Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Volume 4, Number 11 November 2012

Publisher, William L. Armstrong Editor, John Andrews

MARKED FOR DEATH BECAUSE I DARED TO CRITICIZE ISLAM

By Geert Wilders
I feel honored to address you today about the situation in Europe and in particular in my own country, the Netherlands. This situation serves as a warning to what might happen in America if you fail to be vigilant. As Thomas Jefferson said, Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I am one of 150 members of the House of Representatives in the Netherlands, a small country of almost 17 million people in Western Europe. I am the leader of the Party for Freedom. My party is the third largest of 11 parties represented in the Dutch parliament.

and freedom are incompatible. Some people do not want to hear this message. That is why they threaten to murder everyone who states this truth. I am not the only one who has been marked for death. The British author Salman Rushdie, the Scandinavian cartoonists Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks have all been victims of assassination attempts. However, if you really love freedom, you have to speak the truth. If not, we will fall victim to Islam, like earlier the people in the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, India, and Indonesia fell victim to it. That is why I have spoken and will continue speaking, whatever the consequences: I do not want Europe, nor America, to become Islamic. Europes Fatal Mistake Let me make clear that I do not have a problem with Muslims. I always make a distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam. religion

Is it a For the past eight years I have been There is only one Islam, and it is a living under 24-hour police protection. or an ideology? dangerous ideology. It is intolerant, it is Wherever I go, plainclothes policemen violent. It should not be tolerated but should be contained. go with me. I live in a government safe house, heavily protected and bulletproof. I am driven every day from the In Europe, we are experiencing that when Islam becomes safe house to the Dutch parliament in armored police cars stronger in a societyeven when the majority of Muslims with flashing blue lights. are moderatesthat society becomes less free and more
I have not walked the streets on my own in the past eight years. When I occasionally go to a restaurant or a movie theater, the police will have to check everything first. My wife and I have lived in army barracks and prison cells just to be safe from assassins. We Must Speak the Truth Why do I need this protection? I have been marked for death for criticizing Islam. I was placed under police protection in November 2004 when an Islamic fanatic murdered the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh because he had criticized Islam. Van Gogh was slaughtered in broad daylight in the streets of Amsterdam. A few hours later, the police found a letter written by his assassin threatening to kill me as well. What have I done to deserve those death threats? I have candidly expressed my views about Islam. I believe that Islam, rather than a religion, is predominantly a totalitarian ideology striving for world dominance. I believe that Islam intolerant of non-Muslims. Certain parts of our inner cities no longer look like Europe. They look like suburbs of Cairo, Rabat, Algiers, Damascus, or Mecca. We are confronted with headscarves and burkas, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor-killings.

During the past three decades, Europe made a fatal mistake. It allowed millions of people from Islamic countries to immigrate into Europe. So many people rooted in a culture entirely different from our own Judeo-Christian and
Geert Wilders studied law at the Open University of the Netherlands and has served in the Dutch parliament since 1998. As founder of the Party for Freedom, he represented it in the 2010 coalition government negotiations. This essay is based on his book, Marked for Death: Islams War Against the West and Me, and on his speech at the Western Conservative Summit on June 30, 2012. Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.

percent consider Islam more important than democracy. Among Muslim university students in Britain, 40 percent support sharia. One in three of those students considers it legitimate to kill in the name of Islam. The rise of Islam also means the rise of sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe we have sharia wills, sharia schools, sharia banks. The introduction of elements of sharia law in our societies creates a system of legal apartheid. Sharia law systematically discriminates between groups of people. Britain now has official sharia courts. One of these courts settled an inheritance dispute involving a man whose estate had to be divided between his children. It gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with the Koranic pronouncement that a woman is only worth half a man. In my own country, the Netherlands, sharia is also being applied by the courts. This is a disgrace. In our civilization, men and women are treated as equals before the law. America Is Next My American friends, make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. Indeed, it has already arrived. Your country, too, is facing a stealth jihadan Islamic attempt to introduce sharia law bit by bit.

Source: U.S. Muslim Brotherhood secret document dated 1991, uncontested by defendants at Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial, 2008.

humanist tradition have entered Europe that our heritage, our freedoms, our prosperity, and our culture are in danger. In each one of our cities, wrote the Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.

Islam demands separate campus Many Americans see immigration as Is a woman only housing for Muslims; Islam demands something which is inherently good for hours in a country since it contributed so much worth half a man? that women have separateschools are gyms and swimming pools; to the United States. But while most of banning Christmas celebrations and are taking pork off the former immigrants to the United States came from their cafeteria menus to avoid offending Muslim students. Europe, a continent with the same Judeo-Christian roots And American courts have begun to apply sharia law. as America, Europes contemporary immigrants do not share our common roots. The islamization of our society Be aware that this is only the beginning. If we do not stop is undermining our Western, Judeo-Christian values. the islamization, we will lose everything: our identity, our Nonviolent Jihad and Sharia I am not just talking about the threat of terrorism or violence; there is also the phenomenon of nonviolent jihad. Europes increasingly assertive Islamic lobby has successfully pressured European politicians into implementing pro-Islamic policies and adopting elements of Islamic sharia law. The number of people who organize their lives according to Islamic requirements is growing, especially among young people. Among 15-year-old German Muslims, 40 culture, our democratic constitutional state, our freedom, and our civilization. In Europe we are already losing the right to free speech, the right to criticize Islam. We need a spirit of resistance. Resistance to evil is our moral duty. This resistance begins with expressing our solidarity to all Christians, all Jews, all non-Muslims, all Muslim apostates, all people who are the victims of Islam. We can see what Islam has in store for us if we watch the fate of the Christians in the Islamic world, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Iraq,

CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors views are not necessarily those of CCU. Manager, Jeannie Edwards. Designer, Danielle Hull. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at www.CentennialCCU.org. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore Americas moral core and prepare tomorrows leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - John Andrews, Director
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and the brave Christian people in Nigeria. Almost every day, churches are arsoned and Christians are assassinated in Islamic countries. Even in so-called moderate countries such as Turkey and Indonesia, Christians face discrimination and humiliation on a daily basis. We Are All Israel The cause of all this suffering is Islam. Rivers of tears are flowing from the Middle East, where there is only one safe haven for ChristiansIsrael. This is why Israel deserves the support of Christians worldwide. She is the canary in the coal mine. If Israel cannot exist in peace, none of us can. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. It is a safe haven for everyone. It is a beacon of light in an area of total darkness. If Israel falls, we too will feel the consequences. Israel is fighting our fight. Mothers in the West can sleep safely because Israeli mothers at night worry about their sons in the army. We all are Israel. We should all support Israel because Islams so-called holy war against Israel is a war against all of us. Banned in Britain, Prosecuted in the Netherlands In March 2008, I released Fitna, a 15-minute documentary about the Koran and the threat of islamization in the Netherlands. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) arranged for me to show the film to his colleagues in the U.S. Senate, but the screening of my movie was banned by the European Parliament. The British even barred Are all cultures government entering the me from equally good? United Kingdom on the day that I was scheduled to show Fitna in the House of Lords. Later in 2008, leftist, liberal, and Islamic organizations in the Netherlands brought me to court over Fitna. They accused me of group insult and incitement to hatred and discrimination. I was prosecuted for merely stating my opinion about Islam. I was finally acquitted on all charges, but the legal ordeal lasted almost three years. Imagine a member of parliament having to deal with a court case for three years at an enormous cost of time, energy, and money. The court ultimately acquitted me because I had criticized Islam, not Muslims, and because, as an elected politician participating in a public debate, I was entitled to greater freedom of speech than everyday citizens. Small comfort to the everyday citizaen. Multiculturalism and Cultural Relativism How did the West get into this situation? It is partly our own fault because we have foolishly adopted the ideology of multiculturalism or cultural relativism. This is the biggest

Voi ces of CCU ISLAM IN THE CLASSROOM: CORRECT OR POLITICALLY CORRECT? by William Watson
Unlike the politically-correct approach to Islam and the Middle East at most universities, our goal at Colorado Christian University is just to be correct, period. As instructor in CCUs Middle East courses, I assign Bernard Lewis, the best postwar historian of Islam. He was a professor of Middle East studies at the University of London for 30 years and at Princeton for 30 years more. The primary academic organization in this field, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), meets this month in Denver. The Geert Wilders viewpoint wont be welcome there. Most Middle East studies programs today are funded by Saudi petrodollars and dominated by MESA members, many of them avowed Islamists. Lewis helped found MESA in 1966. But he broke with the group in 2007 due to their radical politics and antiWestern bias. As an alternative forum for objective accurate scholarship and debate, he formed the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Its current president, Mark Clark of Cal State, contrasts ASMEAs scholarly openness to the closed circle that is MESA. CCU students who take History of the Middle East will first read the Koran to discover for themselves if Islam is a religion of peace. They will then trace Islamic expansion and rule from the 600s to the 1900s. In the next course, Contemporary Middle East, we study radical Islam from the Muslim Brotherhoods founding in 1928 to the Arab-Israeli wars since 1948, the growth of terrorism since 1970, and Al-Qaeda today. Want to know more? Read such authors as Ephraim Karsh, Ibn Warraq, and Raymond Ibrahim. And read the Koran itself along with the Hadith and the manual of Islamic law, Reliance of the Traveler.
William Watson (Ph.D., University of California, 1994) is a professor of history at Centennial Institute Colorado Christian University and a fellow of the Colorado Christian University Centennial Institute.

disease of politically correct Europe and America today. It is the crazy idea that all cultures are equal. Of course they are not. Our culture based on Christianity, Judaism, and humanism is far better, far superior to the Islamic culture. We should not be afraid, but proud, to say so.
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Centennial Review
November 2012

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By Geert Wilders Is there such a thing as moderate Islam? Not according to the experience of the Netherlands under unchecked Muslim immigration and cultural militancy. Is America safe from islamization? Not if the widening influence of sharia is any indication. Can accommodation be purchased by curtailing our freedom of speech and other liberties? No, the price is too high.

Marked for Death Because I Dared to Criticize Islam

Cultural relativism is weakening the West day by day. Government leaders, lawyers, judges, churches, trade unions, media, academia, charitiesall of them are blinded by political correctness and are condoning Islam. As a result of cultural relativism a little bit of the free West dies each day. Disastrously, multiculturalism has led us to open our borders to those who cannot be assimilated. It has led us to tolerate the intolerant, so that now their intolerance is annihilating our tolerance. We should, in the name of tolerance, claim the right no longer to tolerate those who are intolerant to us. We should, in the name of selfpreservation, no longer allow into our countries those who refuse to assimilate to our values. Four Steps We Must Take Yet I am not a pessimist. We can still turn the tideeven in Europeif we take four steps immediately.

Second, we must end cultural relativism. We should not be afraid to say who we are and to know who we are not. We must proudly proclaim that our Judeo-Christian values are objectively superior to Islamic values. Third, we must stop the islamization process. More Islam means more intolerance, more sharia, and less freedom. You may disagree, but I advocate stopping immigration from Islamic countries, expelling criminal immigrants, and halting the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in the West already.

Fourth, we must take pride in our nations again. We must demand that immigrants accept our values, and not the other way round. What we call home is more than Use our rights or a place ontothe map. It is our sense ofa belonging a community of values, community of ideas and ideals. lose them. Truth Will Set Us Free As Americans and Europeans, you and I belong to a common Western culture. We share the values and ideals of our common heritage. In order to preserve our nations and our homes, in order to pass our heritage on to our children, in order to survive, we must stand together. Otherwise we will be submerged in a uniform nation of Islam. Are you willing to let that happen? We must defend our own civilization. Ronald Reagan was right when he said that the future does not belong to the fainthearted. We must be brave, or we will be swamped by totalitarianism. It is a constant struggle to preserve our faith, our families, and our freedom. But we owe it to our children. That is why we must stand firm. We will not submit to Islam. Never. We will survive with our own Judeo-Christian heritage. We will defend our freedoms. We will speak the truth, because we stand for the truthand the truth will set us free.

First, we must tell people what is at stake. In Western Europe freedom of speech is being restricted at the demand of adherents of Islam and their collaborators. If you insult Christianity, it is considered a form of art; whereas if you insult Islam, it is called a hate crime. What is our recourse if those who deny that Islam is a problem do not grant us the right to debate the issue and speak the truth? If the erosion of our freedom of speech is the price we must pay to accommodate Islam, the price is too high. Our paramount obligation is to defend the right to speak what we see as the truth. We in Europe should follow Americas example and adopt a European First Amendment. But consider this too: Once we have the right the speak the truth, we need to use that right. This is my urgent message to you in America. Speak the truth, even when its uncomfortable, even when its not politically correct, even if we receive death threats. The truth cannot be compromised.
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