Even though there is plenty to worry about in this country, what is playing out in Europe cannot be ignored. Muslims are becoming more numerous and powerful and are openly seeking to transform the continent into an Islamic land under, at some point, Islamic law.
Those who value the democratic principles of the west, including free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and the equality of women are increasingly concerned and are starting to speak out.
However, a strange union has taken place between Muslims and the far left, both of which have as an ultimate goal the destruction of the dominance of Western civilization.
This past weekend in Cologne saw those assembling at a conference to express concern for Western values silenced by violent mob action supported by police of the city, with the apparent appproval of the elected mayor. Doublespeak was in evidence as the mayor called the total disruption of the conference “a victory by the democratic forces of the city.”
“It couldn’t happen here,” would be the typical American reaction. Oh, no?
As in Europe, huge mosque complexes are opening across the States -- one very recently in Boston and another in Atlanta. Do they portend the extension and entrenchment of Islamic law in the United States? One difference between the United States and Europe is that we don't have street thugs enforcing a code of silence on the subject. That's because of the other difference: We don't have any political parties willing, or even able to discuss it.
If we ignore it, maybe it will go away.
Well, it won't. Islam is an aggressive, expansionist ideology bent on world domination. It is extremely well-funded with oil monies (from the West) and being advanced by a large and growing percentage of true believers among the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. It is a threat that no political party in the U.S. dares confront, as has been the case in Europe. In Britain, 20 years of denial have resulted in a large Muslim population 40% of whom want Islamic law to replace British law. Even in the United States, a recent poll of American Muslims found that 26% of young people 14 to 30 felt that suicide bombings were justifiable sometimes. That's not a threat?
Cologne's Anti-Islamization Conference Shut Down by Mayor, Police and ThugsDiana West, Syndicated Columnist
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Readers of my blog (dianawest.net) know that over this past week, as a maelstrom of buffeting economic crises has sucked the air out of the news atmosphere, I have been all-but-transfixed by events unfolding in the German city of Cologne. With the unabashed fascination of the rubbernecker, I have watched in horror, combing online foreign press reports and a few favorite blogs (Brussels Journal, Gates of Vienna, Atlas Shrugs), as local authorities yielded their charge of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly -- indeed, yielded civic space and civic peace -- to a lawless band of violent leftists, who, in their weekend stint of mob rule, successfully prevented a political rally against the Islamization of Europe from taking place.What's more, these same authorities, including the mayor of this fourth-largest German city (about 1 million people), yielded to the mob happily and with much self-congratulation. Indeed, Cologne Mayor Fritz Schramma called the episode "a victory for the city of Cologne and a victory by the democratic forces of the city."
Schramma may well count squelching peaceful political discourse with a violent mob as a victory for his city, but there is nothing "democratic" about it, or about the "forces" responsible. This twisting, weasel-use of language, however, is only one example of the campaign of disinformation waged against reality in Cologne this past weekend.
In brief, elected officials from several different countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy), politicians who campaign and win elections on the politically incorrect issue of resistance to the spread of Islamic law (Sharia), were invited to speak in Cologne.
Why Cologne? After a long and contentious battle, the city council last month narrowly approved the construction of a giant mosque complex funded by a group called the Turkish-Islamic Union to serve some portion of the city's 120,000 Muslims. While the American take on any house of worship going up is generally one of approval based on a straightforward belief in freedom of religion, in Europe, given the heavy influx of Islamic populations, there is a political and legal dimension to such mosque construction that we just don't recognize here.
For example, Germany's Muslim population is largely Turkish; and it is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is infamous for having said in 1998, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Such a declaration of, well, religious war from someone who is now a head of state adds the threat of conquest to any serious mosque debate.
And that's not all. Earlier this year in Cologne, Erdogan declared before 20,000 cheering Turkish expatriates that "assimilation is a crime against humanity." On that same trip to Germany, the Turkish leader also proposed the German formation of Turkish-language schools. What's going on here? If Turkish assimilation is out, is Turkish colonization in? Isn't it the duty of politicians to debate these and other transformational questions within the political process? As a crossroads of Islam and Europe, as a frontline in the colonization of Europe, Cologne becomes the logical meeting-place for such a debate.
But it wasn't to be, not in "democratic" Cologne. As some 1,500 Europeans prepared to assemble to listen to the political opponents of Islamization make speeches last weekend, many more thousands of counter-demonstrators converged on the city specifically to deny rally supporters their right to assemble, and the politicians' right to speak. And yes, by whatever means necessary.
The thugs among the counter-demonstrators mounted a rock-and-bottle attack that shattered windows on a river boat plying the Rhine where the politicians attempted to hold a pre-rally meeting. They blocked urban trains in order to keep rally participants away. They ringed the city center with barricades (tolerated by German police), hurled paint bombs, lit fires and launched violent attacks on some of the participants who managed to draw near the rally location. One would-be rally participant, a Jewish man, sent in an account of his ordeal to Gates of Vienna, writing: "I was wearing my kippah and readily identifiable as a Jew; however, they (the leftist counter-demonstrators) screamed at me 'Nazi Raus.'" He reported they also shoved him, spit on him, and called him a fascist pig. "I was pummeled in the head several times and then shoved to the ground where I was beaten and kicked with steel toe boots in plain sight of police who did nothing." He later discovered he had a broken rib.
And yet, the consensus narrative, dutifully repeated in the mainstream European media, is that it is the silenced and hounded politicians and their supporters who are the "fascists"; while it is the silencers and hounders who are the "anti-fascists."
Such lies and distortions are probably what help convince our own media to ignore such events altogether as just so much marginal "extremism" going on somewhere in Europe. Anyway, how does it affect us? Nothing like that is happening here, right?
Yes and no. As in Europe, huge mosque complexes are opening across the States -- one very recently in Boston and another in Atlanta. Do they portend the extension and entrenchment of Islamic law in the United States? One difference between the United States and Europe is that we don't have street thugs enforcing a code of silence on the subject. That's because of the other difference: We don't have any political parties willing, or even able to discuss it.
It was a nice surprise to come across your site during one of my searches on this topic. I've been one of the "Storm Petrels" going back to the 80's.
We have to be alert to the big picture as Islamic hegemony grows. Apart from the instances of violence, we have to pay attention to each precedent used by them to gain their way - right down to municipal ordnances. Boston just gave away property to Islamic Center (Society) of Boston.
We have experienced, in this country and others, some remarkable measures; Anti-discrimminatin, suffereage and the like - all in the spirit of civic virtue.
Now, we will witness these measures being used to establish a rigid and uncompromising culture. The argument that will be used to keep Islamics from not compromising is that their 'religion' won't allow it. And 'Americana' will probably just say,
"Oh!".