In his 1,500-page manifesto, Anders Behring Breivik slides alarmingly from a legitimate concern about the rise of Islam in Europe to propose 'terror as a method for waking up the masses.
By BRUCE BAWER
When bombs exploded on Friday in a compound of government office buildings in the heart of Oslo, I assumed, as did pretty much everyone, that the perpetrators were Islamic terrorists. But over the course of the day—as the bombings were overshadowed by the gunning down of dozens of young people at a Labor Party youth camp on a nearby island, Utøya—it emerged that these atrocities were not the work of an international jihadist organization. Instead, the perpetrator was a 32-year-old Oslo native named Anders Behring Breivik. He was motivated by a hostility to multicultural policies that, in his view, are leading his country down the path to Islamization. His response was a murderous rampage that has taken the lives of at least 92 people.
It came as stunning news that Norway had been attacked by a blond, blue-eyed, anti-Islamic terrorist. It should not have been: Several of us who have written about the rise of Islam in Europe have warned that the failure of mainstream political leaders to responsibly address the attendant challenges would result in the emergence of extremists like Breivik.
Read more at: The Wall Street Journal
Posts tonen met het label Bruce Bawer. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Bruce Bawer. Alle posts tonen
dinsdag 15 juni 2010
I’ve Become an Enemy of the People for Speaking the Truth About Islam
I’ve now been singled out, in a report commissioned and funded by the government of Norway, as a perpetrator of Islamophobia. Am I about to be hauled into court?
June 15, 2010- by Bruce Bawer
When it comes to the right to speak one’s mind about Islam, the record of the last few years makes it clear which direction the West is moving in. In France and Italy, Oriana Fallaci is put on trial for disparaging Islam. In Canada, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are hauled before “human rights commission” tribunals for criticizing Islam in print. In Australia, an Islamic organization sues two pastors for “vilification of Muslims.” In Britain, a Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested on charges of hate speech for having written negatively about Islam, and the Archbishop of Canterbury proposes that Parliament pass stronger laws against such speech acts. And in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, the head of the Freedom Party, which performed so well in the June 9 general elections that Wilders may end up in the governing coalition, still faces trial for having made a film about the Koranic foundations of terrorism.
Then there’s Norway, where I live, and where the last few days have seen yet another dark development. By way of background, permit me to begin by quoting myself. On pages 230-31 of my book Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom I sum up the more alarming aspects of Norway’s Discrimination Law, passed in 2005:
It forbids “harassment on the grounds of ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, skin color, language, religion, or beliefs,” and, in turn, defines harassment as “actions, omissions, or utterances [my emphasis] that have the effect or are intended to have the effect of being insulting, intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating.”
In other words, it’s illegal just to say certain things.
More at: Pajamas Media
Bruce blogs at: Memo from Europe
Some of his books:
While Europe Slept
ISBN 10: 0767920058
ISBN 13: 9780767920056
Dutch translation:
Terwijl Europa sliep
ISBN 10: 9029077867
ISBN 13: 9789029077866
Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom
ISBN 10: 038552398X
ISBN 13: 9780385523981
June 15, 2010- by Bruce Bawer
When it comes to the right to speak one’s mind about Islam, the record of the last few years makes it clear which direction the West is moving in. In France and Italy, Oriana Fallaci is put on trial for disparaging Islam. In Canada, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are hauled before “human rights commission” tribunals for criticizing Islam in print. In Australia, an Islamic organization sues two pastors for “vilification of Muslims.” In Britain, a Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested on charges of hate speech for having written negatively about Islam, and the Archbishop of Canterbury proposes that Parliament pass stronger laws against such speech acts. And in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, the head of the Freedom Party, which performed so well in the June 9 general elections that Wilders may end up in the governing coalition, still faces trial for having made a film about the Koranic foundations of terrorism.
Then there’s Norway, where I live, and where the last few days have seen yet another dark development. By way of background, permit me to begin by quoting myself. On pages 230-31 of my book Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom I sum up the more alarming aspects of Norway’s Discrimination Law, passed in 2005:
It forbids “harassment on the grounds of ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, skin color, language, religion, or beliefs,” and, in turn, defines harassment as “actions, omissions, or utterances [my emphasis] that have the effect or are intended to have the effect of being insulting, intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating.”
In other words, it’s illegal just to say certain things.
More at: Pajamas Media
Bruce blogs at: Memo from Europe
Some of his books:
While Europe Slept
ISBN 10: 0767920058
ISBN 13: 9780767920056
Dutch translation:
Terwijl Europa sliep
ISBN 10: 9029077867
ISBN 13: 9789029077866
Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom
ISBN 10: 038552398X
ISBN 13: 9780385523981
zaterdag 13 juni 2009
De draai naar rechts
De Amerikaanse schrijver Bruce Bawer buigt zich over de spectaculaire opmars van rechts in West-Europa. Hoe komt het dat links zijn glans verloor?
Toen in de jaren zestig Nieuw Links opkwam, ontstond er tegelijkertijd iets anders dat de Amerikaanse elites in de daarop volgende decennia zou kenmerken: de idee dat het sociaal-democratische West-Europa veruit superieur was aan de kapitalistische Verenigde Staten. Denk eens aan de arme Amerikaanse professor, voor wie elk uitstapje naar een wetenschappelijke conferentie in Europa bedorven werd door de sneren bij de borrel van zijn Europese collega’s over de schandalen waarin zijn land nu weer verstrikt was geraakt – Vietnam, Watergate, Irak – en over racisme, de doodstraf, of de gezondheidszorg. Voor een groot deel van Amerikaans Links was West-Europa niet minder dan een progressieve utopie.
Lees het hele artikel in Trouw
Toen in de jaren zestig Nieuw Links opkwam, ontstond er tegelijkertijd iets anders dat de Amerikaanse elites in de daarop volgende decennia zou kenmerken: de idee dat het sociaal-democratische West-Europa veruit superieur was aan de kapitalistische Verenigde Staten. Denk eens aan de arme Amerikaanse professor, voor wie elk uitstapje naar een wetenschappelijke conferentie in Europa bedorven werd door de sneren bij de borrel van zijn Europese collega’s over de schandalen waarin zijn land nu weer verstrikt was geraakt – Vietnam, Watergate, Irak – en over racisme, de doodstraf, of de gezondheidszorg. Voor een groot deel van Amerikaans Links was West-Europa niet minder dan een progressieve utopie.
Lees het hele artikel in Trouw
vrijdag 23 januari 2009
Bruce Bawer: Submission in the Netherlands
The trial of Geert Wilders represents another blow against Dutch freedom.
“The Freedom Party (PVV),” read yesterday’s press release, “is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal’s decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.”
The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Party’s head and the Dutch Parliament’s only internationally famous member, for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam—and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics—on the part of the Dutch establishment.
What a different road the Netherlands might have taken if Pim Fortuyn had lived! Back in the early spring of 2002, the sociologist-turned-politician—who didn’t mince words about the threat to democracy represented by his country’s rapidly expanding sharia enclaves—was riding high in the polls and appeared on the verge of becoming the next prime minister. For his supporters, Fortuyn represented a solitary voice of courage and an embodiment of hope for freedom’s preservation in the land of the dikes and windmills. But for the Dutch political class and its allies in the media and academia—variously blinded by multiculturalism, loath to be labeled racists, or terrified of offending Muslims—Fortuyn himself was the threat. They painted him as a dangerous racist, a new Mussolini out to tyrannize a defenseless minority. The result: on May 6, 2002, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was gunned down by a far-left activist taken in by the propaganda. The Dutch establishment remained in power. For many Dutchmen, hope died that day.
Read the rest here
“The Freedom Party (PVV),” read yesterday’s press release, “is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal’s decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.”
The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Party’s head and the Dutch Parliament’s only internationally famous member, for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam—and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics—on the part of the Dutch establishment.
What a different road the Netherlands might have taken if Pim Fortuyn had lived! Back in the early spring of 2002, the sociologist-turned-politician—who didn’t mince words about the threat to democracy represented by his country’s rapidly expanding sharia enclaves—was riding high in the polls and appeared on the verge of becoming the next prime minister. For his supporters, Fortuyn represented a solitary voice of courage and an embodiment of hope for freedom’s preservation in the land of the dikes and windmills. But for the Dutch political class and its allies in the media and academia—variously blinded by multiculturalism, loath to be labeled racists, or terrified of offending Muslims—Fortuyn himself was the threat. They painted him as a dangerous racist, a new Mussolini out to tyrannize a defenseless minority. The result: on May 6, 2002, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was gunned down by a far-left activist taken in by the propaganda. The Dutch establishment remained in power. For many Dutchmen, hope died that day.
Read the rest here
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