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| Europe |
| A civil war on terrorism |
| 2004-11-25 |
| How much of a threat does Islamic radicalism pose to western Europe? GEERT WILDERS should be feeling good. This week the Dutch MP launched a new political party—demanding a halt to non-western immigration to the Netherlands for five years and a tougher line against Islamic radicalism. Some national opinion polls already put his party in second place. But Mr Wilders admits he is not sleeping well. His life has been threatened by the Islamic radicals he excoriates and it is no longer safe for him to live at home. Instead he moves between safe houses, and can travel only in an armoured car, surrounded by bodyguards. "It's like being trapped in a B-movie," he says. The Dutch security services are taking no chances because three weeks ago Theo Van Gogh, a prominent Dutch film-maker who had made a movie attacking Islam's attitude to women, was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam. And this was not any old street killing. Mr Van Gogh was dragged from his bike, shot six times and his head was nearly sliced off by an Islamic radical, who then impaled a five-page letter attacking the enemies of Islam on the chest of his dying victim. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch politician of Somali Muslim origin who was repeatedly threatened in the letter, is also in hiding and, unlike Mr Wilders, has not re-appeared in parliament. Other prominent politicians and even some journalists now have permanent armed protection. "You're nobody as a columnist unless you have an armed guard," jokes one eminent Amsterdamer. The current atmosphere in the Netherlands will provoke some knowing nods on the other side of the Atlantic. For some months, leading American intellectuals have been pointing to what they see as the growing threat to western Europe from militant Islam. At a recent seminar at the Brookings Institution, Francis Fukuyama argued that "Europeans are threatened internally by radical Islam in a much more severe way than Americans are in terms of their external threat." According to Mr Fukuyama, Europeans have hitherto been deterred from debating the threat by a "stifling political correctness". But events like the Van Gogh murder are changing the debate. It is increasingly common for mainstream European politicians to call for much tougher measures against Islamic radicals and a more aggressive insistence on western liberal values. These demands have been heard with increasing force in all the west European states with significant Muslim populations—including France, Germany, Britain and Belgium—but above all in the Netherlands. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 The solution Mr Wilders makes for dealing with the problem is the proper one. If they were white catholics these same naysayers would have no problem. Opening Imigration to eastern europe for protestants or catholics would solve part of the problem as well. Massive deportations are comming or western europe will perish. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-11-25 10:14:27 PM |