Islam in Europe: In the Casbah of Rotterdam

5/20/2009

(Page 3 of 3)

circulating around the Dutch mosques, "The path of the Muslim," in which he explains that the heads of homosexuals should be cut off and "hung from the highest building in the city." Next to the al Nasr mosque, we sit down at a cafe for men only. In front of us is a halal Islamic slaughterhouse. Ephimenco is the author of three essays on Holland and Islam, and today is a famous columnist for the leftist Christian newspaper "Trouw." He has the best perspective for understanding a city that, perhaps even more than Amsterdam, embodies the tragedy of Holland.

"It is not at all true that Wilders gets his votes from the fringes, everyone knows that, even though they don't say it," he tells us. "Today educated people vote for Wilders, although at first it was the lower class Dutch, the tattoo crowd. Many academics and people on the left vote for him. The problem is all of these Islamic headscarves. There's a supermarket behind my house. When I arrived, there wasn't a single headscarf. Now it's all Muslim women with the chador at the register. Wilders is not Haider. His positions are on the right, but also on the left, he's a typical Dutchman. Here there are even hours at the swimming pool set aside for Muslim women.

This is the origin of the vote for Wilders. Islamization, this foolishness with the theater, has to be stopped. In Utrecht, there is a mosque where they provide separate city services for men and women. The Dutch are afraid. Wilders is against the Frankenstein of multiculturalism. I, who used to be on the left but am no longer anything, I say we've reached the limit. I feel the ideals of the Enlightenment have been betrayed with this voluntary apartheid, in my heart I feel the death of the ideals of the equality of men and women, and freedom of expression. Here the left is conformist, and the right has the better answer to insane multiculturalism."

One of the professors at Erasmus University in Rotterdam is Tariq Ramadan, the famous Swiss Islamic scholar who is also a special adviser for the city. Some of Ramadan's statements against homosexuality were uncovered by Holland's most famous gay magazine, "Gay Krant," directed by a talkative journalist named Henk Krol. On a videocassette, Ramadan calls homosexuality "a disease, a disorder, an imbalance." On the tape, Ramadan also has comments on women, "they should keep their eyes on the ground when they're on the street." Wilders' party asked for the city council to be disbanded, and for the Islamic scholar from Geneva to be sent packing, but instead he was renewed in his post for two more years. This was happening while across the sea, the Obama administration was confirming the ban on Ramadan entering United States territory. The tapes in Krol's possession include one in which Ramadan tells women: "Allah has an important rule: if you try to attract attention through the use of perfume, or your appearance or gestures, you do not have the correct spiritual orientation."

"When Pim Fortuyn was killed, it was a shock for everyone, because a man was murdered for what he said," Krol tells us. "That was no longer my country. I'm still thinking about leaving Holland, but where can I go? Here we have been criticized by everyone, by the Catholic Church and by the Protestants. But when we criticized Islam, they answered us: you are creating new enemies!" According to Ephimenco, the street is the secret of Wilders' success: "In Rotterdam, there are three enormous mosques, one of them is the largest in Europe. There are more and more Islamic headscarves, and an Islamist impulse coming from the mosques. I know many people who have left the city center to go to the rich, white suburbs. My neighborhood is poor and black. It is a question of identity, on the streets Dutch is not spoken anymore, but Arabic and Turkish."

Let's meet the man who inherited Fortuyn's column in the newspaper "Elsevier." His name is Bart Jan Spruyt, a robust young Protestant intellectual, founder of the Edmund Burke Society, but above all the author of Wilders' "Declaration of independence," and his coworker from the beginning. "Here an immigrant no longer has to struggle, study, work, he can live at the expense of the state," Spruyt tells us. "We have ended up creating a parallel society. The Muslims are in the majority in many neighborhoods, and are asking for sharia. This isn't Holland anymore. Our use of freedom has turned back against us, it is a process of self-Islamization."

Spruyt was one of Fortuyn's close friends. "Pim said what the people had known for decades." He attacked the establishment and the journalists. It was a great relief for the people when he went into politics, they called him the 'white knight'. The last time I spoke with him, one week before he was killed, he told me he had a mission. His killing was not the act of a lone madman. In February of 2001, Pim announced that he wanted to change the first article of the Dutch constitution, on discrimination, because in his view it kills freedom of expression, and he was right. The following day in the Dutch churches, which are mostly empty and used for public meetings, the diary of Anne Frank was read as a warning against Fortuyn. Pim was truly Catholic, more than we think, in his books he spoke out against modern society without fathers, without values, empty, nihilist."

Chris Ripke is a well-known artist in the city. His studio is near a mosque in Insuindestraat. Shocked in 2004 by the murder of director Theo Van Gogh by an Dutch Islamist, Chris decided to paint an angel on wall of his studio and the biblical commandment "Gij zult niet doden," thou shalt not kill. His neighbors at the mosque found the words "offensive," and called the mayor of Rotterdam at the time, the liberal Ivo Opstelten. The mayor ordered the police to erase the painting, because it was "racist." Wim Nottroth, a television journalist, camped out on the spot in protest. The police arrested him, and his film was destroyed. Ephimenco did the same in his own window: "I put up a big white sheet with the biblical commandment. Photographers came, and the radio. If you can no longer write 'do not kill' in this country, then you are saying that we are all in prison. It is like apartheid, whites living with whites and blacks with blacks. There is a great chill. Islamism wants to change the structure of the country." For Ephimenco, part of the problem is the de-Christianization of society. "When I arrived here, during the 1960's, religion was dying, a unique event in Europe, a collective de-Christianization. Then the Muslims brought religion back to the center of social life. Aided by the anti-Christian elite."

Let's go for a stroll through the Islamized neighborhoods. In Oude Westen there are only Arabs, women clothed from head to foot, ethnic foods shops, Islamic restaurants, and shopping centers with Arabic music. "Ten years ago, you didn't see all these headscarves," Ephimenco says. Behind his house, in a flourishing middle class area with two-story houses, there is an Islamized neighborhood. There are Muslim signs everywhere. "Look at all of those Turkish flags, over there is an important church, but it's empty, no one goes there anymore." In the middle of one square stands a mosque with Arabic writing outside. "That used to be a church." Not far from here is the most beautiful monument in Rotterdam. It is a small granite statue of Pim Fortuyn. Beneath the gleaming bronze head, the mouth saying his last words on behalf of freedom of speech, there is written in Latin: "Loquendi libertatem custodiamus," let us safeguard the right to speak. Every day, someone places flowers there.

- - -

Chiesa is a wonderful source on all things Catholic in Europe. It is skillfully edited by Sandro Magister. SANDRO MAGISTER was born on the feast of the Guardian Angels in 1943, in the town of Busto Arsizio in the archdiocese of Milan. The following day he was baptized into the Catholic Church. His wife�s name is Anna, and he has two daughters, Sara and Marta. He lives in Rome.

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1 - 10 of 10 Comments

Faye
3 years ago
And this began in Canada, perhaps only 7 years ago. My Prime Minister Harper PLEASE BEWARE!!!
Well I will forward this to his office and pray for the best.
Saul Horowitz I agree with you, perhaps all we can do is pray to our G-d. Yes I am an Anglican but I know you do not write the full name of Him. Blessed be.
Sjaak van der Velden
3 years ago
Mister Meotti has a point, but also makes a lot of factual mistakes in his articles.
He forgets that many immigrants in Rotterdam are not muslims at all but Christian descendants of the slaves who where transported from Africa to the Americas by Dutch vessels. Many problems that arise from immigration in Rotterdam can therefore not be explained from religious differences.
Besides, it is simply not true that in Het Oude Westen most women wear veils or niqabs. Pim Fortuyn wasn't murdered in Amsterdam but in Hilversum.
Of course the Fortuyn statue is not the most beautiful monument in Rotterdam. That honour must go the statue of Erasmus, the Rotterdam born philosopher who criticised the Church of Rome.
I am an atheist who wants that all religions allow me to live my own life as I want to. I also don't like the signs of muslim presence in my beautiful city Rotterdam, but at the same time I have a feeling that the Meotti article has been published by Catholic online for one single reason. Roman Catholics have lost their fierce grip on society and they want to get it back. Muslims are their main competitors, but most people from Marocco or Turkey just want to live their life as they chose, just as I do.
Of course there should be no room for the sharia just like the excommunication to the third degree of one of my relatives by the church of Rome is insane.
All people should be free to live their own lives.

Sjaak, Rotterdam
gsw
3 years ago
Enait was of course practising Taqiyya. One stands at the arrival of the judge to show respect for the LAW. Obviously, since islam has no respect for Dutch Law, it is necessary for him to talk about equality.
Saul Horowitz
4 years ago
Right on the nose!The cowardly Europeans will sooner or later have realized what a terrible, fatal mistake they have made...Farewell,oh Europe!Welcome to Eurabia, contaminated and befouled by Islamofascist filth.You reek of 'green plague', but you can't smell it for your senses are dead, blocked by the stench rising to the heaven from the tops of their slender minarets!Islam is a modern-day fascism,if not even worse than that...Brace up,Good Old Europe for the dark clouds are descending upon thou and you're too blind to respond.You've been ousting Jews,who would promote humanistic values, such as tolerance towards others; they would advance your economy,they'd boost the development of commerce and trade, they contributed to your scientific progress, further adding to your prosperity. But you never liked them and in the name of the so-called democracy you have let those treacherous muslim snakes into your very heart, so don't be surprised if one day it stops beating and a new heart comes to replace it - the one made of rock, impervious and deaf to the moans of your own citizens,who are oppressed-day in, day out by the very democracy you are so damn proud of...Shame on you!Start praying G-d, because there's nothing else you can do...
Paul Sutton
4 years ago
May one be permitted to wonder if this situation would have occurred if the Leonine Prayers (for the protection of Holy Church & the conversion of Russia)had continued to be offered after low Masses.

Wonder what would happen if they were reintroduced ?

Peace & love in Christ brothers & sisters.
From Our Lady`s Land of the Southern Cross.
Saba
4 years ago
http://www.acryforpeace.com/Play_Song.html
Above, a link of a very impressive song; an offer of peace for all Muslims of the world.
PLEASE try it: http://www.acryforpeace.com/Play_Song.html
Saba Koriale
4 years ago
Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire.
Click here, to this site below; to Fr, Zakaria Botros (Coptic preist) personal web site who is now considered enemy # 1 of Islam who has a show (Alhayat TV, life TV 7/24) and his show have about 60 million of Arabic speakers whatchers ever week

http://islam-christianity.net/

Father Zakaria Botros has just been named World Magazine's 2008 "Daniel of the Year," something of a Christian equivalent to Time Magazine's "Man of the Year." I first wrote about the elusive Fr Zakaria here. The unedited World Magazine article is long but well worth the read, as it has many details -- such as the fact that each of Botros' weekly episodes are watched by nearly 60 million Arabic-speakers, the vast majority of which are Muslim.

http://islam-christianity.net/
Ted of Windsor
4 years ago
Muslims Reverence Jesus Christ

�Experience shows us an enormous difference between piety and goodness.� - Blaise Pascal, Pense�s

It is not uncommon for Muslims to proclaim that they have a respect and reverence for Jesus Christ. This is a claim that many Muslims in Western nations will often make, so as to encourage greater "dialogue" and openness toward Islam. Because Jesus Christ is mentioned at various points in the Qur'an, it is said to follow that the Qur'an honors Him. Indeed, Islam acknowledges that Jesus Christ was a prophet, that He was born of a virgin, and even that He was sinless. However, simply giving lip service to these facts does not necessarily mean that Muslims understand the significance of these points, or that they are therefore reverencing the Lord. This is because, in the process of speaking and teaching about Jesus, Islam rejects and denies many truths about the Lord that are of vital importance and that are clearly taught in Scripture. Further, though many Muslims will affirm their reverence for Jesus Christ in theory, it is not uncommon to see Muslims in practice denigrate the Person and name of Jesus as part of more systematic efforts to force Islamic chauvinism upon Christianity and Christians.
http://www.studytoanswer.net/myths_ch4.html
Ted of Windsor
4 years ago
Ten Myths About Islam (Preface)

A wise man named Francis Bacon once said that knowledge is power. Certainly this is true when dealing with foreign, and often hostile, ideologies that confront our Western civilization and way of life. One of these ideologies is Islam. Americans, and Westerners in general, whether Christian or not, are all too often still dangerously ill-informed about Islam. Many people in the West hear and believe the propaganda promoted by various Muslim groups, but fail to search out the facts about the history, theology, and psychology of the Islamic phenomenon.
While knowledge may be power, ignorance can render a person, a nation, or an entire civilization absolutely powerless. It is the intention of this book to dispel ignorance about Islam and to expose it to the light of open and honest investigation. How much does your average Westerner, your average American, your average churchgoer, or your average secularist, know about Islam? How can we sort through the varying images and claims made by and about Islam? What is truth, and what is falsehood, as far as what we are being told about the religion of Islam? Are we being lied to, and if so, then how can we detect these falsehoods and avoid them?
http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam_myths.html
GUn
4 years ago
The Netherlands had lost its direction in the last decades by legalizing all things unrelated to BIBLE. No offense, Islam rules the country right now. Christians in Holland MUST do something about this.

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