-1-

A Culture Stamped by the Bible

The Islam against Christianity
- how do we recognise ourselves? -

The City of God?

(Koewait City, photo: Khalid Almasoud)

In the period that people in general saw themselves as Christian, or as exponents of what might be called Christian, a theological movement was born that defined our civilisation in terms of Gods Kingdom on earth, whereby in the familiar two-part division made by St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 400 AD) a distinction was made between the city of God and the city of Man. These two are continually opposed to one another. Many interpretations of this theme have seen the light of day. But towards the end of the 19th century a shift took place and the fundamentals of our civilisation were seen rather as a preoccupation with the earthly, whereby people strove for the kingdom of justice, i.e. the salvific socialist economy, to be realised here and now, to bring to pass here a kingdom of righteousness and to rescue from the evil one. (1) In this approach we see that the discord between the two allegorical cities has disappeared, as also the sombre picture of a human potential which is left to its own devices. At present, to speak of the evil one is considered woolly thinking, while in the Christian environment of the past it had great appeal. Now that dechristianisation has sunk deep roots and we Christians are being challenged by a culture inimical to our beliefs, we are starting to think about the essence of what it means to be a Christian. It does have its positive side! We are therefore right to ask ourselves about the extent to which our culture remains Christian and what we should understand by this.

1 The golden rule

There is nothing new under the sun. There was a similar situation in the time of Jesus. At that time there was a strong tendency towards Hellenisation: adapting oneself to the dominant Greek culture. It had taken shape under Antiochus Epiphanes, who came to the throne in 175 BC. His only joy seemed to consist of getting rid of the Jewish-Palestinian culture. His first efforts were mild. And people were prepared to listen, since it is written: In his time a generation was growing up in Israel that cared nothing for the laws of Moses. Antiochus was able to persuade many of his plan to form coalitions with neighbouring countries. For they said since separating from them we have been assailed by all kinds of disasters. Convinced that this was the correct opinion, some

-2-

Jews joined with the king. He gave them full permission to introduce the Greek way of life. Thus they established an athletics school, based on the Greek model, at the foot of the Temple Mount and they had their foreskins restored (since sport was practised naked) and they gave way to the demands of the nations and behaved in concert with evil. (I Macc. 1:11-16) (2) The trend thus set in motion drew savage reactions from the Jews faithful to their religious traditions, which partly explains the legalism of later times. The Book of Jubilees, written in the late second century BC, forms one long condemnation of the mingling of Jewishness with paganism. This document can lead us to conclude that many no longer found it necessary to have their sons circumcised. It is in such circumstances that Hillel the Elder, one of the greatest rabbis that Israel has ever known, did his teaching in the first century BC. He too had to wrestle with the problem of how to bring a Hellenised population to realise the necessity of retaining their Jewish faith. He was unable to reach back to the sacred books of Moses since the ordinary people were no longer interested and were unfamiliar with them. And thus he went looking for a definition of the Jewish belief not just accessible to all but also distinctive from that of the surrounding peoples. And though many Jewish customs were no longer practised by a large proportion of the population, a core had nonetheless been preserved in the personal domain. And so he performed a stroke of genius: he formulated what has become known as the golden rule: Do unto others as you would be done by, to which he added: This is the entire law and commandments. The rest is merely explanation. Go and learn from the oral and written law.

2 Our essential nature

Do you recognise the parallels? We are now beleaguered by the same problems as those confronting Hillel. What is there left of the Dutch identity? Some popular moralists, unworthy of mention by name, allege that the Dutch do not have an identity of their own. What they mean is: we are not allowed to have one. The Queens official birthday is allowed indeed it is a very specifically cultural feast but does something like that constitute the real core of our identity as a people? The popular moralists would have us be absorbed in the progress of the peoples. Our Christian belief is said to be an opinion that is worth about just as much as any religious conviction. Pope Pius X (1903-14), who fought against Modernism, stated: (3) The primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement. () Whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Hillel might just as well have quoted Leviticus 19:17-18, the central commandment: You shall not hate your brother in your heart but you shall love your neighbour as yourself, but in the secular climate of the time this was a bridge too far. You may counter with: the golden rule is not distinctive because we can find the same sort of thing in Confucianism and Buddhism, although Confucianism was not known in the time of the Roman Empire, while Buddhism was. There was, for instance, a Buddhist monastery in Alexandria. And indeed, Confucianism is a

-3-

system that brings out the good in people and strives towards social harmony. As also Buddhism, that strives via a golden middle way and the following of the noble eightfold path to find a useful balance between good and evil desires. Both beliefs have sayings that would not be out of place in the Jewish or Christian religions, although there are unbridgeable contradictions. (4) It is therefore important to add to the golden rule, as Hillel did: Go and study the Bible. Hence it was mainly an invitation to become a serious Jew. This we see in the parable of the man who approached Hillel saying: I will convert if you can explain Judaism to me in the brief time I can stand on one leg. Whereupon Hillel told him the golden rule. And the parable ends with: He started to study and became a wise Jew. (5)
Anti-Semitism everywhere After the drama in 1939 of the ship Saint Louis with Jewish fugitives on board, the Prime Minister of Canada, W. L. Mackenzie King, adopted the policy of none is too many regarding the immigration of European Jewry seeking refuge from the Nazi regime. The principle was in accordance with the widespread opposition at the time to immigration of any kind. This is just an example of a long list of anti-Semitic deeds that reached beyond the borders of the German Reich.
See None is too many, made available by the Jewish Virtual Library.

There may well be philosophies that agree with the golden rule and there may well be peoples, especially the smaller ones, who have been able to practise the law of love - because God will never disappoint the serious seeker but in general we can say that man is like a wolf towards his fellow-man (homo homini lupus est). This fits in with James 4:14: For what is your life? It is even a whisp of smoke that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. The translation is mostly weakened by the use of a term such as vapour or sigh. Acts 2:19 translates the same word (atmis) as vapour or smoke, so my translation is quite appropriate. In studying history a depressing image is created if one fails to rise above the shallow prattle of many history books. And as far as primitive peoples are concerned the smaller history there is an image that is none too inspiring, as indicated in detail in The Golden Bough by James Frazer, the father of anthropology. We have a tendency to regard the cruelties of the Nazi regime as an absurd explosion, an aberration on the part of humanity that we will have to witness never again provided we keep on commemorating. But Id like to point out that there is a fixed pattern in all of this. Commemorations are good, but their preventive powers are limited, because mens hearts remain the same. Just as the whole world bears the guilt for the sufferings of Jesus, so the whole world bears the guilt for the Jewish Holocaust not that I would wish to minimise the German guilt; but he that is without sin, let him throw the first stone. The era of Hillel, and the era of Christ, was an era of brutish violence and great immorality. But it was in no way worse than the present times. We only have to think of institutionalised abortion and modern warfare, where morality has become a rare word. The merciless nature of the Roman Empire is recorded and easy to see, for the Romans were still children as far as hypocrisy is concerned. But we have learned how to build it up to a thus far unknown height of refinement, something the Devil himself is jealous

-4-

of. Christs suffering has never stopped. He is still persecuted and loaded with contempt. His Passion seems never-ending.

3 The way of the leper

Christ turns out to be the leper, sitting at the Rome Gate. A well-known figure from Jewish tradition: The Rabbi asks: Where then can I find the Messiah? And Elijah replies: The Messiah is to be found at the Rome Gate. Then the Rabbi asks: How do I recognise Him? Elijah informs him that the Messiah, always dwelling with the miserable ones, is to be found in the midst of the lepers and the sick; as the man of sorrows He is in the midst of them burdened with sorrow. (Bab. Sanh. 98a)

Wailing wall: a hand blown off by a trick mine, disguised as a childs toy

The leper is also an image of Israel. The place of suffering has moved, first from Egypt to Palestine and then to Rome, to the Europe of sorrows waiting at the gate is now the fate of the Jewish people. The way of the leper can always be recognised in that his suffering is exceptionally great. Rome stands for the kingdom of Esau. Jacobs brother Esau was treacherously excluded from his fathers blessings, causing him and his descendants to be consumed with jealousy and hatred. He is the natural enemy of Jacob, named Israel. Christendom is often compared to Esau in the Jewish tradition. No wonder, when we consider that the Christians have often conducted themselves in an extremely inimical manner towards the Jews. The ghettos were a papal invention. In the virulent papal bull Cum nimis absurdum of 14th July 1555 Pope Paul IV ordered that the Jews be separated off into ghettos, which subsequently came into being all over Europe. (6) According to article 9 they were only permitted to be rag-pickers. His everlasting edict was revoked in 1870. To quote Esther Dorflinger (7): Seldom has the Jewish people found love from the Christian side. In fact most Jews associate the Holocaust with Christendom. Thus it is hardly surprising that the image of Esau has also become the image of Christendom and it is hardly surprising too that they have not recognized the Crucified in his glorious condition. The Messiah has been made by Christians unrecognizable for

-5-

them, for He was disguised in language (the New Testament is in Greek), in their theology and their concept of leading a virtuous life.

4 The patriarchal tradition and not a multicultural melting pot

In the decadent world in which Hillel lived the golden rule was exceptional. He wished to say: Look, you think that the golden rule is obvious. That is the patriarchal tradition which, without your realising it, has been kept by you. But it is by no means obvious! The peoples around us have other opinions. This is the core of Jewish belief, that which makes us different. Do you want to deny that and adapt to the heathen practices? Go ahead! But know this: that you are thereby doing violence to what is your deepest conviction.
A nation unaware of its ethical, spiritual and religious history commits a crime against its culture, against this mixture of history, of patrimony, of art and of popular traditions, which are of such deep influence on our way of life and of thought. Pulling up the roots means losing the significance, weakening the cement that binds the national identity, drying out even further the social relationships that so need the symbols of memory. Taken from the speech given by the President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the Lateran Palace in Rome on 20th Dec. 2007 (lOsservatore Romano Nr. 52 25 Dec. 2007).

Jesus, who according to some rabbis must have been a disciple of the school of Hillel, defines the golden rule in the opposite direction: Hillel in the negative and Jesus in the positive manner. Jesus said (Mtt. 7:12): Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. This agrees in essence with the central commandment to love thy neighbour as thyself, but in a more accessible formulation. Ahad Haam (1856-1927), in his treatment of Judaism and Christendom stated that here Christ certainly pointed out a superior way but one that reached too high since it was beyond the power of man and that it therefore could not lead to improving society. (8) I disagree with this entirely, since an ideal the word says it all can motivate even if it requires too much. (9) In the same way the Old Testament law has motivated people through thousands of years of history. Does not the Bible say that all but all have sinned? And yet the Jews strive to follow the biblical precepts. Nobody could follow the ideal of the central commandment without fail and yet it leavened society, wherever it was taken seriously. In short, it makes no sense to place Jesus saying against that of Hillel. They are both pure Jewish and not coincidentally also pure Christian expressions as variants on the same theme. It is this same theme that constitutes the basis of our Dutch culture, even though it has been fiercely whittled away since the French Revolution. (10) You do not need to be a pious bigot or a Christian faithful to the Bible to agree wholeheartedly with What you do not wish to happen to you, do not do to others and with Do unto others as you would be done by. Our Prime Minister goes on endlessly about RESPECT, but forgets that respect has to be earned. That is yet another fundamental in our Dutch culture. Not everything is respectable! Without having to fall back on the Bible, our entire society can be built around these rules. Those are the true values from which the current cabinet can take an example! (11) The rules are obvious to the ordinary citizen. They have become part of himself. He has a culture that bears a stamp and he does not even realise that other peoples and religions might have different thoughts on the matter. If you are looking for the Dutch culture, it is there that you will find it. The ordinary man and woman find it difficult to imagine that a phenomenon such as Islam, that the European politicians are trying to force down our throats, is miles away from that ideal.

-6-

That multicultural rubbish must now stop once and for all. During his most recent visit to Germany Prime Minister Erdogan had the gall to address a mass meeting of no fewer than 20,000 Turks saying that assimilation is a crime against humanity (great applause), a statement he repeated before the parliament in Ankara. (12) He would seem to have understood it better than we have that multicultural rubbish. His formulation is again one of the symptoms of the inherent aggression shown by Islam. Incidentally, it is we ourselves who have created the multicultural chaos. During its programme entitled The Recruiters (of Al Qaeda), the Canadian Broadcasting Company interviewed Abu Qatada in March 2004. This individual preached in the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque and is currently (April 2008) in the Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire for incitation to terrorist activities. He is on the point (at the beginning of 2009) of being deported to Jordan. Because he was born in Bethlehem, he comes under Jordanian law. I would like to quote from the interview because it agrees with my own insights, conclusions I had arrived at before reading the interview.

CBC: Should we (as Muslims) leave the West? Should we migrate to other countries? Qatada: This is not going to be an Islamic decision. This is a Western decision. As long as the Western society has the door open for people to come, people will go. The West can stop people from coming. They can also deport Muslims and ask them to leave. The decision is not an Islamic one. Muslims are weak (very neatly put, Mr. Qatada!) and it is very difficult for them to take such decisions. The presence of Muslims in the Western societies is not subject to Muslims, but subject to a decision of the West.

5 The Islamic interpretation of the other

The essence of the central commandment lies in the meaning accorded to the other or neighbour. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luc. 10:25-37) Jesus shows that everyone nobody excluded is the other, a somewhat unusual standpoint, even for the Jews of His time, and yet it is Jewish and Christian through and through. The same theme of Love thy neighbour as thyself is taken up again by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Mtt. 5:43-48): You have heard that it was said: You shall love you neighbour and hate your enemy. (The part about hating your enemy is not in the Bible but in the contemporary Jewish literature, including that of Qumran). But, says Jesus, I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven: for He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. () Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. Within Islam, that has taken a great deal from Judaism, but for its own side, the saying Love thy neighbour as thyself also occurs. But Islam teaches time and again that the neighbour is exclusively a fellow-Muslim. Within Islam the non-Muslim is a lesser breed, an Untermensch. When Erdogan spoke of a crime against humanity, he might just as well have said a crime against Islam. You see: the same words but with a different significance. The Jews, called the

-7-

people of the book in the Koran, come off pretty well when compared to other non-Muslims and that is not meant sarcastically. The Indians, treated far worse in the course of history, have something to say on the matter! The Jews are monkeys, it is constantly repeated. Christians too are treated relatively mildly. But despite that, says Mohammed, they are pigs, an unclean animal. Mohammed said: The nature of humans at birth is Allahs choice. Everyone is born a Muslim. A child is made a Jew or a Christian by his parents, just as an animal creates an offspring that looks just like itself. Is any defect apparent? (CSPI Trilogy, V p. 153) When a Muslim discusses something with a kafir a non-Muslim he may not be true friend. Muslims can be very engaging in their attitude to non-Muslims, but should the circumstances give reason, they can become hateful, as if the friendship had never existed. There are blatant examples of this. That is the way they are brought up. And thus there is never a mutually open attitude whereby a point of common agreement can be reached. It is separate from its host-culture and it has always been so. It has been the same throughout the fourteen hundred years of Islamic practice: when Islam penetrates a culture it sets itself against that culture, at first underground and later out in the open. The Paris riots of 2005 are known to the French Muslims as the Ramadan Offensive, in memory of Mohammeds first armed offensive during Ramadan. The passive resistance seems to have come to an end.

6 The New Testament, a continuation of the Old

Time after time, until it gets sickening yes, ad nauseam kafirs are cursed in Islams sacred writings, simply because they are non-Muslims. According to their ideology a kafir can be enslaved, raped, mocked, punished, beheaded, confused, plotted against, terrorised, destroyed, deceived, cut down, annihilated, stolen from, killed, crucified, made war on, and humiliated. (CSPI-Trilogy, V pp. 2-3) Incitement to violence and hatred is consistent throughout their holy books! To mention a few instances from the Koran, which by no way are exceptional (the Sira and Hadith are full of it), I present several quotes: Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: I will terrorize the disbelievers (kafirs). Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes. () Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, torture them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war. () Allah made the Jews leave their homes by terrorizing them so that you killed some and made many captive. And He made you inherit their lands, their homes, and their wealth. He gave you a country you had not traversed before. (Koran 8:12, 9:5, 33:26) The Koran is filled with violent threats, according to its precept (Sura 20:113): Thus we have revealed the Koran to be read in Arabic and have displayed therein threats. The unrelenting invective throughout the whole book is a powerful means of leaving a frightening impression on the mind of an ongoing rage against the unbelievers. It is sufficient to read Surah 2, called The Cow, to get an idea of the violent nature of the Koran. It contains 38 curses against the unbelievers in sickening style: Do not bother to warn the kafirs. Allah has blinded them. Theirs will be an awful doom. (2:6) Allah has sickened their hearts. A painful doom is theirs because they lie. (2:10) Allah mocks the kafirs, leaving them to wander blindly. (2:15) A fire has been prepared for the disbelievers, whose fuel is men and stones. (2:22) Disbelievers (Christians, Jews and any other faith) will be burned with fire. (2:37, 84) Those (the Jews and Christians) who changed the Scripture, on those evil-doers wrath from heaven for their evil-doing. (2:56) Allah stamped wretchedness upon them (the Jews) because they killed the prophets

-8-

and disbelieved Allah's revelations. (2:58) Allah turned the Sabbath-breaking Jews into apes. (2:61) If you believe in only part of the Koran, you will suffer in this life and go to hell in the next. (2:79) Allah has cursed them for their unbelief. (2:82) The curse of Allah is on kafirs. (2:83) They (the Jews) are the greediest of all humankind. They would like to live a thousand years. But they are going to hell. (2:90) Allah is truly an enemy to the kafirs. Only evil people are kafirs. (2:92-93) For kafirs is a painful doom. (2:98) For kafirs: ignominy in this world, an awful doom in the next. (2:6, 108) And thou wilt not be asked about the owners of hell-fire. (Those are the non-muslims.) (2:113) Kafirs are losers. (2:115) Allah will leave the kafirs alone for a while, but then he will compel them to the doom of Fire. (2:120) Those who reject the proofs, are accursed of Allah. (2:154) Those who die disbelieving, are cursed by Allah, angels, and men. The doom of the kafirs will not be lightened. (2:156-57) Allah allots severe punishment! (2:160) They will not emerge from the Fire. (2:162) Kafirs are deaf, dumb, and blind. (2:166) Those who hide the Koran will have their bellies eaten with fire. Theirs will be a painful doom. How constant are they in their striving to reach the Fire! (2:169-70) Fight in the way of Allah. (2:186, 245) Kill them (who do not accept the Islam) wherever you find them. Such is the reward of kafirs. (2:187) Wage ware against them until religion is for Allah. (2:189) Allah ordains war, and all Muslims must be willing to fight, whether they like it or not. (2:212) Those who die in disbelief will burn forever in the Fire. (2:214) Those who marry kafirs will burn in the Fire. (2:220-21) The kafirs, they are the wrong-doers. (2:255) Kafirs worship Satan. They will burn forever in the Fire. (2:259) Give us victory (in battle) over the disbelieving folk! (2:286) See also The Kafir in Islamic Doctrine by Bill Warner from the Center for the Study of Political Islam, taken from: Sharia Law for the Non-Muslim. The Koran is not only cruel against the so-called unbelievers, but the Muslims are also cruel amongst themselves. The law or retaliation is in full force: Believers must retaliate. The transgressors will have a painful doom. Retaliation is prescribed in the matter of the murdered: the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female. And for him who is forgiven somewhat by his (injured) brother, prosecution according to usage and payment according to the means at his disposal. This is an alleviation and a mercy from your Lord. He who transgresseth after this again will have a painful doom. There is life for you in retaliation. (2:173-5) There is only one possible conclusion: todays terrorists have not corrupted their religion. Their religion has corrupted them. The Koran hammers away at the fact that a Muslim can never be friends with a kafir. The kafirs they are you and I. Whatever you say or do: we remain kafirs and thus we are hated. Nowhere in the Bible is it said that we must hate our fellow-men. The suggestion that the Old Testament is no better than the Koran when it comes to bloodthirstiness does not hold water. If all the hateful texts against kafirs were scrapped from Islams holy books the Koran, Hadith and Sira less than half would be left (only 39% of the Koran), the texts inimical to women being disregarded! (13)

In my opinion, talking is not a solution, reacts the Dutch Arab expert Hans Jansen. It is of the greatest importance that we should remain vigilant and not listen to that harping on about Islam being a peace-loving religion. It is not true.
(12th April 2008 in the Veluwehal in Barneveld [NL] in front of the Dutch Christian Youth)

Sura 40:35 states: They (the kafirs) who reject without authority Allahs signs (the Koran verses) that they have heard, are hated above all by Allah and the believers (Muslims). But the God we have come to know through the Jews does not hate the creation of His hands, and

-9-

certainly not in the way that men hate. If God hates a human, then that is the case only with Esau (Mal. 1:2). The translation could also be loathes or does not love. Thus we read in Prov. 13:24: He who spares the rod, does not love his child. In so far as I have been able to check, God hates or abhors groups of people in only two cases (Hos. 9:15 and Ps. 5:6) and only because of what they do and not because of what they are. Note well: the Hebrew hate, used here, has an emotional charge different from the meaning of the word as we use it and can also mean to love less or to rate as lower, to treat as unloved, as in: Then God saw that Lea was unloved. (Gen. 29:31). And even if a distinction is to be made between the Old

Two kinds of hate The hate here in question agrees, according to the New Strongs Concordance (1995), with number 8130 (shen, nun, alef). For the wholehearted form of hate (hatred), from which God distances Himself, term 8135 is used (shen, nun, alef, h), as occurs in Psalm 25:19. The addition to a Hebrew word of the h (comparable to our h) is meaningful. This elongated form is also a poetic expression, called the atid moarakh, and expresses an intense inner movement. It changes a neutral reality in a subjective feeling. To name an example: the first word in the Hebrew lexicon: ab (aleph, beth) means father. By adding a h to the aleph we get ahab, which means affection, sexually or otherwise. By adding a second h to the beth, we get a very strong motherly kind of love, even outrageous, in the menaing of God is Love (1 John 4:8), an expression not found as such in the Old Testament. Both forms appear in Jeremiah 31:3: The Lord has loved (ahab) Israel with an everlasting love (ahawah alef, h, beth, h). 31:9-10: I am a Father (ab) to Israel and will gather him, prophecy that has come to its fulfillment in our days.

and New Testaments, it remains relative. Jesus said: To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. (Luc. 6:29) In those days it was a brushing against the face of ones opponent with the backside of ones hand, as a sign of contempt. Jesus certainly did not say: If they rape your child, then offer your second child. He came into this world to suffer and His death on the Cross was the aim of His existence. For that reason, Peter was told not to take up his sword when the High Priests henchmen took Jesus prisoner. A specific aim, a specific circumstance that requires a specific set-up. In the case of the conquest of the Promised Land there was also a specific circumstance. It occurred because of the depravity of its inhabitants. In Wisdom 12, indeed, speaking of the Canaanites and Amalekites, we read the following: Those old inhabitants of your holy land whom You hated for doing most odious works of witchcrafts and wicked sacrifices: those merciless murderers of children, and devourers of mans flesh, and the feasts of blood, with their priests out of the midst of their idolatrous crew, and the parents that killed with their own hands souls destitute of help, that the land, which You esteem above all other, might receive a worthy colony of Gods children. (See Bible Study on the Amelekites by the Pioneer Tract Society.)

What does it matter if the religion reforms or not? It is the politics that produce fear.
From An Ethical Basis for War, part 5, by Bill Warner - May 6, 2008.

Muslims do not recognise any conversion or shaking off of their old nature, but they may retain their old nature and merely have to change into the clothes of Mohammed.
From The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, by Bernard Lewis - 2004. At 91 years of age, Bernard Lewis is the doyen of Middle Eastern Studies in the USA. He is considered one of the Wests foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture. (this was written in 2007)

- 10 -

A remarkable parallel can be drawn with the conquest of Mexico in the early 16th century. A fascinating story. The horrors perpetrated under the Mayans are shown in Mel Gibsons famous film Apocalypso, the film ending with the landing of the Spanish conquistador Hernn Corts. William Hickling Prescott, one of Americas great historians, has written the classic work on Corts, published in 1843, called History of the Conquest of Mexico, a fantastic book. He says: With the right of conquest, thus conferred, came also the obligation, on which it may be said to have been founded, to retrieve the nations sitting in darkness from eternal perdition. () however much it may have been debased, () it was still active in the mind of the Christian conqueror. (Thus, Corts told Montezuma:) then we shall be obliged to take the temple by force and to roll down the images of the false deities in the face of the city. (And he added:) We fear not for our lives, for, though our numbers are few, the arm of the true God is over us. (Prescott also writes:) and yet, taken as a whole, the invasion, up to the capture of the capital, was conducted on principles less revolting to humanity than most, perhaps than any, of the other conquests of the Castilian crown in the New World. (See also the article The Conquest of Mexico)

7 No excuses, Messrs. Politicians!

Islam can only be understood according to the method used by the Muslims themselves. The Koran is no use for this since it is completely inadequate if one wishes to obtain a correct picture of Islam. In fact it contains no more than 20% of the textual basis on which one can determine the Islamic ideology. The addition of the Hadith and the Sira makes an indissoluble whole, also known as the Trilogy. (14) The Islamic way of life is set out in the minutest detail, even down to how one should go to the toilet, in a thought process strange to our Western logic. (15) Islam devours the believers entire life, from cradle to grave. There is no division between the public domain and private life, between politics and religion. But a study of the Koran alone can lead to illuminating insights. It is often said that the Koran is based on the ancient Sinaitic law. But a close analysis, such as that made by Laurent Lagartempe, brings to light the fact that of the 400 verses making reference to the Mosaic law not a single one refers to the heart of the matter, that of the divine law. They are mentioned without consequences for the practice in life. From this we have to conclude that the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) is not really part of Islamic ethics. The Koranic basis of religion is very simple: it consists of the Five Pillars of religious practice, such as fasting during Ramadan. And there are the Five Pillars of belief in, such as belief in the existence of angels. Very little is told of Allah, since he is very fickle and beyond our ken. As they are accustomed to say: beyond the beyond (waral wara). The ten pillars do not reveal the core of the matter, since Islam is more than a religion. It is ideology and religion, with the emphasis on the word ideology. Since Muslims do not explain their system to outsiders are not permitted to and because their fundamental documents, written in Arabic, are very extensive, it was an impossible task for outsiders to learn the true motives of Islam. A first serious attempt was made by Sir William Muir (1819-1905), but it was Professor Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) who, as the first outsider, discovered the true essence of Islam. After obtaining his doctorate in theology at the University of Leiden, he became a Muslim in

- 11 -

order to get to know the religion from the inside. In 1885 he was the first white West-European to make the Hadj pilgrimage. This was no simple task since it involved him in learning by heart many prayer formulas. Later he once again officially became a Christian. In this way he acquired a deep insight into Islam. He was adviser to the Dutch government in matters pertaining to colonial affairs and warned the German government of the Turkish-Armenian genocide if they should encourage Turkey to proclaim a Jihad. Germanys complicity in this horror, with the mediation of General von Staab, is incontestable. (16) It should come as no surprise that Snouck can count on little sympathy in the present political climate. Unfortunately the work of Snouck and his successors has long remained limited to academic circles. (17) It is only in the last few years that the wider public has been able to learn in a simple way what Islam really signifies. This is particularly thanks to Muslims who have turned to the West, people who have learnt to know the movement from the inside, including Patrick Sookhdeo (Barnabas Fund), a convert to Christianity. In this field there are three useful organisations: CSPI Publishing, the MEMRI and the Political Islam. So, ladies and gentlemen in politics, there is no excuse for naivety!

The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy Jacob Talmon explains in his 1952 classic The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, that the totalitarian democratic model was first envisioned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the philosophical hero of the French Revolution. Rousseau believed that a group of enlightened leaders could push a society towards perfection by essentially coercing the people to accept their view of right and wrong. Talmon drew a direct line between Rousseau and the totalitarian movements of the 20th century Nazism, fascism and communism. And if former Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende (2002-2010) would have had his way, the Christian Democratic party (the CDA) would have been totalitarian too, to be precise totalitarian democratic.

8 No Islam without Jihad

The Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) has done some statistical research. According to the Centers analysis, only 17% of the Trilogy deals with the words of Allah. The remaining 83% refers to the words and deeds of Mohammed. Of all of the references to hell in the Trilogy, 6% are for moral failings, while 94% are for the transgression of disagreeing with Mohammed. Statistical analysis of the Trilogy revealed that 97% of references to jihad relate to war and a mere 3% to the concept of inner struggle. I quote from the postscript of part V of The Islamic Trilogy (CSPI, pp. 172-73), that underlines the statement made by the wellknown French Islamologist Anne-Marie Delcambre that political Islam hides like a chick within the egg of Islam. She says: Moderate Muslims do exist; they are all those who dont really care about the Islam. In other words, the moderate Muslims are those who concern themselves only with the ten religious pillars and nothing more. Now the quotation: Those who argue that the real Islam is moderate or that the real Islam is fundamentalist are like those who would say that a rainbow is red or green. A rainbow is not red, nor green. No, a rainbow is all colors. Islam is peaceful and violent. You can no

- 12 -

more remove the aggression than you can remove the red from the rainbow. The only true view is to take Islam as a whole. The Islamic political doctrine always offers two (contradictory) choices, and both choices are valid. Political Islam is profoundly dualistic. This dualism cannot be removed. Dualism is at the core of the Trilogy. The Trilogy is perfect, permanent and universal. It cannot be changed. A Muslim may reform but Islam cannot. () Jihad is usually called holy war but this is far too narrow a view. Jihad means struggle or effort, and is a process that is shown by the life of Mohammed, the perfect jihadist. In Mecca, Mohammed demonstrated the initial practice of jihad when Islam was weak: persuasion and conversion. When he moved to Medina, he demonstrated how jihad works when Islam is strong: using immigration against inhabitants, creating political power by struggling against the host, dominating other religions, using violence, sowing division among the tribes, and establishing a government. Jihad is civilizational war for two reasons. First, jihad uses every aspect of civilization as an element of war. Violence, education, fear, psychology, sociology, sex, population (growth), immigration, public relations, corruption and religion, all are used in jihad. Military force and terror are the smallest part of jihad. The second reason that jihad is civilizational war is that the purpose of jihad is to annihilate every aspect of the non-Islamic civilization. Art, history, law, dress, manners, names, education, customs, government, foreign policy, economics, and every other detail must become Islamic. Our greatest error is to think of Islam as a religion, when its political (ideology) is its real strength. Another error is to think of jihad only as military force and terror. Hubert Luns

The most important pillar within Islam The first and most important pillar is the Shahada, the testimony of faith: There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God (Ashadou an La-ilaha Ila Allah wa ashadou ana Muhammadan Rasoulallah). A multitude of Internet sites and pamphlets give guidance on how to become a Muslim, stressing the ease and simplicity of entrance. One only needs to pronounce the Shahada with sincere belief and conviction, to enter the fold of Islam, in spite of the precept from Sura 17:36: You shall not accept any information, unless having verified for yourself. The invitation to enter via the Shahada is delusionary, because the practice of Islam and its ideology are something very different as being told to the novice.

See: Poll in Mid-East on Muslim Views (a PEW Global Attitudes Project, December 2010) See: most solemn call for A Fast on Every Friday to Contain Islamic Terrorism

[Published in Profetisch Perspectief, summer 2008 No. 59]

- 13 -

Notes
The new salvific economy (1) A statement by Richard T. Ely quoted in The Rise of the Social Gospel by C. H. Hopkins, 1940 (p. 98): as primarily concerned with this, and (with the mission) to bring to pass here a kingdom of righteousness and to rescue from the evil one and redeem all our social relations. The American Professor Ely (1854-1943) taught economy and is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern socialism. At the time he was accused of Marxism and vain attempts were made to have him dismissed. Scandalous practices under Antiochus Epiphanes (2) A brother of the High Priest Onias had his name Jeshua (Jesus) Hellenicised to Jason. He succeeded in winning the favour of Antiochus Epiphanes thanks to his great enthusiasm for the spreading of the Greek culture, something he was willing to pay for in cash. Thus he was appointed High Priest in his brothers place. He paid the king large amounts of money in order to be allowed to build a gymnasium with a training institute for the older youth. There, many parents were obliged to see their children being alienated from them. Priests performed their office with indecent haste in order to miss nothing of the gymnasium. But Jason did not enjoy the post of High Priest for long: he was replaced by Menelaus, who had offered Antiochus yet more money for the lucrative job (II Macc. 4:7-26). Faith is not a religious feeling (3) Quotation from Our Apostolic Mandate. Pius X was the Pope who obliged all priests to sign the Sacrorum Antistitum (oath against Modernism), on pain of excommunication. Only the German clergy were able to escape the obligation. The oath contained the following: I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and Lord. Christianity is, however, somewhat different (4) Confucius said: Only a person of goodwill is capable of knowing who he should love and who he should hate. That is much different from the central commandment: You shall not hate your brother but love your neighbour as yourself. Against the Buddhistic way of life it is possible to state that it seeks self-salvation, something that is opposed to the Christian message of salvation. An alternative golden way (5) There is another similar parable. A Jew goes to the Rabbi, saying that he has decided to take Judaism seriously, and asks: What should I do to be a god Jew? The Rabbi answers: Thou shalt not bear false witness. Is that all? Yes, that is all. Nothing more. The man goes home, relieved. That wasnt so bad after all! But he quickly discovers that the commandment is possible only if all other commandments are obeyed. In the end he becomes a pious man. The Papal Bull Cum nimis absurdum (6) The title is taken from the first Latin words of the Papal Bull Since it is absurd. Many elements in this Bull seem to have been copied from the Edict issued by Omar, drawn up in 637 after the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem, in which the extremely humiliating dhimmi status was formulated as applicable to Jews and Christians (Wikipedia gives an incomplete summary of it). Omars Edict is still everywhere valid, wherever the sharia is dominant, the sharia being the Islamic version of a totalitarian state, the opposite of a democracy. The Papal Bull begins as follows: Since for the sake of Christian piety it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault and all their doing were condemned by God to eternal slavery, to let them have access to our society and even to live among us () therefore we ordain:

- 14 -

Who was Esther Dorflinger? (7) The quotation is from an interview with Esther Dorflinger in the newspaper Ein Kerem, May 1989, and is taken from the monthly Christenen voor Isral (Christians for Israel). Esther Dorflinger was a member of the Messianic Jewish movement that recognises Christ, which means that in the 1970s she was refused an immigration visa for Israel, something that became a famous case. She describes in her book I Am My Beloved's that when Yeshua (Jesus) revealed Himself to her, she could not believe it, the stigma on Jesus being so great in the Jewish Community. But Yeshua replied that all those former times when she did not know His Name, she had felt His Love and had trusted Him. With that, she began to walk with her Messiah. Who was Ahad Ha-am? (8) Ahad Ha-Am presented an alternative model of Zionism that stressed the need to save Judaism as well as Jews. Ahad Ha-Am or One of the People was the nom-de-plume of Asher Ginsberg. For him, Zionism was important not only because it sought to provide a physical homeland for the Jewish people, but also because this had the potential of becoming a spiritual centre for world Jewry. Ginsberg saw absolute spirituality, the ruhani hamuhlat, as the very essence of Judaism, which had always set its face against material concepts of the divine. Solidarity is more important than the love of self (9) It appears that Sigmund Freud, who essentially was a charlatan, professed that true love is always entangled with a repulsive narcissism: it is not the other whom I love but myself, or at least it is only that quality in the other which resembles me or resembles the person I once was. From the religious point of view this a dangerous philosophy. Indeed, one cannot love the other if one hates oneself, but true love is definitely not a question of a projected form of the love of self. True love, of course, always projects ones identity together with its vulnerabilities, but that is another matter. We could reformulate the adagum of love thy neighbour as thyself into solidarity is more important than the love of self. The negative influence of the French Revolution (10) Because of the French Revolution the principles of the renewed French legal system, based on Roman law, were introduced into the Netherlands. In comparison to the Germanic system then in force, the woman had a despicable position. This explains why the introduction of the French legal principles substantially changed the position of women under the law, something that in no small way contributed to the later movement for emancipation. From the one extreme, the pendulum has swung to the other, whereby the principle of male-female equality has been pushed to the limits. Dutch Premier Balkenende indulges in rare capers (11) The political aim of norms and values was introduced in July 2002 by Herman Heinsbroek, the then Minister of Economic Affairs. In the same year the concept made its appearance in the government declaration issued by Premier Jan Peter Balkenende. The concept was not further elaborated. Things remained quiet until, on 7th September 2004, Balkenende led a European Conference on the notion in the Ridderzaal in The Hague. There it was made plain that he had borrowed many of his ideas from the new age adept Amitai Etzioni, whom he had invited to give a speech. Exactly a week later Balkenende was admitted to hospital with a lifethreatening foot infection and was only allowed to leave in mid-October. At the time he received a great deal of hate mail, which was not dealt with in the Press. A short time later saw the murder of Theo van Gogh. This caused a distraction, which meant that the norms and values question was put on the back burner, something we do not need to grieve over. (NB: norms are derived from values; it should thus have been values and norms.) The following extract taken from Etzionis speech explains a great deal of the hysteria surrounding Geert Wilders film about the Koran, named Fitna (or ordeal, affliction, tribulation), hysteria that broke out even before the films content was known. The lack of subtlety, evident in Etzionis speech, is characteristic of demagogy and fanaticism: We, as the public, care profoundly about what happens in private homes, for instance when there is spousal or child abuse, and command public policies to remedy such bad conduct. The same holds - or at least should hold - for all racial and ethnic communities, whether they are white, brown, or green: Nobody is exempt from public

- 15 -

accountability on those select issues that are morally compelling. (see Presentation Amitai Etzioni at Sept. 7th conference The Hague)

(12) Reference: Taken from the speech in Turkish given without accompanying translation by Premier Erdogan on 10th February 2008 in the Kln-Arena. It is significant for the content of the thoughts of our political leaders that this speech in fact, one long tirade did not lead to a gigantic diplomatic row. A new Koran? (13) Symposium: A NEW KORAN by Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com, Friday, April 18th 2008. Taking part in the discussion panel was Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) and spokesman for politicalislam.com. CSPIs goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced an eleven-volume series on political Islam. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as agent for a group of scholars who are the authors. Part of Bill Warners contribution on the topic of reform within Islam, went as follows: What is amazing is how much the golden rule removes from the Trilogy. About 61% of the Koran vanishes, 75% of the Sira and 20% of the Hadith also go away. (He also said:) Khalim Massoud, the president of Muslims Against Sharia, stated: God is a loving God. () Yet kafirs see a contradiction in Mohammed being such a violent man and yet being called a prophet of a loving God. Muslims see this as a bountiful generosity of ethical choices Allah sets forth. They can be violent and peaceful. Muslims can have their cake and eat it too. They can choose peace and war and both are sacred choices. Islam offers a bounty of moral choices in its dualistic ethics. () I dont know anything about Allah, but I do know what the Koran says. While there are over 300 references in the Koran to Allah and fear, there are 49 references to love. Of these love references, 39 are negative such as the 14 negative references to love of money, power, other gods and status. Three verses command humanity to love Allah and two verses are about how Allah loves a believer. There are 25 verses about how Allah does not love kafirs. This leaves five verses about love. Of these five, three are about loving kin and one about loving a Muslim brother; one verse commands a Muslim to give for the love of Allah. This leaves only one quasi-universal verse about love: give what you love to charity and even this is contaminated by dualism since Muslim charity only goes to other Muslims. So much for love. Fear is what Allah demands. () This is the saddest part of Islam. Islam rejects the bond of love between humans and substitutes submission, retaliation and other forms of dominance - by the best of people. Edip Yuksel, a Kurdish-Turkish-American author and activist, who has become a so-called reformed Muslim, answered: As for Warners assertion about the golden rule removing 61% of the Quran, I am glad to hear that. This shows that the Quran is a book of reality, not a book of fairy tales. First, the so-called golden rule is not a realistic rule and it is very rarely used, usually among family members and close friends. In fact, experiments show that the golden rule promotes immorality and crimes in real life. In my ethic classes, I have repeated the experiments and reached the same conclusion. I recommend Carl Sagans article, titled The Rules of the Game, where Sagan quotes the verse of the Quran, If the enemy inclines toward peace, do you also incline toward peace, concluding that the best rule is not the golden rule but the golden-plated brazen rule, that is, retaliation with occasional forgiveness, which is exactly what the Quran promotes (see Quran 42:20; 17:33).
[A technical note: for the statistical analysis of the Trilogy the CSPI has used Ishaq for the Sira and Bukhari for the Hadith. As concerns Ibn Sad, al Tabari, Muslim and Dawud, they add little additional information. The percentages stated are not based upon verses. Analyzing the Koran only by verses amounts to analysis by sentences. Who would analyse Plato or Kant by sentences? They have measured ideas, topics and concepts, not just sentences.]

The Islamic Trilogy made accessible (14) The Trilogy has been made accessible for the non-Muslim by the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI Publishing), whose books can be obtained from Amazon.com. My insights are particularly based on their publications.

- 16 -

The Islamic way of thought is foreign to our logic (15) Every type of historical or epistemological study of the Bible, usual in the West, is unthinkable within Islam and has never taken place there. The announcement that Mohammed did or said is sufficient to demonstrate a principle. No further reflection is required. We need to realise that, in addition to elements taken from Judaism and Christianity, Islam leans on Zoroastrianism (Persia) and the ancient Gnosticism. It is a mixture of a bit of everything. A typically pagan influence that we can recognise within Islam is that God is the origin not only of good but also of evil. This means that there is no absolute moral rule of thumb for evil: it always depends on circumstances. A remarkable aspect is that the concept of individual responsibility, the masuliyya, was not introduced into Arabic until the 19th century thanks to the then openness of the Arab lands to the West. The decisive concept is that of the umma (the society of Muslims), which implies a denial of individual freedom. Within the umma the Muslim is a reflection of the One Allah (a kind of Hindu all-soul). It thus makes no difference if someone becomes a Muslim from conviction or under pressure. The slavish submission is the same in both cases. Within this belief it is also completely logical and acceptable that if a member of a Jewish or Christian neighbourhood in an Islamic country breaks a law, the entire neighbourhood is punished. Unfortunately it was no exception that for murder or suspected murder of a Muslim by a Christian or a Jew in a mainly Muslim area, as at the time in parts of Spain, the entire neighbourhood was subsequently put to the sword. See, for example, The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom, Prometheus Books, 2005. Via friends working in the police department in The Hague I was informed that when, at the beginning, rumours began to circulate that the Dutch parliamentarian Pim Fortuyn had been murdered by a Muslim (May 2002), hundreds of Muslim families packed their bags, panic-stricken because of the imagined reprisals by the Dutch population. This once again shows that the average Muslim in our country has not the slightest idea of the values underpinning our Western civilisation. (16) Reference: The French journalist Ren Pinon dealt with the question of the Armenian holocaust in LEurope et la jeune Turquie - 1911 (Europe and the young Turkey) and in La suppression des Armniens - 1916 (The Suppression of the Armenians). Hans Jansen and Urbain Vermeulen (17) The Dutch orientalist Hans Jansen and the Belgian Urbain Vermeulen are currently making great efforts to make public their insights into Islam. In France we have Jean-Paul Roux, and not forgetting Laurent Lagartempe, who has written a number of good books such as the Petit Guide du Coran (Small guide to the Koran). The first thing any new cabinet should do, if serious about formulating policy on the threatened Islamisation of the Netherlands, is to appoint Professor Jansen as adviser and to put the WRR (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid Scientific Council for Government Policy) on a non-active basis as far as that question is concerned.

- 17 -

APPENDIX

The silent majority: cause of peace?

A Holocaust Survivor's View on Islam

By Dr. Emanuel Tanay M D, January 2, 2008

A man whose family belonged to the German aristocracy, owner of a variety of large estates and factories before the Second World War, was asked how many Germans were really Nazis. He gave the following answer which may help to guide your opinion on fanaticism: Very few people were true Nazis (he said), but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories. We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the silent majority, is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. Chinas huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were peace loving? History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrele-

- 18 -

vant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they dont speak up, because like me under the Nazis, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: that of the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

The writer of this article is a well-known forensic psychiatrist who has been an expert witness in many famous cases. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Wayne State University in Michigan. He has served as an officer or committee member on the Michigan Psychiatric Society, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and others. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and of the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry and a distinguished fellow of the APA and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFC). A Holocaust survivor himself, Dr. Tanay coauthored a book about the survivors of the Holocaust and was asked by the German government to consult on just compensation for the Holocaust victims. Dr. Tanay has served on several journal editorial boards, authored many publications, and presented countless times on forensic medicine. His efforts have also produced many awards and commendations from groups such as the Michigan State Medical Society, APA, the Detroit Institute of Technology, and the AAFC.

- 19 -

Wilders: Fitna is the final warning

Published on Saturday 22nd March 2008

AMSTERDAM (ANP general news service) - The film Fitna is the final warning to the West against Islam, says Geert Wilders. That was the reaction of the PVV member of the Dutch parliament on Saturday in the Volkskrant national daily to the suggestion by programme maker Harry de Winter that Wilders was engaging in racism with his statements on Islam. Wilders does not regard Islam as an ordinary religion but as a political ideology whose aims are world domination and the introduction of Islamic sharia law. If the West fails to stand up for its freedom, Wilders believes, it will be allowing Islamic ideology to grow even further. The fact that De Winter compares this struggle against Islam with the fate of the Jews In the Holocaust is qualified by Wilders as truly sick. The PVV leader believes that the West is still fortunate that many Muslims do not know their own ideology well - for instance because they speak and read no Arabic. That is (for the time being) to our advantage and gives us the time to take counter-measures writes Wilders. The struggle for freedom is only just beginning. He emphasises that his film is not about Muslims but about the Q'ran and Islam.