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7/7/11

Europe: Islamization or Islamophobia? - by RM

Recently a friend of mine forwarded me a copy of the New York 9/11 speech by Dutch anti-Islam right wing politician Geert Wilders. My first reaction was to discard this as spam, but than I realized that if I did not react, others who did not have the background information available on this issue might start to believe his nonsense. So I decided to make use of my democratic right of free speech,  a right which Geert Wilders would like to see removed from Muslims.

Geert Wilders NY 9/11 speech was just another of his many attempts to create fear and diversion in our Western secular societies. As usual the information, as in most of his right-wing, racially and religiously slanted speeches,  is loaded with unsubstantiated statements, fables. and half truths.

Radicalism of any kind is often bred out of fear and ignorance, and usually is a tool used by those who seek political power and control. Hitler effectively used this to go after the Jews and today we have politicians like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Kent Ekeroth, Sweden, Jean-Marie Le Pen from France, Italy's Mario Borghezio, Flip DeWinter in Belgium, Heinz-Christian Strache from Austria and Markus Beisicht in Germany, who have taken up Hitlers banner of "ethnic cleansing".

In America the critique against Muslims might still be mostly underground, but nevertheless is also quite prevalent. Presently, however, unlike Europe, Latinos (not Muslims) dominate the immigration debate there.

The fact remains, unfortunately,  that these days Islamophobia , like anti-Semitism, hostility towards or discrimination against a person because of their faith or racial group, runs deep again in our society. The failure of some people or groups of people to distinguish between the actions of religious extremists and terrorists, and the vast majority of Muslims and their faith, has reinforced a belief in the collective guilt of Muslims.

Believe it or not, Muslims have the same constitutional rights and freedoms as all others citizens in the EU and the USA. No one has the right to make them collectively responsible for 9/11 or whatever crime some crazy politician can come up with.

Hopefully many others will speak out against this poisonous  and dangerous radicalism coming from far right populist politicians.before it totally gets out of hand.

EU-Digest

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