Four years after the assassination of gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, his warning of the threat posed to the rights of European gays and women by intolerant, anti-assimilationist Muslim immigrants is increasingly vindicated by events.
Muslims have migrated in large numbers to Europe, have more children than ethnic Europeans, are disproportionately involved in crime, and increasingly insist on being governed not by the prevailing civil laws but by Muslim Shari'ah law. Many Muslim clerics in Europe look to the day when Europe will become a Muslim caliphate. Scholar Bat Ye'or has dubbed that future Europe "Eurabia." Already, Muslim leaders in France, Britain, Denmark, and Belgium have declared certain Muslim neighborhoods to be under Islamic jurisdiction.
A prime target of Fortuyn's criticism was the European establishment, a mutually reinforcing collection of political, academic, and media elites who are given far more deference by the public than in America, and who are largely accountable only to themselves. A new book by gay author Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, describes how these elites, with their lax immigration policies, welfare subsidies, politically correct suppression of dissent, and collaboration with Arab governments, have imperiled the very freedom and tolerance in whose name they deny the problem.
Bawer describes private Islamic academies, subsidized by European governments, that teach hatred of Jews and America and contempt for democracy. Muslim children are frequently sent to Qur'anic schools in their parents' home countries to cleanse them of Western ideas. Muslim girls are forced into marriages with men from the homeland, who are then allowed to immigrate, reinforcing Muslim separation from European society. Girls who date outside approved circles, stay out all night, or marry contrary to their families' wishes, are routinely murdered in so-called honor killings, as are rape victims.
A judge of the Shari'ah Court of the UK signed a death order against Terence McNally for depicting Jesus Christ (who is revered in Islam) as gay in his play Corpus Christi. Muslim gangs commit savage assaults on busy streets while crowds look on passively. Researchers don't dare gather statistics on the rise in gay-bashings lest they be seen as criticizing Muslims. Describing his awakening to the threat, Bawer wrote, "Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me." If current trends continue, European imams will have the votes to do it in a few generations.
Bawer writes:
Fortuyn's opponents claimed that he called for an end to immigration and the expulsion of Muslims from the Netherlands. What he proposed, in fact, was a firm policy of education, emancipation, and integration. The Dutch government, he argued, should stop issuing residency permits to imams who preached that Dutch women are whores and gay men lower than pigs….
For this, officials demonized Fortuyn as a fascist bigot, ignoring the majority of Dutch citizens who shared his concerns. Rather than face the danger portended by Moroccans in one Dutch town dancing in the streets on 9/11, and a mosque selling calendars showing the New York skyline on fire, Dutch officials pilloried Fortuyn as the dangerous one.
As Bawer reports on his blog, on February 10 in Oslo, Velbjørn Selbekk, a magazine editor who had reprinted the Muhammad cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and who had withstood pressure from Muslim extremists and the Norwegian establishment for several days, suddenly appeared at a press conference beside the head of Norway's Islamic Council and abjectly apologized. In response, the Muslim leader pledged his protection, and Norway's foreign minister praised Selbekk's "integrity and courage." The death threats against him and his family had apparently taken their toll. Submissive infidels are known as dhimmis, a role tacitly embraced by those Westerners who call any criticism of Muslims racist.
Fortunately, some are refusing to surrender. On March 25 in Trafalgar Square, British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, a self-described "left-wing Green," joined a crowd including humanists, libertarians and liberal Muslims in a rally to defend freedom of expression. The organizers stated, "The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence…." Notwithstanding such progressive aims, the rally was denounced by many on the left.
Tatchell wrote:
Sections of the left moan that the rally is being supported [by] the right. Well, if these socialists object so strongly why don't they organise their own demo in support of free speech? The truth is that some of the left would rarely, if ever, rally to defend freedom of expression because they don't wholeheartedly believe in it. Mired in the immoral morass of cultural relativism, they no longer endorse Enlightenment values and universal human rights. Their support for free speech is now qualified by so many ifs and buts. When push comes to shove, it is more or less worthless.
Unilateral disengagement leads not to peace but to subjugation. If the Enlightenment values that made the gay rights movement possible are to be preserved and extended, the heirs of those values need to overcome their post-colonial reluctance to fight for them. We write our own destinies. Nothing is guaranteed to us. As T.E. Lawrence said blasphemously to his Arab friends 90 years ago, "Nothing is written."
9 Comments for “Gays in ‘Eurabia’”
posted by Foeke on
I should like to point out that Mr. Fortuyn before he was assassinated did indeed favour a full-out ceasing of immigration into the Netherlands, and he said he would vote to abolish the first article of our constitution – protecting citizens of this country against discrimination. I am not denying that there are Muslims in the Netherlands and Europe that would rather abolish fundamental freedoms I stand for, but Mr. Fortuyn was likewise in favour of sacrifing constitutional freedoms to suit his own agenda.
On a side note – if the majority of the Dutch population had really felt just as strongly about this as Fortuyn himself, then why didn’t his party garner over 75 seats in parliament during the elections that followed?
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Foeke,
Kindly cite evidence if you are going to dispute Bawer’s claims regarding Fortuyn.
You wrote, “then why didn’t his party garner over 75 seats in parliament during the elections that followed?”
Um, because the party leader was ASSASSINATED.
posted by Foeke on
“Um, because the party leader was ASSASSINATED.”
Are you saying that, if Fortuyn had lived for another 9 days, his party would have gained *fifty* additional seats in parliament?
As for the evidence you are asking for, what part do you mean? The ceasing of all immigration into the Netherlands? I have repeatedly read the LPF’s party programme for the 2002 elections, which states (I translate):
“The Netherlands are no immigration country. (…) Therefore it is absolutely necessary to resist immigration into this country with all the force we can muster.”
The abolishing of article I of our constitution then? Sadly I can’t find a transcript of the interview Fortuyn gave back then, but he stated that he thought article 1 ought to be abolished because it conflicted with the freedom of speech.
posted by David on
The problem with the movement for sexual liberty is that, as projected by modern activists, it usually lacks a spiritual or moral foundation and instead rests upon politics. As Ayn Rand and others have reasonably observed, the argument based on notions of morality and spirituality tends to sway more people, regardless of whether the argument has any reasonable merit. An example is the classic argument that rape doesn’t seem as bad if the woman was wearing revealing clothes — or, in the case of gays and lesbians, if the victims are perceived to be at odds with thousands of years of church leadership.
posted by David on
It is also rather difficult for gays and lesbians to argue for their cultural liberty if they are simultaneously support their own governments’ interference in the sovereignty of middle eastern governments in an effort to destabilize muslim states.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Many observers believed that Lijst Pim Fortuyn had a reasonable chance of winning that election. As I should not need to mention, in parliamentary systems a party can win an election without gaining a controlling majority. That would have been a messy situation, but a living Pim could have led his party a lot more effectively than a dead Pim.
I believe you are seriously slanting Pim’s message. I read a number of his writings and interviews from late 2001 and early 2002, and he simply was NOT another Le Pen. For one thing, his own party’s racial diversity belied the facile charges of racism that were leveled at him. No doubt you can cherry-pick quotes and policy details to color it the way you want, but that doesn’t make it honest or accurate. Also, I have known and read Bruce Bawer for many years, and I have found him to be a lot more reliable than his critics.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
David, one may of course dispute the grounds for the invasion of Iraq, but it is hardly plausible to claim that the purpose of doing so was “to destabilize muslim states.” Indeed, the pre-existing instability of the region was one of the problems Bush & Co. were addressing. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with a monster like Saddam running Iraq, fanatical clerics running Iran, and the even more fanatical Taliban running Afghanistan, to name three of the lovelier regimes over there at the time, it is hardly fair to talk as if instability was something introduced in 2003 by the U.S. and its allies.
And since you said “muslim states” in the plural, I wonder if you also reject the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of sovereignty. Even most critics of the invasion of Iraq acknowledge that the U.S. was entirely justified by the invasion of Afghanistan. The casus belli for that one occurred on 9/11.
posted by Ron Dortland on
Richard Rosendall’s essay contains some factual errors. First of all, that the statement “girls who date outside approved circles, stay out all night, or marry contrary to their families’ wishes, are routinely murdered in so-called honor killings, as are rape victims” is simply nonsense. Too many barbaric honour killings have occurred among Muslim minorities in Europe, but they remain very exceptional occasions. The word “routinely” is – to be frank -disingenuous here.
As far as Pim Fortuyn’s posthumous electoral victory is concerned: opinion polls credited Fortuyn’s party with about 20 seats in Parliament before he was murdered. His party gained 26 seats in the elections a few days after his tragic death – an impressive score, but far removed from the 76 required to gain an absolute majority in a Parliament of 150 seats. Nor did Fortuyn’s party become the main party in Parliament. The Christian Democrats remained bigger than Fortuyn’s list by a wide margin.
“Muslim gangs commit savage assaults on busy streets while crowds look on passively.” Could the author perhaps cite a few examples? It really seems hard to believe that anything like this would have occurred (even once) without a subsequent outcry in the press, but Rosendall implies that there are several examples of this. I would like to know them…
This said, I generally agree with Rosendall’s over-all point: intolerance is spreading in European society as a result of the rise of radical Islam, and European elites (with some notable exceptions) are too politically correct or afraid to speak up against this.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
To Ron Dortland: One op-ed piece has only so much room. For documentation of these claims, including examples, see Bawer’s book. We can quibble over how many honor killings have to occur how often before they qualify as routine, but there have been a great many and they, like crimes by Muslim gangs, appear to be on the rise. One of Bawer’s key points is that the ruling elites in European countries downplay these problems out of PC considerations.
I am baffled by the reference to an alleged Fortuyn electoral victory. I wrote that Fortuyn’s warnings had been vindicated by subsequent events, not that Lijst Pim Fortuyn had won an election.