Here entire neighborhoods look like the Middle East, women walk aroundveiled, the mayor is a Muslim, sharia law is applied in the courts andthe theaters. An extensive report from the most Islamized city in Europe
One of the most indisputable results of Benedict XVI’s trip to the HolyLand was the improvement in relations with Islam. The three days hespent in Jordan, and then, in Jerusalem, the visit to the Dome of theMosque, spread an image among the Muslim general public – to an extentnever before seen – of a pope as a friend, surrounded by Islamicleaders happy to welcome him and work together with him for the good ofthe human family.
But just as indisputable is the distancebetween this image and the harsh reality of the facts. Not only incountries under Muslim regimes, but also where the followers ofMohammed are in the minority, for example in Europe.
In 2002,the scholar Bat Ye’or, a British citizen born in Egypt and a specialistin the history of the Christian and Jewish minorities in Muslimcountries – called the “dhimmi” – coined the term “Eurabia” to describethe fate toward which Europe is moving. It is a fate of submission toIslam, of “dhimmitude.”
Oriana Fallaci used the word “Eurabia” in her writings, andgave it worldwide resonance. On August 1, 2005, Benedict XVI receivedFallaci in a private audience at Castel Gandolfo. She rejected dialoguewith Islam; he was in favor of it, and still is. But they agreed – asFallaci later said – in identifying the “self-hatred” that Europedemonstrates, its spiritual vacuum, its loss of identity, preciselywhen the immigrants of Islamic faith are increasing within it.
Hollandis an extraordinary test case. It is the country in which individuallicense is the most extensive – to the point of permitting euthanasiaon children – in which the Christian identity is most faded, in whichthe Moslem presence is growing most boldly.
Here,multiculturalism is the rule. But the exceptions are dramatic: from thekilling of the anti-Islamist political leader Pim Fortuyn to thepersecution of the Somali dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the murder ofthe director Theo Van Gogh, condemned to death for his film”Submission,” a denunciation of the crimes of Muslim theocracy.Fortuyn’s successor, Geert Wilders, has lived under 24-hour policeprotection for six years.
There is one city in Holland wherethis new reality can be seen with the naked eye, more than anywhereelse. Here, entire neighborhoods look as if they have been lifted fromthe Middle East, here stand the largest mosques in Europe, here partsof sharia law are applied in the courts and theaters, here many of thewomen go around veiled, here the mayor is a Muslim, the son of an imam.