“Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog,” said famed British statesman Winston Churchill.
“Islam is a religion of peace,” said contemporary British statesman David Cameron.
These two statements, both uttered by men who were or would become British prime minister, are separated by more than 100 years in time — and 1,000 light years in ideology. For you can be arrested for quoting Churchill’s comment in today’s U.K.
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That’s what happened to Liberty GB leader Paul Weston early last year. He was ultimately charged with a “Racially Aggravated Crime” after he publicly read Churchill writings critical of Islam. And such persecution isn’t limited to Britain. As Winston himself might say, from Stockholm in the Baltic to Tamworth near the Tasman Sea, an iron burka has descended across the West.
Founder of French publication Riposte Laïque (Secular Response) Christine Tasin wasn’t nearly as profound or polemical as Churchill when she said, “Islam is rubbish,” but it was still enough for a court to find her guilty of making “statements likely to provoke rejection of Muslims” and fine her $3,700. The charges were finally dropped two weeks ago after an appeal, but other Frenchmen haven’t been so lucky (if being dragged through a criminal process can be called lucky). One of them is journalist Eric Zemmour, who “was sentenced to a fine of 1,000 euros ($1,250) and a payment of 10,000 euros ($12,500) to various associations and leagues. He had said during a talk show that ‘the majority of drug dealers in France are black and Arab Muslims.’ The judges considered this was an ‘incitement to racial discrimination,’” writes the Gatestone Institute’s Guy Millière.
Meanwhile, France has a new major export: It’s now the largest provider of jihadist fighters for ISIS, with two of them making an appearance in a beheading video.
Across the channel, it was revealed last year that political correctness caused United Kingdom authorities to ignore a Muslim child sex-trafficking ring for 16 years, despite its abuse of approximately 1,400 British girls in one town alone. Yet U.K. authorities aren’t always so remiss in enforcing the law. As the Telegraph reported in October, “A successful Christian school has been warned it is to be downgraded by inspectors and could even face closure after failing to invite a leader from another religion, such as an imam, to lead assemblies.” Ironically, this is said to be a reaction to the “Trojan Horse scandal” — involving Islamic infiltration of some English schools — and is characterized as an effort to promote “British values.”
In a further enforcement of British values, a 19-year-old Leeds, West Yorkshire man was arrested December 27 after posting a video to social media in which he burned a Koran. The Yorkshire Standard reports that Leeds District Police superintendent Mabs Hussain stated his department was preparing an “advice file” for prosecutors and that the charge is “suspicion of a racially or religiously aggravated public order offence.” And many thought burning a Koran was only an offense under Sharia law.
Elsewhere on the high-Fahrenheit front, close to 1,000 churches have been burned in Nigeria during the last few years by the Muslim group Boko Haram. And the “Center for the Studies of Global Christianity in the United States estimates that about 100,000 Christians die every year because of their religious beliefs, that is to say one every five minutes,” writes Agenzia Fides. One of these victims, by the way, will be Pakistani mother of four Asia Bibi, whose death sentence under her nation’s blasphemy law was upheld in October. Her offense? As the Star put it, “She is alleged to have made derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbours objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim” and, hence, was “unclean.” Pakistan, it appears, is more Westernized than many think: It subordinates Christianity to Islam as well.
Also in October and reflecting far-away Egypt, a Coptic Christian church was burned in Berlin, Germany, an act bringing condemnation from the city’s mayor. Mere days ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a condemnation of her own — but hers was a bit different. Targeting her nation’s anti-Islamization PEGIDA protests during a televised New Year’s Eve address, she said, among other things, “Do not follow those who have called the rallies. Because all too often they have prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts.”
But more and more Germans are cooling to her message, with a recent poll showing that one in eight would join the protests if they could. In fact, while the movement began mere months ago, a December 22 Dresden march attracted 17,000 people; moreover, the aforementioned survey also found that 29 percent of Germans believe the threat of Islamization is real enough to justify the demonstrations.
Perhaps they’re troubled by the fact that, as The New American wrote last month, “Germany is now home to approximately 3,000 mosques and Muslim prayer halls, including what upon completion will be one of Europe’s largest Islamic houses of worship, the Cologne Central Mosque; and Muslims constitute the majority of the school systems in some parts of the nation.” Some might also be alarmed that Munich city officials blocked a referendum that would have allowed local citizens to decide if a $51 million Munich mega-mosque should be built. This is despite the fact that twice the necessary number of signatures for the referendum to proceed were gathered and that, as the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern put it in 2013, the mosque is “designed to be a key strategic platform for spreading Islam throughout Europe.”
More recently, the people’s will was thwarted in Sweden as well. A mere three weeks ago, its left-wing coalition government was collapsing and the nation was poised to have a snap election in which citizens would, no doubt, have further empowered the burgeoning Sweden Democrats. But now, the major parties of the hard left and right of hard left have collaborated, as American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson puts it, “in a stunning backroom deal” to “prevent the sole party opposing Sweden’s immigration policy from increasing its representation.”
What are some Swedes so upset about? Some Muslim areas in their country are “no-go” zones where police fear to tread, and paramedics are now requesting body armor to wear when entering them. And as The New American reported in November:
• “Primarily Muslim immigrant gangs now control 55 areas in Sweden.”
• “Swedish police recorded in 2010 the second-highest number of rapes in the world next to Lesotho — the small nation in southern Africa.”
• Cars are “set alight almost every day in Muslim enclaves, and Sweden now, incredibly, has an average of one school fire every day — a world record.”
Nonetheless, just as the German government is surveilling citizens who criticize Islam, a new Swedish law criminalizes anti-immigration Internet expression, and certain anti-immigration Internet commenters had already previously been tracked down and persecuted. In fact, Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist said it’s so bad that if you oppose immigration in her country, you’ll be called a “racist” and will have “no job, no career … no future” — and now, it appears, no election.
And Muslim immigration into Europe continues unfettered, enabled by the alliance between liberal doctrinarians and Dar al-Islam. As for the former, an erstwhile advisor to ex-U.K. prime minister Tony Blair perhaps spoke for many Western elites when he admitted in 2009 that mass immigration into his nation was part of an attempt to radically change Britain and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity.”
What the West will be changed and diversified into, however, is the question.
Photo of women in burqas: Steve Evans
