since such actions are considered a war crime by International law.  It is even more surprising when the author claims as a matter of fact that pre-emptive warfare is taught in the Jewish Torah, and that collective punishment is a “common sense” solution “etched in the Mosaic law.”.

If such an article was published by Muslim extremists it is certain that there would be an uproar and demands that every Muslim organization (and even Muslim individual) condemn such a terrorist mentality.

The response so far to CAIR’s call for repudiation is silence for the most part.  In the blogsphere there are some rumblings, but mostly of the expected sort calling CAIR anti-Semitic for making such a call.

Larry Gordon, the editor of the 5 Towns Jewish Times published a response to CAIR’s request which is more of an attack on CAIR than any sort of apology.  The closest the response comes to an apology is the statement:  “The editorial staff of the Five Towns Jewish Times decries the notion of any support of terrorism, and we fully support the United States government’s War on Terrorism. As an Orthodox Jewish weekly, the 5TJT also rejects the demonization of Muslims, both in this country and abroad. If any such implication of supporting the terrorization or murder of innocent Muslims who do not support terrorists or terrorist activities was made by an article in the 5TJT, it was due simply to a poor choice of words—a slip of the author’s pen, if you will. Read in its entirety, the article is clearly conveying the message that members of a community that supports terrorists and allows them to remain in its midst should not expect to escape retaliation. At the same time, the 5TJT calls upon CAIR to unequivocally denounce all of its past and current support of and for Islamist terrorism, whether that support be direct or remote. We call upon CAIR to denounce Muslim killers who act in the name of Islam, and we call upon CAIR to denounce and call for a halt of the hatred of Jews and non-Muslims that many Muslims proclaim.”

They also published a defense of his original article by Lawrence Kulak:

Dear Editor, after seeing the disingenuous way that CAIR attacked me for writing my article “The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror” published in last week’s paper, I am even more convinced of the validity of everything I wrote. In addition, I am also proud to have exposed the way that CAIR chooses to demonstrate its jihadist philosophy by taking the sentence to which it objected deliberately out of context in a typical attempt to fan the flames of hatred.

I never advocated the wanton killing of innocent Muslims, only that Muslim terror be treated the same as warfare, with similar regard for collateral damage. Because it seems as if this common-sense approach has been cowardly sidestepped by the West and Israel—to their severe detriment—there was the need to explain it in seemingly blunt language. If Muslims or CAIR are offended by the methods of Realpolitik which I advocate, let them complain to Muslim governments, such as Pakistan’s, who routinely violate international law by continuing to harbor terrorists and permitting terrorists to use civilians as human shields.

As far as my use of the concept of “an eye for an eye,” the utility of this device was proven in World War II against the Japanese, a civilization that also utilized suicide missions as a means of warfare. The Japanese government had been using poison gas against the Chinese, but when Roosevelt threatened to do the same to them, they abruptly terminated that practice. Unfortunately, it seems that Muslims today do not yield to pure threats as readily as the Japanese did.

Moreover, the Jewish religion does not advocate the killing of innocent civilians, but apparently Islam does. What about the verse in the Koran which states that when the Muslim messiah comes, the trees will tell Muslims to kill the Jews that are hiding behind them? So much for CAIR’s allegations.

The ADL did not issue a formal statement or press release, but did send a letter to the editor of the 5 Towns Jewish Times which stated:

To the Editor:  We were shocked by Lawrence Kulak’s suggestion that Jews should kill innocent Muslim civilians to counter Islamic terrorism (“The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror,” Dec. 12).

Regardless of one’s views on terrorism, to even entertain the notion of responding in kind is morally reprehensible and appalling.  It is unfair to hold innocent Muslims responsible for the radical views of an extreme minority.  In the Jewish tradition, words have consequences.  In this case, Kulak’s words crossed the line.

Sincerely,
Anti-Defamation League

This is something, but not much for the only response to this article made by any Jewish organization.  The letter is not even signed by any individual at the ADL.

The problem is that CAIR was only the organization that raised the issue – they are not the only Muslims that are distressed -  and not only Muslims find this article reprehensible.  Those objecting to CAIR’s concerns are attacking the messenger, but that has nothing to do with the message, and no reasonable person could find fault with CAIR’s message that ‘Such inflammatory comments have no place in reasoned public discourse’.

The theologian, Martin Marty wrote about this in Sightings:

“The mimetic principle,” most developed by René Girard, today captures the attention of psychologists, literary critics, war-and-peace makers, and experts in many disciplines. It builds on the desires and behavior of humans who see something they and their rivals both want.  As they follow up, the price exacted by both keeps going up.  “Keeping up with the Joneses” is matched by build-ups of negative emotions, strategies and arms.  We see this in much of the conflict, including that related to religion, in the world today.

This is most visible among those who react to terrorists who are rooted in and related to Islamic groups. “They” take innocent lives, so “we” should do the same.”  We have seen that practice in Palestinian/Israeli acts of escalation and vengeance.  The question for some is: Should we make a principle out of the “mimetic principle” when dealing with civilians, innocents, mothers and children who are in the path of conflict?

One of the more explicit counsels for “us” to be indiscriminate in killing those who occupy the soil or live within the states in which Islamist terrorists are active, appeared in Five Towns Jewish Times (December 11).  Reproduction of and reports on it quickly spread, and within a day the Times had taken it off their web-site and blocked it on others.  Google “The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror” and you will quickly find traces of it in its brief prime. We can be glad they took it down, but also can learn from what its author, Lawrence Kulak, wrote in this 20,000-circulation paper issuing from five towns in Nassau County, but aimed at all New York and reaching beyond it.

What is “The Appropriate Response to Islamic Terror?” Kulak uses the definite article as he offers “the solution to international terror”.  (The underlining is mine; the stress is his.)  “The only way to deal with Islamic terrorists is the same way in which they deal with their victims. Muslims believe in the literal interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of an eye for an eye…They killed our innocents, and unless we kill theirs, they will go on killing ours. The Torah, however, preaches a doctrine which…would finally put an end to all Islamic terror: if somebody is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

Kulak criticizes the U. S. presidential response to 9/11 which “labeled Islam a peaceful religion that had been hijacked by radical elements.”  The president thus “all but rejected the possibility of taking drastic action…”  Kulak is unsentimental in his “kill them all” approach: “Any and all collateral damage in the form of casualties to friends, relatives, or anyone connected to the lives of these terrorists should be swiftly ignored.  Public opinion and what is written in the newspapers should also be ignored by nations seeking to avenge the death of its innocent civilians.”

The problem of making a principle of this principle is that the rivals, enemies, counterparts, or counter-belligerents who read this kind of editorial–and read them they do–find occasion to raise the price, engage in more indiscriminate violence, and that, in turn inspires and impels us to raise it still higher and engage in ever more violence, “women and children” be damned–or at least thoughtlessly and painlessly annihilated.  We all know that in all wars, including those we call “just” or “good,” there are “collateral damages” and deaths of innocents.  However, making a principle out of doing so, and especially doing so on religious grounds, only invites more violence.  Then there are no eyes to trade for eyes, teeth to exact for teeth, while hatred and violence triumph.

(This article is not yet available online on Sightings, but can be found athttp://subrationedei.com/?p=859 )

As a participant in the recent Mosque Synagogue “Twinning” I remain hopeful that Muslim and Jewish Americans can come together and act as a bridge to help heal the wounds caused by anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.  To do this both communities will need to speak out against those who are determined to continue to spew hatred and bigotry.

It seems that there are still some individuals in the Jewish community who are more concerned with political expediency than with Judaism.  (Just as there are some in the Muslim community that are more concerned with political expediency than with Islam.)  Another example of this same reasoning was a July 2010 article on David Horowitz’s News Real Blog by Jeanette Pryor titled It’s Time to Put the Coffee Down and Eradicate Islam in the West. This article included the passage “It’s time to join the war, not on “terror” (that oh-so soothing illusion,) but on Islam in the West. Most urgently, we must defend Israel as the frontline in the war against the spread of Islam.”

Read the rest…

It’s official, what we knew all along has now being confirmed in a historic judgement by the European Court of Human Rights.

CIA ‘tortured and sodomised’ terror suspect, European court rules

Richard Norton-Taylor (The Guardian)

CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations.

Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA “rendition team” at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan.

It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture.

“The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rightsunanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment,” said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

He described the judgment as “an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror.” It should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration and US courts, he told the Guardian. For them to continue to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities was “simply unacceptable”, he said.

Jamil Dakwar, of the American Civil Liberties Union, described the ruling as “a huge victory for justice and the rule of law”.

The Strasbourg court said it found Masri’s account of what happened to him “to be established beyond reasonable doubt” and that Macedonia had been “responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extra-judicial ‘rendition’”.

In January 2004, Macedonian police took him to a hotel in Skopje, where he was kept locked in a room for 23 days and questioned in English, despite his limited proficiency in that language, about his alleged ties with terrorist organisations, the court said in its judgment. His requests to contact the German embassy were refused. At one point, when he said he intended to leave, he was threatened with being shot.

“Masri’s treatment at Skopje Airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction,” the court ruled.

It added: “Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court’s view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention].”

In Afghanistan, Masri was incarcerated for more than four months in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell in a brick factory near the capital, Kabul, where he was repeatedly interrogated and was beaten, kicked and threatened. His repeated requests to meet with a representative of the German government were ignored, said the court.

Masri was released in April 2004. He was taken, blindfolded and handcuffed, by plane to Albania and subsequently to Germany, after the CIA admited he was wrongy detained. The Macedonian government, which the court ordered must pay Masri €60,000 (£49,000) in compensation, has denied involvement in kidnapping.

UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, described the ruling as “a key milestone in the long struggle to secure accountability of public officials implicated in human rights violations committed by the Bush administration CIA in its policy of secret detention, rendition and torture”.

Read the rest…

They still try to tell us that White Supremacy has nothing to do with it. (h/t: CriticalDragon):

Murderer Breivik gushes to German ‘Nazi killer’

RACIST mass murderer Anders Breivik has fallen for an alleged female Nazi killer and sent her a letter praising her role in a string of assassinations.

Breivik wrote to accused far-right extremist Beate Zschaepe in Germany to congratulate her terror cell which killed nine immigrant businessmen and a policewoman in a decade-long reign of terror.

Breivik, who slaughtered nearly 80 young people in Norway last year, said she should use her upcoming trial on murder and other charges “to spread right-wing propaganda!”

He also called her a “courageous heroine of national resistance” and addressed the letter to “Dear Sister Beate”.

“Reveal your political motives to the population,” said Breivik.

Details of the correspondence are revealed in this week’s edition of Der Spiegel magazine which went on sale on today in Germany.

Zschaepe was an alleged member of the National Socialist Underground, a death squad which idolised Hitler and wanted to up a “Fourth Reich” in Germany.

The cell was hunted for many years after being suspected of the string of racially-motivated attacks.

However the reign of terror came to an end after Zschaepe’s two male co-conspirators apparently killed themselves after a botched bank job.

Zschaepe then turned herself in and was arrested and charged in connection with her role in the 10 murders.

Since the NSU’s disintegration police have gathered evidence which suggests that Zschaepe was present at most murders and probably carried out several of them.

Breivik wrote a three-sided letter to Zschaepe – gushing with admiration for the NSU’s motive.

And the Norweigian is said to be “spellbound” by the woman dubbed “The Nazi Mare” in Germany.

“You did everything to stop the multiculturalism and the Islamisation of Germany,” he wrote.

But he said that the cell, which was based in the eastern German city of Zwickau, was wrong to target immigrant businessmen.

“You should have gone for political elites instead,” he advised. “But both forms of attack would damage the multicultural experiment.”

Breivik, 32, waxed lyrical about the “mission” he sees himself and Zschaepe involved in, adding: “We are both among the first drops of rain that foretell the huge, cleansing storm about to break across Europe.

“We are martyrs of the conservative revolution and should be extremely proud of our sacrifice and our troubles.”

But his words never reached his jailbird sweetheart; the letter was seized by authorities in Germany and confiscated.

Breivik is serving a minimum 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in the bombings and shootings in Oslo and Utoya that shocked the Scandinavian country.

If Zschaepe is found guilty she faces life behind bars.

Book Review: The Islamophobia Industry

by Nicole (MuslimahMediaWatch)

Nathan Lean’s book The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims is a look at the pernicious ways in which anti-Muslim sentiment is fostered, both in the US and to a smaller extent in Europe.

Although MMW is primarily focused on Muslim women in the media and their issues, I chose to review this book anyway because it lends context to the issues that affect us. In recent months, I have been told that Islamophobia doesn’t exist (and is just a fabrication of the victim mentality Muslims have fed the liberal media) that “a Muslim woman told me not wearing a veil is ok so the veil isn’t ok” (when the truth is much more nuanced than that) and that teh Islamz is inherently responsible for domestic violence by definition (because only Muslim men hit women, of course). I also think that Muslim women are on the front lines when it comes to bearing the brunt of Islamophobia (headscarf wars, anyone), and in that this book, while not looking at women per se, sets the stage for the issues that affect us. In this vein, if I could critique what is otherwise an excellent book, it would have been nice to see women’s issues treated in a more balanced way, given women are affected by Islamophobia in lopsided ways (see: France’s niqab ban).

Much like the work of John Esposito and Edward Said back in the day, in a sea of the Bernard Lewises and Thomas Friedmans of this world, Nathan Lean’s book is a welcome addition to Muslim cultural criticism when the only stuff getting airtime these days seems to be the recent Pamela Gellar New York subway ads.  Lean takes us through the history of fear in America, drawing parallels among the anti-Catholicism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Red Scare of the mid-20th century, and the discourse surrounding Muslims today. As he mentions in the introduction, it is a propos that parts of the evangelical Christian community root their faith narratives precisely in a “religious showdown” with Muslims.

The Islamophobia Industry reads well as a continuum, but it is also an easy read chapter by chapter – I could see how either the entire book or parts of it could be assigned in a classroom context. As a tech blogger based in Europe, the two highlights of Lean’s book for me were Chapter 2 (“A Web of Deception: Fomenting Hate Online”), covering the role of the internet in creating hate; and Chapter 7 (“Across the Pond: The Deadly Effects of Hate in Europe”) which provided an accurate analysis of the situation “over here.”  In Chapter 2, I couldn’t help but chuckle when Pamela Geller’s name showed up on only the second line and set the stage for a takedown on Atlas Shrugsand Jihad Watch (I don’t hyperlink and send traffic  to bigotry, sorry). This chapter also provides an extremely detailed analysis of the Park 51 shenanigans. I enjoyed Chapter 7 because one of my ongoing complaints about America-based activists is that some people, while well-intentioned, fail to realize that Islamophobia isn’t the same game “over here,” something that Lean catches onto right away in the way he writes the chapter. This chapter starts out with a play-by-play of Anders Breivik’s acts of violence (and some ironic giggle-worthy quotes about how his gushed over Robert Spencer). Lean goes over some of the context in France, Belgium and Switzerland, and notes that the extreme right, where necessary, is “creating fears about Islam and Muslims rather than exploiting existing ones,” as shown by campaigns by people like Geert Wilders, or the anti-Minaret vote in Switzerland.

Read the rest…

Wilders divisiveness and hate promotion has hurt the image of the Netherlands.

Alliance with Wilders did hurt Netherlands’ reputation

The previous coalition government, which involved Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV in a supporting role, did have an image problem abroad, civil service documents supplied to website nu.nl show.

Ministers repeatedly said foreign governments understood the relationship between the minority coalition and Wilders and that he was not officially part of government.

However, official papers show “time after time” that diplomats wanted proper instructions on “how to avoid reputation damage as much as possible” – for example, when Wilders published a new book. This often did not work, the documents state.

Rob de Wijk, director of research institute HCCS and an expert on international relations, told the website this should not be a surprise. “Wilders’ position was impossible to explain abroad,” he said.

The problems have not all been solved now Wilders is no longer part of the alliance. “He was a symbol of the way the Netherlands had turned in on itself.”

Dutch News, 4 November 2012