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Monday, 9 May 2011 Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post: "Geert Wilders' problem with Islam" by Jerry Gordon http://www.newenglishreview.org/images/clear.gif Hon. Geert Wilders, National Post photo Hon. Geert Wilders, Leader of the Freedom Party in The Nethelands was interviewed by Jonathan Kay, of Canada's National Post in Toronto on Sunday near the start of his "A Warning to America" tour. Wilders spoke in London, Ontario on Sunday. He will speak in Toronto this evening and in Ottawa on Tuesday before his arrival in Nashville on Wednesday for a series of events and interviews culminating in his major public speech at the Cornerstone Church in Madison on Thursday evening. This National Post interview, <http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/05/08/jonathan-kay-no-distinction- between-islam-and-islamism-for-geert-wilders/> "Geert Wilders' problem with Islam" is one of the more thoughtful presentations of Wilders' views that reflect of our own here at the New English Review. His responses in this National Post interview mirror our basic question about Islam: <http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog.../28866%20-%20Ca ched%E2%96%BA> "Is islam a religion or is it a totalitarian doctrine seeking world domination with a thin veneer of religious practices". Wilders answers this question in the affirmative in the course of which he explains the basis for his views. We shall hear more from Wilders as he continues the remainder of his American tour culminating in his momentous visit to Nashville - a city caught at the center of controversies over the threat of Islamization in the buckle of the bible belt. Here are excerpts from the National Post interview: "The word 'Islamism' suggests that there is a moderate Islam and a non-moderate Islam," he told me during an interview in Toronto on Sunday. "And I believe that this is a distinction that doesn't exist. It's like the Prime Minister of Turkey [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, said 'There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that's it.' This is the Islam of the Koran." "Now, you can certainly make a distinction among the people," he adds. "There are moderate Muslims - who are the majority in our Western societies - and non-moderate Muslims." "But Islam itself has only one form. The totalitarian ideology contained in the Koran has no room for moderation. If you really look at what the Koran says, in fact, you could argue that 'moderate' Muslims are not Muslims at all. It tells us that if you do not act on even one verse, then you are an apostate." [. . .} Mr. Wilders forthrightly describes the Muslim Prophet as a dictator, a pedophile and a warmonger. "If you study the life of Mohammed," Mr.Wilders told me, "you can see that he was a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden ever was." [. . .] Yet the real Geert Wilders speaks softly and thoughtfully. It turns out that he's travelled to dozens of Muslim nations. He knows more about the Islamic faith and what it means to ordinary people than do most of Islam's most ardent Western defenders. Nor do I believe that Mr. Wilders is a bigot - a least, not in the sense that the word usually is understood. "I don't hate Muslims. I hate their book and their ideology," is what he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in 2008. Mr. Wilders sees Islam as akin to communism or fascism, a cage that traps its suffering adherents in a hateful, phobic frame of mind. Mr. Wilders describes Muslim as victims of bad ideas, in other words. In this way, his attitude is entirely different from classic anti-Semites and racists, who treat Jews and blacks as debased on the level of biology. Of course, in the modern, politically correct Western tradition, hatred expressed toward a religion typically is held on the same level of human-rights opprobrium as hatred expressed toward a race or an ethnicity. But Islam is not really a religion at all, as Mr. Wilders sees it, but rather a retrograde political ideology with religious trappings. He notes that while other religions draw a distinction between God and Ceasar, between the secular and the spiritual, Islam demands submission in every aspect of human existence, both through the wording of the Koran itself and the Shariah law that has developed in its shadow. The faith also supplies a justification for aggressive war; vilifies non-believers; and pronounces death upon its enemies. In short, Mr. Wilders argues, it has all the ingredients of what students of 20th century history would recognize as a fully formed totalitarian ideology. "I see Islam as 95% ideology, 5% religion - the 5% being the temples and the imams," he tells me. "If you would strip the Koran of all the negative, hateful, anti-Semitic material, you would wind up with a tiny [booklet]." [. . .] His insistence on the proper distinction between faith and ideology is an idea that deserves to be taken seriously. For it invites the question: If we permit the excoriation of totalitarian cults created by modern dictators, why do we stigmatize (and even criminalize) the excoriation of arguably similar notions when they happen to be attributed to a 7th-century Bedouin with supernatural visions? It's a good question. And as far as I know, Geert Wilders is the only Western politician taking it seriously. Tags: Hon Geert Wilders <http://technorati.com/tag/Hon+Geert+Wilders> , A Warning to America Tour <http://technorati.com/tag/+A+Warning+to+America+Tour> , Jonathan Kay <http://technorati.com/tag/+Jonathan+Kay> , National Post <http://technorati.com/tag/+National+Post> , interview <http://technorati.com/tag/+interview> http://www.newenglishreview.org/images/clear.gif Submit Your Comment <http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_comment.cfm/blog_id/34522> Posted on 05/09/2011 2:32 AM by Jerry Gordon [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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