Posted on 09/15/2007 7:59:52 AM PDT by Nuc1
The story of the week wasn't Gen. David Petraeus' testimony on Iraq, although it dominated the headlines. The story of the week wasn't the sixth return of Sept. 11 since the jihad atrocity of 2001, although it inspired many public statements and ceremonies. The week's biggest story garnered little press and few comments. But, in a significant way, this overlooked story -- an outrageous display of police force in Brussels on Sept. 11, 2007 -- symbolizes the missing link in our flawed comprehension of both Iraq and Sept. 11.
There, in the so-called capital of Europe, 200 people marked the day with a protest against the Islamization of Europe -- a civilizational shift which, as Europe increasingly accommodates Shariah (Islamic law), is shockingly advanced. Indeed, Middle East expert Bernard Lewis has already predicted Europe will become Islamic by century's end. Absent a reversal of Islamization (which remains possible) I'm guessing sooner than that.
Belgium's Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht gives a news conference in Brussels September 14, 2007 following the announcement of the release of Stefaan Boeve in Iran. Boeve had been kidnapped on August 12, 2007 with his girlfriend Carla Van Den Eeckhoudt, who was released on August 15. REUTERS/Sebastien Pirlet (BELGIUM) Related Media: VIDEO: Belgium Farm Hosts Large Music Party, Neighbors Complain VIDEO: IT Events - European e-ID Conference 2007 The assembly, sponsored by Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE), was wholly peaceful -- at least until Belgian police showed up. With a chopper above, water cannon nearby, they didn't break heads, exactly -- nothing so kind as that. In a photo that should be titled The New Face of Fascism (see it at www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2441), we see black-clad Belgian policemen brutalizing a man in a light-colored suit and tie. His hands are cuffed behind his back, his right elbow is clasped in what is known as an arm-bar hold, and he is also being subjected to a genital hold -- a vicious grip that, a retired cop friend of mine tells me, would get any American policeman thrown off the force.
The man under arrest was Frank Vanhecke, president of the Flemish secessionist party Vlaams Belang and a member of European Parliament. Also arrested and beaten was Filip Dewinter, who, as the leading politician of Vlaams Belang, Belgium's largest opposition party, has personally garnered 25 percent of the electorate. (You can find a picture of Belgian police forcing Dewinter to the ground online at kleinverzet.blogspot.com.)
These men are invariably described as "far-right" politicians, as though "far-right"-ness alone (whatever that means when totalitarian police tactics are considered tolerant left) is rationale enough for harsh treatment. I've met both men and know them as free-market, small-government conservatives who deeply believe Western civilization is worth defending against the Islamization that occurs with the entrenchment of Shariah. Indeed, they are bravely trying to prevent Europe's Islamization, practically by themselves. I say "bravely" because in Europe these days, as we know from the Islam-motivated murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, such beliefs can get you killed.
Maybe so, a reader might say. But what does protesting Shariah in Europe have to do with either American policy in Iraq or Sept. 11?
The answer is everything. What were the attacks of Sept. 11 all about? Al Qaeda's terrorist plot was designed not only to strike at the United States, but also to advance the cause of establishing an Islamic caliphate -- a world government ruled according to Shariah, which, among other things, forbids criticism of Islam. Polls indicate that sizable numbers of Muslims (solid majorities in key countries), regardless of their opinion of Al Qaeda, share this same goal of a Shariat-based, Islamic caliphate. This is a highly significant overlap between the goals of Islamic terrorism and what we think of as mainstream Islam.
Meanwhile, though, in our childish, PC wisdom (accepted across the political spectrum), we have let Islam off the hook when it comes to terrorism, sticking to the story that our whole problem is with a Tiny Band of Extremists That Hijacked Islam, not the jihadist teachings of Islam itself. To make the story stick, we also seem to ignore the impetus behind Islamic terrorism -- the imposition of Shariah, what with its ultimate institutional denigrations of non-Muslims and women, and its denial of freedom of conscience and expression.
This blinkered view of Islam explains how even in our commemorations of Sept. 11 we ignore the ongoing threat to liberty posed by the spread of Shariah across the West, which the SIOE was trying to protest. It even helps explain our confusion over Iraq, where, ignoring the formative influence of Shariah on the native culture, we are stumped by our failures to remake Iraq in our own Western image.
There is another consequence of our blindness: a terrible indifference to cultural allies in Europe who are fighting its Islamization -- a cataclysm for the liberty-based West.
We ignore them at our peril.
It takes almost 700 years to come to this conclusion?
Typical leftist treatment. They are the center of the world and everybody else is an extremist.
Logic: if you are not a Muslim, you must not believe Mohammed was a prophet.
It is a small step from “not believing Mohammed was a prophet” to “believing Mohammed was not a prophet” (since it is silly to be agnostic on such a high-stakes issue).
If Mohammed was not a prophet, he was either sincere and deluded, or insincere and a charlatan.
Therefore, if you are not a Muslim and you have any intellectual integrity at all, you believe that Mohammed was either deluded, or worse.
Each Presidential candidate should be asked:
1) Are you a Muslim? If no, then
2) Do you believe Mohammed was not a prophet? If yes, then
3) Do you believe Mohammed was sincere? If yes, then
4) In other words, you believe that Mohammed was deluded, right?
It can’t be an insult to Islam to affirm your own non-Islamic faith. Anyone Presidential candidate who is brave enough to say “as a Christian, I believe Mohammed was not a prophet, and therefore I believe that Mohammed was deluded” is likely to get my vote.
The final point, of course, is that people who are Christians or Jews or atheists or Buddhists or Muslims etc. ought to be able to publicly say “Mohammed was deluded, and I am ready for my fatwa.”
Logic: if you are not a Muslim, you must not believe Mohammed was a prophet.
It is a small step from “not believing Mohammed was a prophet” to “believing Mohammed was not a prophet” (since it is silly to be agnostic on such a high-stakes issue).
If Mohammed was not a prophet, he was either sincere and deluded, or insincere and a charlatan.
Therefore, if you are not a Muslim and you have any intellectual integrity at all, you believe that Mohammed was either deluded, or worse.
Each Presidential candidate should be asked:
1) Are you a Muslim? If no, then
2) Do you believe Mohammed was not a prophet? If yes, then
3) Do you believe Mohammed was sincere? If yes, then
4) In other words, you believe that Mohammed was deluded, right?
It can’t be an insult to Islam to affirm your own non-Islamic faith. Anyone Presidential candidate who is brave enough to say “as a Christian, I believe Mohammed was not a prophet, and therefore I believe that Mohammed was deluded” is likely to get my vote.
The final point, of course, is that people who are Christians or Jews or atheists or Buddhists or Muslims etc. ought to be able to publicly say “Mohammed was deluded, and I am ready for my fatwa.”
Just read “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam” by Regenery Books (sp ?) ...
Very sobering summary who - and what - Islam was. Is. Wants to be.
oops, sorry for the double post, network got real slow for a while....
I like your analysis.
Also arrested and beaten...What were they arrested and beaten for?
What were the reasons, actual and stated?
The article is not at all clear on this point.
At a press conference in the European Parliament yesterday evening foreign journalists openly doubted the statement by Philip Claeys and Koen Dillen, two members of the European Parliament for the Vlaams Belang party (VB), that the Brussels police had told the VB that they would tolerate yesterday’s anti-Islamization demonstration if it was a peaceful “static” protest at Schuman Plaza. Despite this agreement, the police beat up the peaceful demonstrators in front of the European Commission building. “You can tell us whatever you want, but we need proof,” one of the foreign journalists told Claeys and Dillen.Bringing in Walloons to "monitor" the Flemish -- sounds like it could be a bit of a setup. Not a lot of love lost between those groups.The proof was given yesterday on Flemish television when reporter Goedele Devroy told a colleague [video here, in Dutch] that she was amazed by the brutality of the police against the peaceful demonstrators “who just stood there.” She added: “This is strange because, when I rang the police this morning, they said that they would tolerate the demonstration if the demonstrators would not use violence and if they just remained put and would not try to march.”
It looks like a deliberate trap was set up for the demonstrators, who were gathered at Schuman Plaza. Riot police units from Liege in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, maltreated the demonstrators, many of them from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, in an excessively violent way, picking out the VB leaders for the worst treatment. This picture shows how Frank Vanhecke, the VB party leader and a member of the European Parliament, was held tight by police officers while one of them pinches him in the balls. As they did so they shouted abuse such as “Sale Flamingant” (Dirty Flemish-secessionist).
Vanhecke’s hands were tied behind his back, as our video shootage shows, and he was shoved into a police bus. There the beatings continued. Yesterday evening, after releasing the VB leader, the Brussels authorities announced that they will press charges against Vanhecke for assaulting the driver of the police bus.
Filip Dewinter, the group leader of the VB in the Flemish Regional Parliament, was also beaten up. The police dragged him away as he was talking to journalists, a few yards from the demonstration. Last Monday, Dewinter, a member of the Flemish Parliament, called upon that institution to declare the independence of Flanders from Wallonia. Also beaten up, probably for the same reason, was Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen, another VB politician and a Deputy Speaker of the Flemish Parliament. Mr Van Nieuwenhuysen escaped from the beatings in the police bus by pulling open the emergency exit and fleeing.
The Walloon officers also maltreated Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament. The Italian government has formally complained to the Belgian government about his arrest, protesting against the violation of his parliamentary immunity by the Belgians. Franco Frattini, the (Italian) European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, is angry, too. He told the Belgian authorities demonstrations should only be banned when they are violent or glorify Nazism.
Yesterday, the Neo Nazis, which the Brussels authorities had said were coming to Brussels to join the anti-Islamization demonstration, were nowhere to be seen. This is hardly surprising. For Neo Nazis the Jews, not the Muslims, are the enemy.
See #11.
Ugh.
I agree. This is not about tolerance or multiculturalism. Doing nothing is just plain suicidal. The first step, I think, is to take a page from the ACLU playbook and insist on stopping ANY public monies being spent to subsidize anything Islamic. If any schools allow time for Islamic prayer it must be accompanied by the same set asides for Christians and those of other religious groups. Prisons are public institutions. There should be no tolerance for Islamic recruiting in prisons. If we are to have provisions in our laws against hate speech, then this must be applicable to Madrasas and Mosques. I would also support a constitutional amendment that specifically states that no system of religious laws (i.e. Sharia) can ever be used as a basis for legal judgments in the US.
Is it any wonder that the American Left seeths with anger at the 240,000,000 guns and 20 billion rounds of ammunition in the hands of the citizenry? Belgium has no such bulwark against Islamofascism.
This can’t happen under current conditions. Conservatives have jobs and families and cannot concentrate daily on fighting Leftist fascism. Leftists, on the other hand, congregate in jobs and in lifestyles that offer almost endless money and time to spend on pushing Leftism on the rest of us. Add to that conservative politicians who are just too chicken shit to stop public billions being given to aggressively seditious organizations like the ACLU and there is simply no way this situation is going to be remedied on a national level. All successes by conservatives in the foreseeable future will have to be at the local level.
I have my friend and I highly recommend it. BTW I won't hold (sp) errors against you if you don't hold them against me. :D)
"There, in the so-called capital of Europe, 200 people marked the day with a protest against the Islamization of Europe -- a civilizational shift which, as Europe increasingly accommodates Shariah (Islamic law),..."
I believe this is the reason they were arrested.
"These men are invariably described as "far-right" politicians, as though "far-right"-ness alone (whatever that means when totalitarian police tactics are considered tolerant left) is rationale enough for harsh treatment. I've met both men and know them as free-market, small-government conservatives who deeply believe Western civilization is worth defending against the Islamization that occurs with the entrenchment of Shariah.
I believe the action is intended to make a statement to people that have conservative view points that place emphasis on freedom and personal responsibility. Sound familiar? NUC1
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.