Wilders’s platform explained

In the entry, “A time for choosing,” I derived seven planks of Geert Wilders’s Islam policy based on his October 21 speech at the Harvard Club. Among the positions I attributed to him, without providing a direct quotation from the speech to back it up, was that “Islam itself is the problem.” Here is a direct quote of Wilders which supports my characterization. In the text of his October 21 speech at Columbia University, which is very similar to (though perhaps more mildly worded than) his remarks at the Harvard Club, Wilders said:

“We have to stop the mass immigration from Muslim countries. Because more Islam means less freedom.”

Even more pointed, at a recent press conference broadcast on British television on the occasion of the announcement that he would be admitted again to the UK, Wilders said:

“The more Islam we get in our free societies the less freedom we will get.”

It couldn’t be plainer: the more Islam there is—meaning, the more Muslims there are—in our society, the more we come under the intimidation of Muslims, the influence of the Islamic law, and the ever present threat of Islamic terrorism. Islam itself is the problem. This is the reason why all further mass Muslim immigration (which means essentially all Muslim immigration) must be stopped. It doesn’t matter if lots of individual Muslims are not terrorists or sharia promoters. Every increase of the Muslim population in our society increases the power of the Islamic community as a whole and thus of its sharia program.

He also said at Columbia:

“[I]f you cross the red line and commit … the implementation of shariah law, … you are not welcome anymore, then we will expel you if possible the same day.”

“Committing the implementation of shariah law” logically includes not just its completed and successful implementation, but any attempt to implement it, which in turn would include any advocacy or promotion of its implementation. The number of Muslims who advocate or promote the implementation of shariah law amounts to a significant percentage of the Muslim population. Meaning that a significant percentage of the Muslim population is not welcome and shall be expelled.

So, to repeat the essential elements of Wilders’s platform: (1) Islam as such is the problem; (2) all further Muslim mass immigration shall be stopped; and (3) a significant percentage of the Muslim population in our society shall be made to leave.

- end of initial entry -

Jack S. writes:

You write:

So, to repeat the essential elements of Wilders’s platform: (1) Islam as such is the problem; (2) all further Muslim mass immigration shall be stopped; and (3) a significant percentage of the Muslim population in our society shall be made to leave …

This is what YOU have been saying for years. There are no major American politicians who will dare to say this and I have reached the conclusion that there are precious few that even secretly think this way.

If Western civilization were to set itelf to face the threat of Islam by ruthless categorical means as we dealt with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan the problem would have been resolved long ago. It is liberalism and the straitjacket of political correctness that is the greater enemy and bar to victory against this mortal foe of our civilization. In some ways liberalism in its current form is a greater evil than old style Soviet Communism. The old Soviet bloc had no doctrines that included supine submission to an enemy that openly declared its goal to be their destruction. it did not admit millions of enemies into its borders and grant these enemies special rights over and above those of its own citizens. It did not insist that representatives of those enemies should consulted when making political descisons. It definiteley did not put iimmigrants from enemy civillizations in leadership positions in goverment, academia and the press.

PS

I took a look at Come Nineveh Come Tyre and found it unreadable. The author talks down to the reader like a teacher with a dim-witted 8th grader. After a chapter and a half of those improbable Dickensian character names I wanted to throw the book against the wall. It is one of your shining characteristics that you do not talk down to your readers.

LA replies:

Thank you.

Sorry if the Drury was no good. When I’ve talked about that novel, which I read decades ago, and which I barely remember, it was not to recommend the book as a whole, but the section of the book where the appeasing U.S. president unilaterally retreats before the Soviets in the hope that this display of peaceful intentions will provoke a like response; but then the Soviets instead of reacting peacefully, belligerently demand even more concessions from the U.S., and the U.S. president, instead of realizing that the Soviets’ aggressive response reveals that his assumptions about them have been completely wrong and so giving up his appeasement policy, yields to the further Soviet demands. More than anything I’ve read, that scene captured the essence of the liberal mentality.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 25, 2009 02:08 PM | Send