Dhimmi Watch: Despicable moral equivalence from the New York Times

February 12, 2005

Despicable moral equivalence from the New York Times

The New York Times today carries a story entitled 'Fear of Islamists Drives Growth of Far Right in Belgium,' which details how the scary 'far right' is using fear of the poor old Muslims to gain political power and influence. Without a trace of irony or introspection, it quotes a Belgian convert to Islam praising Osama bin Laden and 9/11, but still stoops to suggest that opposition to Islamic influence and immigration in Europe is equivalent to Nazi genocide: 'Though he is the son of concentration camp survivors and his grandparents died in camps, he campaigned on behalf of Vlaams Belang, then named Vlaams Blok, in regional elections last year.'

No one is advocating death camps for Muslims in Europe. Opposition to Islamic immigration to Europe is not racism or Nazism. It is a sober recognition that Islam is a political and social system as well as a set of tenets for individual behavior, and that many Muslims in Europe believe that present European societies have no legitimacy and should be replaced by Sharia.

But as long as the Times continues to write articles as full of sly insinuations as this one is, all too many people of good will will not realize that Sharia is an institutionalized denial of the rights of women and non-Muslims, and that it could come to Europe. The equality of rights of all people is at stake, and Europe is on the brink of a Dark Ages that could erase all the achievements of Western civilization in establishing a legal structure guaranteeing the dignity of all people. But the Times has appointed Walter Duranty its Guiding Inspiration for the 21st Century.

ANTWERP, Belgium - Filip Dewinter, a boyish man in a dark blue suit, bounds up two flights of steep stairs in his political party's 19th-century headquarters building where posters show a Muslim minaret rising menacingly above the Gothic steeple of the city's cathedral.
"The radical Muslims are organizing themselves in Europe," he declared. "Other political parties, they are very worried about the Muslim votes and say let's be tolerant, while we are saying - the new political forces in Europe are saying - no, we should defend our identity."

From the Freedom Party in Austria to the National Front in France to the Republicans in Germany, Europe's far right has made a comeback in recent years, largely on the strength of anti-immigration feelings sharpened to a fear of Islam. That fear is fed by threats of terrorism, rising crime rates among Muslim youth and mounting cultural clashes with the Continent's growing Islamic communities.

But nowhere has the right's revival been as swift or as strong as in Belgium's Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, where support for Mr. Dewinter's Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest, has surged from 10 percent of the electorate in 1999 to nearly a quarter today.

Vlaams Belang is now the strongest party in Flanders, with support from a third of the voters in Antwerp, the region's largest city. Many people worry that the appeal of antiIslamic politics will continue to spread as Europe's Muslim population grows.

"What they all have in common is that they use the issue of immigration and Islam to motivate and mobilize frustrated people," said Marco Martiniello, a political scientist at the University of Liège in the French-speaking part of Belgium. "In Flanders all attempts to counter the march of the Vlaams Belang have had no results, or limited results, and no one really knows what to do."...

"Their values are not the right values," said Henri Rosenberg, a Talmudic scholar and lawyer who is an Orthodox Jew, speaking of the Muslim community. Though he is the son of concentration camp survivors and his grandparents died in camps, he campaigned on behalf of Vlaams Belang, then named Vlaams Blok, in regional elections last year....

Behind the wooden door of a brick Brussels town house, Jean-François Bastin, 61, a Belgian convert to Islam, holds court before a steady stream of Islamic activists. His fledgling Young Muslims Party is one of the new groups aggressively pursuing pro-Muslim agendas in Europe.

He calls Osama bin Laden "a modern Robin Hood," and the World Trade Center attacks "a poetic act," "a pure abstraction." His 23-year-old son is in jail in Turkey on charges that he was involved in the bombings there that killed 61 people in November 2003....

Already about 4,000 to 5,000 Flemish residents are leaving Antwerp every year, while 5,000 to 6,000 non-European immigrants arrive annually in the city, Mr. Dewinter said. Within 10 years, he predicts, people of non-European backgrounds will account for more than a third of Antwerp's population.

"It's growing very, very fast," Mr. Dewinter said. "Maybe that will be the end of Europe."



Dhimmi Watch: Despicable moral equivalence from the New York Times