As we could not participate ourselves in the Pepperdine 'Collapse of Europe' conference, we continue with the truthful reports by Vik Rubenfeld in his Blog 'The Big Picture', adding our comments, where it seems appropriate. His second report starts like this:
Conference on the Collapse of Europe: What Makes Jihad so Effective - and What to Do About It
Leon de Winter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Henryk Broder, Andy Bostom, Daniel Pipes and Greg Davis
(This photo is merged from two smaller photos. [By Vik, HR])
(This is the second in a series on the international conference on the Collapse of Europe, organized by Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance, and the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The first article is here.)
At 11:30 am, the event divided into a number of panels taking place simultaneously. I opted for the one titled "Eurabia: Is Muslim domination of Europe inevitable?" particularly in order to have a chance to see the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Born a Muslim in Somalia, Ayaan was raised with terrible violence directed against her in her own home, as is not uncommon for children born into the Islamic culture.
I would have done the same. But for reasons opposite to Vik's. Ayaan Hirsi Ali developed in time a Manichean vision on Islam, attributing all imaginable wrongs in society to Mohammed. She exaggerates, even in the eyes of the genuine NeoCons, who forbade her to speak in the name of the American Enterprise Institute about Islam, imposing an obligation to furnish proof of what she has to say about it. That is why her publication about Mohammed, several times announced, did not see the light of edition yet. Apparently, she did not speak in Malibu as an AEI-collaborator. She just repeated her Shura against everything Islam. To the greater joy of the conference initiators.
Vik continues:
Her [Ali's] mother found Christians, with their beautiful Judeo-Christian culture of "love they neighbor", despicable - but not the evil all around her and in her own home, of family members beating, torturing and killing other family members. That is a crushing, devastating indictment of Islamic culture.
Where do 'honor killings' occur in Europe, and where are they accepted, tolerated? Answer: Nowhere. In my country of origin, Holland, honor killings, or public humiliations of women who had intercourse out of wedlock, occurred still during the sixties. In the name of Christian values, in some localities, women and girls who were accused of extramarital relations, were exposed on charts, drawn by easels, to the whole community. A despicable tradition, that was forbidden and generally condemned later on. The more so, why the male participants in that kind of activities generally went unharmed. I am proud of that progress of civilization and I am proud of the fact that it is considered now as an inextricable part of our 'culture'.
Most Muslims in Europe are of the same opinion. Some indulge into nostalgic maintenance of what they consider as traditional morals. Like for the Christianist fundamentalists, their practices have to meet with condemnation and punishment. That is what the European authorities do. Everywhere, without exception. Most Muslim countries (with the exceptions of Saudi-Arabia and Iran), do not differ from European law in this respect. So, where is the problem? In the US, the Mormon majority in Utah is allowed to abide to its own laws, that permit men to marry multiple women. No protection of their person, their integrity, their rights as parents of their children is provided. They are left behind. So, what permits American isolationists to condemn such practices, when applied elsewhere in the world? And, still more convincing, what allows them to depict a picture of European tolerance, that is utterly untrue? Even in culturally backward regions like Bavaria in Germany, or in the Polish countryside, the law is maintained and women are protected against male pretensions. I do not know of any European authority, leftist or not, who tolerates depreciating behavior onto women, like it is tolerated at some places in in the US.
But, let us listen to Vik, who recorded all on his recorder:
After introducing the panel, moderator Andy Bostom asked Ayaan to speak first. She detailed what Europe can do to avoid Islamic domination. (All quotes are transcribed from audio recordings.)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Is Muslim domination of Europe inevitable? I can't predict the future. But looking at the way things are in Europe, at least what we see is that it is urgent to address this issue. And probably now in some neighborhoods, in some cities in Europe, Islamic domination is visible. Europeans have a taste of how things can look like if Islamic domination becomes Europe's future. I think it's avoidable. And it is avoidable, if European leaders and European civil society at least approach four policies in a radically different way than what we see now.
The first is of course the immigration policy. The EU have removed the borders in between the countries, without thinking about the consequences of that, inviting the people to come from other countries, mainly Muslim countries, and even those who are not invited, when they came still. The immigration laws that made it possible for a large number of people to come to the EU have not been reformed. There is no central EU policy, even though the member states no longer have borders. So either you have a planned European immigration policy, or the member countries go back and say, "You know what? We are going to take care of that part of our problems."
Now what? Is this a liberal, speaking? Abolition of borders between countries, I have always heard, helps creating bigger, more competitive markets. Cheap labor, provided by immigrants and transmigrants from eastern Europe, is good for employers. That is how Michigan and Chicago became great in industry and wealth. A 'large number of people' migrated during the thirties from the plains to the new industries. It saved America from the woes of depression and crisis. Why should Europeans not be allowed to do the same? And a common European immigration policy, who is against it? Answer: Hirsi Ali's Conservative Liberal Party of Holland, led by her "friend" Rita Verdonk, who featured a restrictive (very restrictive and discriminating) immigration policy for Holland exclusively. As usual, Ajaan is mixing up contradictory statements, only to please the audience.
The report continues (Hirsi Ali):
..The next policy that should be approached differently is what is now in many European countries called, the integration policy. Integration is just another euphemism for multi-culturalism. I think we should be honest about this and I think if Europeans adopt an assimilation policy, that that is going to prevent a complete Muslim domination in Europe.
Now that assimilation policy, should not be left to government. I think that civil society - that's the main thing that I've learned from the United States - is that civil activism is the thing that needs to change, and not top-down change. As the guiding of the Muslim movement in Europe is a grass-roots movement, not coordinated from a central command somewhere, so I think the reaction to it must be also grass roots, civil activism, and where the government should do its bit, the government should do its bit, which is [indistinct on audio].
And that policy is economic reform, meaning, to reduce government, where government is unnecessary, and especially the welfare state. You don't need Islamic domination - look at the aboriginals in Australia. If you have generations of people depending on welfare, you're just freezing them in poverty. It's an inhuman policy, I think. It's been instigated by compassion, but it's very inhuman. And if you have generations of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, on welfare, feeling alienated, then the agents of radical Islam just target that group, and take advantage of that resentment.
The news is, that Hirsi Ali now condemns "integration" policies as a giving in to "multiculturalism". Forced "assimilation", an authoritarian policy, is what she demands now. That policy should not come from government, but from "civil society". She claims, that she has learned so in the US.
Southern 'civil society' indeed has blocked black emancipation, justice for Afro-American people, until deep into the sixties. The Ku-Klux-Klan gets belated support from an unexpected side!
This dangerous nonsense is supported by references to libertarian views: Do away with the welfare state! Leave pregnant young women alone! It is their fault. We do not want to pay for the upbringing of new dangerous Muslim babies!
Development aid to third world countries is a devilish idea too:
And the fourth, and that's where I'm going to end, is an intervention policy, what today in Europe is known as, development aid. So the idea is, we are going to help Muslim countries, or countries where immigrants come from, and trade with them through aid. But we are not going to reform our own markets. We are not going to have crops grown in Africa, we are not going to allow them into our countries, but we are going to give them some money. And when we need oil, instead of having our defense system up-to-date, we are going to persuade them to do - we are actually going to bribe them. That's what it amounts to. And I think that approach - bribing nations where immigrants come from, should change. I think we should adopt a carrot-and-stick, the old carrot-and-stick approach, where help - I'm not a proponent of indefinite help - I think that a nation should help themselves. But ultimately, the idea that military intervention is unavoidable and that before that you need a proper defense system.
She stops just before pleading for a preventive military occupation of Muslim countries. But that is where it amounts to. Ajaan craves for the 'stick' to discipline countries like Somalia. The US provided a "proper" defense system to Ethiopia, that willingly went murdering in Mogadishu, in order to impose a government lead by her Darod-clan uncle. Carrots have not yet been spotted in the ruins of Mogadishu.
Finally, she sets her hopes on two old friends, who are expected to sell those policies in Holland and in Germany:
If all those policies [change, HR] - and some of them are changing. The debate is open. There are people like Leon de Winter and Henryk Broder and many other Europeans who are debating this, and I hope that that's going to lead to something more positive. If that has not happened, then yes, the Muslim domination of Europe is unavoidable, but it's something that Europeans have to take upon themselves.A heavy burden on the weak shoulders of De Winter and of Broder. Hirsi Ali herself is no more to be counted upon. They have to work for it themselves. Lady-friend is occupied in the Promised Country. Europe is given up.
[..]
I do not think, that our friend Leon made his point very clearly. He apparently intends to counter the Pepperdine axiom of an Europe that has already been lost to Islam and its perverse leftist friends. But he did not dare to dissent too ostensibly from his friend Hirsi Ali. Therefore, I think, this muddled statement about the specific Dutch tolerance traditions, concluding weakly into a description of the Wilders mood, shared by (too) many Dutch citizens. In an effort to abide by the Pepperdine lesson, he refers to the xenophobic masses as "we". A lamentable performance. His reference to the imaginary specific dangers for Jews in Amsterdam is particularly despicable, when you realize, that the only antisemitic threats he received in his life, came from the murdered Theo van Gogh. Now his hero and martyr.Leon de Winter spoke next. (Bios of the panelists are here.)
Leon de Winter: ...There is absolutely no Islamization of Dutch society. Can you imagine? Okay, Amsterdam changed, to some degree. We have areas now, which we didn't have 20, 25 years ago, that are more or less, no-go areas. Especially when you're a Jew. This is worrying. It's of great concern to all of us. The general public is as tolerant, and at the same time, as - this sounds paradoxical - as Calvinistic as it has been since centuries. We are not changing. On the contrary. There is a vast undercurrent among the general public of the feeling that we have had enough of it. We are fed up. We want to stop it.
The Jewish mayor of Amsterdam City, Job Cohen, who managed to "keep the city together" in spite of the tensions provoked by islamist terror and xenophobic reactions against it, would never accept "no-go"-areas for non-muslims in the city, and he hasn't. But that is a truth that is not welcome in the Pepperdine world. (The audience would have liked his german shepherd-dogs proposal (link to a Dutch site) to discipline young Dutchmen of Moroccan origin. But it seems, that he did not repeat his outrageous proposals at Pepperdine...)
De Winter's co-referent, however, the virulent anti-islamic German columnist Henryk Broder, managed to deliver his message loud and clear:
Henryk Broder.
Henryk Broder then described in detail how jihad functions, that is, how it can be effective in destroying a culture from within:
Henryk Broder: ...Our best allies in this in Germany, the same is the case in Holland, are secular, united, Liberal Muslims who come out and defend our civil rights. And they are much more reliable than my colleagues from the liberal German daily newspapers. But what happened all over Europe after the attacks in Ankara, in Madrid, in London, after some attempted attacks in Germany - there is now a culture of angst established, all around the world - a culture of fear. [..]
Stop, Mr. Broder, prize-winning writer!
Germans used to make a clear distinction between "Kultur" and "Zivilisation", at least at the moment, when when I got acquainted with Germany and its great philosophers, literature and science.
What, in Gods Name, is an "Angst-Kultur"?
I can imagine, that people's thinking is dominated by fear of the strangers in the house.
But that is not a culture. That is a state of mind that can happen in any culture, and become a threat to civilization, i.e.: to the rational behavior of citizens as such.
Some people may draw upon those fears, fomenting a cult of fear and its corollary: blind hatred. That, in its turn, may develop into an ideology, an "-ism".
In this case, we are present at the birthplace of an ideology of anti-islamism, based on fomenting fear and hatred. Or, to say it otherwise: a simulacrum of ideology is developed, in order to mobilize a "grassroots movement" against Islam, Muslims and their property.
Adolf Hitler's first and only book (1928: Mein Kampf) opens with a description of how a Jewish boy is leering at blond German girls, with an intention to abuse them. This was to be considered as part of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to spoil innocent people, in order to dominate them (Proof: The protocols of the Wise of Zion, a 19th century forged document). We all know, what has been the outcome of such a cultivation of fear.
Isn't the suggestive storytelling about Muslims like the ones Broder and other Pepperdine speakers indulge in, unsettling similar to what antisemites used to do (and still do)?
The following statements of Mr. Broder in Malibu do not take away MY fear, that this man is indulging in racist agitation:
And things are happening now in Germany that could not have happened 10 or 15 years ago. I will give you a couple of examples to illustrate the situation. Protestant churches are celebrating this year and last year, Mohammed's birthday. This was unheard of. [.....] So on the grass roots level, church and state, it's a good idea to celebrate Mohammed's birthday, together with our Muslim citizens, simply to appease them - to accommodate them - to make them feel better, hoping that they will not let out any aggression on us.
Most Europeans do not know that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Nor do many Americans. To me, that is no problem. Everybody is allowed to access to happiness in his or her own way, if I may paraphrase a well-known Prussian King, a son of Enlightenment. Why not celebrate Mohammed's birthday too? And Buddha's and Moses'? More holidays for all the workers.
It is absolutely unconceivable, that the German Protestants, who headed the most courageous opposition to Ulbricht and his surrealist brand of socialism, have decided to include the prophet Mohammed in their celebrations because of FEAR, resorting to "accomodation". They just want to bridge irrelevant cultural differences with their Muslim co-Germans. An intelligent and humanistic way to quell the same popular fears that Broder ignites!
Those Protestant communities just do what President Bush did, when he organized an Islamic service in the White House, in order to show, that the US are not against Islam as such! Is Henryk Broder accusing George Bush of "appeasement" and "accomodation" policy? THAT would have been interesting to tell at Pepperdine!
After having ridiculized a German paper that (ironically) deemed the hanging (in stead of stoning) of an Iranian girl as "progress", Broder continues:
I'll give you one more example, because it is so unbelievable. There was an auction recently at Christy's in London. A couple of days ago. There was going to be an auction, but there was already a catalog out for this auction. And two pictures in the catalog have been worked on in some detail, and intimate details were erased. And there was a footnote to those pictures saying, 'out of respect for cultural sensibilities, this image has been distorted. Please refer to the department of Christy's, for an accurate representation.' [Laughter.] Out of respect for cultural sensibilities, they distorted some classical pictures, with the great titles, "In the Harem," and "The State Market," showing some naked women.
The Christie's website learns us, that they do not eliminate specific physical details on their representation of paintings because of Islam, but... because of US rules, that forbid their representation. The 'Madonna' Brooklyn incident under former New York Mayor Giuliani (2002), who retired city funding, because of a representation of the Virgin with naked breasts, has been (a.o.) at the origin of stricter US rules for artistic expositions.
Broder doesn't SAY explicitly that it were Islam, that provoked this outburst of Victorianism. Maybe, he even knew, that Islam has nothing to do with Christie's sudden puritanism. Then it was just a joke, to show his independence from the fundamentalist Christian environment (like Voltaire used to do in his time), but our Vik has no doubts:
So that's the way that leads us into submission, into surrender, into capitulation - without any pressure applied on us! It's enough to keep them in this culture of fear, where you know there may be a kind of violent attack happening next day or next time. That's enough! That's enough to exercise this terrible amount of discipline on you and to make you surrender, before the crisis occurs.
I do not see, if it was Henryk Broder himself, recorded, here, or our reporter jubilating about this ultimate confirmation of his prejudices, but I cannot appreciate the utter cynicism that made Mr. Broder make this last statement.
And now, we are getting serious. Daniel Pipes himself speaks:
Daniel Pipes: [..] Through these speakers we have had something of a virtual tour of Holland, Germany, and England, and have seen how in each nation Western freedoms are being attacked by the cancer of jihad. The Islamist culture preaches - to Muslims - hatred of all things non-Islamic; so much so, that there are always a sufficient number of Islamists ready sacrifice themselves in a violent attack. The Western culture is paralyzed, thinking that it cannot identify which Islamists are about to attack, and believing that as a result, it cannot do anything.
Pipes has got what he wanted and paid for: 'Europeans' who are ready to smear their countries of origin, telling lies, summoning fear.
[Pipes gives a long description of a Government program to infiltrate dangerous mosques. Some mosques have to be 'eradicated':]
Such a crackdown is to be accomplished, not merely by the government, but primarily, by a grass-roots movement - by the people. As Ayaan is quoted above: "...that's the main thing that I've learned from the United States - is that civil activism is the thing that needs to change, and not top-down change. As the guiding of the Muslim movement in Europe is a grass-roots movement, not coordinated from a central command somewhere, so I think the reaction to it must be also grass roots, civil activism..."Pipes preparing an American "Kristallnacht" (1938: Germany - indoctrinated "grassroots" civilians attack synagogues, Jewish property, rape Jewish girls, destroy houses and steal household goods). The Hitler government would greedily have done so itself, but preferred to disguise it into a grassroots-, "civil society"-pogrom. I cannot but wonder, if Leon de Winter has felt at ease at Pipes' call for an unleashing of popular hatred against foreigners. Government (and Justice) to be overrun at the same time ...
[Pipes continues with his story of a man named Gaubitz, who infiltrated radical mosques as an US Government spy, only to resume finally his call:]
As Henryk Broder showed, this [Islamist] strategy can be very effective in getting a Western culture to surrender its freedoms. Why should we tolerate these bomb factories, that produce walking, human time bombs, intended by their leaders to kill us?
We must shut down the mosques that instill this hatred into Muslims, in order to protect our freedoms.
Mr. Pipes is a dangerous extremist.
His text is intentionally equivocal: At first sight, he only asks for closure of mosques where terrorism is fomented. Few people will disagree with that.
But Hirsi Ali, Greg Davis, Ibn Warraq, Broder and others have been arguing that all Islam is about hatred of non-Muslims and "dawa" (viz. the "protocols"), a Macchivellian strategy for underhandedly getting power, posing as "integrated" and respectful citizens.
If all the mosques are to be considered as potential centers of terror, and Pipes did not contradict that with one word, his last statement should be read as a call to shut down all of them, to the last one.
Knowing, that the US government and Justice never would accept such a policy, another new (new to me, at least) element put forward at the conference by Hirsi Ali and explicitly underwritten by Pipes himself (see above), stands out in all its evil consequences: The attack on mosques should be the work of a "popular upsurge"...
Can you imagine a Ku-Klux-Klan like popular US pogrom against Muslims, that would make distinctions between "good" and "evil" Islam? Wouldn't popular outrage develop into a witch-hunt on "dhimmis" too? - Pontii Pilati like Pipes would afterwards wash their hands in innocence. De Winter would deplore the "excesses", but ask for understanding the desperation of the common people, caused by "criminal" neglection by liberal (leftist) politicians. And Pepperdine University would, I imagine, piously say, that among the dead victims, God will make a distinction between his people and the others...
The perverse call by Daniel Pipes and his friends for a 21st century version of pogroms against Muslims should meet a firm response. In the US as well as in Europe.
I will develop some ideas for a counter-offensive at the end of this reporting about the Pepperdine Conference. In the mean time, let there be no misunderstanding what the debate is about:
Of course, Muslim preaching of hate and destruction should be countered by all (legal) means. Like every terrorist agitation, such as the American neonazi movement, the terrorists who blew up a government building, only because it was a government building, representing the federal state, and without any care for the children who died under the blaze, in their kindergarten.
Of course, fundamentalist Christian movements, who attack abortion clinics, should also be infiltrated and made ineffective. Authoritarian sects, that proceed to kill their followers and bystanders, as they are expecting the redemption by a glorious Christ, coming from the moon or from Mars, should be stopped by all means.
But all that is not what Pipes intends to say. What he is provoking, or trying to provoke, is an attack by unlashed citizens on all Islamic property, on all what he deems "un-american", including what his stooges call the (European, or liberal-democrat) leftist, welfare-state traitors.
A new and dangerous stage in the struggle for a humane, civilized western society has been opened. Pipes and co have government money to spend. Their attack on Europe is, and will be, shameless and pitiless.
A united stand is necessary, now more than ever before.
The real traitors in this Spiel are the European opinionmakers who accepted to serve as (false) witnesses for the prosecution in Malibu.
I am not in a mood to forgive them.
