A time for choosing

Yesterday afternoon, in the last of his appearances during his just ended trip to the United States, Geert Wilders addressed a private luncheon at the Union League Club in Philadelphia. According to a source in Philadelphia who was at the lunch, Wilders at the end of the speech announced a plan to form an international organization, the purpose of which will be “to break the chains of political correctness and cultural relativism.” Wilders said that everywhere he goes people ask him, “What can we do?”, “How can we help?”, “What can we join?”, and that it was in response to these questions that he has decided to take this initiative.

This is profoundly important news. To understand its significance, let us consider again, based on Wilders’s talk that I heard earlier this week in New York City, what Wilders stands for, and thus what this new international organization will stand for:

(1) Islam is the problem (not “radical Islam,” “radical extreme Islam,” or “Islamo-fascism”).

(2) While individual Muslims may be moderate, there is no such thing as moderate Islam.

(3) Islam is in part a religion but is primarily a tyrannical ideology aimed at controlling the world.

(4) The more Muslims there are in a non-Muslim society, the greater becomes the power of sharia, the Islamic law, which requires that all aspects of society be brought under its control.

(5) Wilders says that he has nothing against Muslims as people, and that Muslims who support the freedoms and the culture of their host societies in the West are welcome; but that those who do not, are not.

(6) All mass Muslim immigration to Western countries must be ended.

(7) Muslims in the West who promote sharia should be made to leave, “today.”

That is an extraordinary list of statements and positions. An international organization formed on these principles, and aimed at bringing them into the politics of each Western country, is exactly what is needed. It would represent, for the first time, the beginning of a serious effort to defend the West from Islamization.

But now an interesting question arises.

The anti-jihad conservatives who support Wilders and who have enthusiastically received him in his recent trips to America, have never taken the positions on Islam that Wilders takes—that moderate Islam does not exist, that Islam itself (not “radical” Islam) is the problem, and that all Muslim immigration should be stopped. In fact, their positions have tended to be the opposite of his. Up to this point they seem to have dealt with the contradiction by lauding and embracing the man, while remaining silent about his stands. But now that Wilders is creating an international organization devoted to advancing his ideas, his ideas that are, let us make no bones about it, radical compared to current accepted beliefs, the anti-jihad conservatives will be forced to make a choice: either to endorse the platform and support the work of the West’s most prominent and effective jihad opponent, or else to declare that it, and he, are too extreme for them.

Let us hope that Wilders’s seminal announcement will be the spark that finally galvanizes the reluctant Islam critics into adopting a serious anti-Islam position, and thus unites the various forces that are fighting this fight. I look forward to Wilders’s next move on this front.

- end of initial entry -

October 25

LA writes:

In the original entry, 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.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 23, 2009 06:42 PM | Send