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Qaddafi, Wilders, and the Jihad Against Switzerland

Qaddafi's declaration of jihad against Switzerland is an action with centuries of precedence within Islam.

by
Andrew G. Bostom

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March 10, 2010 - 12:00 am
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These blatant, repeated exhortations for the Islamic subjugation of Europe — a context ignored by mainstream media “analyses” — motivated the Swiss Freedom Party’s (SVP’s) successful referendum to ban minarets.

The SVP has referred to minarets as both an accessory to worship, i.e., an instrument for the Muslim call to prayer (or “adhan”), and “a sign of domination.” Does this claim have merit? Indeed it does, according to the official entry on minarets from the venerable Encyclopedia of Islam. Ottoman minarets, in particular, epitomized their dual role “as a sign of power, and as an instrument for the adhan.” Despite orthodox Islamic views that minarets were garish and unnecessary — most notably, by the convenient bogeymen for “radical Islam” in our era, the Wahhabis — the Ottomans built:

… gigantic, needle-sharp lances clustered protectively, like a guard of honor, around the royal dome, have a distinctly aggressive and ceremonial impact, largely dependent on their almost unprecedented proportions; the pair of minarets flanking the Süleymaniye dome are each some 70m high.

Thus objective historical reality supports SVP’s claim that “Islam makes no distinction between Church and State, such that minarets become the expression of influence not only religious, but political, in nature. This conception is incompatible with Western secular tradition.”

SVP Parliamentarian Oskar Freysinger further rejects any anti-Muslim bias, but re-asserts:

We don’t want minarets. … The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam; it’s a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in Europe, it means Islam will have taken over.

These SVP arguments are bolstered by the brazen speech of then Istanbul mayor and current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who declared in 1997: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our bayonets and the faithful are our army.”

On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, Dutch voters delivered an even stronger democratic message rejecting Europe’s Islamization, ironically just hours before Qaddafi’s declaration of jihad against Switzerland was joined by his co-religionists in the Arab League. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV), participating for the first time in local municipal elections, won handily in Almere, a city of 200,000. The PVV also became the second biggest party in The Hague, the country’s third largest city. Polling data now indicate that the PVV could become the Netherlands’ largest political party after June’s national parliamentary elections.

Wilders celebrated these local electoral gains and optimistic national prospects during a remarkable address given in London at the British Parliament’s House of Lords on Friday, March 5. He invoked Winston Churchill’s 1899 commentary on Islam from “The River War” — a first-hand narrative of the great British prime minister’s encounters with jihadism in the Sudan as a young military officer:

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science — the science against which it had vainly struggled — the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Wilders agreed with Churchill’s historical assessment, and then provided an accurate doctrinal rationale for Islam’s bellicose nature and its contemporary relevance to Europe, which fittingly referred to Qaddafi’s statements from 2006:

I don’t have a problem and my party does not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. The majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens and want to live a peaceful life as you and I do. I know that. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people, the Muslims, and the ideology, between Islam and Muslims. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam. Islam strives for world domination. The Quran commands Muslims to exercise jihad. The Quran commands Muslims to establish Shariah law. The Quran commands Muslims to impose Islam on the entire world. … Islam is merely not a religion, it is mainly a totalitarian ideology. Islam wants to dominate all aspects of life, from the cradle to the grave. Shariah law is a law that controls every detail of life in a Islamic society. From civic and family law to criminal law. It determines how one should eat, dress, and even use the toilet. Oppression of women is good, drinking alcohol is bad. I believe that Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to Western values. The equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of Islamization. Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are not compatible.

As former Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan said: “The whole of Europe will become Islamic. We will conquer Rome.” Libyan dictator Qaddafi said: “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent today and their number is on the increase. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted into Islam. Europe will one day soon be a Muslim continent.” Indeed, for once in his life, Qaddafi was telling the truth.

Wilders’ keen, if blunt, conceptions articulate contemporary realities while restating seminal insights on Islam observed by great scholars whose works antedate the present day morbid affliction of cultural relativism.

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