BOWING TO THE ISLAMISTS
By Paul Belien

Washington Times, DC
Oct 24 2007

Last Thursday, a group of 80 people from 15 European countries, plus
Israel, Canada and the United States, convened in a conference room
on the seventh floor of the European Parliament building in Brussels
for a "counterjihad" meeting.

They listened to speakers such as the Egyptian-born scholar Bat Ye’or,
author of the book "Eurabia," who explained how the European Union
(EU) has become a vehicle for the Islamization of Europe and how
the EU has promoted "a massive Muslim immigration… hoping that the
Euro-Arab symbiosis through economic development, soft diplomacy and
multiculturalism would guarantee [Europe] peace, markets and oil."

The citizens of Europe are extremely worried by this Islamization
process, but their political leaders impose it on them against
their wish. Europe is in worse shape than America because European
democracies lack two pillars of freedom that America still has
– solidly enshrined in the first and second amendments of its
Constitution. In many European countries, freedom of speech no longer
exists. It has been restricted by laws intended to curb so-called
"hate speech." These laws forbid people to express their worries
about massive immigration and about the Islamization of their nations.

Europe, with few exceptions, such as Switzerland, is also unfamiliar
with the second pillar of free societies: the right of the citizens
to keep and bear arms. In countries such as Belgium even pepper spray
is an illegal weapon. The result is that the law-abiding citizens
are at the mercy of criminals, many of them of foreign extraction.

While the delegates at the counterjihad meeting, who had been invited
to the European Parliament by one of Europe’s so-called far-right
parties, discussed strategies to counter the spread of Islamism, EU
bureaucrats convened in a meeting room two floors below. On the fifth
floor of the parliament building, they discussed the "harmonization"
of self-defense legislation in the 27 EU member states. This means
that, if the EU gets its way, the citizens of all member states will
soon be submitted to Belgium’s strict rules and that pepper sprays
will be banned everywhere.

Meanwhile, as became clear from the country reports given at the
counterjihad meeting, Europe’s no-go zones are multiplying. These are
areas where the police no longer dare to venture and where Islamists
hold sway. Every night since the beginning of last week, immigrant
youths have been torching cars and clashing with police in Amsterdam’s
Slotervaart district. The incidents started Oct. 14 when a policewoman
shot dead a 22-year old ethnic Moroccan while he was stabbing her and
a colleague with a knife. Senior police officers compare the current
situation in Amsterdam to the 2005 Ramadan riots in Paris. Media
outside the Netherlands, however, hardly mention the riots, which
aim to drive the police from Slotervaart and turn the neighborhood
into a new no-go area – yet another pocket of Eurabia on Europe’s soil.

Similar events are currently taking place in Brussels, the capital of
neighboring Belgium and of the EU. Last Sunday, demonstrating Turkish
youths ransacked an Armenian pub in the Sint-Joost-ten-Node borough.

According to the pub owner, police were present at the scene but
did not interfere while his pub was being demolished. The Armenian
owner, who by Belgian law is not allowed to possess pepper spray,
had to flee for his life. The situation in Brussels remains tense.

Fortunately, there is some good news as well. Last Sunday, the Swiss
People’s Party (SVP) won 29 percent of the votes and 62 of the 200
seats in Switzerland’s federal parliament, the National Council. This
is the largest number of seats that any Swiss party has ever won
since 1919.

During its campaign the SVP used a controversial poster, showing three
white sheep standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep kicked
a black sheep off the flag. The caption read: "Bringing safety." The
SVP poster wanted to emphasize that foreigners commit four times as
many crimes as the Swiss do and that this situation will no longer
be tolerated. Everyone knows which segment of the foreign population
the term "black sheep" refers to.

Even law-abiding foreigners living in Switzerland realize what the
SVP’s true message is: Get rid of those aliens who perpetrate crimes.

Parties in the rest of Europe would be persecuted for using similar
posters because people are not allowed to contemplate the issue, but
the Swiss are able to raise their voices. It is no coincidence that
the freedom-loving Alpine republic consistently refuses to join the EU.

Paul Belien is editor of the Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow
of the Hudson Institute.